In honor of the debut of ABC's World Wide of Sports in 1961 on this date, today I've selected the ArmchairGM wiki as my wiki-of-the-day.
ArmchairGM, based on MediaWiki, aims to be the ultimate community of sports fans. It includes articles on sports in many categories, including baseball, basketball, football, soccer, ice hockey, auto racing, golf, cycling, olympic events, combat sports, extreme sports,water sports, horse races, and many more! Writers of articles within this sports encyclopedia can embed flash videos (such as YouTube video clips). Unlike some encyclopedias, fans on ArmchairGM may write Opinions describing what they think about different sports-related topics.
Any and all sports fans are welcome to join the ArmchairGM community and contribute. Community members can post to the community blog -- articles are filtered by the community. Articles with enough votes appear front-and-center on ArmchairGM and hit the RSS feed. ArmchairGM lets fans rate "virtually anything in the sports world" and also make it easy for its fans to grab the ratings and stick them elsewhere. Fans on ArmchairGM can get recognition through points for virtually every activity on the site. Top fans are honored on an ongoing, monthly, and weekly basis. Fans can advance up levels, starting as Little Leaguers and up to the Legends level.
ArmchairGM has been described as an example of Wiki 2.0, combining the features of open source wiki software with social networking features. Each fan can build a profile and include their own photo galleries. Fans may join networks of other fans of their favorite teams. They can meet new people and add friends. Likewise, it also has a counterpart where you can add a fan to your network of foes. It also has a virtual gift component where little icons can be sent to another fan with a personal message (e.g., tissues for team losses, asterisk for accolades). Fans can also create gifts themselves by uploading images.
ArmchairGM has been quite successful. It was acquired by Wikia for $2 million. In March 2008, the Sports Illustrated site SI.com added to its new SI Vault section the "SI Wiki" which is powered by ArmchairGM. This wiki has obviously been found "worthy enough and rich with information" of being the sports wiki for SI.com.
For those who celebrate the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat, visit the ArmchairGM wiki, join the community, and jump right in!
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