RitchieWiki is a wiki website project sponsored by Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers. It was launched in 2008 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the company. The idea for it came from the realization by some long-time Ritchie Bros. employees that the knowledge base on equipment diminishes over time, and that a wiki might be a good way to gather and preserve it. This dovetailed well with founder Dave Ritchie’s desire for the creation of an equipment library. The goal of this project is to become a comprehensive source of equipment information for the construction, agriculture, forestry, mining, and transportation industries. Ultimately we hope RitchieWiki becomes a source for everything about equipment.
So what exactly is a wiki? In simple terms, a wiki is a website that permits visitors to log on to a site and add new material or modify and even delete existing material. In short, imagine a spider web of content in the form of articles all interconnected together by hyperlinks and you have the basic infrastructure of a wiki. The most popular example of a wiki is Wikipedia, and the company has software that encourages organizations and companies like Ritchie Bros. to create their own wikis for their niche market.
The material on a wiki differs greatly from paper-based referenced material. A wiki covers and expands upon existing knowledge widely available in the public domain. Therefore, a wiki encourages democratic, non-technical use of the web—material may as easily be written by a credible expert or by an individual expressing a great passion for a certain subject.
RitchieWiki is a first for the industry since it is the one place online to find out everything about equipment. On RitchieWiki you can research, read, add, and edit information about equipment, manufacturers, people, uses, projects and history—there are even specifications for thousands of different machines.
At Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers we envision RitchieWiki as a virtual online equipment community by which multiple authors will contribute, add to, and improve upon a large body of resource material focused primarily on equipment. With RitchieWiki, it is our goal to enlist the participation of everyone in order to build a strong community of contributors. We want equipment experts, our customers and those from the general public with a passion for everything about equipment to get involved and build upon what has been started.
To stay up to date with the newest articles and changes on RitchieWiki, try out the RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed on the left hand side, under the title "Toolbox." It will show you at a glance what is new in RitchieWiki.
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