Omaha Wiki:About

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The Omaha Wiki is a non-commercial, informational, and educational website, founded and managed by the College of Business Administration at Creighton University and hosted by the AIM Institute. The Omaha Wiki uses the software and overall licensing approach of Wikipedia, which allows users to generate free content about Omaha. It is thus part of the broader Web 2.0 approach to publishing that encompasses a range of other user generated techniques such as blogs and content sites such as YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, and Flickr. The Web 2.0 approach is in contrast to the "Web 1.0" approach where most content cannot be modified by users, is copyrighted with "all rights reserved," and can only be reused with permission and/or payment of fees[1]. The "free encyclopedia" portion of Wikipedia's tagline was a two fold meaning: (a) content can be accessed free of charge and (b) most content is licensed so users are free to reuse it on other sites, provided the terms of the license are followed. The Omaha Wiki thus ties into the broader free software movement associated with Richard Stallman at M.I.T. in the mid 1980s and the Free Culture movement associated with Larry Lessig at Stanford in the early 2000s[2].


Contents

[edit] History of the Omaha Wiki

The Omaha Wiki began in January 2007 as a class project in two sections of MKT319 Principles of Marketing taught by Dr. John Workman at Creighton University. During the Spring 2007 semester, the Omaha Wiki was open to public viewing but editing of articles was limited to students enrolled in the two classes at Creighton and a handful of others with technical expertise. The Omaha Wiki was initially hosted at Creighton but was moved to Siteground in Houston, Texas on February 13, 2007, due to technical problems displaying images on the site. The AIM Institute agreed to host the site in early April and the site was moved from Houston to Omaha on April 21, 2007, partly to increase responsiveness and reliability for final student editing and presentations on April 24, 2007. By early May 2007, legal counsel and management from Creighton and AIM reached an understanding that AIM would host the Omaha Wiki on an on-going basis but that Creighton was responsible for managing the content.

An advisory board was formed in May 2007 to make decisions about the future of the Omaha Wiki. In June 2007 the advisory board decided to open the site to anyone with a valid e-mail address. In July 2007, Dr. Workman's MBA761 Marketing Management class did strategic analysis of the positioning of the site in comparison to other Omaha information sites. Some of the unique benefits included the user generated approach and the non-commercial nature of the site. Two of the major strategic issues were whether Google ads should be used to support growth of the site[3] and whether the Omaha Wiki should remain at Creighton or should be an independent 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. After allowing the Google ads to remain on the site in August and September, the advisory board reached a decision in early October 2007 to remove the Google ads, due to concerns about perceptions they might compromise the non-commercial nature of the site, might deter volunteers from contributing content, and detracted from the visual appearance of the site. The decision of whether the Omaha Wiki should remain affiliated with the Creighton University College of Business Administration is under review.

[edit] Omaha Wiki Advisory Board

The advisory board was formed in May 2007 to provide guidance on the development of the Omaha Wiki. The current members of the advisory board are:

For additional information on the mission and purpose of the Omaha Wiki, see Omaha Wiki:Advisory Board Mission Statement.

[edit] Growth of the Site

  • 500th article - April 12, 2007
  • 1,000th article - April 23, 2007
  • 2,000th article - July 26, 2007
  • 3,000th article - July 27, 2007
  • 4,000th article - September 28, 2007
  • 5,000th article - December 9, 2007

As of March 31st, 2008, the Omaha Wiki was the 3rd largest city wiki in the U.S. and the 6th largest in the world. The Mission Statement of the advisory board states, "The vision of the Omaha Wiki is to be the first website people go to when looking for information on Omaha and to be one of the largest, most comprehensive, and most innovative city wikis in the world."

[edit] About the Site logo

The current site logo was approved by the Omaha Wiki Advisory Board on August 31, 2007. Reasons for changing the logo included problems protecting a logo based on a photograph and because of the desire to have a family of logos that could accommodate future wikis. The O! symbol, a registered trademark of the Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce is used with permission. There is no official relationship between the Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce and the Omaha Wiki. The gallery below shows all of the site logos used since the start of the Omaha Wiki in February 2007.

Logo from February 13 to April 16, 2007

Logo from April 16 to June 29, 2007

Logo from June 29 to September 26, 2007

Logo since September 27, 2007

[edit] References

  1. ↑ With the exception of limited use provided under the Fair Use provision of U.S. copyright law.
  2. ↑ Richard Stallman was the founder of the Free Software Foundation, which is responsible for the GFDL license used for text on the Omaha Wiki. Larry Lessig, founded Creative Commons, which has a number of licenses similar to the GFDL that Omaha Wiki contributors may use for photographs on the Omaha Wiki. It is also possible to "multi-license" images (but not text) under both the GFDL and one or more of the Creative Commons licenses.
  3. ↑ Google Adsense ads (along the right margin) along with Google Analytics tracking software were used in the MBA class to demonstrate and discuss on-line marketing techniques.
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