Foot.ie PROJECT: Wikify Irish Football
In the past we've looked at various ways of cataloguing information about Irish football on Foot.ie, however a big issue has always been that the bulk of knowledge is out there, with you guys, and it's very hard to get a large group of people to collaborate on such a project in an organised way. My last Big Idea was to set up a Wiki (I'll explain that in a minute) on my own site and use that to catalogue the information, but I got to a certain point and realised that it wasn't going to work.
Last night it occurred to me that we can kill two birds with one stone here, by pushing your knowledge into the Football League of Ireland section on Wikipedia, and extracting it later on for use in fixture and results tables, club and player profiles, and all sorts of other stuff. There's already some content there to get us started, it just needs a little reorganisation and filling out with more information. For example, the clubs could be split into Premier Division and First Division on the main page, and some information on the Junior and Intermediate Leagues could be added. Looking at the clubs too, the Cobh Ramblers and Cork City pages pale in comparison to the St Patrick's Athletic page.
If you're not familiar with Wikipedia, in basic terms it's just an online encylopedia that anyone can edit. You don't even have to register, although you will be missing out on some useful tools, like access to pages that you've edited or commented on, preferences that can make editing easier, and your own user and discussion page. Unfortunately sometimes this open policy leads to abuse, but the more members we have on there keeping an eye on things, the better chance we have of reverting those changes quickly and keeping the repository of information about Irish soccer tidy and up to date.
So let's get to work! You guys are the football nerds around here, get your knowledge into Wikipedia now for all to see! Not only will you be helping to raise interest in Irish football, you'll also be helping us by making it easier to add new features to Foot.ie!
adam
