[pct-l] PCT-L wiki

[pctl at ilja.ws (Ilja Friedel)]

Hi,

many readers on this list actively search and collect information for 
coming hikes. While this email list provides first hand experience and 
social interaction, it lacks two dominant features:

1) FAQ: many questions arise again and again. The answers don't really 
change, but "elders" get bored and drop out. Most readers compile their 
own FAQs for an upcoming hike - but sharing happens infrequently.

2) Seasonal information: the status of springs, locations of caches, 
mailing addresses, phone numbers, forest status etc. change during the 
years - and often even during the hike. It would be nice to permit easy, 
immediate and collaborative updating at a central place.

A wiki is a form of a dynamic web site that permits these operations. 
Every visitor of a wiki is allowed to change the information posted on 
that web site. Therefore the maintaining effort is shared on many 
shoulders and information accumulates and stays up-to-date. (For instance 
the first hiker reaching independence could post conditions on Forester 
pass for everybody that follows to read. Status of caches and springs 
could be updated on a daily basis. There would be no need of searching 
through hundreds of emails.)

For this reason I propose the creation (or use of) a wiki. The most famous 
is the wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Crest_Trail

Now I'm not sure wikipedia would want to essentially become a forum with 
so specialized knowledge. (They might not mind on the other hand - and 
they have awfully nice technology under the hood.) One could also set up a 
simpler system like pmwiki http://www.pmwiki.org/, that runs under php on 
most webservers.

I believe it makes a lot of sense to have a wiki devoted to the most 
current trail conditions, phone numbers, etc. One could add long distance 
hiking advice to it on the long run - but this is more ambitious. (On the 
other hand most people destill it anyways from this list - so it is just a 
matter of formatting.)

Opinions, experiences?


Ilja.