WikiCU:About
WikiCU is a wiki with articles related to Columbia University and its neighborhood. It is effectively an insider's guide to Columbia University. As an observant Bwog commenter notes, WikiCU is to an extent Columbia's "institutional memory".[1]
For a list of similar wikis at other universities, see WikiNode.
Contents
History
Beginnings
The site was first conceived on April 12th, 2006, in a note on Yahoo Notepad, as pictured on the right. It was originally intended to be at "cuwiki.com". However, the domain was no longer available by February 2007, so "wikicu.com" was registered instead on February 28th, 2007. Other options included "cuwiki.net" and "cuwiki.org", but these were judged inferior to a ".com" domain name. Since then, "cuwiki.org" has been registered and is the location of a wiki about Cornell University.
The first edits by the wider Columbia community started to be made on Tuesday 6th March in the late afternoon / early evening.
Project Athena
For a few years, Columbia's undergraduate student councils intended to create a Columbia wiki called "Project Athena".[2] The students working on this project managed to create about 50 brief articles, but they didn't get round to making the site publicly accessible. A Spectator editorial on September 6, 2006 spoke positively of the prospect of a Columbia wiki, but noted that "if the delays run too long, students may take it upon themselves to create their own solution. As has been shown by the abundance of private Wi-Fi networks, when the institution doesn't provide a means, students will just come up with their own ways to communicate-and procrastinate."[3] Well, as it turned out, the Spectator's prediction came true. When WikiCU emerged, the articles written for Project Athena were moved to corresponding articles in WikiCU.
Slow Decline
Wikicu experienced a period of slow decline after about 2008 when the very active users graduated. Although edits were still occasionally made, they became more and more rare.ref>"An Unloved Archive" The Blue and White, April 2011</ref> By 2011 user registration was disabled to combat spam.
Handover and revitalization
In March 2012 WikiCU was compromised by malware, and the administrators were unable to save it. After some discussion Sam Aarons SEAS'14 and a Bwog webmaster took over.[4] Following cleanup the site experienced a renewed energy as new editors were allowed to register and content was updated throughout the site.
Statistics
WikiCU is powered by MediaWiki software, which records several statistics. The wiki has 4,240 useful articles, or 12,043 if you count all the shorter articles, redirect pages, talk pages, and so on. The wiki also has 2,074 images and other uploaded files. So far, 1,686 users have registered, and 7 have additional administrative powers including the ability to fly. Further statistics are available at Special:Statistics.
Extensions/modifications
- Cite
- ConfirmEdit
- GoogleMaps
- CategoryCloud
- videoflash
- Short URLs
- Timezone is America/New_York
- Interwiki links (use w:Page to link to a Wikipedia page)
- inputbox
Legal issues
Federal law protects WikiCU from libel lawsuits. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, passed in 1996, specifically states that "no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker." Thus, unlike print and broadcast companies, online service providers cannot be sued if their users disseminate defamatory materials.
