science

LocalWiki

LocalWiki is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand LocalWiki rather than just read about it. In short: LocalWiki is a project that was founded by Davis Wiki creators Mike Ivanov and Philip Neustrom to help communities create local wikis. They started DavisWiki in 2004, a crowdsourced website for the college town of Davis, California, which became popular among Davis residents.

Key takeaways

LocalWiki belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect LocalWiki to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of LocalWiki from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

LocalWiki is a project that was founded by Davis Wiki creators Mike Ivanov and Philip Neustrom to help communities create local wikis. They started DavisWiki in 2004, a crowdsourced website for the college town of Davis, California, which became popular among Davis residents. They expanded the software to create the LocalWiki platform in the early 2010s after receiving a grant from the Knight Foundation. The project still exists as of 2024 but has struggled to remain viable.

History

DavisWiki

In 2004, Ivanov and Neustrom started DavisWiki, an experimental project to collect and share local information about the town of Davis, California, editable by anyone. By 2006, DavisWiki was one of the largest city wikis, providing its users a guide to a wide range of topics like local businesses, politics and activities; the site relied on donations and fundraising events. It allowed more geographically-specific and subjective information than Wikipedia. Neustrom described DavisWiki as hyperlocal. By 2007, two former Davis residents created a similar wiki for the neighboring city of Sacramento, California, using the Wikispot website that also hosted DavisWiki. In 2009, Nieman Lab called DavisWiki the world's best local wiki. That year Neustrom was planning to incorporate the nonprofit under the name Wikispot.

Expansion into wiki platform (2010–2014) In June 2010, LocalWiki won a $350,000 grant from the Knight News Challenge to help build the technology so that other communities could create their own wikis, modeled after DavisWiki. The grant was related to the Knight Foundation's interest in open government; they also funded OpenStreetMap and EveryBlock. Also in June 2010, the New York Times noted that DavisWiki had helped Davis residents compile information about a local con artist. Later that year, LocalWiki ran a Kickstarter project that raised $26,000 to help fund outreach. In 2011 the project worked with the creators of an existing city wiki in Denton, Texas, to shift the website to the LocalWiki platform, because their original wiki software was not user-friendly. LocalWiki's second focus community was the Triangle region of Durham, North Carolina, with initial contributions about transportation infrastructure and parks, and a goal of compiling information about historic events. The Triangle project was supported by volunteers from CityCamp Raleigh and by Red Hat, a company based in Raleigh. A nonprofit in Tallahassee, Florida, Village Square, helped start TallahasseeWiki in 2012 with knowledge from residents. Residents of Ann Arbor, Michigan transitioned their city wiki, founded in 2005, to the LocalWiki platform in 2012. Oakland Wiki was launched in November 2012, coming out of a Code for Oakland event in September; it received early support from Open Oakland. In 2014, the Oakland Wiki was used as a resource for information in a public debate around surveillance in Oakland as well as showcasing more whimsical ideas such as re-imagining supervisor districts with Hunger Games logos. The Oakland Wiki attracts volunteers who want to preserve history and information that is not notable enough for Wikipedia. As of 2013, the DavisWiki was still the most actively used LocalWiki. Some challenges experienced by LocalWiki include determining geographic boundaries for LocalWikis, specialized knowledge needed to start a LocalWiki, and difficulty coordinating across LocalWikis. As of 2014, LocalWiki had 71 wikis in 10 countries.

2015-present By 2024, LocalWiki has survived but, according to a PhD thesis from Temple University, only resulted in 100,000 articles and has struggled to be viable.

Functionality The LocalWiki software includes a WYSIWYG editing interface to help make editing simpler. It also includes mapping features: each article can have an associated annotated map, and the website has an overview map with those annotations. LocalWiki is built on the Django framework in Python.

See als List of LocalWikis List of wikis RegioWiki and list of Regiowikis List of wiki software Comparison of wiki software Comparison of wiki farms

References

External links Official website Davis Wiki https://oaklandwiki.org/ https://localwiki.org/oakland/ LocalWiki on GitHub "Wiki Spot". Internal Revenue Service filings. ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer.

Illustrations

DavisWiki logo

LocalWiki: The DavisWiki website on Thursday, December 13, 2007 — The DavisWiki website on Thursday, December 13, 2007

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with LocalWiki

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what LocalWiki claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to LocalWiki before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about LocalWiki ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of LocalWiki

In research: LocalWiki appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses LocalWiki in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: LocalWiki is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Collaborative projects, Content management systems, Creative Commons-licensed websites, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for LocalWiki outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study LocalWiki in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what LocalWiki means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain LocalWiki out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is LocalWiki in simple terms?

Why does LocalWiki matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study LocalWiki?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on LocalWiki.