The Wikimedia Foundation has just launched Wikivoyage, bringing a Wikipedia-like element to travel. Built by volunteers, Wikivoyage is a free travel guide which can be edited by anyone. While it is a new project for Wikipedia, Wikivoyage has actually been around for about seven years. The site was originally active only in German and Italian, supported by the German non-profit Wikivoyage Association. Eventually this brand was offered to the Wikimedia Foundation and the site officially moved to their servers in November 2012. Until its recent launch, it was in beta.
There is a huge global demand for comprehensive and non-commercial travel information by users all over the world – Wikivoyage certainly meets this demand. It’s a great, useful service for travellers and I’m expecting that with the support of the Wikimedia Foundation and the global Wikimedia editing community, it’s going to get even bigger and better.
Wikivoyage is currently available in nine languages: Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Russian, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish. It already contains about 50,000 articles, edited by about 200 volunteer editors. With this great community support, Wikivoyage can easily become the number one travel resource on the web.
Jesmond Darmanin is a technology enthusiast who has his own blog at www.itnewsblog.com.