50 new Coast pages added to Wikipedia

FIFTY new web pages profiling the West Coast have been added to the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, along with more than 1000 photos, most featuring blue skies.

New Zealand’s only ‘‘Wikipedian at Large’’, Dr Mike Dickison, recently finished a sixweeklong West Coast visit, funded by Development West Coast, to boost the region’s presence on the platform.

Dr Dickison said he had more than a dozen volunteers from around Australasia working on the ‘‘West Coast Wikipedian at large’’ project.

Wikipedia is the eighthmost visited website in the world, with millions of visitors every day. Anyone can submit entries to Wikipedia, which is also able to be edited by the public.

New pages include the Left Bank Art Gallery, the Kotuku miniature bungalow, Denniston Plateau, churches, Rimu goldfield, and even a statue of Richard Seddon.

People added include farming leader Katie Milne, potter Yvonne Rust, nurse and local body politician Maida Bryant, glacier history expert Dorothy Fletcher, Maori wood carver Fayne Robinson and early Hokitika nurse Bess Hudson.

A further 50 or so pages were improved, from Westport heritage buildings to Ngahere, and the Okarito Lagoon.

Swags of new photos were uploaded, including tourist shots by Greymouth photographer Stewart Nimmo, and 1980s images of Greymouth from the John Charlton collection.

An image of a couple taking a selfie overlooking the Hokitika Gorge also features on a page about taking selfies.

"Stewart’s 356 photos are now in 41 articles, being seen by 660,000 people a month, because they’re on articles like ‘New Zealand’ and ‘Kiwi’," Dr Dickison said.