Difference between revisions of "Hitchwiki:About"

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The [[Hitchwiki]] is a collaborative website for gathering information about [[hitchhiking]] and [[train hopping in the United States|other]] [[boats|ways]] of extremely cheap ways of transport. It was inspired by [http://en.wikipedia.org Wikipedia] and by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker's_Guide_to_the_Galaxy Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy]. At some point it was left abandoned by its founder, and adopted by [[User:Guaka|Guaka]]. As a hitchhiker you're encouraged to not only read the guide, but also to contribute by adding your knowledge, improving existing articles and starting new ones!
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The [[Hitchwiki]] is a collaborative website for gathering information about [[hitchhiking]] and [[train hopping in the United States|other]] [[boats|ways]] of extremely cheap ways of transport. It was inspired by [http://en.wikipedia.org Wikipedia] and by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker's_Guide_to_the_Galaxy Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy]. At some point it was left abandoned by its founder, and adopted by [[User:Guaka|Guaka]]. As a hitchhiker you're encouraged to not only read the guide, but also to contribute by adding your knowledge, improving existing articles and starting new ones! Anyone is allowed to edit - you don't even need to log in.
  
 
The Hitchwiki is collecting all sort of relevant information about good hitchhiking spots, knowledge about hitchhiking possibilites in different countries, general know-how about [[what to pack]] and [[when to go]], [[what to eat]], and [[how to stay safe]].
 
The Hitchwiki is collecting all sort of relevant information about good hitchhiking spots, knowledge about hitchhiking possibilites in different countries, general know-how about [[what to pack]] and [[when to go]], [[what to eat]], and [[how to stay safe]].

Revision as of 23:36, 15 July 2008

The Hitchwiki is a collaborative website for gathering information about hitchhiking and other ways of extremely cheap ways of transport. It was inspired by Wikipedia and by Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. At some point it was left abandoned by its founder, and adopted by Guaka. As a hitchhiker you're encouraged to not only read the guide, but also to contribute by adding your knowledge, improving existing articles and starting new ones! Anyone is allowed to edit - you don't even need to log in.

The Hitchwiki is collecting all sort of relevant information about good hitchhiking spots, knowledge about hitchhiking possibilites in different countries, general know-how about what to pack and when to go, what to eat, and how to stay safe.

How to contribute

Just click edit at the top of an article, make your changes and click Save page. A good article to start editing or writing is probably your home town. To create new articles you can add [[ and ]] around the title of the new article, in some other article, on your user page or even here on the main page. Save the page, click on the red link and start writing a new page. Be bold about editing, just do it! If it feels a bit awkard, you can practice in the Sandbox.

There are als some help pages for people who are editing a wiki the first time.

Background

The project started 14th of April 2005. However, the person who started didn't respond when the wiki was constantly being spammed. Consequently Guaka moved the wiki to wikicities (nowe Wikia), a migration that was completed on the 19th of December 2005. The Hitchwiki was relaunched on 17 December 2005. Guaka organized the relaunch with a first English version of the wiki. A second and final relaunch found place at hitchwiki.org in November 2006 by Guaka and MrTweek. In 2007 a Spanish, French and German version were added. And in 2008 a Russian and Finnish version.

Idea behind the project

The idea in the hitchhiking wiki is not to compete with other already existing marvellous hitchhiking sites, but to provide a way to reorganize a lot of the existing knowhow into one, easily searchable guide. Hopefully the hitchwiki can help all the other sites to flourish. It links to all known sites.

Free Content / Licence

The GNU Free Documentation License, the license under which The Hitchhiking Wiki's articles are available, is one of many "copyleft" copyright licenses which permit the redistribution, creation of derivative works, and commercial use of content provided its authors are attributed and this content remains available under the GFDL. When authors contribute original material to the project, the copyright over it is retained with them, but they agree to make the work available under the GFDL. Material on The Hitchhiking Wiki may thus be shared with, or incorporated from, resources which also use this license.

This means that the content of the Hitchhiking Wiki is available to use on other sites and media that agree to share it alike. Because of this, the Hitchhiking Wiki is not just for itself. It's for all hitchhikers, and for all hitchhikers' communities.

Frequently Asked Questions

So I can use the content on my own website?
Yes, as long as you give the same permissions to the text there and remember to give the credit to Hitchwiki. Linking back to the original article will suit us fine for this purpose. It is basically possible for anybody to produce a book or other similar publication from the contents of the site, as long as the derivative work is in the framework determined by the GNU Free Documentation License.
What's the point?
Freely shared content will never be lost, as people can copy and distribute it. This also makes the Guide a project that everybody can benefit from – the articles are free to use for all the hitchhiking communities that already exist. And heck, wouldn't it be cool to see somebody actually publishing a printed hitchhiking guide after so many years?
Can I download the websites somehow to my computer?
Yep, You can download daily generated database dumps here.
hitchhikingguide.org, hitchhiking.wikia.com, world.wikia.com, hitchwiki.org – what is now what, what is related to what in which way?
Originally this wiki was started at hitchhikingguide.org as Hitchhiker's Guide to Hitchhiking, by Teppo Moisio (who is also the originator of one of the founders of Liftari.org). Because it was spammed all the time there, with no maintainer in sight, it was relaunched on Wikia as Hitchhiking Wiki on hitchhiking.wikia.com. Now it has its own domain, hitchwiki.org and its current name, Hitchwiki. The wiki moved from hitchhiking.wikia.org to hitchwiki.org in November 2006. We transfered all the pages (including user pages and images) to here, but unfortunately, Wikia didn't let us export user-accounts, so you will have to register here again. Also, unfortunately Wikia made the old URL redirects to world.wikia.com, and we can't do anything about that. This seems to confuse a lot of people. Anyway, now we have our own domain and own databases, so the wiki will stay here forever!
How many people are contributing to the wiki?
For detailed statistics about users, articles and databases, see the statistics.