KUpedia, formerly WiKUpedia, was renamed and changed its Web address as the site’s administrators refocused their efforts to be an all-in-one resource about everything related to the University.

The site’s administrators are bulking up information on student organizations to help incoming freshmen get involved in student life in Lawrence.

The wiki was originally an initiative of former Student Senate coalition ConnectKU during the 2008 Student Senate elections. After the elections, the project was removed from the ConnectKU Web site and administrators registered a domain name of www.kupedia.org. Jack Connor, Overland Park senior and KUpedia president said KUpedia was its own entity and no longer had connections with the former coalition ConnectKU.

He said the site already has 73 articles about various student organizations.

“We have a pretty decent section, but we don’t have every single one,” Connor said.

Dan Holmes, Olathe senior, said the section on KU history was another area the site’s administrators wanted to improve. Holmes said the site was updated often and that just last weekend, students contributed several new articles to the section.

Caleb Zahnd, St. Joseph, Mo., alumnus and KUpedia administrator, said he contributed regularly to the site’s general information about the University.

“Since I’m an alumni, I was there several years before anybody who is there now,” Zahnd said. “So I have somewhat of a more historical perspective on certain things.”

The wiki is written by students and community members and managed by the KUpedia Project, a registered student organization.

Connor said the main thing administrators and editors of the site are working on was getting the word out about how easy the site was to use, edit and add to.

KUpedia has a partnership with KU Info and

Connor said Curtis Marsh, KU Info director, liked the KUpedia Web site and wanted to do cross promotions with it to increase awareness of both sites. KUpedia features a KU Info Tip of the Day on its home page. The KU Info site also has a link to KUpedia.

Zahnd said anyone could edit or contribute to KUpedia, but he strongly encouraged people to register as a user because of the benefits.

Unregistered users have to enter a confirmation code every time they want to make a change and are not able to edit certain pages like Chancellor Robert Hemenway’s page or football coach Mark Mangino’s page.

Zahnd said pages were protected if they had been vandalized or were a strong candidate for pranks. The site tracks the IP addresses of visitors’ computers that visited it to discourage abuse of the wiki.

He said KUpedia was still in the development stage.

“We’re working on student awareness and getting everything covered,” Zahnd said. “It’s not even hardly a year old yet. It’s an infant.”

Connor said the wiki offered a student’s view of the University to other students.

“It’s how the University really is as seen through students and alumni and people that really matter there,” Connor said.

— — Edited by Lauren Keith