The Blue Room now boasts almost 4,000 members, with over 110,000 messages posted since its official launch in January 2003. With over 4.5 million hits each month, the Blue Room has proved very popular. "The introduction of a Wiki is something which we've been working on for a while. We saw that the Blue Room was becoming, in part, a repository for a vast assortment of technical knowledge and advice, and an online encyclopaedia seemed like the next logical step for us as a way of consolidating all of this information into an easily-accessible form," says Peter Kirkup, one of the administrators of the Blue Room.
Peter, along with lighting designer Richard Williamson, has put together a successful industry resource, built on a not-for-profit basis. "An 11-strong team of moderators work behind the scenes to keep the Blue Room ticking over day to day, and for this we are really greatful," continues Peter.
Found across the internet, Wikis are ever growing in popularity. The main example of a Wiki is Wikipedia, set up by the Wikimedia foundation and now cited as more accurate than any published encyclopaedia, it features over 1,000,000 articles. Anybody can create or edit articles in a Wiki, making it truly a community project. Through this editing process, articles gain more and more depth and often link between one another.
The launch of the Blue Room Wiki is hoped to bring a new resource to the backstage community. The Blue Room Wiki can be found at the web address below.
(Lee Baldock)
