[LINK] WikiVoyage.org
stephen at melbpc.org.au
stephen at melbpc.org.au
Fri Jan 18 00:38:38 AEDT 2013
http://www.WikiVoyage.org
Wikipedia, now open for travel
By Oliver Moody, The Times, London, January 17th 2013.
WIKIPEDIA has entered the crowded travel guide sector with the launch of
their free online handbook for tourists around the world.
Like their internet encyclopedia, www.Wikivoyage.org can be edited by any
user and will be funded entirely by donations from the public.
It already contains 50,000 articles, in nine languages.
It allows its articles to be collected into "books" that can be printed
as PDFs, or ordered in print as customised travel guidebooks, and also
includes interactive maps which run on the open-source, "OpenStreetMap"
software.
The guide has long been a pet project for Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of
the Wikimedia group, who told The Colbert Report, the US satirical TV
program, last week that it would operate with the same not-for-profit
ethos as its parent website, which celebrated its 12th birthday on
Tuesday.
Wikivoyage will face tough competition for travellers' attention from
Lonely Planet, which is owned by the BBC, TripAdvisor.com, which is
funded by advertising, and Google, which bought the Frommer's travel
guidebook series last August for a sum thought to be about $18 million.
It will also compete with Wikitravel, a commercial website designed in a
very similar format and owned by Internet Brands.
Andrew Warren-Payne, a research analyst with Econsultancy, said: "I can
imagine Wikivoyage being a part of someone's vacation research, but just
a part. It's hard to see why this would be significantly disruptive -
TripAdvisor et al did that years ago."
<http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/wikipedia-now-open-for-
travel/story-fnb64oi6-1226555380873>
--
Happy trails,
Stephen Loosley
Member, Victorian
Institute of Teaching
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