Wikipedia:Wikipedia Takes Manhattan/Fall 2008 - Wikipedia


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Wikis Take Manhattan (WTM-2) was a scavenger hunt and free content photography contest coordinated with Columbia University and New York University students and The Open Planning Project, aimed at illustrating Wikipedia and Streetswiki articles covering the wondrous sights of the isle of Manhattan, and all across the Five Boroughs of New York City

We had over 650 photo-goals on our list, located throughout the city; the strategy to get as many as you can in one afternoon!

Held on October 4, 2008, the event is a sequel to last spring's Wikipedia Takes Manhattan (WTM-1) event. Everyone met up and checked in at one of the two starting points located at Columbia and The Open Planning Project, and after an afternoon of subways, street rambles, photography and free culture goodness, the night will conclude with a party back at The Open Planning Project's fantastic event space in the West Village.

The event's name was changed to Wikis Take Manhattan because it is intended to generate free content for use on both Wikipedia and StreetsWiki.

The day was sponsored by Free Culture @ Columbia, the Columbia University chapter of Students for Free Culture, in cooperation with the NYU chapter Free Culture @ NYU, The Open Planning Project, Wikimedia New York City and Wikipedia volunteers.

All Wikipedians and non-Wikipedians were invited to participate in team of up to three (no special knowledge was required at all, just a digital camera and a love of the city). And many brought their friends too.

The grand prize, of course, was dinner for three with Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, at Pure Food and Wine. There were a lot of other great prizes too; see the main homepage for the project.

This was third event of its kind on the Wikipedia Takes The City model (the first was also in NYC, the second was in Nashville, and the fourth was in Berlin).

(the great majority of attendees were actually not Wikipedians or Wikimedians, which is pretty cool)

This is more or less complete for now.

See the full list at commons:Commons:Wikis Take Manhattan.

We had 23 teams and certainly over 50 participants, a huge step up from last time. There are certainly thousands of photos to go through, and we didn't have time to upload them all that night, but we'll be getting to them over the coming days.

The grand prize winners were Erin and Ian of Team "Ex Post Photo". Congratulations!

There's a great short video of the event created by Streetfilms here.

And here is a fun blog entry from one one our participants.

Also, please see our main homepage for this project on the Livable Streets Network.