Environmental journalist/professor Dave Poulson and a group of students at Michigan State University took on an ambitious task with no real guidelines, no compass and no idea how to get where they were going. However for those who had a hand in creating the greatlakeswiki.org, they were anything but lost.

“I don’t know if (people on) the eastern edge of Ontario feel much sense of community with people on the other side,” says Poulson, who was gracious enough to chat with me about the project he founded in 2006 with the help of several others in the community.

The site is an early experiment in creating a viable community knowledge base with the wiki-software for anyone and anything connected to the world’s largest source of fresh water, the North American Great Lakes.

“The best thing for me [about greatlakeswiki.org] is that it gives us a chance to do some experimental journalism,” he says.

That community is not just made up of journalists, according to Poulson. The great lakes wiki has over 1,500 members with backgrounds in science, politics and general interests in the area. Categories, or “ports” as they are appropriately dubbed, include things you’d expect to find such as Areas of Concern, Ecology, Geography, etc. but there are also some you may not expect.

Commerce, culture, and recreation also appear as categories in the wiki as a way to bridge a gap between the information and why people feel strongly about it.

“I’m trying to concentrate doses of information about the environment. When we started, we spent a lot of time discussing ‘Where do we draw the line?’” Something Poulson says never really happened.

“It’s a community. It should define itself,” he says, which is exactly what happened. Extensive portions of the site were carved out for wind energy, courtesy of a local government official, and lots of information from the Michigan Mountain Bikers.

A few things worked against the project Poulson listed, like the several organizations and pre-established Web sites in the Great Lakes area with their own enthusiastic community. He also noted wiki technology is somewhat difficult for the average person to grasp. The site is currently still alive and kicking—- even attracting longtime editor from the main wikipedia page Lar*.

Check out the site, sign up, and add a few entries if you search for something that isn’t added yet.