Wikipedia:Meetup/DC-Baltimore Railroad Wiki-hunt

A postcard from the Democratic Convention of 1912 advertising the Washington, Baltimore and Annapolis Electric Railway service.

This is an experiment. I (Taylordw) am tentatively organizing a D.C.-Baltimore area edit-a-thon / treasure hunt hybrid (a wiki-hunt) focusing on photographing places in the region's railroad network. If prospective participants can nominate a robust set of objectives, the hunt will be on in mid-October.

The Proposal

Edit-a-thons can be less than thrilling events. I bunch of people get together in a room, usually surrounded by a bunch of dusty old artifacts, and stare at their laptops for a few hours. Alternately, there have been drives to get people out to take photographs of community objects in need of documentation, but often this is an as-available, solitary activity.

I am imagining a Wikipedia edit-a-thon cum scavenger hunt. In the weeks leading up to the wiki-hunt prospective participants will nominate places and things from the D.C.-Baltimore area railroad system in need of documentation and organize their teams, each equipped with a digital camera and car (maybe equipment for uploading on the go?). The day of, we could meet up for breakfast (or not) then set off to photograph items from the list. At the end of the day, we would convene at a diner or something in agreed upon territory to upload, edit, tally results and bestow recognition upon the wiki-hunt champion team.

1. It's an experiment in gamifying the edit-a-thon
2. It gets participants out of the institutions and into the great outdoors

I think what would be cool is if we could end up with a good number of then-and-now pages where there was a period image supplemented by a contemporary image acquired on the wiki-hunt. So people would be encouraged to work on pages for wiki-hunt objectives sort of adding a current photograph.

There are a number of ways prospective participants could rig the game (take pictures in advance, use preexisting photographs, shape nominations to their advantage), however, the stakes are low, so participants would be on the honor system.

The proposal and nominations can be worked out on the Talk page for this event.

When and Where

I am thinking about 18 or 25 October 2014 for dates. Whether this goes forward or not is dependent on a robust set of proposed objectives from prospective participants.

Nominations for hunt objectives

This is the wiki-hunt equivalent of the requested articles list. Nominations should be links to articles (including red links). Include brief information as to where the objective can be found (an external link to a WikiMapia or Google Maps pin). Location information doesn't need to be perfect. The search is part of the fun. Do not include objectives that require access to private property or dangerous or restricted areas (see the Safety and policies for railroad photographers resources below).

The day of the event: place a Y and your signature next an article to indicate an objective obtained.

• Northern Virginia trolleys (what aspects?)
• Rosslyn Connecting Railroad
• Alexandria Extension (Google Maps link) - It's the railroad track that connects to the Capital Subdivision at Hyattsville, and runs down to Benning Yard and the CSX bridge across the Anacostia River

• Washington to Atlanta Main Line (Google Maps link) - It's the railway line that goes under I-395. It's a long line (all the way to Atlanta), but its Wikipedia article is disappointingly short. The focus should probably be on the stretch of track that approaches Alexandria (inside the beltway) and specifically on the yard in Alexandria (right by where the tracks pass under Van Dorn Street - I think the yard is called Van Dorn Yard). Norfolk Southern (the track owner) has an ethanol facility there, which made the news in 2013 (that may help with documenting the yard).

Resources

Safety and policies for railroad photographers

• Railroad Safety for Photographers
• Amtrak Corporate Guidelines on Photography and Video Recording

RSVP

This is a prospective participant list – people working on planning and creating the list of wiki-hunt objectives for now. Once a date is firmed up, we will make this into a real RSVP list.

Planning participants

1. Taylordw (talk) 18:36, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Post Edit-a-thon Report

There will be photographs and an account added to the page after the event to help organizers of future events learn from our experience.