Pavel's Blog

Shortly before we left for Helsinki, I rediscovered wikis. In particular, although I'd heard about Wikipedia pretty early on, I hadn't really paid much attention to it until something induced me to go see if anything had been written up there about the London bombings. I was amazed and impressed at the depth of the article there, even just a few days after the event itself.

A link from that article, I think, led me to discover WikiNews, a wiki-based news-coverage site. This is, in some ways, an even more ambitious effort than the Wikipedia, aiming to provide wide-ranging news coverage in as timely a fashion as any of the big commercial outfits. I found it particularly fascinating to page through the early revisions of the first London bombings article, and see preserved there the process of slow realization going on around the world at the time.

While bouncing around between those two wikis, I ended up typing the word "wiki" into the address bar of my browser a bunch, and as usual, IE kept offering me completions for that text based on the URLs of recently visited pages. At some point, I noticed that the top completion offered was for "http://www.wikitravel.org/en/Ashland_(Oregon)", which I must have visited at some point via a Google search for Ashland wireless hotspots.

I didn't remember noticing when I did the search that I'd turned up a wiki-based online travel guide, but there it was, large as life. Now, in my newly wiki-wakened state, I found the idea intriguing. Wikitravel aims to produce high-quality online travel content, suitable for (and available for) republication in paper-based guides (in addition, of course, to use as-is online).

In preparation for our Helsinki trip, and almost constantly while we've been here, I've been making use of, and contributing updates to, the Wikitravel Helsinki article. Its restaurant recommendations, getting-around information, etc., has been invaluable, especially because we forgot to bring along the paper guide we originally bought for this purpose.

Like many of the articles in Wikitravel, most of the content already there was written by locals, not by actual travellers. This is evident from the some of the choices of content, and from the point of view of the authors. This is not a hit against Wikitravel, just an observation. Certainly, there's much to be gained by a traveller from a resident's local knowledge. Of course, the wonderful thing about a wiki is that it makes it so easy to augment what the locals have written with the traveller's on-the-ground experience, and that's what I've been doing.

I've enjoyed contributing to the Wikitravel Helsinki page, adding information about airport shuttles, more detailed restaurant descriptions, updated taxi fares, etc. I can tell from my own experience that this is work that'll be useful to future travellers, and there's a great feeling of balance, giving back to the very resource that has helped us out in visiting here.

Like blogs and MUDs, wikis provide what Amy Bruckman called an "authentic context for writing", so widely lacking in the pre-Internet age. Certainly I'm enjoying it, anyway.