Jaunted

Jaunted Interviews / Guidebooks / World Wikia / Jimmy Wales / Gil Penchina / → All Tags

World Wikia Interview: Official Wiki Travel Guide

As we mentioned last week, Wikipedia is set to launch a series of travel guides, called World Wikia. We had the chance to talk about the new project with Gil Penchina, the CEO of Wikia, about the project. As travelers, we find it exciting that local knowledge could become available to everyone. But, also as travelers, we want our information to be as reliable as possible, not something Wikipedia is known for, to say the least. We'll see what develops; below are answers to our questions (in bold) about the project.

How much of the travel guide information will be taken from Wikipedia?

Wikia and Wikipedia have the same parents (Jimmy Wales and Angela Beesley) and use the same open source software and the same copy-left license for content (GFDL). Wikia did take a small amount of content and pictures from Wikipedia as part of the launch, but is focused more on guides than historical facts; so much of the wikipedia content is really not appropriate for World Wikia.  Under GFDL, all of Wikia's content is also available for free to any other site that wants to take it.

How will they be edited? Won't entries be more subjective than regular Wikipedia?

Correct; there will be a combination of facts ("Singapore Air has the most direct flights to Singapore") and opinions ("this hotel is the worst ever").

Will you be launching the whole world at once? How will you determine what guides come out first?

We don't determine how it works, the community and partners like Hostelsclub.com contribute content and it grows organically.  We expect English and Spanish language destinations to be the fastest growing because those are the two largest languages on Wikia.  In addition, we have over 60 city guides at various stages of development including boston.wikia.com, vancouver.wikia.com, and more. You can see all of them at, http://www.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Places .

Wikipedia posts in other languages--will you be integrating reviews from other languages into the guides?

Absolutely, Wikia is available in over 40 languages already and we expect the same to happen with World.wikia.com

Are you internet guys or travel guys over there?

Personally, I have earned 6 million frequent flier miles as part of visiting almost 40 countries.  Bill, the World.wikia.com founder, has also organized tours around the world and has visited all seven continents.   Both of us have been working in the consumer Internet for almost a decade.

Thanks!

So there you go; World Wikia is an opportunity to get your hatred of any given airline into reference document form. Comments or questions on our World Wikia inteview, let us know in the comments section below or send 'em to tips.

[Image via songlines/Flickr]