Jump to content

Wikipubs

From Meta, a Wikimedia project coordination wiki

Project Description

Wikipubs (http://wikipubs.org) is a project to create a free, complete, up-to-date and reliable world-wide pub guide. It is built in collaboration by contributors from around the globe.

The project was begun in January of 2006 by James. It was inspired by Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.org/), the free encyclopedia, and by the needs of drinkers world-wide for timely information that book-publishing cycles can't seem to meet.

This page describes the projects goals, and outlines basic requirements for the project.

Mission Statement

Current Wikipubs Logo

Wikipubs seeks to provide a source for the sharing of information relating to pubs, clubs, bars and festivals throughout the world. It will achieve this by encouraging users to post information, stories, anecdotes and reviews of their local pubs, clubs, bars and festivals.

Wikipubs will also encourage discussion on pubs, clubs, bars and festivals between patrons of these establishments. Thus building a database for users to refer to when planning an enjoyable night out.

Wikipubs will include the option for users to plot the location of specific pubs, clubs, bars and festivals on an embedded map. This will provide readers with the ability to locate establishments within their local area, read and contribute to articles written by other wikipubs contributors.

Wikipubs follows key principles which have made Wikipedia and other Wikimedia websites what they are today: free content, and an open decision making process

Current Wikipubs Site

A currently working version of the Wikipubs site is available from http://www.wikipubs.org. The domains http://wikipubs.net and http://wikipubs.com are also currently enabled and redirect to the main page in the .org domain namespace. The current site has a number of contributors with pubs and clubs being submitted mainly from Australia, Wales, England and the United States.

Currently the site is using the following versions:

  • MediaWiki: 1.5.0 [1]
  • PHP: 4.3.11 (apache) [2]
  • MySQL: 4.1.14-standard [3]

The following extensions are currently installed:

  • Inputbox by Erik Moeller [4]
  • gmap extension (version 09/21/2005)]], displays a google map on a wiki page, by Gregory Szorc, Markus Arndt [5]

History

In 2001 James started a pub and club review site for pubs and clubs located in Adelaide, Australia. This site was designed for pub owners and managers to update and modify their listings. This site grew rapidly however due to a large administrative overead the site had to be shut down in 2003.

In 2004 James started a pub, club review and information site for pubs and clubs located in the whole of Australia. Specifically http://www.pubsearch.com.au. This site was designed for pub owners to manually add information relating to their pub or club. Information such as beer specials, special events, beers on tap, dining facilities etc.. were included on this site. However this site does not provide patrons of these pubs and clubs to provide ratings, reviews and stories from the experiences. This site has grown very slowly over the past year and an easier way for people to edit and modify the way in which their local pubs were listed was required.

In 2005 James started wikipubs a natural progression to the previous two websites, however the main difference here was to leverage on the popularity and ease of use of the MediaWiki software. Wikipubs is now live and capable of taking information on pubs, clubs, bars and festivals from around the globe. http://wikipubs.org.

Further Information