Wiki for Motorcycle Touring

In a different thread, I made the suggestion to use a Wiki to provide a place for 10,000 people to edit a living document containing all of the motorcycle road information that we collectively possess.

So, having made the (rather flippant) suggestion, I decided to see what it would take to make it happen. It was surprisingly easy!

I found a free hosting site, so this costs nothing.

Check it out for yourself.

Read, explore, make changes, add pages, go nuts.

Let's see what this can do!

This is the true "top" page: http://riters.com/MotorcycleRoads/

But, here's where the magic happens: http://riters.com/MotorcycleRoads/index.cgi/RoadReviews

Follow any link you like, and read what's there. If you want to edit or add to the information, then click the EditText link at the bottom.

If you run into a dead end (a "stub" in Wiki-speak) then click the EditText button at the bottom to create the page YOURSELF.

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So far, I only added a few lame details about a really boring road in Iowa, but hey, this is was just a test to see what it would look like. We can clean up the details later.

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Check it out!

Gene,

I think this is pretty cool. I have plenty of questions, look for a PM shortly.

Best,

More additions

I've been entering sample data for some roads around me, just to get a feel for how this whole thing would work.

I'll probably put together a Style Guide so we can standardize how the pages look.

I know 30 people have looked at this thread, but no one else has made any additions to the Wiki yet, so I'm REALLY excited to get someone/everyone else on-board.

Please check it out:

http://riters.com/MotorcycleRoads/index.cgi/RoadReviews

Can't...figure...it....out....

This is cool Gene! I'm having a bit of trouble navigating, but I guess that this forum was hard to get used to at first too...

. I just tried to make an entry under "Minnesota Roads" but seem to have made my entry on the Minnesota Roads front page - how do you label your specific road/give a heading to your post under a state?

Create pages for specific roads.

Thank you RV!

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Here's what I would do with your contribution:

1. On the MinnesotaRoads page, add the following text:

2. Save Changes on that page, which will create a new page called MinnesotaHighway61

3. Edit the MinnesotaHighway61 page like:

4. Save changes. Step back and admire your work!

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For everyone following along....
Okay, this might seem complicated UNTIL the first time you do it yourself, and then it's easy. Most of these suggestions are STYLE issues, not CONTENT issues. So, you could say I'm making it more complicated than it needs to be.

I've created a Style Sheet at http://riters.com/MotorcycleRoads/index.cgi/MotorcycleRoadsHelp

When in doubt, just get your contribution in place...anyone else can work on the formatting later.

THANKS for contributing!

Thanks for the help, Gene. I think that I've got it now. It is fairly straightforward after a bit of trial and error. It is helpful that it is easy to edit what you post.

New comments added

Click this link to see what RV added:
http://riters.com/MotorcycleRoads/index.cgi/MinnesotaHighway61

Comments needed

I started working on the MotorcycleRoads Wiki by just adding every road in my general area, just to see how the process worked, and what the output would be like.

I started to envision the Wiki as being an interactive street atlas...it would be possible to follow link to link and virtually "drive" your path. Unfortunately, this includes entering every road, including all the boring roads.

Some boring roads have good places to eat , so that's not all bad, either.

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Anyway, the other idea I had was to enter only the really good roads, but then that would ignore most of the roads in my area.

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A compromise would be to list any road that anyone wants to include, but to highlight the best roads for easy identification.

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Please check out the Wiki and look at the info that has already been entered.

The IowaHighway30 data is pretty lame so far, but on the plus side I've included City information that could be expanded.

The MinnesotaHighway61 data is in a commentary style, and doesn't attempt to list irrelevant details.

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Check it out...I'm looking for suggestions.

Contributions needed

I just had a thought...if everyone created a Wiki page for their hometown, and a page for the nearest highway, we'd have about 3000 more pages than we do now.

So, what are you waiting for? Get busy.

Ok, ya'll... go ride this road.

Just put up a description of GA60, one of the nicer roads in these parts.

While I understand the objective of a Wiki, I sorta don't like it.

Reason? It's great for computer wonks but us mere mortals would find this difficult to use. Clueless idiot users (that would be me....) would not take the time to figure it out before giving up.

It took me over a minute to figure out how to add a road. Granted, this could be fixed with some copywriting and interface work, but I would like to see a tool here on our site that used a form that even a brain-dead moron (me, again) could use to enter in a road description.

We used to have the beginnings of this on our site, but it has been taken down. Not that it was the best thing going (by any stretch) but it was a step in the direction I think something like this should go.

It interfaced with Mapblast, so that when the person put in the name of the town where the road started, a link was created to a Mapblast page with that town centered in the map. Ditto for the endpoint. It allowed the user to defiine the kind of road (twisty, scenic, fast, etc...) and put in a little writeup.

This was enough to have a search tool that would allow you to find all the twisty roads in a particular state... handy for planning a trip.

Thanks for taking time to try out this Wiki concept. Collaborative knowledge management is a really interesting concept, and this is a particularly interesting way to do it.

Ian

Visian said:

It's great for computer wonks but...It took me over a minute to figure out how to add a road.

Click to expand...

Granted...but how long would it take you to enter a *second* road?

Thanks for making a contribution, I really like what you wrote. Your contribution and BoxerGrrlie's are really what I was looking for. My own contribution is much too factual (i.e. boring). But, I've left it in place to show an example of bulleted lists and how the links could flow to other pages.

I'm also trying to keep to a certain style, so I moved your contribution down one level and formatted it like the other pages.

I do wish it was easy to have clickable maps, graphics, etc. There is a Full Text search, that could be used to find keywords like "twisty".

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