Thinking about setting up a hiking wiki

Greetings all,

I feel as though the New England hiking community doesn't process information as well as we could. You have to go to one source for trail guides (either commercially, such as the AMC guide, or Mohammed's website--which is great, but could go a lot farther).

Road closings have another website, if you know where to find it.

A few weeks back I wanted to hike the Long Trail, couldn't find a definitive website on whether a road was open. (It may exist, but again, there isn't one location to start from to find it). Had to call a ranger, got the wrong one, she gave me another number...

There are books on histories of place names, if you own the books.

Is a Garfield shelter finished? What's the capacity of it? Again, it's out there, but you have to know how to find that website.

I think that people are web-savvy enough, and the technology is now user-friendly enough for the hiking community to start a hiking wiki. We all place out collective knowledge in one location--or at the very least use that one location as a jumping off point so that you go there, go to the right entry, and find the links to all the other websites out there.

For example. Think of doing a Pemi Loop. There's a nice website on that. There are guidebooks. The AMC maintains websites. NOAA can tell you the weather for any given summit. But that's four websites (you have to pay for the AMC online guide). A wiki could contain all that info in one location, plus have links to the others. You could have one entry per mountain, with links right to the NOAA forecast for that summit, all the trail info (distance, elevation, book time), lists of shelters, updates on trail conditions, connections to other mountains, the history of that mountain and its trails, pictures, maps, GPS coordinates to the trailheads, again, all in one location, with links.

It would make accessing the mountains much easier from the perspective of the user, and it would allow us a community to build on our collective knowledge, rather than each person/group having to start collecting that information de novo every time they want to do a hike. If done properly, and completely, this could be a really valuable resource for the hiking community.

BUT, it's a lot of work to set up! We would need a bunch of very dedicated editors to set up the format for each mountain initially, so that users could come in and enter the information easily--and if we include all the New England states, that's a lot of people! Prior to that, we would have to think through what the format for each mountain's page would look like.

We would have to think through the Long Trail's entries, which would be different. Also things like the Pemi Loop and the AT. Below are some thoughts I jotted down, as a first run just to get people thinking.

Mountains
Name

Description (height, location, so on)

Trails (brief description and verbal details, links to GPS routes, links to legally available maps)

Weather (link directly to the NOAA forecast for the summit)

Amenities (Shelters, water sources, lookouts, outhouses) [Can we find a better than “amenities, or does that work”?]

Driving directions to trailheads

History

Photos


Trails [AT, LT, Pemi Loop, etc.]
Directions to trailheads (with GPS coordinates or road numbers)

Verbal descriptions and distance/elevation gain/book time

Links to GPS routes, links to legally available maps

Amenities (Shelters, water sources, lookouts, outhouses)

People

Huts

Places [here I’m thinking Arethusa Falls, swim holes, Zeacliff, and so on]

Lodgings (hotels/hostels/motels)

Places to shower / do laundry

Restaurants

Stores

Roads [here I’m thinking Sawyer River, Zealand Road, CVR, and so on]

Publications

Clubs (AMC, RMC, etc.)

# # #

It would take a lot of effort to put together, but once it was up and running, hikers wouldn't have to reinvent the wheel every time they want to plan a trip, and there are so many people on the trails, that our collective knowledge could keep the wiki up to date.

So the questions I have for people are:
1) Is this worth doing?
2) Is it feasible?*
3) Would you volunteer your time to help create it?

*Getting a domain name is cheap, getting the wiki software is also quite easy. By "feasible" I mean, is it really possible to put together a hiking encyclopedia on volunteer effort?

In essence, we would be creating an on-line, non-profit, volunteer written hiking encyclopedia. It wouldn't compete with Views because it wouldn't be a forum, nor would it use copyrighted information. But ideally it would assemble all the public information in one, very easy to use location, just as wikipedia does, for example.

Your thoughts?


Brian



p.s. I will be backpacking over the Wildcats-Carters-Moriah this weekend, and won't be able to respond until Monday.

There are so many personal hiking sites and blogs, plus the three major New England forums, plus summitpost.org, that Google is usually adequate to find the information, wherever it is. A hiking wiki is a nice idea in theory but I can tell you (from using them at work), they are a LOT of work to maintain, as is any web site. With multiple people, you suffer from inconsistent formatting, wording, etc., which further reduces their effectiveness, especially for a search. And then there are hosting costs.

You already have VFTT trail conditions, NewEnglandTrailConditions.com and trailsnh.com along with the state (DOT) sites for road closures. Unless you have a dedicated network of hikers visiting all sites in the wiki on a semi-monthly basis, or more frequently, you're probably not going to be as up-to-date as these other sites.

Tim

bikehikeskifish said:

There are so many personal hiking sites and blogs, plus the three major New England forums, plus summitpost.org, that Google is usually adequate to find the information, wherever it is. A hiking wiki is a nice idea in theory but I can tell you (from using them at work), they are a LOT of work to maintain, as is any web site. With multiple people, you suffer from inconsistent formatting, wording, etc., which further reduces their effectiveness, especially for a search. And then there are hosting costs.

You already have VFTT trail conditions, NewEnglandTrailConditions.com and trailsnh.com along with the state (DOT) sites for road closures. Unless you have a dedicated network of hikers visiting all sites in the wiki on a semi-monthly basis, or more frequently, you're probably not going to be as up-to-date as these other sites.

Tim

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What he said!

I run a small web site, and that alone is enough to give me a lot of extra work. My items are always changing as well, (pubs come and go more quickly than you might think!), and while I do have some helpers, it's still a big job staying current.

I applaud your proposal, but I'm afraid that it would just be overkill at this point, unless you were to really do it up in a BIG way. And even if you did, the other sites have a huge amount of momentum on their side.

Being an academic, I get philosophic about knowledge-building. I believe the more knowledge available to more people is almost always a better thing. I am also very big into knowledge building, where folks who know collectively contribute.

Now I should point out that in the waaay to long posting I initially wrote, I didn't say a thing about trip reports, and I specifically said that the wiki I envisioned wouldn't be a forum. Yet the only sites Tim mentioned were Views and two trip report sites. Now imagine one site that at the bottom of each mountain had a link to those sites. Rather than "competing," the wiki now becomes a source of traffic for those trip report sites, and actually creates an incentive for the hosts to ensure the wiki links remain live.

Now Tim, if it looks like I am taking you to task, note this. You post an average of over two comments to Views every single day. So you're a person of great enthusiasm and clearly you have something to say. So imagine you dedicated, say just fifteen minutes a week to a wiki, entering info on a trail or parking lot information. in just five months--twenty weeks--that would be five hour's of contributions that would never disappear. They might be updates (perhaps by yourself!), but that knowledge you contributed would always be there, and the next time a person had a question about it, they wouldn't have to start from scratch to find an answer.

As for the DOT websites, again, a Wiki merely has to have good links to them, and then people come to realize that a wiki is an excellent source to start asking questions, and since it serves as a free "yellow pages" for the DOT, their P.R. people also have an incentive to ensure the links remain live.

Tom, just visited your site. It would be a lot easier to maintain all that info on a wiki, where many people could keep the information up-to-date (including the bar owners themselves), and it would reach a lot viewers.

True enough, on a wiki, we lose ownership of the info in a way we keep on all the individual sites, but the flip side is that we get to build knowledge together.

People could certainly take editorial leadership over certain topics--indeed, that would need to happen--which of course gives them incentives to bring in more contributors...

Honestly, who ever thought Wikipedia would actually work? Who ever though people would voluntarily and anonymously write hundreds of thousands of encyclopedia entries? And yet they do!

But it is undeniable that if people see knowledge as something that they "own" or that there are "competing" sites that don't see the two as complementary, a hiking wikipedia would never work.


Brian

i think it is a fine idea. time will tell if it becomes an effective source, but I do not understand the big difference between making x number of clicks from google to separate web sites and x number of clicks while searching the wiki? Both approaches start with a search engine and end at a page with information.

As far as spending time to maintain this information, I personally would prefer to devote my time to actual hiking or taking care of those who are dear to me.

Brambor said:

... but I do not understand the big difference between making x number of clicks from google to separate web sites and x number of clicks while searching the wiki?

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That, of course, is the main objection ... what new information will the wiki produce?

Brambor said:

As far as spending time to maintain this information, I personally would prefer to devote my time to actual hiking or taking care of those who are dear to me.

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As someone who has "been there, done that" I must note that maintaining a half decent web site requires an immense amount of work. While starting it seems like fun ... trust me, it soon becomes hard work, less attractive by the year. I have dozens of ideas for improving my site ... too much hard work to implement them

Absolutely, one of the common pitfalls of our passionate hobbies is to get involved too much to a point where they become jobs. Once they become jobs the hobbies are no longer fun.

Mohamed Ellozy said:

That, of course, is the main objection ... what new information will the wiki produce?

As someone who has "been there, done that" I must note that maintaining a half decent web site requires an immense amount of work. While starting it seems like fun ... trust me, it soon becomes hard work, less attractive by the year. I have dozens of ideas for improving my site ... too much hard work to implement them

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I think that the naysayers here don't quite understand how wikis work. The advantage to a wiki is that it's not just one or two people doing all of the work- anyone in the community can contribute and update the pages. The whole idea behind something like this is that it wouldn't just be one person keeping everything updated.

I think it's a great idea- in fact, I've often thought about starting a wiki for the Adirondacks and the Catskills. I'd be interested in helping you out if the wiki included those areas, as well as VT, in addition to the Whites...

What is a wiki?

MEB said:

What is a wiki?

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A wiki is a collection of articles that anyone can add to and edit. Wikipedia is a great example of a wiki.

Basically, wikis are resources/repositories of information that are developed and maintained by a large community, rather than just a select group of "staff."

They have their advantages and disadvantages, of course. They are great ways to build massive websites full of information without placing too much of the burden for managing that information on any one person. Of course, since anyone can edit the articles, sometimes the quality of the information in questionable.

Please be sure to include very detailed descriptions of as many trails as possible so we will know exactly what to expect around every corner.

DSettahr said:

I think that the naysayers here don't quite understand how wikis work...

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I agree. People who work in engineering/software/networking usually don't have the juice to understand something as complex as a wiki page. Yup, you nailed it. But then again, I'm not an academic, so what do I know. I thought a wiki was one of those ugly dudes in the bar scene in Star Wars.

You make a fair point, Brian, but let me counter with:

I have a web site which archives all my TRs. Like Mohamed says, it has become a borderline job to update. It was fun for the 48, but now I feel obligated to continue it for the NEHH.

My contributions to this website largely occur during those compile/build/test cycles at work and aside from TRs, are much more social in nature. You probably notice that most contributions come during working hours. I'm not an academic*, but I (ask Craig ) 'like numbers' and I am fascinated about why certain topics or trips generate more response than others. Without the social interaction, I have far less motivation to contribute. I have spent a fair amount of time making sure that my TRs archive well, by keeping the linked photos in place, and updating links that they point to.

I have worked at the same company now for 4 years. We have gone through three Sharepoint sites (Microsoft's 'Wiki') and are now on 'real' Wiki (Confluence) #2. Wiki #1 was driven by one person, was fairly complete, fairly well organized, and fairly well edited. All others (4 out of 5) are nearly useless. Despite everyone being free to contribute, not every one does, and without editing, searches don't work that well, and information is poorly organized. So yes, everyone is free to contribute, but A) will they and B) at what level will they?

Since you pointed out my contribution rate, let me observe the majority of your posts are links to outside articles (the New York Times, Boston Globe, NPR, Denali, Everest, ...). So, if you want to build a wiki with links to a lot of pre-existing things, that you can do without much help. Keeping the links current, however, is not trivial. Effectively, I have this already with Google. In fact, a survey of our customers recently revealed that they don't want "help" or "user manuals" - they want a search box ala Google so they can ask it questions and get the answers they seek (with regard to the operation of our software.)

I'm not saying not to do it, I am telling you what I expect you will be up against. Let it be noted that I generally don't post trail conditions (unless it is shoulder season, or something it out of the ordinary). Let me further say (paraphrasing Spencer) that as I gained experience, I stopped even reading the WMG trail descriptions. So, what is it you hope to provide that isn't available either in the WMG or with a Google search? Maybe it is more backpacking focused? Something I don't do. I am not convinced that the Wiki will provide timely answers to your original questions like "is the road open?" or "is the shelter complete?" and will anyone bother to update the "close" or "no" answers when the road becomes open or the shelter is complete?

Tim

*I am a software engineer by profession. I have done at least half of my professional time on web applications.

ETA: It seemed so obvious to me early as to not mention it, but I may as well just in case. You could dedicate efforts to improving the existing Wikipedia entries. Most of the Hundred Highest (for example) have at least stub articles on an existing and popular site.

Here's what I envision in a hiking wiki: Rather than having a page for each trail with links to trip reports, all of the pertinent infromation would be listed on right on the page itself. Each page for each trail would be a trail-description, similar to what you see in guidebooks. The advantage here is that a wiki can be updated much more regularly than any printed guidebook.

For example, say that a signficant section of a trail gets rerouted. The reroute won't get mentioned in a guidebook until the next printing- which could be 10 years down the road. But with a wiki, information about the reroute can be added almost immediately. A bridge is out? Just log into the site and add it to the trail description. Beavers flood part of the trail? Again, just log into the site and add it to the description.

Heck, it doesn't even need to be a full blown trail description on par with printed guidebooks- it really just needs to list trail conditions of major consideration to be useful.

I think that a lot of people would use such a site- especially people who are new to hiking and backpacking, who like to enter the woods armed with as much information as possible. Heck, I get about 20-30 hits per week alone on just my photo album from people doing research in preparation for hikes. I bet a site like this would draw a lot of search engine traffic.

bikehikeskifish said:

ETA: It seemed so obvious to me early as to not mention it, but I may as well just in case. You could dedicate efforts to improving the existing Wikipedia entries. Most of the Hundred Highest (for example) have at least stub articles on an existing and popular site.

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I think that Wickipedia's standards on relevance would preclude adding pages in the level of detail B is looking for, but yes, it'd be a start.

Lots of online communities have developed their own wikis that are very specific. For example, Memory Alpha is the Star Trek wiki, and Wookiepedia is the Star Wars wiki.

Speaking of which, B really wouldn't even need to concern himself with finding hosting and installing wiki software on it. He could simly use Wikia, an online community that allows users to start and manage their own wikis.

DSettahr said:

I think that Wickipedia's standards on relevance would preclude adding pages in the level of detail B is looking for, but yes, it'd be a start.

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Good point. BTW, I hope I am not supplying only "criticism." Brian did ask for input.

Who is your target readership?

Peakbaggers? Those are the ones doing the most searching. I recently built up a stack of notes for the Maine 6-pack peaks using Google, and TRs from this site were a big part of the information. It didn't take that long.

Where are you going to get your content?

The 27th ed. of the WMG has over 540 pages and six maps. Links to other sites are readily available from Google. 'Gotchas' are available from existing sites.

How are you going to popularize your site?

The more pages it has, the more links to it and the more traffic, the higher it will rank in search engine results.

Who is going to write your content? Edit it? Are they themselves the target audience? Academics tend to write a lot of papers, generally to be consumed by other academics.

How will you build trust that the information is accurate? As an academic, you probably don't allow your students to use Wikipedia as a source for papers. My kids can't and they're in 3rd and 6th grade, not college.

Let me summarize my concerns in this way: I think it is a fine and noble idea, but *I* personally wouldn't try it because to achieve the level of interest and professionalism I would demand of it would entail vastly more time and effort than I have available.

I may, or may not make contributions of my own. After a peakbagging trip, I currently:

- Add photos to my photo sharing site
- Post a link to those photos on FB
- Write a TR for this site and Hike-NH, linked to those photos
- Duplicate the TR plus some additional features on my own 'blog'
- Update my Google Maps to check off the peak, with a photo
- Update my SQL Database, spreadsheet, and fill out the paper FTFC application
- Add a trail condition report to NewEnglandTrailConditions.com (if anything noteworthy.)

I'm not sure I would have the patience to read an article and update the relevant sections. This is one of the MAJOR problems with the wiki idea at work - people dump stuff in the comments but the original article is often not kept up to date.

Tim

p.s. and while I may be spending a fair chunk of time on this discussion, it's mainly because I don't dare go out on Black Friday, and I'm waiting for it to warm up so I can spend the afternoon on a bike ride.

B the Hiker said:

Tom, just visited your site. It would be a lot easier to maintain all that info on a wiki, where many people could keep the information up-to-date (including the bar owners themselves), and it would reach a lot viewers.

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My first response was HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Ok, I'm done laughing. The reasons I laughed are:

1) You would not believe how hard it is to get brewers, owners, etc. to participate. Even though I am trying to help them, in a limited way. I talk with them in their bars and they are all gung-ho, but not a single one is a contributing member to the site.

2) It's hard to get drinkers to participate in my site. I have a facebook page too, and it gets precious little traffic as well.

3) I would be constantly checking a wiki for errors (many of which I can not verify), spam, p$rn, etc.

Sorry if this is a little off topic, but to come back around:

From my perspective, it will not be as easy as you think, you will not get as many people as you think, and you will be doing more work than you think.

What you're suggesting sounds an awful lot like the idea behind SummitPost, which is an experiment that ultimately proved successful in many areas but not-so-much in others. I was a member there for about 5 years before moving on and was a regular contributor during my time there. I think it would be hard to create the kind of traffic you need to make a similar idea successful.

Below is one large page I did several years ago on SP that contains links to many other pages (I no longer maintain it). As you can see, the quality of the information varies depending on the person who submitted the page. Many are great but many are poor as well.

Northeast 115

Good luck if you go ahead with it.

I also used to have a trails website, I added an average of one per week for over two years and eventually had over a hundred.

While the immediate impetus for closing the site was a drastic increase in hosting fees, I had long since given up trying to maintain the sort of quality I wanted (and would hope for in other sites). There were perpetual broken links because NH state parks for example would redo their site every couple years and needlessly change the name of the page about a park when the content was changed. I wanted dynamic map links so people could zoom in/out but the names of the map providers kept changing. Dealing with these issues eventually took all my time.

The problem with a wiki is that the people who have the most time to write may be the ones who do the least hiking and may not even be familiar with map-reading. Both peakbagger.com and summitpost have plenty of bogus summit information, and the page votes tend to reflect the quality of photos rather than underlying facts. The Wikipedia entry for the Pemigewasset Wilderness was once mostly a description of the hike along Franconia Ridge until I amended it to say that the trail was outside the Wilderness, it now reads very strangely.

You may have noted that there is quite a diversity of opinion on this site about the difficulty of certain trails, and it seems more useful to read them all than to be stuck with the opinion of whomever last edited the wiki. I can remember when the idea was that you would access the web through portal sites that would index the useful content, but that concept seems to have died less through worry about bias of the indexer than the impossible magnitude of the task. The moderators of this site have tried to pseudo-index with "sticky" pages, but there are still plenty of readers who would rather type a question as a post instead of into a search box.

I hate to discourage anybody who wants to provide useful content, but I don't have time enough already for what I'd like to do.

I like outdoorsy-ish websites that are done by ONE person so that you can get used to their standard of writing. This helps build trust as you start to use their information. A great example is Ellozy's 4000-footers website. Another is climb-utah.com.

There is a lot of value in the open-managed summitpost.org, but there is a lot of bad information there as well. I've gotten lost because of them while out west in the past.

FYI hosting is cheap these days and should never be an excuse not to have a website. I pay $4/month for mine through godaddy.com.