Rough draft for Public I article:
edit the article directly or leave comments at end of the page after the horizontal line
Whether you have lived in the Champaign-Urbana area for a lifetime, a decade or a semester chances are you have some cool places, helpful advice and insider tips that you would like to share with others. And you’d probably also like to hear what others have to share.
Champaign-Urbana is an amazing place to live with a thriving art community, hopping music scene, active community groups, a diverse culture and rich history. There are a number of child and adult education classes, public computing centers, and public projects. But the community needs to know about these projects and how to get involved in order to take advantage of these resources.
It’s a weird time: we don’t have the same relationships with our neighbors and lack the deep rooted community networks that existed twenty years ago. Instead of talking to our neighbors about who fixed their roof, our community groups about local financial-aid resources or our friends about who to get medical attention from, we often go online. And most of the time the sites we visit online don’t feature recommendations from community members who use and experience these things but offer top-down content scattered all over the web. The CU Wiki hopes to change this by focusing on community created knowledge collected in one place.
CU Wiki is a place in the form of a website to collectively create, share, and access information about the Champaign-Urbana area that redesigns the information flow of a deeply connected social network in our community.
Here are six things to know about CU Wiki:
1. Anyone can edit anything and anyone can create a page about anything. No page is off limits. No edit is too small or too large. If there is something missing from the wiki, create a page about it! Whether it's a person, place, business, project, program or local legend it can have a place on the wiki. For instance, maybe you want to create a page about resources for veterans; classes offered at a neighborhood community center; local programs providing winter coats for children; or a page consisting entirely of pictures of handprints in the concrete of sidewalks around town.
2. CU Wiki is a treasure chest of information - so search, browse subjects, and explore links. You can find a hidden running trail, discover a new live music venue, learn about community support groups, and connect to Champaign-Urbana history.
3. The only rule, well guideline really: respect. Respect others and respect what you are writing about.
4. CU Wiki is created by the community for the community; its development and survival depends on YOU! Content and usability are key. The site allows for an endless amount of text and photos, and provides a map tool to add location information to any page. See the front page for tutorials on editing to help get you started.
5. CU Wiki uses the free open software LocalWiki.
6. Just do it! CU Wiki is a tough beast to kill and it will take more than a few mistakes in editing to bring it down! Every version of a page is saved and if you decide you don’t like the edits you made, you can undo them!
Visit http://cuwiki.net to get started today!
Comments:
I like the intro about sharing our local knowledge no matter how long you've been here (appeals to college students and folks who've grown up in CU). It takes a while before the article gets to the wiki (bottom of the third paragraph), so I would suggest maybe condensing the first three paragraphs and moving the CU Wiki line up to the first or second paragraph.
Also, I like that you end with the website. Makes me wanna click it and get started today! -Sasha
