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Wednesday, Feb. 19
The Indiana Daily Student

Bloomington Web site explores regional lore

Founder defends the legitimacy of online ‘city-wiki’

In 1964, residents of the rural town Elkinsville, Ind., located 45 minutes from Bloomington, found themselves facing the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, who’d claimed much of town as the future site of the Lake Monroe Reservoir. The Army succeeded, razing the city’s church, school, farms, businesses and all but a few homes in the process. Former residents now reconvene at the town’s previous site each year.\nIn compiling such stories online, bloomingpedia.org has breathed new life into nuggets of regional lore like this.\n“I think the Web site makes local information more accessible,” said Mark Krenz, the IU alumnus who created the Web site in 2005. “There might be information about these things at places like the Monroe County Historical Society, but \nnot stories.”\nBloomingpedia, like the popular online encyclopedia it mimics, wikipedia.org, lets any user edit and create articles.\nThe difference between the two is that Bloomingpedia focuses only on Bloomington and the surrounding area. Sites such as these are known as “city-wikis,” and dozens of them have popped up in recent years.\nOver time, the Web site has developed a cult-like following. The site has more than 5,000 pages of content, and has had 1.3 million page views since its inception in 2005. Its most involved users have made thousands of edits.\n“All of us involved have a common love for Bloomington,” said Chris Robb, a wiki enthusiast who works closely with Krenz on the site daily – all unpaid. “We’re interested in participating in our surroundings and capturing part of the community for others.”\nStill, Krenz mentions “more contributors” as a goal for \nthe site.\n“The draw to the wiki format is that it allows everyone to collaborate on bringing information to the current and writing about the things that they are interested in,” he said.\nOn the academic level, Wikipedia and similar Web sites have struggled to gain credibility. Wikipedia’s founder, Jimmy Wales, who received a doctorate from IU in finance, has railed against that image, contending that many entries are put through an “extensive process of compromise,” he said in a 2007 interview with Mother Jones magazine.\nIU professors generally bar using Wikipedia as a source in academic work. But some, such as L. Jean Camp, an associate professor at the School of Informatics, acknowledge the \nsite’s usefulness.\n“(Wikipedia) is a good starting point for research,” Camp said. “It is high-speed, word of mouth information ... but (it) can be used as an introduction or for finding related topics.”\nA team of researchers from the School of Library and Information Sciences has even worked to study Wikipedia. Their efforts included creating a “map” of Wikipedia that shows which articles are viewed most often or most often linked to other articles. Each article on the map is represented as a black dot.\nThe map, in a display of the extensiveness of Wikipedia, measures 5 feet by 5 feet.\n“After we created the map, we saw that the most viewed articles are the most divisive,” said Bruce Herr, a senior software developer at IU who worked on the project.\nBloomingpedia’s operators don’t combat others posting wikis on their site and instead embrace a multifunctional role.\n“We don’t delude ourselves to thinking that people won’t make mistakes,” Robb said. “It takes baby-sitting, but there are enough eyes on it.”\nKrenz added that people alternately use the Web site as a “city history,” “city directory” and “social networking site.”\nHe welcomes all three.

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