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 1,000,000 Hits

Amherst, MA, 4/28/2006 – In the 19 months since its founding, a student-run web encyclopedia for the UMass community has served 1 million page views to the public. The web site, known as a “wiki,” will be instantly familiar to anyone who has used Wikipedia in the past. “UMassWiki.com operates along the same lines as Wikipedia,” said Gordon Morehouse, senior Computer Science major and the site's operator. “Anyone can freely edit pages and add information about UMass and the surrounding area. We use the same software as Wikipedia, so the site will 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 to about 140 visitors a day. That's great, but for the wiki to grow we need to double or triple 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 about UMass since I started the wiki is that there's a huge wealth of information and history about UMass, more than I ever imagined. Many hours of work from me and volunteers have gone into this wiki, and the structure is all there, but there's so much more to do,” Morehouse said. When asked why some articles were so detailed and others fairly sparse, he replied “The wiki is a work in progress, and it all 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 all 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.