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Joburgpedia is the first Wikipedia project to embrace a whole African City—specifically, the South African City of Johannesburg. You can see what is happening here.

Dumisani Ndubane

David Richfield

Douglas Scott

Bobbyshabangu

Project background

Monmouthpedia was the first Wikipedia project to embrace a whole town, specifically the Welsh town of Monmouth. This was done partially by installing cream plaques containing QRpedia Codes next to buildings and linking these to Wikipedia articles. A QR Code (it stands for "Quick Response") is a cell phone readable bar code that can store website URL's, when scanned by a smart phone, it will direct the browser of the smart phone to the url.

This project brings together the success of cream plaques with the intrinsic Historical value of Blue plaques. Blue plaques are used to commemorate significant sites (sites can be significant to a community for a whole host of reasons). It is an invitation to people to discover more about a site and its history. The iconic look is the circular shape with white writing on a blue background. It is currently estimated that there are about 150 to 200 blue plaques in and around Johannesburg.

Aim

The aim of this project is to increase Wikipedia coverage of iconic buildings around Johannesburg with historic and heritage importance. QR codes will be installed next to blue plaques in Johannesburg city in a bid to create the first MetropediA in Africa between the years 2013 through to 2015.

Impact and Monitoring

This project is expected to feed off to other heritage Wiki projects, especially the Wiki Loves Monuments photo competition around monuments within and around the Johannesburg area. The impact this project could have on local small wikis is not easy to quantify currently, except to say that it will provide local Wikimedians working in small language projects, an ever fresh spring of material to write about.

Strategy

• increasing reach of Wikipedia especially the local small language Wikipedias,
• participation of heritage institutions (governmental and private) in Johannesburg,
• quality of articles about Johannesburg heritage sites will be enhanced by donation of useful metadata and historical images of the sites concerned,

Languages

This project will benefit local small languages Wikipedia communitites, by providing quality materials and sources. The following language Wikipedias would benefit.

isiZulu; Xitsonga; Sesotho and isiXhosa, English and Afrikaans.

Endorsements and Samples

This project pilot has been endorsed by The City of Johannesburg and The Johannesburg Heritage Foundation.

External Portal and discussions

Discussions on this project can also be found here:

• heritage portal discussion

More about QR coding

1. Official QRPedia website. Can be used to create QR codes to WP Articles by dropping WP article URL.
2. QR Code on Wikipedia
3. QRpedia on Wikipedia
4. QR Pedia on Wikimedia Outreach Portal
5. Interesting stats on en.wikipedia Johannesburg page

Joburgpedia uses QRpedia codes, a type of bar code a smartphone can read through its camera (using one of the many free QR readers available) that takes you to a Wikipedia article in your language. QR codes are extremely useful, as physical signs have no way of displaying the same amount of information and in a potentially huge number of languages.

Articles have coordinates ( geotags) to allow a virtual tour of the town using Wikipedia's mobile apps (or the Wikipedia layer on Google Streetview) and are available in augmented reality software including Layar.

There are different kinds of QR code—plaques and labels—all put up with the permission of the council and building owner:

• Larger ceramic plaques for places exposed to the elements for articles specific to Johannesburg.
• In addition there will be information posters, signs, notice boards and leaflets to help people contribute and stay informed.

We are very keen for local people to be involved however they wish. Computer skills are not important, it’s the interest and the willingness to be involved, there is a wealth of opportunities for community involvement:

• Suggest and write content

• Donate photographs, both new and old

• Recommend good reference materials

• Translate articles into other languages

• Learn and teach skills

Please click here to learn more