MOTD

I just got off the phone with a reporter from the East Bay Express. She was writing about the petition to keep BART open until 3am on weekends to cut down on drunk driving and to let folks stay out and party late.

She found my BART Petition Rebuttal thread and mailed me asking for an interview. I was trying to coordinate times, and noticed her message was posted 1 hour in the future. I realized that she was in mountain time, and George Perry reminded me that the East Bay Express is owned by the same conglomerate that owns the SF Weekly.

So I basically sent her a mail saying "I can call you, but if it's long distance I can send you my number." Whoops! She's in Emeryville, using the newtimes mail system (some novell thing).

I was satisfied with her level of skepticism, which is refreshing after spending so many years talking to bubbly tech press who take every word you say and repeat it to avoid doing any work. I guess I forget that computer news is really special and separate from even the more corporately-managed free weeklies.

So she didn't seem to buy that the problems were all technological, and that's a fair point. The issue of money came up, but I'm sadly not as familiar with the particulars of the BART financial hemmorhage beyond occasional quotes that they're trying to reduce the yearly net cost per rider to $28. The one thing I did point out is that night work is typically much more expensive than daytime, and they could likely save money if they found some way to do maintenance during the day without stopping service.

I know a lot of good writers, and I have a lot of friends that support our effort with <a href="http://www.wikitravel.org/">Wikitravel</a>. Many have offered to "submit something", or "help out", but I've noticed a tendency on their parts to think of wiki pages as magazine articles. In their mind, the page must be complete and exquisitely crafted on initial posting.

This is a daunting task, and most people just don't have the time or energy for it. Some folks have, in fact, come through in this way: Johnny Royale wrote up the hilarious <a href="http://www.wikitravel.org/article/Walnut_Creek">Walnut Creek guide</a>, and Siduri started <a href="http://www.wikitravel.org/article/San_Francisco/Tenderloin">a guide to the Tenderloin</a>. Tjames made <a href="http://www.wikitravel.org/article/Santa_Barbara">Santa Barbara</a>, which is such a great professional page. I love it.

But most people don't, or can't, and then they get intimidated and guilty and they don't want to talk to me about Wikitravel anymore. Which is kind of a bummer for me, because I never wanted a magazine article in the first place. It's like if your Dad promises you some expensive gift for Christmas, and then he can't afford it, so he doesn't get you anything and feels guilty and goes and gets schnockered at the pub on Christmas Eve instead.

The thing I'm starting to grok about wiki -- and I'm not a wiki expert by any means -- is that <a href="http://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html">Worse is Better</a>. You don't have to create something beautiful the first time around. In fact, great initial postings may actually be counterproductive. They kind of discourage editing by readers, meaning that community knowledge doesn't get included. It's the <a href="http://www.wikitravel.org/article/Wikitravel:stub_articles">stub articles</a> that seem to really grow into something information-rich.

I love my friends and I appreciate their goodwill. I know some of the best people in the world. But I wish I could think of an easy way to tell friends who offer to create a new article for Wikitravel that that's not what I really want. Just come over and help out. Create a stub for something that's not there. Expand a stub that is there. Correct someone else's spelling. Look up the phone number for a restaurant listing. Just, y'know, <a href="http://www.wikitravel.org/article/Wikitravel:plunge_forward">plunge forward</a>. It's more fun that way, anyways.

So, Nick, if you really want to help out, check out the pages for <a href="http://www.wikitravel.org/article/Bay_Area_(California)">the Bay Area</a>, for <a href="http://www.wikitravel.org/article/San_Francisco">San Francisco</a>, or for <a href="http://www.wikitravel.org/article/East_Bay_(Bay_Area)">the East Bay</a> and <a href="http://www.wikitravel.org/article/Oakland">Oakland</a>, and just start dribbling in bits and pieces of transit info. You know plenty more about <a href="http://www.wikitravel.org/article/Seattle">Seattle</a> and the <a href="http://www.wikitravel.org/article/Pacific_Northwest_(United_States_of_America)">the Pacific Northwest</a> than is on those stub pages. That's really what I want.