Locapedias: generación de conocimiento local de manera colaborativa

Abstract

Wikipedia has become the biggest encyclopedia ever made in the world. With more than four million articles written in hundreds of languages, Wikipedia is nowadays one of the five internet well-known branches in the world. In 2004, following the Wikipedia model, Alfredo Romeo suggests the launching of “locapedias”, based on the voluntary and collaborative model of contributors, with the aim of creating the biggest knowledge centre ever written about a local area. In 2005 the first “locapedia”, Cordobapedia, is founded. About two years later, 12 locapedias can be found in Spain, with about 20000 local articles made in a collaborative way. As time goes by, locapedias will probably represent for cities and regions the same as wikipedia has achieved: the largest reference web-site for local knowledge in any city with a locapedia. For locapedias, the fact that public institutions, as libraries or local archives, head these proyects could be the needed guaranteed mark to consolidate a movement of local-free knowleadge creation, which will be the reference for the society we are unstoppable going to: the knowledge society.