Raise your hand if you've ever assassinated an hour or two just following a thread through Wikipedia. My favorite was the time I started with the Bilderberg Group and wound up via sub-atomic particles, etc., at art taxidermy.

Imagine how much you could discover about your home town if you had a Tucson-only "Wikipedia." You could start with a question about your neighborhood and wind up reading about haunted houses, the first bar in town, hunting woolly mammoths , Hohokam ball games, ranching tips, bird indexes, how to make an adobe brick ... whatever someone might be passionate enough to write about, list references to and invite legitimate and courteous revisions from anyone who might know more.



At Code for Tucson 2013, July 27 and 28 at Gangplank Tucson, one team experimented with what a TucsonWiki might look like. The result was this prototype, developed in 24 hours with team lead Justin Williams of Startup Tucson.



This Thursday, Aug. 15, at Gangplank, anyone interested in working on a TucsonWiki can join a conversation about how it might be structured and rolled out to the community. Subject matter experts, people with blogging experience and anyone who can recruit others to contribute skills and information are especially encouraged to attend. It's free, and there will be cake. Please RSVP via Tucson Wiki Meetup on Facebook.



If you already have a blog and a website to maintain, come anyway. Through its discovery process, TucsonWiki can direct traffic you might not otherwise attract. Organizers encourage bloggers and website owners to attend because of all the experience you bring to the planning, and the insights you'll have about how the TucsonWiki can work for you.



Gangplank is located in the Pioneer Hotel building, at 17 E.Pennington. Parking is free in the library parking lot, assuming you'll be leaving after 5:40 p.m. There's also the Pennington Street Garage.



So you can see more of what it's about, here's Justin giving the TucsonWiki pitch and final presentation at Code for Tucson.



