A new website may soon become the premier source for information about Grinnell clubs and culture.

A new group created by members of SGA and the Voice Box intends to create a wiki, which will allow Grinnellians to share information about Grinnell traditions, student groups and more. Group organizer Harry Krejsa '10 said the site would hopefully be ready within a few weeks.

The idea for a wiki underwent convergent evolution in the VoiceBox and among SGA representatives. VoiceBox co-Administrator Emily Stiever '09 said the VoiceBox wanted a space where activist groups on campus could share experiences, strategies and ideas. "The VoiceBox had explored the option of creating our own wiki," she said, "to have a place to put activism and social justice resources for students and student groups."

Meanwhile, Krejsa "heard lots of people talk about a [potential] Grinnell wiki, a place were people could write about Grinnell's tradition, culture, events and history," he said. "Not to mention clear up the mess of acronyms and abbreviations that plague Grinnell life."

The VoiceBox administrators had already started to develop their own wiki on PioneerWeb, when Stiever mentioned the idea to Krejsa in passing in class.

They soon combined their wiki ideas and drafted a resolution that called for the formation of an ad hoc SGA committee to implement the wiki project. After a short debate over the resolution at Joint Board, presenters Krejsa and Greg Hudson '09 withdrew it so that they could form a student group instead. CND senator Spencer Green '09 argued that the creation of a wiki oversight committee went against the idea of self-governance and other Joint Board members agreed.

An outside server will host the site to avoid issues of content conflicting with college policy. Such issues occurred in 2003 when GrinnellPlans was forced off the Grinnell server for failing to comply with college computing policy, as reported in a Sept 5, 2003 S&B article. The group hopes to purchase a domain name "similar to GrinnellWiki.com" within a week, said Krejsa. He said that he expects it to cost "well under a hundred dollars a year" for site hosting.

At Joint Board and in conversations about the wiki idea, questions arose about potential content issues ranging from slander to privacy issues. According to Stiever, they had not yet worked out all the security details, but expected that users would need a Grinnell email address to edit the wiki.