Convivial City is a new cycling wiki from the guys behind The Practical Pedal magazine. Its purpose is to share information about cycling and cycling-oriented lifestyles in particular cities. Currently there is no information about Austin, but I suspect it was announced as soon as it came online.

The site uses the DokuWiki wiki platform, and I’ve got to say that I’m not a big fan of it. I know administrators like it because it does not require a database back-end like MediaWiki and other major wiki platforms, but it has some issues I do not care for. One issue is that its markup is different from MediaWiki, which is certainly the most widely used platform because of Wikipedia. Its markup requires more keystrokes and is somewhat less intuitive, which presents a barrier to entry for contribution, particularly when you consider MediaWiki’s user base. The other issue is that its URI structure makes it difficult to link to particular pages. In this case, I could not link directly to the list of cities. That said, I do hope this or another wiki becomes a useful source of practical cycling information online.