Ritchie Bros. Launches Online Equipment Info Resource

"Dave Ritchie, co-founder of Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers, has always wanted to collect the knowledge and expertise of our company and our customers and gather it in some sort of library or repository," said Clay Tippett, vice president of internet services for Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers at a press conference held at the MINExpo trade show in Las Vegas today. "There is a vast body of information about equipment in the world • but it was not all in one place and a lot of it is hard to access."

A wiki is a website that allows people to collaborate and share information online, editing and creating web pages with their web browser, and creating topic associations between them. Wikis are generally user-friendly with edits appearing instantly online. Tippett said that a wiki is the best way to compile information and to ensure availability to the greatest number of people. Information can be constantly added, elaborated, and updated democratically by thousands of individual contributors who all have different information to share.

"The effect of a community of contributors is powerful, ensuring accuracy as the group creates and oversees the content, rather than just one author,” said Tippett. “Our goal is for manufacturers, associations, trade schools, equipment enthusiasts, industry journalists and authors, our customers and employees alike to embrace this new equipment wiki and give it that momentum."

The new equipment wiki, called RitchieWiki, has reference-quality material on equipment, manufacturers, people, uses, projects and history. There are also specifications for more than 9,200 different machines and growing. Not only can you find out the length and width of a machine, perhaps for transporting purposes, but you can also find out other information such as the depth an excavator can dig, or the bucket capacity of a wheel loader.

There is also a comparison feature on the specifications tool that allows you to evaluate up to four different models of equipment at a time.

The free public site is sponsored by Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers, and will be moderated by the company after the roll-out with rules in place to only allow reference-quality, encyclopedic material. No promotional, libelous or self-serving writing will be allowed on the site.

Before the launch of RitchieWiki, Ritchie Bros. staff worked for months to populate the site with more than 2,000 pages, more than 650 photographs, 9,200-plus equipment specs and more than 500 articles.

"We are encouraging equipment enthusiasts and anyone with knowledge to share to edit the existing content and to add new information and photos to RitchieWiki," said Tippett. "With the industry's help, this will be the most comprehensive, up-to-date library of equipment information in the world."

Tippett and Ken Duncan • another long-time employee at Ritchie Bros. • came up with the idea at a trade show in Dubai late last year and found themselves arguing over whether a CNH loader backhoe they were standing in front of had a Ford design heritage or was largely Case DNA. They realized that there was a lot of knowledge in the equipment industry and that the industry really needed a good repository for all that information. "We hope that this wiki project will engage others like us • and younger folks too • to participate," said Tippett.