Help:Philosophy
It started with the realization that in our city, Boston, as in all cities, lots of people know a lot of things about navigating city life - but there’s no one we can call who knows everything. So we wondered: how can we get all of this valuable, distributed information collected into a single place where everyone can access it?
Povo is the answer to that question. Based on a wiki platform, Povo is a collaborative tool that lets everyone in the community come together to create, evolve, and maintain local neighborhood knowledge. We believe it’s the ultimate urban guide – demystifying the city, block by block, street by street.
Povo is Portuguese for “the people”, which means that Povo is a people site, and we aim to keep it that way. It’s for you, by you, and about your city. This imperative, to keep the content in your hands, informs our guiding philosophy of being as open and transparent as possible, both with the information on the site, as well as the information about the workings of the site.
We encourage you to be bold about adding information and making changes to site content, but to be open-minded about changes made by others. It’s the things you know about the city, from the obscure to the famous, from the alleys to the avenues, that make Povo interesting and useful.
We believe the value of Povo is that it’s not just about the city. It’s about your city.
