Benutzer:Manuel Strehl/WikiPlanet

DON'T PANIC!

Abstract

Datei:WikiPlanet.png

Suggested WikiPlanet Logo

For travellers around the world it is very important to have access to detailed information about their destination. Thus WikiPlanet shall provide addresses of hostels, travel schedules and subjective comments concerning the place to go.

This proposal is presented by Manuel (Diskussion) and Clemens (Diskussion).

Alternative Names

• "Hitchhiker's Wiki" (hitchhikers-wiki.org)
• "WikiPlanet" (used below, planet.wikipedia.org)
• "Wikhiker's Guide To The Galaxy" (wikhiker.org)

Leaning on Douglas Adams' famous "Hitchhiker's Guide" the project can be named in a similar way to awake the proper associations. Alternatively it can refer to the "Lonely Planet" series, like the second proposal.

Purpose of Project

The "Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy" was an idea by Douglas Adams described as an universal source of tips and tricks for travelling on a budget. This project is proposed for trying to reach this aim in a much smaller scope: just covering Earth. In entries similar to the Wikipedia informations for travellers for destinations around the globe shall be provided. E.g., an entry for "Rio de Janeiro" is supposed to contain

• basic infos, like country: Brasil, language: Portuguese, currency: Whatever, ...
• touristic infos, e.g. descriptions of good and not so good hostels, restaurants,...
• sights and important places: the Sugar Loaf, Botanical Garden, ...
• infos about travelling from an to Rio: Visas, Airport, ...
• comments of the users: Beware of the red taxis! ...

Structure of Entries

Like mentioned above, the entry is supposed to present relevant information about a touristic destination in structured form (example for a city, also possible for region or country; this should be a kind of category, similar to the ones in Wikipedia): See this link for an example page.

City/Region/Country Description

• Full name
• Geographical data, e.g., climatical situation
• Political data, country, currency

Accomodation, Travel & Food

• Travelling possibilities: Airport, port, station, busses, taxis
• General introduction to local food habits
• Lists and reviews of hotels, hostels, b&b
• -- "" -- of restaurants, bars and fast food

Sightseeing

• Short overview over place's history
• Important buildings, museums, natural highlights, art, persons, ...

Nightlife & Activity

• Lists and reviews of the city's discos, bars (as not listed above), and nightlife activities
• -- "" -- of sport possibilities, hiking, ...

Comments

• Includes subjective opinions of locals and visitors. Can be used to underline a special place, or to warn against pickpockets.

Addresses

• Important addresses in the selected region.

Weblinks

• Rather extensive (compared to Wikipedia) link collection for travellors and visitors

Possibilities & Advantages

• This project could be a large database for travellers around the world, providing very up-to-date and close view information due to the update by both inhabitants and former visitors.
• More detailled information can be achieved by linking to Wikipedia, e.g., concerning region history or actual political situation.

Possible Extensions

• Finding an appropriate partner, it would be possible to feed live information about rates of exchange, weather forecast, travel routes (bus or train schedules,...) or any other interesting information.
• By getting something like the GPS position of a location, WikiPlanet could automatically suggest further travel stations and/or sightseeings close by the selected city.
• By providing a country map one can plan a complete trip using the information from WikiPlanet handled by PHP session variables. Therefore it would be necessary to add a special user site named "planned tours".

Technical Requirements

• PHP: The standard proposal doesn't have features that aren't included in Wikipedia, so there wouldn't be additional PHP design to do.
• MySQL: Same as above.
• Extensions: Newsfeed can be simply implemented by telling the PHP script to grab remote data from partner sites. That could be ,e.g., parsing a HTML document for a special <div> which contains the rates of exchange. Other extensions should be addable at later time.