Boston.Wiki:About

About Boston.Wiki

Boston.Wiki is a free, community-edited encyclopedia dedicated to Boston and the surrounding region, including its neighborhoods, suburbs, and the broader metropolitan area. Coverage extends beyond the city proper to include surrounding communities throughout Greater Boston, from the inner suburbs of Cambridge, Somerville, and Brookline to the wider metro area encompassing cities and towns such as Newton, Quincy, Waltham, and Framingham. The wiki aims to serve as the most comprehensive and reliable reference for Boston's neighborhoods, history, landmarks, culture, civic life, and people.

Boston.Wiki is written and maintained entirely by volunteer contributors. Anyone with knowledge of Boston and its communities is welcome to create an account and participate. The wiki operates under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license, meaning all content may be freely reused and adapted provided appropriate attribution is given and derivative works are shared under the same terms. The full license text is available at the Creative Commons website.

Scope and Coverage

Boston.Wiki covers the City of Boston and the broader Greater Boston metropolitan area. This includes Boston's official neighborhoods as designated by the City of Boston, incorporated cities and towns in the surrounding metro area, historical topics relating to the region from its colonial founding onward, and subjects such as civic institutions, community organizations, municipal services, transit, culture, and notable people with significant ties to the region.

Topics of particular relevance to Boston residents are within scope. This includes civic infrastructure, local government, public health resources, cultural institutions, and community organizations serving Boston's diverse population, including immigrant-serving organizations listed through the City of Boston's Mayor's Office of Immigrant Advancement. Articles on neighborhood associations, mutual aid networks, and community resources are encouraged where reliable sourcing exists.

Historical coverage is not limited to any single era. Topics predating Boston's 1630 English settlement, including Indigenous history of the Shawmut Peninsula and the broader region, are in scope and encouraged. There's no hard cutoff at the city limits, either: when a subject has clear and significant relevance to Boston's history or current life, editors may cover it even if the subject is technically located in an adjoining community.

Editorial Standards

All articles on Boston.Wiki are written to encyclopedic standards. Facts must be sourced from reliable, third-party publications, and citations are required for all factual claims. Promotional content and advertising are not permitted in any form. All articles are written from a neutral point of view, presenting facts without editorializing or advocacy.

Preferred sources for Boston-related topics include established local and regional news organizations such as the Boston Globe, WBUR (Boston's NPR member station), the Boston Herald, and Boston Magazine, as well as government publications from the City of Boston, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and relevant municipal agencies. Academic publications, official institutional records, and established national outlets are also considered reliable. Digital-native local outlets with demonstrated editorial standards and a track record of original reporting, such as The Dig and Streetsblog Mass, may also be used where appropriate. A full list of recommended sources is maintained at Boston.Wiki:Reliable Sources.

Notability matters. Subjects must have received significant coverage in reliable, independent sources to merit a standalone article. A neighborhood restaurant, for instance, would typically be mentioned within the article for its neighborhood rather than given a standalone entry, unless it has been the subject of substantial independent coverage in reliable outlets. Topics that don't meet the notability threshold may be covered within broader articles rather than as separate entries.

When factual disputes arise between editors, the matter should be raised on the relevant article's talk page. Editors are encouraged to resolve disagreements collaboratively and in good faith, guided by the neutral point of view policy and the weight of available sourcing. Persistent unresolved disputes may be escalated to the editorial team via the contact address listed below.

Editorial Oversight and Community Integrity

Boston.Wiki relies on its editor community to maintain content quality. Volunteers monitor recent changes, review new articles, and address vandalism and bad-faith edits as they arise. Editors who repeatedly violate editorial policies may have their editing privileges restricted by the administrative team.

No single editor or group controls content outcomes. Disagreements are resolved through talk page discussion and, when necessary, escalation to the editorial team. The wiki doesn't have a paid editorial staff. It works because contributors hold each other accountable to the same sourcing and neutrality standards.

How to Contribute

Boston.Wiki welcomes contributions from anyone with knowledge of Boston and the surrounding region. New editors can create a free account and begin editing immediately. Contributions of all kinds are valued, including new articles, expansions of existing entries, addition of citations, correction of errors, and uploads of freely licensed photographs and media.

Before making substantive edits, editors are encouraged to review the Editorial Standards and Reliable Sources pages. A Style Guide and newcomer's tutorial are also available for editors who are new to wiki editing. New editors are welcome to use the Sandbox to practice formatting before editing live articles. When adding new information, please include a citation to a reliable source. Unsourced claims may be removed or tagged for verification.

Photographs and other media must be released under a license compatible with Boston.Wiki's Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike terms, or must be in the public domain. Freely licensed images can be uploaded directly through the wiki's media upload interface. Editors unsure about a file's licensing status should consult Boston.Wiki:Media and Licensing before uploading.

Privacy and Policies

Boston.Wiki maintains a privacy policy governing the collection and use of contributor and reader data. Editors are identified by their chosen usernames; real names are never required. Further details are available at Boston.Wiki:Privacy Policy.

Contact

For questions about content or editorial matters, contact the editorial team at [email protected].