CNYRADIO.COM -- For many people, a new year represents a clean slate. Here at CNYRadio.com, your editor is trying to make some improvements to the site in the new year. The changes already started: a new Facebook page launched late in 2010, and work is underway (when the news slows down enough) on a new layout design for the website. Concurrently, I'm doing some housecleaning: after much consideration, I've decided to terminate the CNYRadio.com Station Wiki.
In a nutshell, I've decided to terminate the Wiki because the Wiki doesn't really offer anything "extra" above and beyond the information one can already find on Wikipedia.
My original vision for the Station Wiki upon its 2009 launch, was to revive the extensive station directory from the original CNYRadio.com. Knowing I wouldn't be able to build it all and maintain it all entirely on my own (as Scott Jameson did with the original site), I purposely opened it as a Wiki -- hoping that, after I got things started, readers would take over the bulk of the upkeep, just as Wikipedia is maintained entirely by the general public.
Great ideas on paper don't always succeed in reality. Aside from a few very dedicated volunteers, there was never as much interaction as I had imagined. Many of the station profile pages remain untouched after nearly two years, and others have become outdated. For quite awhile, I wondered how I could encourage more people to help, but never reached a great solution.
Perhaps a final nail in the proverbial coffin came when I recently noticed one station's Wikipedia page had just been updated by a CNYRadio.com reader, yet that reader had never logged in to the CNYRadio.com Station Wiki. No, I'm not upset or bitter -- it simply got me to realize that the Station Wiki doesn't really offer anything "unique" that's not already available on Wikipedia.
Rather than continuing this duplicate effort, I've decided it's time to humbly bow to Wikipedia. Trimming the Station Wiki from my list of site maintenance duties will allow me to focus more of my efforts on the site's primary mission: chronicling current events within the local broadcasting industry.
As noted before, there were some readers who did a wonderful job in helping with the CNYRadio.com Station Wiki. It's because of their efforts that I didn't already close the Wiki several months ago. Thanks to the following CNYRadio.com users whose usernames showed up very frequently in the "change log" on the Wiki:
I'm sure there are others I'm forgetting -- every contributor's work is appreciated, even if you only logged into the Wiki once or twice and made just a few minor edits.