Thanks to the COM352 students for contributing a bunch of new pages! I'll be moving these pages into the main area of the wiki soon.

From UMassWiki

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:
Gordon Morehouse
Smart Cat Media
info@smartcatmedia.com
http://www.smartcatmedia.com/

Student-Run UMass Web Encyclopedia Gets Over 1.2 Million Hits

Amherst, MA, 8/4/2007 – In the 2 years since its founding, a student-run web encyclopedia for the UMass community has served 1.25 million page views to the public. “UmassWiki.com is a wiki. Anyone can freely edit pages and add information about UMass to the site,” said Gordon Morehouse, a 2007 Computer Science alumnus and the site's operator. “We use the same software as Wikipedia, so the site will instantly feel familiar to anyone who uses Wikipedia for research.”

Asked about his goals for the site, Morehouse stated, “I have two main goals for the site. First, I want to make UMassWiki a great resource for everybody, from incoming freshmen to local residents to alums taking a trip down memory lane. Second, I really want to increase the number of editors on the site. Our biggest challenge right now is lack of awareness. We serve over 3,500 pages a day. That's great, but for the wiki to grow we need to double that.”

A tour of the site reveals some detailed articles, such as those Diva's Nightclub and the W.E.B. DuBois Library. It also reveals many shorter articles labeled “stubs,” or articles in need of expansion.

“One thing I've found out since I started UMassWiki is that there's a ton of information about UMass, more than I ever imagined. Many hours of work from me and volunteers have gone into the wiki, but there's so much more to do,” Morehouse said. When asked why some articles were so detailed and others sparse, he replied “The wiki is a work in progress, and it comes down to what people are interested in. At a school this big there's somebody interested in just about everything, and I'd like to get those people contributing.”

UMassWiki.com is a leading student-run wiki for a higher education community. Along with wikis at Columbia University (WikiCU), Oberlin College (OberWiki) and Duke University (Duiki), UMassWiki is one of the most actively developed student wikis in the nation.

Gordon Morehouse is a 2007 Computer Science graduate from UMass. He currently lives in Portland, Oregon.