Several years ago, my wife and I moved here to Newburyport. The air is clean, the water is clean, it’s a nice place to live. But most of all we enjoyed the fact that Newburyport is a unique place which has a sense of community and local character. We enjoy the parks, the shops, the waterfront, the beach.

Years ago I worked in another “upscale” town, Greenwich, CT. It was a nice place also, but over time, the main street started to look live every other shopping mall – with quaint little storefronts replaced by The Gap, J Crew, Brooks Brothers, and other chain stores. Newburyport, I thought to myself, was different.

Recently, Allyson Lawless, who posts on the Newburyport Political Blog, wrote a summary of why local businesses are a great thing to have in Newburyport (or anywhere else). I thought that this very much reflected what I felt as well, and decided to put up a site where we, as people who care about the character of our town, can all come together and pool resources, put together a list of to-do’s, document what has been done already, and share information both among ourselves, and to anyone who might care to look at it, whether they are local to Newburyport or not.

Instead of putting up a site with some information, I decided that the best thing to do would be to have a *wiki*, and call it the Newburyport Local Business Wiki (I’ll take any suggestions for a catchier name).

The purpose of a wiki is so that we *all* can contribute – I’m just the administrator, and although I put together some preliminary content to jump-start the wiki, and I’m responsible for user administration, I’m not the person “doing” the site – we can all be contributors. Probably you’ve seen wikipedia (wikipedia.org). This is just like that, but focused on the goal of protecting Newburyport from the onslaught of chain stores.

Any wiki, this one included, is a work in progress. It’s constantly changing, and right now, this one is very new and has very little content so far.

This is how wikis work – a community must build around it so that value can be created. The wiki has a link where you can request a username to log on and help us out!

Gene Volovich
Newburyport

(Editor’s note: For those of you out there in web-land who might be like me and had never heard of a “wiki” before, here is a definition:

“A wiki (IPA: [ˈwiː.kiː] or [ˈwɪ.kiː] [1]) is a type of website that allows users easily to add, remove, or otherwise edit and change most available content, sometimes without the need for registration. This ease of interaction and operation makes a wiki an effective tool for collaborative writing.”

This definition is from “Wikipedia,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki, the free encyclopedia.)

(Editor’s note: The new web address is www.supportnbpt.org/wiki, Support Newburyport Wiki.)