[PRCo] Re: PRCo Photo Wiki?

[Herb Brannon]

Will this thing you speak of be a part of the Dementix.Org server or are
you thinking of a different  system on a different server?

On Thu, May 24, 2012 at 8:13 PM, Bob Iannucci <bob at rail.com> wrote:

> All,
> I have appreciated the many photos and stories from this group, and I've
> enjoyed the various
> photo websites showcasing Pittsburgh's rich trolley history.  And, of
> course, the PTM is a wonderful
> resource for those who have the opportunity to visit.  For me out here on
> the west coast, I am quite
> reliant on the online resources - this group and the websites.
>
> I have repeatedly felt that there is a need for something more, however.
> The various photo websites,
> or at least those that are still online, are fairly static, and only the
> owners can contribute.  This group
> is great, but email with attached (or semi-attached) photos makes
> researching hard.  I have seen others
> expressing the same thought ("I know it was discussed here a while ago...
> I know there was a photo
> that was posted a while back...").
>
> I imagine something that is just a little more organized than this email
> list, and something that is a little
> more community-maintained than the photo websites.  I am thinking of a
> photo wiki, not unlike Wikipedia,
> but devoted specifically to PRCo.  Think of one page per photo, with
> commentary from anyone who
> wants to contribute a relevant story.  We have had LOTS of good stories in
> this group.  But in addition
> to the photo, the photo credit, and the stories, I am thinking that each
> page should also have a way to
> indicate the date of the photo and the location.
>
> This structure offers several advantages.  The photo and the related
> stories will live together on a web page
> and can be easily found by search tools.  The date and location information
> offer the hope that we could provide
> the ability to search by date range and/or by location.  Picasa and some of
> the other attach-photo-to-location
> sites come close to this ideal.  A friend of mine in San Francisco is
> thinking of something similar that
> he calls Pastmapper.  So, perhaps there is a way to get this functionality
> using some off-the-shelf technology.
> Or perhaps someone is already at work doing this and I just have not heard
> of it yet.
>
> I'd be willing to host such a site and support the underlying machinery.
> But that alone is not enough.
> In order to be a success, it needs community commitment to generate and
> maintain the content.  If the
> more prolific contributors to this group were willing to upload their
> photos and paste in the stories
> that they have written, I feel we would be off to a great start.
>
> So, my question is, what do you think?
>
> Bob
>
>
>
>


-- 
Herb Brannon
In Cuyahoga Valley National Park