You remember Wikipedia.  It’s that web site that helped you write all your college term papers without actually doing any of the necessary research.  Wikipedia is a “free encyclopedia that anyone can edit”.  Therefore, just about EVERYTHING that has ever existed in the world is listed on it.  Seriously, it’s true: the Internet HAS made us all stupid, fat and lazy; by knowing everything for us; and frankly, I like it.

I, for instance, have no need to learn how to spell.  Oh, look! There!  I just misspelled the word “spell”.  And you never knew.  Know why?  Spell-check.  Turns out "sqpell" doesn’t have a silent ‘q’ at all!

It is in that spirit (stupid, fat, lazy) that I call your attention to BingWiki—a new web site from local web guru Douglas Camin.  Why go out and actually explore the streets of Binghamton when you can let other people do it for you and revel in their collected works.  BingWiki is just like Wikipedia, except everything on it is local to greater Binghamton.

Want to know about spiedies?  Click here.  Curious what it’s got to say about J Michaels Restaurant?  That entry’s here.  But right now; it’s just a shell.  Waiting for your extraordinary wisdom.  Would you please grace it?

I asked Douglas to take a moment away from working with 1’s and 0’s to answer a few questions about his new Wiki…

First thing’s first: Wikipedia is notoriously unreliable.  What’s to stop BingWiki from being full of made-up facts?  OR, turning into a war of: “Dillingers has the best drinks in town.”  “No, Dillingers has the crappiest drinks in town.”  “No, it has the best!”  “Yeah, well, you smell bad.”
One of the most interesting things about a Wiki is that once a community is established for it, it becomes self-policing. Anonymous posters are not allowed, you must register to post information. A Wiki-based site is very easy to change in the event that some sort of bad information appears. With three clicks any user can "revert" bad information back to good. In most traditional sites, you worry about getting the content right the first time because it can be hard to change it if it’s incorrect. On a Wiki, the whole idea is that the information is alive and evolving - all the time, by many people - so you encourage everyone to voice their opinions and share their stories and if something incorrect or wrong comes through it is ridiculously simple to fix it.

As far as made-up stuff, if something doesn’t pass the smell test about truthfulness, someone will edit the information away. We plan on allowing people to comment on things like a restaurant or business - good or bad - to bring a sense of dynamism to the site. It’s called the People’s Guide to Greater Binghamton, so people need to put their thoughts and opinions on there as well.

Ironically, statistically speaking Wikipedia has been found to be more accurate that print encyclopedias. It is a myth that the content is notoriously wrong. The Wikipedia community is so fast at correcting either mistakes or vandalism of articles that it’s really a non-issue.

I bet you have some favorite businesses in town that you’re gonna write the entries for personally.  Which ones?
Well, I have been a downtown resident for the last six years, so a lot of things I write about focus on downtown. I’ve been particularly pleased with Sake Tumi, and also like a little restaurant on Washingston Street called Despina’s Mediterranean Taste. The fun of a project like this is that everyone shares information they know a lot about - in my case, I know a lot about downtown Binghamton.

What exactly was the inspiration for BingWiki?
About a month ago I was asked to help out a class at Binghamton University that focused on things that could be done to improve the community. One of the things that came out of those discussions from students was to have a Wiki set up to share information. I talked with a lot of friends in Southern Tier Young Professionals as well who helped out, and with my company (Avant IT Consulting) we were able to quickly put all the pieces together. A little bit of research revealed some other cities had some really awesome Wiki sites - particularly Rochester (rocwiki.org) and Ann Arbor (arborwiki.org) and that became the inspiration for modeling how BingWiki is set up.

Personally, I want BingWiki to be something that helps enhance the community. Having been president of groups like STYP in the past I learned that one of the issues the community faces isn’t that there is nothing to do (as some people try to say), it’s that finding what IS going on can be a challenge. Our community has been stable for years, so we are not "geared" towards making sure newcomers can find information and get acclimated to the city quickly - we are a city of people that "know" what is happening already. If you want to like Binghamton, you have to be willing to invest in liking it, and a site like this should help make finding information to like the area easier.

If somebody’s never written for a “Wiki” before, what are three things they should know going in?
Easy:
1. The Wiki is everyone’s property. Everyone is welcome to post information and add content about things they know and love - your neighborhood, street, or favorite eatery.
2. If there is an article you want to add something to or change something on, go right ahead - it’s EASY. If you can type, you can create a Wiki entry.
3. Be respectful of others when writing. Bad articles or blatantly problematic entries will almost certainly be removed by others.

There seems to be something of a new trend towards Binghamton info websites—between 607 Magazine, BingWiki, and BingPop.  Being that your background’s in web sites, if someone wanted to go out and build an addition the Binghamton online culture, what would you like it to be?
Well, I think right now each of those sites is filling a unique niche - BingPop does a lot of great "latest things around town" coverage, 607 is devoted to expanding and covering the music scene, and BingWiki is sort of the catch-all repository of information both functional, useless, and fun. Whatever someone’s idea, it is important to leverage the tools that already exist - social networks like Facebook and other entities really devoted to (like BingPop, 607 and BingWiki) to getting the "info" out about the community.

What things do you want to see people add to BingWiki?
The Wiki is perpetual - so it can capture information about history as well as what’s happening currently. Rochester’s Wiki has a number of pages devoted to the oddities and crazy things that have happened recently and in the past in town, or just cool things people did not know about (like the old abandoned subway system.) I’d love for people to contribute interesting historical information about the area to the site. My girlfriend and I are both architectural buffs (she is an architect), so there are also pages being created to catalog and document the buildings that exist in the community, especially the historic ones. Would it be great to have an article on the torn-down Ross building so we won’t forget how it looked?

I want to point out that BingWiki is not a "news" or "blog" - it is a repository and guide. Think of it as Binghamton’s Encyclopedia. If done right, 20 years from now someone will be able to look back and know that there was a business doing baked goods in 2008 on Court Street downtown. BingWiki is based on the same software that runs Wikipedia, so keeping the site "up and running" for many years won’t be a problem.