UMassWiki:About

From UMassWiki

UMassWiki is a user-edited source for information of interest to the University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass) community and local residents. It was founded Thursday, August 25, 2005. UMassWiki is not an official publication of UMass Amherst. It is provided free of charge by Smart Cat Media, an alumnus-run business. It is supported by non-annoying text ads, and as of January 2008, slightly more annoying full-page interstitials once per session per 24 hours. You will never be charged to use the wiki, nor will you ever be spammed.

UMassWiki was originally founded to serve as a repository for answers to frequently asked questions in the umass_amherst Livejournal community, but quickly took on a life of its own and evolved into something with a much broader mission. As of 2007, the wiki has become a general-purpose information resource to the UMass community and to local residents, and classes are being taught using the wiki. None of this would be possible without you, the users.

Anyone can edit UMassWiki, even you. If you think something needs to be added or corrected in the UMass wiki, you can do so! Just click the "edit" tab at the top of the page you're viewing. If you're not sure about what you're doing, try reading the Help and testing out some edits in the Sandbox.

If you enjoy using or contributing to UMassWiki, please join the Facebook group.

Press Coverage

• Campus 'wiki' integrated into classroom curriculum, The Daily Collegian, September 4, 2007.
  

  Kent, a communications major, has already used the wiki to teach classes for three semesters, but will now make the site a much larger part of class as well as homework. [...] A list of the semester's assignments and due dates are also available on the site.

• UMass Gets Its Own Wiki, The Hampshire Gazette, April 3, 2007 (subscription required)
  

  ..."I realized the possibilities" . . . . "I thought it would be a good place for general information on campus, surrounding towns and the stuff you don't see in print like dormitory legend and lore."

Press Kit

For official press releases, see UMassWiki:Press.

Traffic

UMassWiki traffic over time. The red line is a 3 month simple moving average, the green is 6 months.

Milestones

The Fine Print

Vanity pages and pure opinion pieces are not allowed. All content is provided at the sole discretion of site administrators and may be removed without notice. Policies involving vanity pages and POV (opinion pieces) will loosely follow guidelines used on Wikipedia -- please see the Guidelines for specific information.

You are free to use most content on UMassWiki for non-commercial use as long as you attribute UMassWiki as the source (for text) or the copyright holder as the source (for multimedia). Certain important exceptions apply. See UMassWiki:Copyrights for more details.