University of Saskatchewan Department of Computer Science

The Value of Geographic Wikis

Title: The Value of Geographic Wikis

Speaker: Reid Priedhorsky, Ph.D.

Date:

Time: 10:30am

Place: Thorvaldson 159

Abstract:

Two major online trends are occurring. One is open content, where users produce most or all of a site's value (c.f. Wikipedia, Stack Overflow, and YouTube); the other is geographic content: Google Maps and its peers make easy-to-use and high-quality maps available to anyone with a web browser, and their associated APIs support geographic "mashups" on a wide range of topics, from taxi fare to volcanoes to "geogreetings". These revolutions are merging. Internet-based tools and communities are useful for communication even when people are physically present in the same city or neighborhood, and shared locality leads to shared local experiences and needs. This talk focuses on a new type of system which enhances the utility of this emerging area: the geographic wiki or geowiki. We'll explore how the logical conclusion of open content - wikis, where anyone can edit anything - can be adapted to the geographic domain, and how this strange new model of mass collaboration functions within it. This work analyzes two systems in service of these goals: Cyclopath, a system we created, is a web-based mapping application serving the navigation needs of bicyclists in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area since 2008, and Wikipedia is a large and mature wiki community offering lessons relevant to the growth and limits of wiki systems. The results of our experiments show that this new collaboration model works, and they are of broad interest because they affect any geographically-grounded community where important information is distributed among its members.

Biography:

Reid Priedhorsky is a Research Staff Member at IBM T.J. Watson Research Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, and holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Minnesota. He is interested in sustainability, believing that the vital and growing role of computing at the core of nearly every modern endeavor means that the field is uniquely positioned for great impact in the matter of global sustainability. He works to empower communities to make better decisions in pursuit of a more sustainable future, doing so by improving the tools and algorithms which facilitate human communication, collaboration, and shared creation of knowledge, with a special focus on geographic contexts.