Editors who want to update a bio of a local politician, add a local restaurant’s birthday deal, or make a map of great sledding hills can now add links, bold text, make lists or include maps in the same way they use most any other modern word-processing software.

Launched in the fall of 2005, the first press release from early 2006 touted ArborWiki’s 250 articles. By February 2009, it had grown to 2,771. And in the past three-and-a-half years, that number has more than doubled to 7,794 articles. That’s more than 1,000 new articles a year.

Back in 2005, ArborWiki was a sub-folder in the $10-a-month hosting plan of Matt Hampel, who was then an Ann Arbor Community High School student. It’s now hosted on Ann Arbor District Library servers.

Work on the recent migration to the new software platform included efforts by long-time Ann Arbor online presence Edward Vielmetti and Davis Wiki co-founder Philip Neustrom, who worked on the LocalWiki project. The ArborWiki Facebook group conversation that led up to the migration also included: Murph, Matt Hampel, Rod Johnson, Ryan Eby, Terry Williams, Alan Benard, and Mark Dilley.

Yes, we know it’s not quite Wednesday yet, but here at The Chronicle it’s already Wiki Wednesday, an occasional series in which we remind readers of the online encyclopedia, ArborWiki, to which they can contribute their knowledge of the community. On Wiki Wednesdays we try to offer a clear path for contribution to ArborWiki.

Most links contained in this article lead to ArborWiki entries that can be edited or created from scratch.

This week we focus on How-To articles. ArborWiki isn’t really intended for general interest How-To articles – how to plant a garden, how to arrange an attractive flower bouquet, how to organize an effective political campaign. But each of those general interest categories could be Ann-Arbor-ized. For example, a garden in a particular place – like a lawn extension (the space between the sidewalk and the street) might require special permissions in Ann Arbor or need to comply with certain rules. Or one could imagine a flower bouquet made of wildflowers collected from locations in Ann Arbor where specific types are known to thrive.

Or one could imagine a nice nuts-and-bolts rundown of the mechanics of an Ann Arbor city council campaign.

That link currently leads to a page that doesn’t exist. A good place to start for filling in nuts and bolts information is the Ann Arbor city clerk’s web page on elections. Some of the basics include the difference between “pulling petitions” and “filing petitions.” Getting the packet of forms and petitions for a particular person (no blank petitions get handed out) from the clerk’s office is “pulling petitions.”

After pulling petitions, there’s no obligation to attempt to collect the 100 required signatures from voters in the ward a candidate seeks to represent. This year the deadline for submitting signatures is June 22, 2009 at 5 p.m. Those candidates who wish to run without party affiliation (independent) have until August 5, 2009 at 4 p.m. to file petitions. Here’s who’s on the clerk’s office list of people who’ve pulled petitions as of April 14, by ward and within each ward in the chronological order they pulled petitions:

• Ward 1: Sabra Briere
• Ward 2: Stephen Rapundalo
• Ward 3: Stephen Kunselman, Leigh Greden, Marwan M. Issa
• Ward 4: Marcia Higgins, Hatim A. Elhady
• Ward 5: Mike Anglin, Scott Rosencrans

All except for Elhady have taken out petitions for the Aug. 4, 2009 Democratic primary election. Elhady is listed without a party affiliation for the Nov. 3, 2009 general election. None except for Rosencrans have filed completed petitions with the clerk’s office. Rosencrans pulled petitions on April 10 and submitted 106 valid signatures on April 13.

Candidates who might entertain the idea of submitting an extraordinarily large number of signatures (say 1,500) in a show of bravado are thwarted by the requirement that no more than 200 signatures be submitted.

In the packet provided by the clerk, there’s an affidavit of identity that needs to be filled out, a checklist for campaign finance reporting (it’s required of all candidates), and a form for the organization for candidate committees.

The ArborWiki article on How to Run for Ann Arbor City Council should contain at least all of that “mechanics” information.

But it should contain more than that. For example:

• Where do I get economical yard signs? Do I have to provide the sign maker with art, or do they do that for you?
• How do I get a mailing list of just the registered voters in my ward? How about just the voters who actually voted in the last election?
• How do I get notified when somebody asks for an absentee ballot, so that I can send them a vote-for-me postcard?
• What’s the latest hour it’s considered reasonable to knock on someone’s door?
• How do I make a campaign website?

We conclude by reminding readers that ArborWiki is a tremendous resource already, that could be made even more useful with Chronicle readers’ help. The project is hosted on Ann Arbor District Library servers, so there should be no worries that work put into it will evaporate into a cloud. The “W” in Wiki stands for “work.” You’ve got a whole extra day this week. Get crackin.

It’s Wiki Wednesday again, an occasional series in which The Chronicle reminds readers of the online encyclopedia, ArborWiki, to which they can contribute their knowledge of the community. On Wiki Wednesdays we try to offer a clear path for contribution to ArborWiki.

This week we focus on city boards and commissions.

A standard criticism sometimes heard about Ann Arbor’s city government is that it does not include adequate input from citizens. A standard response to that criticism is to point towards the more than two dozen boards and commissions in the city’s organization on which over 200 citizens serve. But who are the people who serve on those boards and commissions? How long have they served? When do their appointments expire? What boards and commissions exist? For a given person on a given board, on which other boards, if any, do they serve?

Here at The Chronicle, we found it a bit easier than expected to find answers to those kinds of questions on the city’s website. When we inquired with city clerk Jackie Beaudry, she said the increased ease comes from upgrades last month to InSite (the online version of Legistar – the software for minutes and agenda creation).

We found the functionality for exporting the data to .pdf or to .xls files to be not yet implemented – only blank pages seem to be generated. However, the onscreen functionality of report generation allows the questions posed above to be answered in straightforward fashion. It’s easy to get a list of the 220 people who serve on various boards and commissions.

City of Ann Arbor website.

Clicking on a name in that list generates a report of all the boards and commissions on which that person serves. Clicking on the name of a board or commission generates a list of the board or commission’s membership, complete with contact information, and date of their appointment’s expiration. It’s possible to sort the list onscreen by the date when an appointment expires.

That’s useful, for example, if a citizen were interested in serving on a commission. One way to approach it would be to send an email to the next person on the commission up for re-appointment and just straight-out ask: “Are you planning to seek re-appointment? Either way, would you mind meeting with me to talk through what serving on the commission is like?”

What’s the Wiki Wednesday connection? We’d like to offer a suggestion more concrete than simply, “Add the boards and commission information from the city’s website to ArborWiki.” One way to start building out ArborWiki’s information on boards and commissions is to start with the people. More specific than that, we’d suggest starting with the people on a particular commission.

Take the environmental commission, for example, which we’ve copied and pasted below from a report generated from the city’s website. Follow the links from the names. You’ll be taken to a page that either exists on ArborWiki or doesn’t.  If it exists, add the “appointed on” and “term ends on” dates for the environmental commission – if no one has already done that. If the page doesn’t exist, you’ll be presented the option to create one. It’s not much to know about a person that they served on the environmental commission in the mid 2000s. But it’s more than nothing. So it’s time to do some Wiki Wednesday work.

• Kirk Westphal 2/2/2009   6/30/2009
• D. Malama Chock 9/6/2006   9/5/2009
• Margie Teall Councilmember 12/5/2005   11/9/2009
• Carsten Hohnke Councilmember 11/18/2008   11/9/2009
• Steven Bean 8/7/2007   8/6/2010
• David Stead 8/7/2007   8/6/2010
• Anya Dale 2/20/2008   2/20/2011
• Summer Tucker 5/19/2008  5/18/2011
• David A. Wright Energy Commission Rep. 2/23/2005   6/2/2011
• John German 7/3/2006   8/7/2011
• Rita Loch-Caruso 4/17/2006   8/7/2011
• Matt Naud Ex-Officio non-voting 10/29/2007    no end date

It would be useful to have a page about the environmental commission itself, with its current membership.

Reminder: Pages for other people or commissions can also be created using the form at the bottom of the ArborWiki home page.

It’s Wiki Wednesday again, an occasional series in which The Chronicle reminds readers of the online encyclopedia, ArborWiki, to which they can contribute their knowledge of the community. In the inaugural edition of our Wiki Wednesday series, we suggested adding to some ArborWiki entries consisting of name lists. One of those name lists was a historical record of people who have served on Ann Arbor city council.

Following that link reveals a whole host of additions, since last week, some dating back to the 1950s. Other additions are more recent.

What good is a list of names, though, if we don’t know who these people are? Take as an example one of the recent additions to the list of city council members who’ve served sometime in the past: Jean Carlberg. If you click on her name in that ArborWiki list, the result (as of this writing) takes you straight to a blank editing window for the page about Jean Carlberg, which doesn’t currently exist. It’s ArborWiki’s way of saying, “Hey, this page needs to be created – how about giving it a shot?” That makes it easy to add whatever you might know about Jean Carlberg. ArborWiki needs an entry for Jean Carlberg. She’s been mentioned in The Chronicle as recently as today. And that’s not the first time.

And there’s plenty of other people who need an entry as well. For a quick overview of all the people who already have an entry in ArborWiki, visit the People page. You can’t click on something that’s not there, so what if you notice a gap – a name that’s not on the list that should be? There are a couple of different ways to create a page for somebody. We’ll highlight just one. Head to the ArborWiki home page and scroll to the very bottom. Here’s what you’ll see:

This image is linked to the ArborWiki home page. If you'd like to create a page about a person, follow the link, type the person's name into the form, and hit the "Create page" button.

Bear in mind that in creating a page for someone, the idea is to provide encyclopedia-type information, not a promotional resume. It might not be a great idea to try to write your own entry. Have at it.

Today is Wednesday. Wiki Wednesday.

What’s a Wiki? It’s like an online encyclopedia – to which anyone can make a contribution. The phrase “Wiki Wednesday” is not original with us. It’s used commonly throughout the world as a day for Wiki-philes in a specific community to work together on a Wiki.

Alert: The key word here is work. By the end of the article, you’ll be invited to do some work.

Our Wiki Wednesdays will focus on an online encyclopedia for the greater Ann Arbor area called ArborWiki, which currently comprises 2,771 entries. Those articles  have accumulated over the course of the last three years since its launch in fall of 2005.

At that time it was a sub-folder in the $10-a-month hosting plan of then Community High School student Matt Hampel. Articles range from a sketch of what the Downtown Development Authority is to a listing of great birthday deals at area restaurants.

ArborWiki is now hosted on an Ann Arbor District Library server. Why? Says Eli Neiburger, who’s associate director for IT and production at AADL: “I see this as a critical (and natural) role for the public library; to put it most simply, if ArborWiki was paper-based, AADL would obviously work to ensure that it was permanently accessible to the community. Different format, same mission.”

In addition to the hosting provided by AADL, any number of people have made contributions of content and technical know-how to ArborWiki since its inception. Besides Hampel, they include but aren’t limited to Brian Kerr, Ed Vielmetti, Richard Murphy, Andrew Miller, Alan Gutierrez, and Andrew Turner. There are people who’ve made contributions whose names we’ll never know.

Is 2,771 articles a large number? It’s slightly greater than the 2,687 articles in a roughly equivalent project in Bloomington, Indiana. If  a single person had written all the articles in either of these Wikis, that would be a gigantic number. But they were not all written by one person. Not even close.

The whole idea of “writing” an article for ArborWiki is probably not even the best way to think about it. ArborWiki is freely editable by anyone, which means that it’s possible to make a contribution to an article  just by filling in a missing date. A place. A dollar amount. A name.

So for our inaugural Wiki Wednesday, we start with names. ArborWiki has articles about the Ann Arbor City Council, the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority, and the Downtown Development Authority.  Those articles include lists of current councilmembers and board members, respectively.

But who served on those bodies before the current casts of characters?

What You Can Do To Help

We’ve set up ArborWiki articles that are designed to be nothing more than a historical listing of people who’ve served on these bodies: City Council Members, AATA Board Members, DDA Board Members.

Clicking through to those articles will show them to be in need of some attention.  Readers who have the inclination can start to fill in those historical gaps by clicking on the “Edit” button at the top of the ArborWiki page. Some of the codes in the Wiki editing window might look a bit odd, but if you follow your instincts, and apply principles of copy-paste, you’ll find yourself making a contribution to our community collection of knowledge.

Readers are invited to share their successes as well as frustrations in adding to ArborWiki in the comment  thread. You found a list of councilmembers from 1987? Leave a comment saying where. Maybe it’s a source more people ought to know about. Or maybe you looked somewhere you expected to find the information, and it turned out to be a dead end? A comment about that would save someone else the trouble. You tried to add some material and ArborWiki reacted in an unexpected way? Leave a comment explaining what happened. We’ll get you an answer that lets you share what you know with the rest of us.

We look forward to reading your contributions.