{"frontmatter":{"type":"Policy","title":"The vision","description":"What Little Milwaukee is, its four pillars (places, events, public feedback and public discourse), how it is made and what it will not do.","slug":"vision","status":"stable","generated":{"by":"agent:claude-opus-5-5","at":"2026-11-02T01:19:47.000Z"},"verified":[{"by":"human:tyler","at":"2026-11-02T00:59:22.000Z"}],"sources":[{"id":"editorial-policy","resource":"https://littlemilwaukee.com/about/editorial-policy","title":"Editorial policy"},{"id":"inclusion-rule","resource":"https://littlemilwaukee.com/about/inclusion-rule","title":"Inclusion rule"},{"id":"paid-placement","resource":"https://littlemilwaukee.com/about/paid-placement","title":"Paid placement"},{"id":"roadmap","resource":"https://littlemilwaukee.com/about/roadmap","title":"The roadmap"},{"id":"submit","resource":"https://littlemilwaukee.com/submit","title":"Submit a place"},{"id":"dataset","resource":"https://littlemilwaukee.com/data","title":"Dataset"},{"id":"mayors","resource":"https://littlemilwaukee.com/mayors","title":"Neighborhood Mayors"},{"id":"llms-txt","resource":"https://littlemilwaukee.com/llms.txt","title":"llms.txt"},{"id":"okf","resource":"https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/open-knowledge-format","title":"Open Knowledge Format specification"}]},"sections":{"":"Little Milwaukee is a travel and local planning website for Milwaukee County, for people and their agents, in four parts: places, events, public feedback and public discourse. People read it as web pages, and agents read the same record as data.\n\nThis page states the plan. The [roadmap](/about/roadmap) lists which parts exist as of November 2026.","What Little Milwaukee is":"Little Milwaukee is a travel and local planning website for Milwaukee County, Wisconsin. The plan is that a person, or an agent acting for a person, asks what to do and gets a page whose facts have sources. After the visit, the person or the agent reports how it went. Once a mayor or the editor accepts the report, the website adds it to the record that the next person reads.\n\nThe four pillars are parts of one record:\n\n- Places: the sourced record of locally owned businesses and public places.\n- Events: what happens at those places and in their neighborhoods, such as weekend plans, yearly festivals and election days.\n- Public feedback: suggestions, corrections, business claims and visit reports from people and from the agents acting for them.\n- Public discourse: Topics, which are public discussions about a place, a neighborhood or Milwaukee.","Why it exists":"The editor wants a guide to Milwaukee by the people who live here. Each place page states why the place belongs and shows the evidence. The editor's aim is that an assistant asked about Milwaukee can cite this website, and that the people who use it can correct it.","Three contribution tiers":"The same three tiers of contribution apply to each pillar, on the model of Wikipedia. The tiers take effect with governance version 1, which is being built as of November 2026. Until then the editor makes each decision.\n\n| Tier | Who | What they will be able to do |\n|---|---|---|\n| Suggest | Anyone, including an agent acting for a person | Propose a change to any element of a page, propose a new place or report a closing |\n| Mayor | A Neighborhood Mayor, inside the domain assigned to them | Accept or decline suggestions, create and edit pages, verify pages and moderate topics |\n| Editor | Tyler Einberger | Take any action on any page, revert a mayor's action and retire a mayor |\n\nA suggestion will change nothing until a mayor or the editor accepts it. When a mayor deletes a page, the website will keep the page in the record and mark it deprecated.\n\nA Neighborhood Mayor is a volunteer assigned to one domain. A domain is a neighborhood, a gathering spot such as a county park or the airport, or a recurring event such as Summerfest or voting in county elections. A mayor assigned to an event domain is an Event Mayor. As of November 2026 the [mayors page](/mayors) lists 397 roles: 200 neighborhoods, 171 gathering spots and 26 events. One role is claimed. Mayor sign-in is being built as part of governance version 1.","Places":"## What it is\n\nPlaces is the record of locally owned businesses and public places in Milwaukee County. A place is a business, a park or another public space. A place record includes a name, address, map location, category, hours, phone number, website, ownership and sources.\n\n## How it works\n\nA record can exist before it has a page. A place gets a listed page when it passes the [inclusion rule](/about/inclusion-rule): it is locally owned today, it would make less sense anywhere else, and at least two sources support the one-line reason it belongs. A Milwaukee business that later franchised nationally does not qualify. Records of businesses that do not pass, such as national chains, stay in the database marked unlisted.\n\nPlace facts come from the businesses themselves and from public records, and each page cites them with a link. Mentions from Milwaukee publications and organizations are planned, each cited and linked to the original.\n\nNeighborhood boundaries match the City of Milwaukee's neighborhood map, and each suburb is one neighborhood. Each place has one category, a noun people search for, such as fish fries or parks. Tags are adjectives from a fixed list, such as patio. A collection is a list of places from more than one category.\n\nAs of November 2026 the canon contains 8 place pages, 200 neighborhood pages, 1 collection page, 7 categories and 10 tags. The place, neighborhood and collection pages are drafts under review. The database contains 3,163 business records built from City of Milwaukee food, liquor and business licenses. Of these, 3 belong to draft place pages, and the other 3,160 are marked unlisted.\n\n## What each tier can do\n\nAnyone can [submit a place](/submit) or correct a fact from a place page, and will be able to suggest a change to any element of a place page. A business owner will be able to claim the business's page by confirming a work email and then propose changes to its facts, photos and links. A mayor will be able to create, edit, verify and deprecate place pages in their domain. The editor decides each submission, will decide each claim and will be able to revert any mayor's action.\n\n## The rule\n\nA place page states a fact only with a source and a check date.","Events":"## What it is\n\nEvents will be the calendar of what happens at places in the record and in their neighborhoods. It will include a weekend page, weekly fish fries, yearly festivals and civic dates such as election days. Each event will be tied to a venue and a neighborhood in the record.\n\n## How it works\n\nAn event record will include a title, a start and end time, a repeat rule for an event that repeats, a venue, an organizer, a category, a price, a link for tickets or details, and sources. A venue's page will list its upcoming events, and a neighborhood's page will list the events at its venues. An event will be able to name a hall or a park without a page as its venue, stored as an unlisted record.\n\nEvent facts will come from the organizers and venues themselves, from public records and from Milwaukee publications and organizations, each cited with a link.\n\nOrganizers will submit events through a form. Agents will draft events from official calendars, such as those of venues, Milwaukee County Parks and neighborhood associations, and the judge will review each draft. A weekly event at a listed place, such as a Friday fish fry, will come from that place's own record.\n\nFamily mode will hide places and events that have no family attributes in their records. Supper clubs and taverns stay in the record whether or not they suit children.\n\nAs of November 2026 the database contains no event records. The part of this pillar that exists is the set of 26 event roles on the mayors page.\n\n## What each tier can do\n\nAnyone will be able to suggest an event or a change to one. An Event Mayor will accept or decline suggestions about their event, such as Summerfest, and a mayor of a neighborhood will do the same for events in that neighborhood. The editor will be able to change or revert any event.\n\n## The rule\n\nAn event will appear on the website only with a venue in the record and a source, after the same review a place page gets.","Public feedback":"## What it is\n\nPublic feedback is the set of ways people and their agents send changes and visit reports to the mayors and the editor. It includes suggestions on any element of any page, corrections, business claims and reports on how a planned visit went.\n\n## How it works\n\nA suggestion will target one element of a page, such as one fact, one photo, the hours or a tag. The database will store the current value, the proposed value, an optional source, a note and whether a person or an agent sent it. A mayor or the editor will accept or decline the suggestion in one action, and the website will commit an accepted change to the canon.\n\nAn agent that plans a visit for its person will be able to register the plan. After the visit, the agent will be able to report whether each place was open, whether the facts were right, what the person thought and whether the person would return. A wrong fact in a report will become a suggestion on that fact. After a mayor or the editor accepts a report, the website will add it to the place page's count of verdicts, such as loved or disappointed. The page will attribute a short quote from the report to \"a visitor, through their agent\" and will name no person.\n\nAs of November 2026 place submissions and corrections go to the editor queue, and the editor decides each one. An accepted submission or correction waits in the editor queue until the step that commits it to the canon is set up. Business claims are built, and the email that sends claim codes is not set up yet. Suggestions on any element of a page are being built, and plans and outcomes are planned.\n\n## What each tier can do\n\nAnyone can send a correction today, and anyone, including an agent, will be able to send a suggestion or a visit report. A mayor will be able to accept or decline suggestions in their domain. The editor decides each correction today and will be able to revert a mayor's decision.\n\n## The rule\n\nFeedback changes nothing in the record by itself. The editor decides each change today, mayors will decide changes in their domains, and the editor will be able to revert a mayor's decision.","Public discourse":"## What it is\n\nPublic discourse means Topics: public discussions in the record about a place, a neighborhood or Milwaukee. Two example topics are \"Where to watch the Brewers in Walker's Point\" and \"Best fish fry for a big group in Bay View\".\n\n## How it works\n\nTopics are being built as of November 2026. Each topic will have its own page with an opening post, replies and links to the places, neighborhoods or mayor domains it is about. Each topic will be a markdown file in the canon, and a daily export job will write the replies into that file, so a person, an agent or a user of the dataset can read the whole discussion. Each place, neighborhood and category page will list the topics about it. A topic page will tell search engines not to index it until the topic has three posts.\n\n## What each tier can do\n\nThese permissions take effect when Topics open. A person who signs in with a code sent to their email can open a topic or reply. The first three posts from a new account wait until a mayor or the editor reviews them. A visitor who is not signed in can reply as \"a visitor\", and the reply waits for approval. An agent can open a topic or reply for its person. A mayor can pin, close, move and remove posts in their domain and can mark a reply as the answer. The editor can take each of these actions on any topic.\n\n## The rule\n\nA topic post will not change a fact. To change a fact that a discussion questions, a person or an agent will send a suggestion, and a mayor or the editor will decide it. A removed post will stay in the database with the reason for its removal, and the topic page will hide it.","How it is made":"The record is a folder of markdown files in the [Open Knowledge Format](https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/open-knowledge-format), a format its authors describe as vendor-neutral. A database built from the files answers searches by location and by meaning. The files are the source of truth, and a build script rebuilds the database from them.\n\nAgents draft pages, and a judge agent reviews each draft against the inclusion rule and the [editorial policy](/about/editorial-policy). A page becomes stable after a person or a named review process verifies it, and the page shows who verified it and when. A draft page shows a notice and tells search engines not to index it. Each page has three forms at one address: HTML, markdown and JSON.","For agents":"The [llms.txt](/llms.txt) file lists the policies, categories and tools. Seven read-only tools need no key: search places by meaning, get a place, list places near a point, get a neighborhood, get a collection, list categories and list tags. A REST API with an OpenAPI description and a Model Context Protocol server with a server card serve the same seven tools. The [dataset](/data) offers the stable canon as JSON and CSV under a CC BY 4.0 license.\n\nTools now being built will let an agent post to topics. Planned tools will let an agent read events, send suggestions, register plans and report outcomes. To contribute today, [submit a place](/submit), use the correction link on a place page, email hello@littlemilwaukee.com or apply for a mayor role.","What the website will not do":"- Accept payment to add a place. A listed business can buy a slot labeled \"Sponsored\", and payment does not change a listing, as the [paid placement](/about/paid-placement) policy states.\n- List national chains or businesses that franchised nationally.\n- Copy photos or descriptions from other websites. Logos come from each business's own website and are credited to it.\n- State a fact without a source and a check date.\n- Publish a page with an unsourced reason or an uncredited photo.\n- Change a fact because of a topic post or a visit report before a mayor or the editor accepts the change.\n- Name the person behind a visit report.","Who makes it":"Tyler Einberger is the editor, decides what is listed and is the Neighborhood Mayor of Washington Heights. Neighborhood Mayors are volunteers assigned to domains. Agents draft pages, and scripts build the business records from City of Milwaukee license data. A page about a business connected to the editor includes a disclosure line."},"jsonld":null,"url":"https://littlemilwaukee.com/about/vision"}