About WhereTo.org

What is WhereTo.org

WhereTo.org is a free description of places where you can:

Keep track of places you've been to
Tag places, edit them, describe and rate them
See where other people go
Browse similarly tagged places
Get recommendations on where to go next

WhereTo.org is built by the community of people using it. Everyone is encouraged to participate in building the largest and most useful database of local destinations -- this is our goal.

Tagging, grouping, recommendations

Tagging is a popular buzzword lately, and for a good reason. It is a simple yet efficient way to naturally organize information.

Tagging serves two major purposes:

It is first and foremost an easy way to organize your collection of places. When you "bookmark" a place adding it to your private list you can add a couple of free-style textual tags to it ("beach", "tidepools", "short hike" for instance). Later on, if you think of a weekend outing with kids, you can easily see all your places tagged with a combination of "short hike" and "tidepools" for instance.
When you and a number of other members tag a set of places it becomes possible to discover new places to go to:
- You can browse through the global collection of tags and places created by other members.
- We can suggest other similarly tagged places.
- You can simply browse to other people who've been to your places, then their places, etc.
- We can suggest places that other people have been to, especially people who tend to tag and rate places similarly to you.

Social editing, collaboration

We employ the same general idea of editing that Wikipedia.org uses -- all places descriptions are editable by everyone. We do not use the same technology, but we do use roughly the same simple Wiki-language to describe data and layout of our pages.

Having said that, we are not a pure encyclopedia -- we extend the concept by allowing non-neutral point of view for instance in personal reviews of places.

There is no central authority that bans or approves what YOU can enter. There is even no requirement on notability of places you add -- as long as it is accessible to public you can add and describe it. The idea is, at least initially, to focus on day trips -- swimming holes, hiking trails, and other local destinations.

Membership

Membership is of course free. You can enter, tag and describe as many places as you want -- the more the merrier in fact.

The registration is a very simple process, requiring a minimum of time and information.

Go on, register and add a place or simply browse or search places others entered.