Open Wiki Blog Planet

A response to Loveland’s GFC review

2011-12-02T13:47:23+00:00

I noted in the latest Signpost a new review of Good Faith Collaboration from Jeff Loveland has appeared in the Annals of Science. Loveland is a historian of eighteenth-century encyclopedias, a perspective I’ve been keen to hear as I’ve had reviews from about every other discipline!

While Loveland has some nice things to say, he writes:

Good-Faith Collaboration has one major weakness, namely in historical contextualization. As noted above, Reagle deliberately limits his historical survey to chapter 2 through the 20th century, which excuses his inattention to Vincenzo Coronelli’s Bibliotheca universale and Johann Heinrich Zedler’s Universal-Lexicon, both of which were meant to include contributions from a certain public at large in a manner reminiscent of Wikipedia.

Fair enough. He continues:

More seriously, the analysis of Wikipedia’s Neutral Point of View is compromised by Reagle’s conviction that “historically, reference works have made few claims about neutrality as a stance of collaboration, or as an end result” (p. 56). “Neutrality” may have not been much discussed by previous encyclopedias under this name, but references to such values as impartiality, unbiasedness and objectivity are frequent in the prefaces of encyclopedias over the last 300 years. (Loveland 2011, p. 557)

Granted, my focus in time is mostly restricted to the 20th century, but I find this critique intriguing none-the-less. My sense in reading the prefaces of varied 20th century encyclopedias was that their compilers were concerned with highlighting the authority of contributors, their discriminating expertise, and their systems for arranging knowledge in contrast to Wikipedia’s anonymity, neutrality, and folksonomy. There are exceptions, especially in the 18th century (Loveland’s area of expertise) when compilers like Samuel Johnson and Ephraim Chambers wrote much more humbly. Also, these two compilers are early proponents of what we might now call descriptive lexicography. Chambers, in the preface to his Cyclopedia wrote:

The Dictionarist, like an Historian, comes after the Affair; and gives a Description of what pass‘d….. The Dictionarist relates what has pass’d with regard to each of our Ideas, in the Coalitions, or Combinations that have been made thereof.... The Dictionarist is not supposed to have any hand in the Things he relates; he is no more concerned to make the Improvements, or establish the Significations, than the Historian to achieve the Transactions he relates. (Chambers 1728, p. xxii).

None-the-less, even this invocation of historian-like objectivity does not perfectly match 20th century notions, which are detailed in Peter Novick’s (1988) The Noble Dream: the “Objectivity Question” and the American Historical Profession and Mark Smith’s (1994) Social Science in the Crucible: the American Debate over Objectivity and Purpose, 1918 – 1941. (And the Randian/Objectivist influence upon Larry Sanger and Jimmy Wales adds yet another valence.)

This is a fascinating topic but unfortunately not a topic I presently spend a lot of time thinking about. However, it just so happens that earlier this year I read Loveland’s (2010) excellent monograph An Alternative Encyclopedia? Dennis de Coetlogon’s Universal History (1745). Therein, I delighted in reading about various plagiaristic practices of early encyclopedists and the ways in which compilers represented themselves in their works, from first-person “authorial disclosures” to religious and political polemics. One excerpt that I found especially amusing was de Coetlogon's defense that “I know that I have been accused of being a Papist; so I am, if to love truth, justice and impartiality is to be one; for I am really a Protestant against error, falsehood, injustice and calumny” (Loveland 2010, p. 193). In any case, I look forward to other scholars attempts to fit Wikipedia into more detailed and nuanced “historical contextualization”!

IMG_8659

2011-12-02T10:42:55+00:00

At Amsterdam, 60 Wikimedia activists and fans from 22 countries gather for the 2nd “GLAMcamp”: a seminar on cultural heritage. Now we listen to the experts on mass uploads. There is a problem for museums to upload pictures from their collection to the internet; of course, we want those pictures with metadata.

Wikimedia organizations are going to cooperate with Europeana, a EU network for cultural heritage institutions. It’s tricky – uploading must become easy and effective so that really everyone can use the new tools.

Can UI Changes Transform Wikipedia from Call Center to Community?

2011-12-01T20:29:15+00:00

The following post was written by my friend, former colleague and fellow Wikipedia editor Jeff Taylor (Jeff Bedford). His opinions are his own, but they are also good ones.

Danny Sullivan made waves on the web last week with a blog post titled The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia.

Sullivan made a few honest mistakes in the way he approached the Wikipedia community. Instead of easing his way into the community and learning its culture and norms, Sullivan moved quickly – perhaps a bit too quickly. Yes, Wikipedia encouraged him to be WP:BOLD; however his approach at times came across as accusatory and unfriendly. He inadvertently began treating other editors as if they had done great wrongs, expecting everyone to drop what they were doing to answer his requests.

Though not his (nor Wikipedia’s) intention, Sullivan’s experience with the Wikipedia community resembled that of dialing in to a tech support call center, with Wikipedia’s volunteer editors relegated to the unwanted role of customer service representative. Sullivan even alludes to this call center vibe in his blog post, with section headings such as “At The Tone (If You Can Find It), Please Leave A Detailed Message” and “To Contact an Editor, Please Contact An Editor.” Much like a call center, he got the run-around, and this is not his fault. It is the product of Wikipedia’s user interface and overall structure, which is truly showing its age in late 2011.

The Wikimedia Foundation has a very academic/university-like mindset, which has its benefits, but has also stifled change — including design updates — when change is absolutely necessary. To be fair, the foundation is quite self-aware, as evident in their product whitepaper:

“Wikimedia’s editing environment, which fundamentally is based on 1995 technology, represents a highly complex and intimidating way for users to engage with content online. In usability studies, users themselves call out the editing environment as unusual, and ask why a rich-text editing environment as used in tools like Blogger or Google Docs is not present.”

The current discussion system is detached from the norms of the rest of the web, hindering the ability of otherwise intelligent users to collaborate productively:

“Usability issues mean that especially for new users, the interaction with advanced users is seriously impaired by their lack of a mental model of the discussion system. Paradigms that the user may be familiar with (forums, inboxes, social media feeds) do not apply. Indeed, it is challenging to find any discussion system that is willfully designed to resemble Wikimedia’s.”

The web is moving forward and Wikipedia is not moving forward at the same pace:

“User expectations have changed drastically as a result of the innovations that became mainstream during 2005-2007 and continue today. The studies conducted during the Usability Initiative provide evidence that the editing interface is confusing and does not match user expectations.”

A redesigned user interface will be critical for Wikipedia to pivot from call center back to productive and thriving community, and while the public at large may not be aware, a new design is already under construction. If done right and deployed swiftly, this change – along with an update to the discussion interface – will ensure that users like Danny Sullivan encounter a community, not a call center, when shifting from reader to potential long-term contributor.

According to the Wikimedia Foundation’s annual plan, a target has been set for the “first opt-in user-facing production (to be in) usage by December 2011.” Today is December 1. To the development team that is clearly hard at work, I ask, will we see a sneak preview, a screenshot, or an option to test this out before December 31^st? After all, this may be the catalyst to reversing Wikipedia’s editor decline.

First pilot launches, software released!

2011-11-30T20:00:00+00:00

Hey friends!

We've got two extremely exciting announcements for you. Our first focus community, serving Denton, Texas, has launched! And we're making the first major release of the new LocalWiki software today!

Launching our first pilot

The DentonWiki, serving the community of Denton, Texas, has officially launched to the public! Check it out!

Denton is a small, college-focused community in North Texas, about an hour from Dallas. Being a college town, it's easy to see parallels to Davis, California. But it's a radically different place than Davis, as anyone who's been to the Dallas area can attest!

Folks in Denton, Texas had been building up and playing around with their project for a few months. With the new LocalWiki software at a good point, and a solid amount of interesting pages on their project, Philip packed up and headed out to Denton for two weeks to help them get their project ready to launch!

We held several marathon editing / hang-out sessions while there, met with lots of local Denonites, got a feel for the community, and did a bunch of work to prep the site for launch.

A little pre-celebration get-together of DentonWiki folks

The Denton project has already seen a higher level of participation and usage than DavisWiki did in its early days. And we're really seeing our extreme focus on usability pay off -- I watched many non-technical people simply get handed a laptop and just immediately start creating great stuff without any guidance.

If you want to read more about DentonWiki and the launch process there, check out some information we're compiling on our guide site.

This first focus community launch -- the first of many -- is a huge milestone for the project!

LocalWiki software released

Today we are also excited to announce the first major release of the LocalWiki software! Check it out at localwiki.org!

Make sure you watch the video!

Starting today, any community can create a local wiki using our new software. The software is designed to be installed by someone who's somewhat technical - someone who's had some experience working with Linux, for instance. We worked hard to make the software as easy to install as possible.

Most people will simply use the software, not install it, though. We're hoping that over the coming months many technically-savvy community champions will set up LocalWiki for their communities. The localwiki.org site is currently focused on targetting these sort of technically-minded folks.

There's a list of communities currently running LocalWiki here (and a map here). We'll let you know as more come online, develop, and launch!

There's so much more we have planned for the LocalWiki software — but this day marks a significant step toward realizing the dream of collaborative, community-run media in every local community.

xo-
Philip & Mike

Wikimania Keynote

2011-11-29T21:19:24+00:00

My keynote from Wikimania 2011 (Haifa) is now up. Unfortunately, you can’t see the slides as I talk, but those are online as well.

Turning off notification sounds for muted threads in Gmail on Android?

2011-11-28T19:40:40+00:00

At the weekend I bought a new phone, a Samsung Galaxy S2. It’s very nice, blah blah. I’ll write up a long post about Android sometime soon.

But I’ve got a bit of a tech support question.

I’ve got the Gmail app that comes with the phone, and I have it set to give me notifications when I get new e-mail. I know this will probably drive me completely apeshit very quickly, so I might turn it off. But it is actually mostly useful.

The only thing is it seems to not be very smart about what it notifies me over. It seems to notify me over every new message in the inbox, even muted threads. I reported a bug with Firefox a while back, and someone just got around to submitting a patch for it this evening, and there have been a few developers commenting on the patch and changing Bugzilla statuses and so on. Which is fine, but it gets annoying. This seems like the ideal case for muting at thread.

I don’t need a notification every time it happens, but it’s still inbox material as the first message to come through for months since reporting it is interesting and I don’t want to write a rule to send it to the same label as all the crappy notifications I get about people following me on Twitter.

Only the Android Gmail app doesn’t seem to have a way to let me change this. I could have it only notify me on Priority Inbox messages, which might do the job as then muted threads are highly unlikely to make it in. But I’m not sure I want that. Any advice?

Ziko

2011-11-27T22:10:04+00:00

Marek Blahus in Rotterdam

‘Libera Scio’ was the title of a seminar organized by Wikimedia Nederland together with the World Esperanto Association (UEA) in Rotterdam. Marek Blahus and I presented the Wikimedia movement, multilingual Wikipedia and above all the secret ingredient of Wikipedia: free knowledge.

The UEA holds an open day twice a year in its headquarters; it is usually on Saturday, and on Sunday some guests from abroad still stay in town. For about a dozen people (age 20 to 70) joint us for a tight schedule with lots of information and exercises. The participants were not only impressed by Wikipedia’s size (and the size of Wikimedia Commons) but also by the many ways you can go wrong when it comes to copyright.

Code noodling contest: functionalize this

2011-11-26T00:33:42+00:00

Learning moment for me. I’ve been learning functional programming for a while, but was faced with an interesting little challenge today. I’ll spare you the problem domain, which is rather boring, and simply give you what’s needed…

A function that takes a positive (that is n>=1) integer, calculate the number of times this number is divisible by 16, and how many times the remainder is divisible by 8, and how many times the remainder of that is divisible by 4, and how many times the remainder of that is divisible by 2. Return each of these values in a key-value structure similar to Ruby’s Hash.

My mind immediately leapt to “oh, this is a perfect fit for some kind of functional technique! Who needs variables?” And then I sat down and tried to write something and my brain very quickly turned to jelly, and I gave in and wrote a very quick imperative version.¹ Which looks like this:

Which is fine and will do the job. But, here’s the challenge to any of my FP-loving readers. Feel free to code-golf the hell out of this. Lisp/Clojure, Scala, Haskell, OCaml, Ruby, Python, JavaScript: whatever your poison, show me how much I suck for using variables. The prize? I might nick your solution and quietly put it into production. And you get over 9000 nerdpoints. And the warm feeling of satiating my curiosity. I don’t care if you don’t output necessarily the same data structures, but you do have to output the right values given the same input.²

Why? My new standard practice with the client in question is to sit down with them at a computer, and if they describe some potentially complex business rule, try and write a simple implementation of the rule in the form of a Ruby (or Python or Scala or whatever) function and verify that it does vaguely what they want. I then chuck it in the bug tracker so when I implement it, I have some nice readable, compilable pseudocode rather than a vague specification. In many cases, implementation is just a matter of writing tests, putting it in the context of the class, documenting and updating the UI and so on. ↩
If you feel like cluttering your example code up with checks to make sure non-positive non-integers raise an exception, feel free. But that’s not really what I’m interested in. ↩

From WLM to the official Heritage Inventory

2011-11-25T12:18:35+00:00

Winner photography of the Catalan contest. Manel Pons. CC-BY-SA

Before the wikimedians asked for content to institutions, now institutions use wikimedian's content : A selection of 4,000 photographs of Wiki Loves Monuments will be gradually included to the Official Inventory of Architectural Heritage of Catalonia, after a review by its technicians.

It will also be the first time that material provided by Wikipedians becomes part of a public inventory managed by the Official Cultural Heritage Institution of the Government of Catalonia.

Delivery of the pendrive with 4,000 photos to the Director of Cultural Heritage
of the Autonomous Government of Catalonia. Amador Álvarez. CC-BY-SA

This collaboration, with the opening of the lists of monuments and technical advice from the Culture Department of our government on the one hand, and the organization of the contest by the wikimedians, has reached results difficult to achieve using traditional systems.

It is an example of new models of collaboration between government and citizens, in which new technologies and open licenses allow citizens to take an active role in creating useful content for the society and engage with the preservation of heritage and culture. GLAM institutions should start to think about doing similar projects.

At this moment, we all agree that Wiki loves monuments contest has been one of our most interesting projects ever.

Further reading: Official press release (in Catalan)

Sausages and Scholarship: Wikipedia and Digital Literacy

2011-11-24T22:57:55+00:00

The Economic and Social Research Council is supporting a series of academic seminars on “Digital Policy: Connectivity, Creativity and Rights”, led by Prof. Gillian Youngs of the University of Wales, Newport. Last Friday’s seminar at the University of Leicester invited four representatives from outside academia, including myself for Wikimedia UK. Although the day’s theme was “digital literacy”, the twelve presentations covered a dizzying range of issues, from the legal structures that regulate television, to community journalism, to “sexting”.

My presentation paraphrased the German saying, “People who enjoy sausages or legislation should not watch them being made.” I contrasted this with scholarship: it is better to have a closed system of publication and review, or an open, wiki-based process which lets us see the sausages being made before we eat them?

For the topics of rights, connectivity, creativity, digital policy, and digital literacy, I argued that the Wikimedia perspective comes down to openness and freedom (in the sense of free content). Free content guarantees users’ rights: it treats them not as passive consumers of a finished product, but as active editors and re-users. Free content lets people build something together that they couldn’t on their own, hence it supports creativity. Freedom and openness are crucial to bring about the volunteer effort that makes Wikipedia a success: like most volunteers, I donate time and money to Wikimedia because it is a charitable project serving the widest possible public, not a commercial operation serving shareholders. Policy (whether in a country or an institution) can make openness either straightforward or difficult.

As a Wikipedia author, I’m very concerned that people understand the site’s limitations and biases as well as its strengths. To me, “digital literacy” means seeing digital resources as the result of a process, and understanding the implications for quality and reliability. Wikipedia educational projects are a low-cost opportunity to do this. If open publishing is like letting people see the sausages being made, then an educational assignment is like setting students loose on the machines to make their own sausages.

During questions, David White of Oxford University mentioned his own research into the use of online resources in schools and universities, which is feeding into the JISC ‘Developing Digital Literacies’ programme. While many schools in the UK and USA forbid children from even looking at Wikipedia, the site’s page views confirm that it is by far the most frequently-consulted source (nearly half a million hits on “Henry VIII of England” in one month, for example).

Wikipedia emerged as a topic in other discussions through the day, including the way it allows a natural division of labour: people who follow a topic obsessively can summarise it on Wikipedia for the benefit of people who are interested but less obsessive. In his round-up at the of the seminar, Matt Chilcott of University of Wales, Newport pointed out that the Wikipedia article on Digital literacy is still quite basic, and urged all present to improve it.

"Police officers told a member of the public they were prohibited from bringing “political materials”..."

2011-11-24T13:50:00+00:00

“Police officers told a member of the public they were prohibited from bringing “political materials” into the Houses of Parliament”

- Police attempt to ban “political materials” from House of Commons

Start with the politicians, I say.

"A 61-year-old Halifax County man died Tuesday, a day after police shocked him with a stun gun while..."

2011-11-24T13:42:59+00:00

“A 61-year-old Halifax County man died Tuesday, a day after police shocked him with a stun gun while he was riding his bike, family members said.”

- Halifax County man dies after being shot with stun gun

I was on the train recently and saw something that to anyone competent at using a computer is a bit...

2011-11-24T09:40:00+00:00

I was on the train recently and saw something that to anyone competent at using a computer is a bit like the sound of nails on a chalkboard.

Across the aisle from me was a man with a MacBook Pro. He had open Numbers, Apple’s spreadsheet software.

He had a list of figures in the spreadsheet. He wanted to do some arithmetic on the same column in each row and have the resulting value fill the column directly to the right of it.

He had found a method for doing this.

For each value in the spreadsheet, he looked at it, stored the value in his brain, hit the button on his keyboard (F4) to open the Dashboard (OS X’s gallery of helpful widgets), manually clicked the number into the calculator Dashboard widget using the trackpad, stored the resulting value in his brain, hit F4 to close the Dashboard, then typed said value into the spreadsheet.

I’ve seen people pull out a calculator to crank numbers while sitting in front of a computer, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone doing anything quite so elaborately strange with a computer for quite some time.

I sat there wanting to say “you know, you could just write an expression in the first row, then use fill down, that way if one of the values changes, the calculated value will also change”. But I didn’t.

Someone once said that Excel was the world’s most widely used functional programming language. I’m so glad to see that both functional programming and cargo-cult programming have reached mainstream acceptance.

Bad code: it’s everywhere.

Ziko

2011-11-23T14:15:53+00:00

“

Will Guttenberg use this kind of machines ever again? (2010 in Kunduz; US Gov. PD)

The prosecuting attorney of Hof (Bavaria) made public today that it will drop the charges against Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, the former German minister of defense. Guttenberg had to step down from his office in March 2011, after massive plagiarism had been discovered in his PhD thesis. GuttenplagWiki found out that more than 63% of all lines were taken from various sources.

From 199 complains that came in only one was issued by a person whose texts had been plagiarized by Guttenberg. The prosecuting attorney says now that

‘only’ 23 text passages can be considered plagiarism in the strict sence of the law
taking over parts of texts provided by the scientific service of the parliament is no embezzlement or fraud to the detriment of the Federal Republic
copyright is primarily protecting economic rights, and the economic damage to the plaintiff is minimal
the title PhD did not provide essential benefits to Guttenberg

Guttenberg got the complaints cancelled by paying € 20,000 to a charity. Even a party comrade of Guttenberg calls this a second class cessation. After more than seven months we came to know that plagiarism is less than you think, that it causes no damage and that a PhD title isn’t worth anything anyway.

The ex-minister is already busy with his political comeback. Recently he appeared in Canada at a conference on security issues, where he offered abrasive criticism against European politicians. For November 29th he announced his new book ‘Failed for the moment’.

Ziko

2011-11-21T21:00:30+00:00

Sad clown (Melissa Wiese CC BY SA)

Today I read another complaint in German language Wikipedia about the Wikimedia Foundation. Someone said that he found many of the candidates to the WMF board incompetent, and that he had candidated himself if he was capable of that difficult commercial English they use at the Foundation.

One might put this on the pile of easy reproaches: leaning back, let the others work and take responsibility, and complain that ‘I was not informed sufficiently’. But this sorrow has a true and honest ground. For a non native speaker of English, or even a native, it is difficult to follow discussions on Meta Wiki or the Foundation mailing lists. The language there

is full of colourful colloquialisms, nice for the natives, terrible for the rest
delivers a lot of Wikimedia jargon which you have to learn separately for every language
often contains an aggressive tone

When the Foundation asks volunteers to translate something, then the texts are not always as comprehensive and concise as they should and could be.

In theory, the Wikipedia language versions have ‘ambassadors’ who are supposed to link the national or ethnic level with the international level. In practice, this hardly happens because the ambassadorship is non-binding, it bears no obligation. People put their names on the list and then forget about it.

Such a position, a contact person for a single language version, should be assigned by the concerning community, maybe by vote. And it must be clear to the ambassador what people expect from him: translating the most important messages from the Wikimedia blog, giving feedback from the community to the international level.

It should be obvious by now that the pure wiki way does not work.

Ziko

2011-11-19T18:56:32+00:00

For a while some Wikipedians are protesting against the personal image filter the Wikimedia Foundation wants to introduce. Based on the Harris report of 2010, the Foundation thinks that individuals should have an easy tool to hide pictures they find disturbing, for example pictures with sexual content or violence.

Although the filter is a purely individual choice and can be turned off immediately, the protesters cry out ‘censorship!’ and claim that the filter is intended to please religious extremists in the USA. The protest seems to rise high especially in Germany. A poll among the German Wikipedians showed a strong contra vote, and at the WikiCon in Nuremberg in September one head-hot yelled at Foundation president Ting Chen.

Today in Hannover the members of Wikimedia Deutschland gathered to elect a new board and decide on some propositions. One of the accepted propositions was: “Position concerning the image filter in Wikimedia projects” by Achim Raschka. WMDE should not support or defend the introduction of the image filter. The filter is in violation of the basic principles of encyclopedic enlightenment. Inappropiate content (pictorial or other) should be treated in the usual way of community discussions. The board of WMDE had supported the Raschka proposal in advance.

Shaving Years Off the PhD in History

2011-11-17T18:41:29+00:00

For years historians have wrung their hands about how long it is taking our doctoral students to complete their PhD degree. Six years? Seven? Eight? More? In fact, a 2008 report by the American Historical Association indicates that eight years is the average, with the range being 4-11 years to complete a PhD in history.

The longer it takes our students, the more expensive it is for them (and for us), in particular because every year they are in school is a year of lost income after someone graduates. Most of the solutions I’ve heard revolve around offering students more funding so they can spend more time on their studies/dissertations. It is interesting to note, however, that size of program seems to be more important to time-to-degree than funding, as students in small programs seem to complete their degrees in much less time.

I spent a fair amount of time last week in Switzerland chatting with PhD students there. If you are familiar with the typical European PhD program, you’ll know that PhD students on the Swiss side of the pond take no, or almost no classes. They enroll in their doctoral students and, as one student told me last week, begin “making a PhD.” In other words, they start on their dissertations right away, which means that they are generally done in three or four years.

My view is that both versions are problematic. Our students spend too much time on their degrees and European students don’t have the opportunities our have to deepen their knowledge or a topic, develop a knowledge of more than one subject area via minor fields, and because they aren’t spending time in class with fellow students, often lack a community of practice with other students–or so several have told me over the past year.

Given these issues, I have a modest proposal for changing the PhD degree–a proposal that puts the onus on us rather than on our students or the administration. Assuming they come to us with an MA in history, doctoral students could follow a curriculum that includes:

Year 1-2
12 credits of course work
6 credits of advanced reading
Qualifying exams

Years 3-5
Dissertation research and writing

Students who followed such a curriculum would thus have the benefit of the study of two specific areas of history–say a 12 credit major field and a 6 credit minor field, as compared to European students who launch right into the dissertation. These same students would then have had the opportunity to begin building a community of other students that could lead to such things as writing groups, etc., as their career progresses.

If we are honest with ourselves and our students, three years is certainly enough time to research and write a dissertation. Too often we either load them up with expectations that can only be satisfied by spending four, five, or even more years on the dissertation, or we allow them to work on topics more suited for monographs than for dissertations (or simply allow them to dawdle).

It’s possible to imagine fully funding students for four or possibly five years in such a degree program, especially if they spend (no more than) one year working as a teaching assistant go gather some useful classroom experience.

I realize that it’s unlikely that any PhD program out there is going to willingly shave credits off of their program, if only because of the revenue losses that would result. In the case of our program here at George Mason, such a proposal would mean the loss of between at least 6 and probably 12 credits (and possibly more) sold to each doctoral student.

There are many difficulties with such a proposal, not least of which is the willingness of external accrediting agencies to accept a doctoral degree that includes fewer credits. Nevertheless, I think a discussion of such a modified degree path is well worth having.

UK attendees attending WikiConference India 2011

2011-11-17T13:27:26+00:00

This Friday, the first WikiConference India will take place in Mumbai. The three day event will see over 600 participants discussing a wide range of topics related to Wikipedia, and will provide a significant boost to the reader and editor community of Indian-language Wikipedias.

Wikimedia UK has given four scholarships to attend the conference from the UK, all four will give presentations to share their experiences and knowledge. They are:

Dr Toni Sant, Director of Research at the University of Hull’s School of Arts and New Media in Scarborough, UK, talking about Embracing Wikipedia as a Learning & Teaching Resource
WereSpielChequers, a long-time contributor to Wikipedia and Wikimedia UK’s activities, talking about experiences of Wikimedia-GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums) partnerships in the UK
Dhaval Vyal, currently the only active administrator on the Gujarati Wikipedia, talking about Growth of Gujarati Wikipedia and possible aspects of dissemination
Vinesh Patel, founder of the Imperial College Wikipedia Society, talking about Wikimedia and student societies: present and future

The scholarship recipients will be putting together public reports of their experiences which will be posted to the Wikimedia UK wiki over the next few months.

Stanley Winters and Me

2011-11-15T14:45:37+00:00

Earlier this year the great historian Stanley B. Winters died after a long and distinguished career, that included service in the American Third Army as it swept into Czechoslovakia in the last weeks of World War II, then a long career teaching history at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, and along the way the publication of several books and more articles than I can count about the history of the Czechs, Czechoslovakia, and the Czech Republic. He was a mentor and spiritual guide to more than one generation of Czech historians and I was proud to count him as a friend.

To my surprise and delight, he was also an artist and, it turns out, I was the beneficiary of at least one of his spurts of creativity. At the 2002 annual meeting of what was then known as the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, Stan drew a sketch of a panel I chaired on Czechoslovakia a decade after the end of World War I. The most recent issue of the newsletter of the Czech Studies Association included this work of art. While I’m not sure it looks like me, I was delighted to see it and to remember Stan in one more way.

New AdManager extension

2011-11-15T01:51:22+00:00

The folks at the American Academy of Ophthalmology asked us to create an AdManager that could be managed in full from the wiki itself. They were using BanManPro which allows you to create zones, with each zone corresponding to a particular ad. AAO wanted per-page or per-category control of which zone was assigned to which page. We created the AdManager extension but we designed it so it could be used with OpenX or really any ad service. The extension currently sticks the ads in the sidebar. You can place any number of zones there. See it in action here.

I think the way we hooked into the sidebar was neat and the tips I took from it are useful for any other extension that adds to the sidebar. We of course used the SkinBuildSidebar hook. The problem is that monobook automatically puts a header on top of the new sidebar item – in this case AdManager1 – and puts a border around it. Neither of these was desired. Good thing that MediaWiki also gives it an id (p-AdManager1) so you can use some CSS to hide it. The trick here is that there can be multiple zones added so we may have other ids like p-AdManager2 and so on. So here’s the nifty CSS that will match all of those ids:

div[id*='AdManager'] h5 {
	display: none; #Hide the header
}
div[id*='AdManager'] .pBody {
	border: none; #and the border
	padding-left: 0; #override the normal padding
}

Unfortunately, you’ll need admin rights to see the 2 special pages that handle the settings. And that’s that.

UK copyright is about to change, did you know?

2011-11-15T01:13:03+00:00

I joined the parliamentary information technology forum on 1st November for a discussion of the Hargreaves' review and to hear some expert evidence for and against it in the context of data mining.^[1][2] I attended as a non-expert but as a board member for Wikimedia UK I was interested in judging possible impact on our future activities.

Hargreaves was commissioned by the Prime Minister to examine the issues with Intellectual Property and recommend changes, which there is now a commitment to adopt.^[3] My layman understanding is that Hargreaves' analysis was from an almost entirely economic perspective, with a focus on how a future market in digital IP licensing could create a trading marketplace of IP to encourage UK business, as well as making it easier (supposedly guaranteed) to identify who the owner of any possible copyright is, and deal with the issues of orphan works and simplify license terms.

Possibly good things:

Though the recommendations avoid an equivalent to the USA's fair use, the changes would provide an exception for data mining in the UK where entire transient copies of works may be made for automated analysis, in most cases this currently being considered to break copyright terms. This would enable significant areas of research which at the moment are hampered in the UK by having to negotiate specific deals with publishers for data mining. The CIO for Nottingham University gave a good example of the currently impossible task of having already paid £5 million to publishers for access rights to academic databases and then having to attempt to negotiate separate terms and additional charges with each publisher for the confused area of data-mining.

Simplifying license terms would be of benefit to all, particularly as the recommendation is that contract terms would not be allowed to override license terms, for example JSTOR's contract terms for non-systematic use would no longer be enforceable in the UK.

Possibly bad things:

A number of publishers spoke out against the report, including the CEO of the Publishers Association, their concerns include that by allowing exceptions for data-mining this would introduce a risk of their databases being insecurely mirrored in other countries and that the changes would reduce the benefits of them acting as a "maitre d'" for access to copyright material.

From a Wikimedia cultural perspective the formation of a digital trading market will tend to default to allowing non-commercial use only, making more material impossible to use on our projects, and in the long term reduce the likelihood that digital collections could be used under a "no copyright known" rationale as such material would be likely to instead be exchanged on the basis of future speculative monetization that would ensure it always has a declared copyright owner.

Hargreaves proposes a system for dealing with suspected orphan works, in that any work not found on the national database would be licensed for reuse as an orphan work. Unfortunately, and somewhat bizarrely considering there is no copyright claim, the report suggests a "nominal" charge for use, presumably this would have the unintended consequence that no UK orphan works could ever be used on Wikimedia projects.

Conclusion
There was time for social chat after the main meeting and I got to meet some interesting folks from the Pirate Party^[5] as well as copyright experts. As the recommendations are just that, it is hard to say how firmly they would be adopted or implemented. In the case of Wikimedia we can already side-step many issues in terms of how UK law might affect our projects, however if cultural institutions (such as the BFI and British Library) default to using the suggested "research use only" restrictions for digital archives, this may cause arbitrary restrictions locking out the reuse we would like to see available for hosting on Wikimedia Commons, Wikisource, etc. If the recommendations turn into firm proposals we may need to help some of our partners consider the impact of changes in their policies for long term public access and open knowledge.

Links
1. http://www.pictfor.com/sample-page/
2. http://www.pictfor.com/2011/10/hargreaves%e2%80%99-review-%e2%80%93-data-analytics-text-and-data-mining/
3. http://www.ipo.gov.uk/ipresponse
4. http://www.ipo.gov.uk/ipreview.htm (The full report is available for download here)
5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_Parties_International
6. Event: Hargreaves’ Review – Data Analytics / Text and Data Mining 01/11/11

Integrating Mediawiki while retaining your web site’s look and feel

2011-11-15T01:04:29+00:00

We finished this project quite a few months ago but I never got around to bragging about it. The nice folks at petwellbeing.com already had a web site and wanted to add a wiki that would completely match it.
There are a few interesting points here. We based it on the Vector skin. The sidebar was a natural fit since the rest of the site already had one. The main problem was positioning the (always difficult) vector tabs and the personal links at the top. The good news is that it can be done, with a bit of trial and error.

You can see it in action here.

We then pulled off the same idea for another one of their sites.

I think the main lesson for me was how easy it is to integrate MediaWiki with the rest of a site. We’ve all come across well-designed sites with a wiki component. Click the wiki and you’re off into monobook-land with no (apparent) links to help you return. Now what? As it turns out, it doesn’t have to be that way. With a little bit of effort, that nice theme can be applied to MediaWiki.

THATCamp Switzerland (Concluding Remarks)

2011-11-12T17:21:04+00:00

THATCamp Switzerland is now over and everyone has dispersed to their various ends of the earth, which in my case means a flight out of Geneva tomorrow morning.

My impression was that the experience was a good one for those in attendance. I certainly got plenty of positive feedback. Of course, one rarely hears the negatives in situations like this, so it’s quite possible that some weren’t pleased with the whole unconference concept, but I certainly didn’t see anyone who looked unhappy or frustrated during the two days.

At the concluding session, attended by about half of those who were there when we started, several people emphasized their belief and/or hope that further connections and collaborations would grow from this THATCamp. If this one is anything like the others I’ve attended, that will certainly be the case. And, I was pleased to note, a number of people referred to my admonition on the morning of Day One to “have fun.”

If only one could say that about the other academic conferences we attend…

THATCamp Switzerland (8)

2011-11-12T15:49:08+00:00

The final full session I attended was devoted to the question of digital project management, led by Radu Suciu.

Among the questions discussed were how to complete a project once the money runs out? Another was how to plan successfully for the final outcome? Another was how do we get started with a digital humanities project?

The conversation then turned to audience. We have to think through who might be using the resource–ranging from just me to many different audiences in different fields. This makes project management difficult in the extreme if we don’t know what people in those other audience groups want (or don’t) from our work.

Another was whether digital humanities projects can be anything but a collaborative/team effort? My own take on this is that none of us have the expertise we need to realize all aspects of such an endeavor and so from the beginning we need to plan collaboration into the project in a formal as well as an informal way. This can also mean, according to one of the participants, that we may do much of the initial work alone, but there is almost always a point at which we have to engage others as partners, building a community around the work we began. The evolution over time can therefore move from an idea to a community with specific details of the project being realized either by the initial researcher or the growing community over time.

The session also raised the point that, given the difficulty of realizing a digital humanities projects, shouldn’t there be some part of graduate education (formal or informal) to teach our graduate students learn how to get from start to finish on a digital project. Our second course in the Clio Wired sequence (most recent version) offers one example of a full course version of such an introduction.

THATCamp Switzerland (7)

2011-11-12T14:14:11+00:00

In the afternoon the first session I attended was “How is the writing of history changing?”

The session began with a Ted Talk by Erez Lieberman Aiden and Jean-Baptiste Michel on Google’s n-gram viewer and what we can learn from 5 million books (500 billion words), a topic I’ve also played with here in the blog.This was a way of raising the question of “data driven history” and will this change our writing?

A second question was how has the process of writing changed (or is changing)? A third, are we going to keep writing books anyway? What are some of the truly new forms of writing? Does this mean we are thinking differently about history? Are ePubs going to be something different in the sense that 35-40 pages is an article, 200 pages is a book, but what about 100 pages, which is neither? Who is doing the writing? What is the future for collective authorship?

I raised the issue of what happens when writing is taking place in real time in public as in the case of my current research project? What does it mean that I’ll be getting comments–are those who comment co-authors, for instance? How does my writing and thinking change as a result of their input and what does that mean for authorship?

I’m also thinking about this because in my short term plan, once my book on teaching history in the digital age comes out, is an ePub tentatively titled “Edwired: The Book.” My plan is to take a selection of half a dozen or so larger issues I’ve raised in the blog that also elicited a higher degree of engagement from readers, pull them together in a sort of chapter form, add some commentary at the beginning of the chapter (new content) including a reflection both on where the issue is today and what I think about that commentary now that I’ve had more time to reflect on it.

One of the issues batted around in the room for a while revolved around the question of authorship in the digital world. If work is collectively authored, or includes comments, or other input from others, what does that mean for authorship? So, for instance, to what degree can McKenzie Wark claim authorship of Gam3r Th3ory if he incorporated content from the website where he wrote the book in public?

Another question raised was about narration in digital media. How do we tell stories differently in these new media? How is the new media working its way into our writing if writing is the core of what we do in the humanities? Does the writing process change? Does imagination change? Does our sense of time change?

Another question was related to the issue of what happens to us when we create a digital publication like Docupedia? To be specific, authors for this project were generally resistant to taking “interactive responsibility” for things they wrote, because they wanted to be done once they had submitted their work. It seems to me this is a point well worth keeping in mind, because there is certainly a danger in taking on too much interactive responsibility over time. I know journalists who speak of this issue with respect to having open comments on their stories and being glad that there is a point when the comments are closed so they don’t have to keep monitoring them.

Projects discussed were Hacking the Academy and Writing History in the Digital Age and what projects like these mean for things like the authorship question raised above?

2011_Sep_Mobile

2011-11-10T09:05:04+00:00

After a long gap of almost 7 months, I have compiled the statistical report for the Indian Language wikipedias.

As all of you know recently I joined the India Programs of WMF to support the Indic language wiki projects. In the past I was interacting with various Indic language wikipedians for various community related and technical things (for example, the FAQ booklet translated to various Indic languages, the typing tool integrated to several Indic wikipedias (now rechristened as Narayam extension and now has the official backing of WMF), Wiki India Newsletter, and so on). Now onwards I will be able to spend more time on the Indic language wiki projects.

The data for this report is taken from http://stats.wikimedia.org/. I thank Erik Zachte for providing me the support for the same.

Due to the long processing time, the report at stats.wikimedia.org is getting generated after one month. Hence in this report I have captured the data for 2011 September (also data for 2011 August is given for comparison).

Unlike the previous reports, now onwards I will be analyzing data only for the languages spoken in India. So from this report I have excluded languages of neighboring countries of India like Sinhala, Burmese, and so on (even though personally I am interested to watch the growth of these language wikipedias also since those languages are closely related to one or the other language spoken in India).

Following are the languages of India I have selected for preparing this report. The number of speakers for each language is given against each language.

NOTE: I have used the Indian way way of denoting large numbers, since that make more sense in India. Others please note, Crore is equal to 10 million, and Lakh is 100,000.

Indian languages having wikipedia

In India, Hindi is the language with most number of native language speakers. There are few more languages with huge speaker base. But when it comes to Wikimedia movement of India, speaker base is not making much impact.

The number of speakers for Punjabi (the language spoken in the Punjab state of India) is often misquoted at many places including the WMF stats. Punjabi language has two variants (Eastern Punjabi and Western Punjabi). According to various Indian statistics reports, the Punjbai language (also called Eastern Punjabi according to en Wikipedia) that uses Gurumukhi Script, is spoken by almost 2.9 crore people. The Western Punjabi (a language spoken by close to 6 crore people in Pakistan) has its own wikipedia (http://pnb.wikipedia.org). I assume the issue is similar to that of Hindi and Urdu where languages are closely related but use different scripts due to various reasons. Since my interest is in the Punjabi wikipedia (http://pa.wikipedia.org) that uses Gurumukhi script, I considered the number of speakers for that language.

Also I found that the Bhojpuri wikipedia (http://bh.wikipedia.org/) still uses the wrong language code (bh), the code that represents the Bihari language family. Bihari (ISO-639-1 bh) is a language family and the Bhojpuri language is just one of the languages in this family (Angika, Fiji Hindi and Maithili are few others). Bhojpuri has the language code bho. So we need to do two things in the case of Bhojpuri wikipedia. 1. update the language code to bho, 2. change the language name to Bhojpuri (instead of Bihari) in wikimedia records.

I have included almost all the important parameters (for which there is required and updated data) in this report. From the next report onwards I will be adding few more relevant parameters. The placement of languages in the all the tables of this report is based on the number of speakers.

Article statistics

Hindi with more than 1 lakh (100,000) articles is on the top. Newari wikipedia with 69,826 articles comes second, and Telugu comes third with 48,803.

In the span of 9 months (from 2011 January) Hindi wikipedia has added more than 40,000 articles. But did the community size increased? See the next few parameters for more information.

Odia and Assamese wikipedias made much progress since my last report. Both the article number and community strength are increased for both. The article number in Punjabi wikipedia is going high.

Edits per article

Edits per article shows the number of times a wikipedia article is edited. More edits for an articles means more people contributed to it and neutrality of the article is also high. For active wikipedias it is a rough indicator of quality. Wiki article will have more encyclopedic value when more people see and edit it.

Among active wikipedias Bengali and Malayalam got maximum edits per article. It is expected, since it has a very active community. (To see the community strength refer the next few tables).

For languages like Kashmiri, Pali the edit per article is high because it has very less number of articles and same articles are getting edited (mostly by bots) every time.

Editor and Reader Statistics

Malayalam and Tamil tops the list with almost 85 active editors. But in Malayalam there is a reduction of 14 active editors from the previous month.

As said before, when it comes to Wikimedia movement, the speaker base is not making much impact.

For example, Sanskrit language with just 50,000 speakers is making huge impact in the Wikimedia world. It has 14 active users, a bigger community than many other big Indic languages. I am impressed by the efforts of Sansskrit wiki projects especially with the sister wiki projects (for example wikisource), their way of interacting and implementing the best practices from other Indic language wikipedias, and so on.

In the past few months I have conducted 3 wiki workshops for Sanskrit. I found each time they are maturing with the vision about the future of Sanskrit wiki projects. In the last Sanskrit wiki workshop the main focus was on defining the category tree for Sanskrit wikipedia.

When I published the report last time, Odia and Assamese wikipedias were inactive. Now the situation is changed. Now we have a community to work on it.

The progress made by Odia wiki project (http://or.wikipedia.org/) is note worthy. Kudos to Odia wiki community for all the online and offline initiatives for building the community and to increase the article count. I was actively involved in the community building for Odia wikipedia. I still remember the day (2011 January 15) when I introducted Odia wikipedia and Odia tying tool (developed by Junaid) to Odia speaker to Ashuthosh Kar during Wiki X celebration at Bangalore. Through him very soon we got a wonderful wikipedian Subhashish who is leading the efforts for Odia now. Initially Subhasish and I used to meet at my home and work on the basic things for Odia wiki. I remember us working on Odia wikipedia logo, FAQ booklet, Translate wiki, and so on. Soon we got more members to the team through the few Odia wiki workshops happened at Bangalore. Along with workshops Odia wikipedians translated the FAQ booklet to Odia and took efforts to integrate the Odia tyoing solution developed by Junaid to Odia wikipedia. Later with the support of Dhanada Mishra (the chairman of Human Development Foundation (http://www.hdf.org.in/)) and a young student Odia wikipedian Srikanth Kedia we had conducted a wiki workshop at Bhubaneshwar. Odia wikipedians from Bangalore are doing an excellent job and now many of them are participating in Wikimedia India chapter activities also.

Odia wiki project picked up not because Odia has got huge speaker base, high literacy, access to computers or any thing else; it become active only because it has receieved the volunteers who has passion and vision of developing a wikipedia in their mother language. We need similar volunteers for each Indic langauge.

The case is similar for Assamese also. I was trying to get a good volunteer for Assamese wikipedia for the past 3 years. Initially I tried to get the volunteers from Bangalore since Bangalore has good representation of Assamese community and it is easy for me to reach people. But that didn’t worked out. Then I tried for online outreach, initially through emails. Finally I got connected with Parabhakar who is a professor at NIT in Silchar, Assam. Together we try to do online outreach first through a google group (it didn’t worked out), then through facebook. A facebook page is created for Assamese wikipedia projects aimed at bringing together all Assamese people who are in Facebook and who are interested in Assamese wiki projects. It has more than 460 members now. Prabhakar used that group and his personal contacts effectively to build a community for Assamese wikipedia. That worked. Assamese wikipedia started becoming slowly active. Later Prabhakar started another Facebook group dedicated to NIT Silchar for promoting Indic language wikipedias among students (and aluminis) of NIT Silchar. Due to all these in the next few months we are going to see more wiki activity from the Assam state of India and in the Assamese wikipedia. Recently Narayam (the typing solution extension) is integrated to Assamese wikipedia. Thanks to the Assamese wikipedians Chaipu, Prabahakar and other volunteers who actively worked to make it a reality. A major roadblock for bringing Assamese people to Assamese wikipedia is removed now.

Assamese wiki community is currrently concentrated on online outreach, but soon they are planning to start offline outreach activties also.

It is intersting to note that the community size of smaller languages is either equal to or even larger than that of much bigger languages. I don’t fully understand this and like to hear your opinion on this. One hypothesis could be that, larger ratio of people in smaller languages are more passionate about their language and there fore are willing to put additional effort to showcase their mother language. Each Indic language wiki project is waiting for the few users who has vision and passion about the future of the respective wiki project.

The technical issues and the other road blocks for smaller languages are more.

Number of highly active wikipedians (more than 100 edits per month)

Highly active wikipedians are the editors who do at least 100 edits per month. In fact we must say that they are people who are running the respective language wiki.

Here also Malayalam and Tamil tops the list. In fact if we have more high active editors you will be able to see more activities (not just article creation) coming out of that wiki community. Due to this you can see that offline project, photo events, article writing contest, community quiz, collaborating with respective state government, photo contest, wiki workshops, and many other innovative wiki projects are coming out from these two wiki communities. So ideally we should be able to convert more active editors to highly-active editors to make the wiki activism in each language wikipedia more vibrant.

Registered users who edited at least 10 times since they arrived

This parameter shows how many of the registered users did actually turned into actual wiki editors and done at least few edits in wiki.

Even though many big languages has more number of registered users, still Malayalam continues to be on the top. Hindi and Tamil comes second and third. I wish all wiki communities be able to convert more registered users into active wiki editors.

Newly registered users who edited atleast 10 times

This parameter is a subset of the preceding table. It shows how many of the newly registered users turned into wiki editors. Tamil wiki community is leading here. Among smaller communities, Assamese is also doing well (due to the reasons I told else where).

Page Views – Non Mobile (In Lakhs)

This parameter shows how many readers are waiting for us. Are we caring for them? The following table give the data for Non-mobile (mainly PC).
Even though Hindi lags behind in some of the wikipedia editing/editor matrices, the speakers of Hindi are not lagging behind in using Hindi wikipedia. Hindi with 77 lakh page views tops the list. No other Indic langage is near Hindi. And this is expected considering the huge speaker base of Hindi.

Even for the inactive wikipedias like Sindhi, Kashmiri, Pali, and so on, we have thousands of people accessing it every month. But do we have enough content to offer for these readers? We need to build community for all these languages to serve our readers. In fact we should be converting some these readers into wikipedians of the respective language wikipedias.

Page Views – Mobile

This parameter shows how many are accessing each language wikipedia using mobile. Unlike the non-mobile data, this data is showing an upward trend for all the Indic languages. Eventhough rendering of indic scripts is not good in most of the mobile devices, many users are accessing it. This also shows from where our future readers are going to come.

Here again Hindi comes first. Most of the other Indic languages are increasing its mobile reader base. For some lamguages the growth is more than 100% than the previous month. I assume this is going to increase in future and it is our duty to welcome all these new readers and convert some of them into editors.

Conclusion

In short, in terms of readers most of the Indian languages are doing good. But when it comes to editors that is not the case. One hypothesis could be that we are more knowledge consumers than knowledge creators. Another – and a probably more valid one – is that there are large gaps in basic awareness of the existence of Indic language wikipedias, relatively lower use of Indic language on the Internet, (expected) lack of familiarity with wiki editing, technical issues with regards to Indic languages, tiny community sizes, and many other things.

As wikipedians can we change this scenario?

For wikimedia India we have lot of things to do. In terms of building the community, overcoming the technical challeges, creating awareness about wikipedia (more inportant is creating awareness about Indic language wikipedia), and so on. The challenges are many – but the opportunities are massive. I look forward to working closely with the various language communities on realizing the enormous potential of their respective languages.

Once again, I welcome your views and comments and opinions on the above. Please express your views as comment here. You can also reach me at shiju@wikimedia.org in case you want to send a personal mail. Thanks for reading.

My presentation at Wikisym: studying (current) history by analyzing Wikipedia

2011-11-09T10:48:47+00:00

Wikisym was a great conference! Below you can find my presentation about the paper on Collective memory building in Wikipedia. During the presentation, I provided evidence and possible research lines in order to argue how it is becoming possible to study history (of current events) by analyzing what it is written about these events by thousands of editors on Wikipedia.

Collective Memory building in Wikipedia: the case of North African uprisings

Day 14 at Occupy Wall Street, photographed by David Shankbone

2011-11-08T23:36:32+00:00

I spent part of last weekend at Occupy Wall Street in Zuccotti Park, in New York’s financial district. It was a terrible weekend to be there, with the slush and snow making life pretty miserable for the protestors. Friends who’ve gone have reported a festival-like atmosphere with music and food and day-tripping families: what I saw was mostly just sodden people huddled in tents.

But it was fascinating, and I’m glad I went. You probably already know that the Occupy movement aims to operate via consensus decision-making, which makes it especially interesting to me because the Wikimedia projects operate the same way. OWS does it slightly differently though — because they’re making decisions via face-to-face interactions among large numbers of people, they use a variety of hand signals so that people can give simultaneous input without obstructing each other or interrupting speakers. Different gestures signal agreement and disagreement, the desire to raise points of process or ask clarification questions, and so forth.

As I watched the General Assembly, held at seven every evening, three things struck me as useful for the Wikimedia movement:

The “progressive stack” notion could help Wikimedia combat systemic bias in our projects. I want to immediately note here that the progressive stack is not uncontroversial in the Occupy movement: the New York General Assembly has agreed to use it, and is using it, but a couple of facilitators openly expressed ambivalence towards it. I am well aware that anything hinting at a progressive stack would be generally disliked in the Wikimedia movement, for lots of reasons.

The progressive stack is based in the premise that people who come from culturally dominant groups have throughout their lives been encouraged to speak, and rewarded for speaking, whereas people from other groups are more likely to have been ignored or silenced. Therefore, when GA participants line up in a “stack” to speak, the movement has agreed to privilege the marginalized by moving them forward, ahead of others. In practice this means that women, people of colour and gays and lesbians may get to speak before straight white men. You can read more about the progressive stack in this article from The Nation, this Feministing article, this discussion on the Occupy San Jose site and this discussion on Occupy Nashville.

I don’t flat-out love the progressive stack either: it’s obviously problematic. But it does strike me that it’s got application for the Wikimedia projects and our problems with systemic bias. I wouldn’t advocate that we give people from underrepresented groups a louder voice than others, or that they be given particular extra privileges of any kind. But I would recommend that if for example we’re arguing about a topic related to India, and there’s an Indian person in the conversation, given that we know Indian people are underrepresented on the projects, it would make sense for us to listen to that person extra carefully, since he or she would be bringing information we’d otherwise be likelier to miss. Same goes for women, and other underrepresented groups in our community.

I loved how the facilitators deliberately created space for new people by minimizing and making fun of their own contributions. The man who facilitated at my second GA did this explicitly, saying things like “I hate facilitating; I am really bad at it,” and “Nobody trained me to do this. I learned how to do it by reading magazines at Barnes and Noble, which means I don’t really know how to do it.” I thought that was great. In the Wikimedia projects, too often we do the opposite: we use impenetrable acronyms and jargon, sending the implicit (and sometimes explicit) message that there is a lot to learn, and you, the new editor, might not be quite up to the task. That’s a shame.

We used to create more space for new people: I remember Florence Devouard, then the chair of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees, telling me that in the early days of the French Wikipedia she used to deliberately make crappy messed-up pages full of misspelled words, so it was easy for people to imagine themselves making things better. I’m not advocating for that today, at least not in the large, mature Wikipedia language versions, but I do think that demystifying our work and making it clear that most policy is just common sense, would help new people to find us more approachable.

I loved how multiple random people in the assembly took personal responsibility for its success. Consensus decision-making can be frustrating, and a couple of times I saw angry people try to circumvent or ignore the process by interrupting or starting up side conversations. Every time that happened, someone in the crowd near the disruptive person would patiently, but firmly, explain the process and ask the person to respect it. I saw one woman do this repeatedly, and I was surprised to eventually figure out she’d only arrived at Zuccotti Park from California earlier that day, and didn’t have any prior experience with the Occupy movement. The fact that she felt empowered to help the GA succeed, and that she wanted to, reflected well on her — and also on the organizers.

By contrast in the Wikimedia movement, too often I see people stand silently aside while somebody else acts destructively. It’s most obvious on our mailing lists, where promising threads sometimes devolve into flame-wars and snark. When that happens in a thread I started, other people will often write me supportive e-mails off-list, wanting to commiserate about how awful so-and-so is, or how terrible the lists are. I appreciate those mails (really, I do!), and I have written a couple like that of my own. But it would be so much healthier for us all to take responsibility for creating a constructive space, rather than standing by as though we are helpless, while stuff is set on fire. That Californian woman was correct: it’s her movement too, and she has every right, and arguably a responsibility, to keep it from being damaged.

So those are three quick things I think the Wikimedia projects might usefully learn from the OWS movement. Please don’t write me angry comments about NPOV: I am not talking here about the substance of OWS: I’m talking solely about its process :-)

I’m writing this fast tonight, even thought I’m a bit of a jet-lagged wreck, because I’m in Paris kicking off a two week trip to Europe, and I’m hoping to visit the Occupy movement while I’m here. I know about Occupy London at St. Paul’s Cathedral, but I don’t know if there are ongoing protests taking place in the other cities I’m travelling to. If you know that there are protests happening in Paris, Utrecht, Vienna, Berlin or Hanover, please tell me in the comments where they are. I’d love to see how they are, or are not, different from the one in New York.

For some reason I can’t make the cutline show up (sleepy!) but the image at the top of this post was taken at Day 14 of Occupy Wall Street, by David Shankbone. The woman shouting in the foreground is still there, but now she’s wearing mittens and a parka.

Filed under: Consensus Decisionmaking

Charity Status for the world’s favourite encyclopaedia – and a milestone for Charity Law

2011-11-05T10:50:12+00:00

Today the Charity Commission has approved Wikimedia UK, the UK membership organisation supporting Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia projects, as a registered charity.

The news comes shortly before the launch of this year’s global Wikimedia fundraiser. Starting on 14th November, Wikimedia UK aims to raise £1 million to support Wikipedia and its sister projects. The Charity Commission’s decision, regarded as a milestone in charity law, means that for the first time British donors to Wikimedia will be able to make their donations go further with Gift Aid.

For Wikimedia UK, being recognised as a charity is a springboard for ambitious plans to work with a growing range of major organisations (including the British Museum and British Library). Wikimedia UK recently appointed its first Chief Executive and will open new offices in central London on November 14th.

Gaining Charitable Status

Roger Bamkin, Chair of Wikimedia UK said, “Achieving charitable status is the culmination of hard work by the Board and by Wikipedian John Byrne and board member Steve Virgin. John, in particular, has worked tirelessly with the volunteer community to create the most persuasive case and to recruit the best legal team to present it. Wikimedia UK is anticipating another successful year of outreach and believes we will build further upon the time, dedication and effort of a wonderful group of volunteers in the Wikimedia community. We would like to thank the charity team of Stone King LLP for their outstanding work, and understanding of our unique activities.”

Leading charity law specialists Stone King LLP, who advised Wikimedia UK on the successful application for charity status, describe our registration as “a milestone in the development of charity law in England and Wales”, and go on to say in their own statement:

“Wikimedia UK’s registration as a charity is a significant step toward the updating of charity law to reflect developments in modern communications and the evolution of user-generated content. The promotion of open access to content and user-generated and -enriched content has not, until now, been recognised as a charitable purpose. Stone King and Wikimedia UK are therefore delighted that the Charity Commission has made the bold and wholly justified step that acknowledges the profound contribution that properly managed and regulated open content makes to society.”

Wikimedia UK would like to acknowledge the staff of the Charity Commission for England and Wales and Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs Charities team for their effort and patience throughout the application process, which was complex and involved lengthy submissions of evidence.

Raising funds for 2012

Wikimedia UK will be joining the global Wikimedia fundraiser, starting on 14th November, to raise £1 million as part of a global fundraising drive to keep Wikipedia and its sister projects running. Wikimedia UK supports work to engage more people and institutions, in the UK and worldwide, with the Wikimedia movement. Fundraising banners will display on all nine Wikimedia projects, inviting donors to make a donation to Wikimedia UK. For the first time, UK donors will have the option to make a Gift Aid declaration online, adding up to 25% to the value of their donation. Also for the first time, UK donors will be able to give by direct debit. Wikimedia UK is hoping that, with the help of Gift Aid and Direct Debits, the UK will provide greater support to the Wikimedia projects than last year’s fundraiser, which raised around £600,000 from over 30,000 individual donors in the UK.

We use the donations for our outreach projects and initiatives in the UK including projects teaming with volunteers outside the UK, and provide a grant to the Wikimedia Foundation, the US non-profit that coordinates the national chapters’ work globally, to operate the servers and develop the software on which the projects depend.

An ambitious programme of activities in the UK

British Library Editathon participants standing outside the British Library

Over the last year, Wikimedia UK has begun an innovative program of outreach activities that have included partnerships with cultural sector organisations including the British Library, the British Museum, Derby Museum, the National Archives, Coventry’s Herbert Art Gallery and Museum and the National Maritime Museum. There have been a number of Wikipedia training academies with organisations such as Cancer Research UK, the Medical Research Council and a workshop at the Institute of Physics. The University of Bristol partnered Wikimedia UK with a UK Outreach summer internship, and there was also a Wikipedian in Residence working with the leading global biodiversity organisation ARKive.

Our 2012 activities will build on these partnerships, and expand to include sessions to build a network of volunteers across the UK; Wikipedian in Residences at a wide range of cultural and educational organisations; and will significantly enhance the information that the Wikimedia projects provide on the two World Wars in advance of the centenary of the start of World War 1.

Wikimedia UK is assembling a dedicated UK team to make these activities happen in concert with our volunteer network. Wikimedia UK has hired its first Chief Executive, Jon Davies, and will open its office in central London on the 14th November. Our plans for activities in 2012 are summarised at http://www.wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/2012_Activity_Plan

About Wikimedia UK

Wikimedia UK is the local Wikimedia chapter covering the United Kingdom. Wikimedia UK is an independent charity that supports free and open knowledge throughout the United Kingdom, including promoting and supporting the projects of the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Wikimedia UK is the operating name of Wiki UK Limited. Wiki UK Ltd is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and Wales, Registered No. 6741827 – and a Registered Charity, No.1144513.

About Wikimedia

Wikimedia is an umbrella term for the projects run by the Wikimedia Foundation and for the movement of volunteers that contribute to and maintain them. These projects are: Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, Wikiversity, Wikispecies, Wikinews, Wikisource, Wikibooks, Wikiquote, Mediawiki and Wikitionary. These projects make up one of the top five websites in the world, as well as the largest free reference work ever created.

Contact details

Jon Davies, Chief Executive, Wikimedia UK
Phone: +44 (0)7976 935986
Email: jon.davies@wikimedia.org.uk ; press@wikimedia.org.uk
Website: www.wikimedia.org.uk

New stubs – for making the Swahili Wikipedia big!

2011-11-04T16:51:51+00:00

Howdy! It’s been a while since my last post. It does not look okay to me or to among of you guys to see me away like this. Maybe need to change the blogging style, i.e updating the happening stories quite often? The answer is yes, however, busy in real life kept me away from blogging and adding some contents on the Swahili Wikipedia and other Wikimedia’s sisters projects as well. Now what? Oliver really had me encouraged about adding some stub articles, at least to push my home Wikipedia to another level (although not good enough compare to the Afrikaans one), but it;s my home Wikipedia it needs my efforts to make it among of the biggest Wikipedia in the world! Thanks Oliver, I’m back with some stub articles about Wabunge (parliamentarins) of the United Republic of Tanzania. It’s awesome working about my country!

Sincerely,

Muddyb

Trick or Treat! “The Human Centipede” and the Making of an Unpopular Featured Article

2011-10-31T17:08:46+00:00

Editors on the English-language Wikipedia often like to choose “Featured articles” (FA)—the best articles Wikipedia has to offer—for appearance on the website’s front page to coincide with relevant dates, including holidays and anniversaries. This is called “Today’s Featured article” (TFA), and while all Featured articles are eligible (and only those articles) it is not automatic and not necessarily a given. For example, two articles shared featured status on the day of the U.S. presidential election in 2008: John McCain and Barack Obama. To coincide with Halloween in the U.S. (and to a lesser extent elsewhere) Wikipedia editors have chosen “The Human Centipede (First Sequence)” as the day’s Featured article. And not without some controversy.

If you don’t know what this film about… I suggest that ignorance may in fact be bliss. But the chances are pretty good that you do; “The Human Centipede” is a film that many more people know about than will ever choose to see, so there was more than enough independent coverage to write extensively about it, and there were in fact serious horror fans who were so moved to write it. So it exists. And according to those who have reviewed it closely (I am not one of them) it’s quite well done.

This doesn’t mean everyone was happy that the article was granted Featured status, nor that it was actually chosen to be featured on Wikipedia’s front page. In fact, when it was first nominated for Today’s Featured article—by its originator and chief contributor, Coolug—to coincide with the sequel’s release earlier this month, it didn’t go over so well. One editor replied:

Using Wikipedia’s main page to promote the sequel, which features even more depraved torture of pregnant women, rape of children, etc., would be despicable. The nominator should quickly remove this nomination with an apology (for his own good) and then observe a self-imposed (unofficial) “block” as penance (again for his own good).

Another:

Oppose due to my personal belief that this is a disgusting topic, although I think Kiefer goes way too far in suggesting Coolug owes us an apology. He has as much right as anyone to be proud of his efforts and wish to see them on the main page.

And another:

Quite apart from the obvious dubious moral grounds in featuring this article, it also amounts to giving free advertising to The Human Centipede II, a film so questionable in its content that it is actually illegal to supply in the UK. “Highlights” of Centipede II include [Editor's note: Wow, I'm really not going to quote that here.] I am sorry, but giving the kind of exposure the main page of Wikipedia provides to this apocalyptic level of filth is just not on. I am therefore posting a firm oppose.

So the article was shot down, and Coolug replied:

I suspected this might be the reaction to this nomination, but I thought I would give it a try anyway, oh well never mind Maybe in a few months I will try and get a more traditional article on the main page. I’m writing something very boring about the Soviet Union and who knows where that might end up? I didn’t nominate this to try and help Tom Six sell tickets for his horrible sequel, but I can see why editors might see things that way. I must admit I am very amused by the suggestion that by nominating this I am essentially a bad person. Thanks for the comments congratulating me on getting the article to FA by the way.

But with Halloween on the horizon, he tried again, and this time the reaction was not too much warmer—just enough to get it through. The opponents led early:

I restate opposition to featuring Human Centipede on the main page, because its sadistic content and the worse content of its sequel, which includes murdering of a mother, torturing a pregnant woman, etc. A few minutes exposure gave me nightmares, honestly. The British authorities have banned the latter film because it threatens to cause harm to the public.

Second, I believe that everybody but myself stated (some) appreciation for Coolug’s efforts, so it is an exaggeration to say that “his head was handed to him”. Nonetheless, the community overwhelmingly opposed featuring Human Centipede on the main page, with many stating an objection based on its sadism, albeit apologetically, alas. Those objections will remain.

Although it was pointed out:

The Brits reversed their ban on the second film after filmmakers did a little more editing. This article is also not about the second film, but about the first one – thoughts on the content of the second film (or its article here) should not weigh into the decision. Our precedent has not been to wait a year after the release of a sequel to have other movies/video games/tv shows on the main page.

I’d be much more inclined to hold my objections if Human Centipede were on the main page on Halloween instead of a different date. I still wish I’d never read it, but that’s not due to the quality of the article.

And support did emerge:

OK Coolug, I’m going to stick my neck out and suggest that you go ahead and nominate this for Hallowe’en. There seems to be some support building for this here, and on your user talk page. While I still think that the subject matter is horrible, it’s a very popular and widely-read article, and it is one of a tiny number of featured articles about horror movies. On Hallowe’en, readers will be less shocked to see the article on the main page, and I think that any concerns about promoting the sequel are even less relevant now that it no longer coincides with the release date. Finally, noting that a precedent exists for articles about distasteful subjects and extreme horror films on the main page, I can offer my support for a nomination in this date context.

Support. Agree with Papa November. Coolug’s article is an accomplishment, well done! Nothing in the article nor the film is distasteful except the concept. Is Wikipedia going to disregard Raul’s (and the general readership of Wikipedia’s) opinion? Are we such prudes that we censor what the public finds fascinating? Halloween is the ideal choice. What else could be such a match? (Most past Halloween choices have been quite boring.)

Not that everyone agreed:

Strong Oppose, on any date The subject matter of the article is frankly extremely disturbing and filthy. I don’t deny that this is out of personal interest. My little sister views Wikipedia’s main page on a regular basis. I don’t want her to see this, and I’m fairly certain that the majority of readers wouldn’t want to read this either. This would also generally reflect very badly on the project.

But if I had to choose one quote that summarizes why the article was approved, it would be this:

I do not oppose the article (or indeed, any article) being banned from TFA [Today's Featured article] at any point in time. I think it would be insulting to an editor who put so much work into an FA to be told “no, we won’t allow your article on the main page because the subject matter is icky” (which is what this ultimately boils down to), especially when such a thing is anathema to Wikipedia culture.

The point about Wikipedia culture links to a Wikipedia guideline called “Wikipedia is not censored“, which generally means that just because content may be conisdered “objectionable” is not a reason to remove it. Whether that means such material should be actively promoted is another issue entirely.

Other featured articles were suggested for the date, including Bride of Frankenstein and London Necropolis Company (this one would have had my vote) but “The Human Centipede” was on a roll. Today, some opposition is apparent on the article’s discussion page. The heading of one editor’s reply: “On What Planet Did Making This A Featured Article Seem Like A Good Idea?” You have to expand a hidden section to read all of the protest, so I can’t actually link it, but here is one that’s readily visible:

Wow. What a troll. How in the hell did this article become a Featured article? It’s not exactly morally right and this doesn’t make a good impression of Wikipedia to the masses who come here everyday. I hope the (old, resident) Wikipedians here are not becoming weird (if they aren’t already). Please reconsider and remove the Featured article nomination… this has NOTHING to do with Halloween, it is NOT FITTING; the subject of the article isn’t morally right and this kind of stuff shouldn’t be known by young kids who might come here. Oh what have you guys done? :O

And Coolug has set up a page to collect “Human Centipede related hate mail”—although no one has taken up the offer just yet. And has posted a note on his user page explaining the article’s history:

I started this article for a bit of a joke back in 2009 when I had for the most part only really used Wikipedia to mess about with articles and cause general low level mischief. I ended up taking the whole thing a little bit too seriously and out of it somehow became a pretty serious Wikipedian. I suspect this is quite a common editing progression and therefore I’m always loathe to treat the vandals too harshly. We can always revert their rubbish and hey, maybe one day they might write something really good?

After three attempts at FAC [Featured article candidates] this eventually passed, however, the attempt to immediately shove it onto the main page was as predicted an absolute disaster, with one editor observing that I should apologise and then leave Wikipedia temporarily “for (my) own good”.

However, bizarrely quite a few editors thought it would be a good idea to nominate the article again, this time for Halloween 2011. And even more bizarrely, it actually got selected!

You may not care for the subject matter—I’m not planning to read the article, let alone see the film—but I think that makes it all the more interesting a Wikipedia success story.

Teaching Visual Storytelling: The five-shot method and beyond

2011-10-28T19:48:03+00:00

At Journalism Interactive at the University of Maryland, I’m giving a lightning talk about Teaching Visual Storytelling: The five-shot method and beyond. In addition to the talk about using Michael Rosenblum’s five shot method at USC, I have included checklists journalists can use in the field for shooting better video.

Teaching Visual Storytelling: The Five Shot Method and beyond

View more presentations from fuzheado

Checklist: Five Shot video method

View more documents from fuzheado

Checklist: Video interviews

View more documents from fuzheado

Wikimedia UK one step closer to charitable status

2011-10-27T15:41:59+00:00

There was a record-breaking turnout of UK Wikipedians on Sunday 16^th October for the 50th London Meetup and an Extraordinary General Meeting of WMUK. The single resolution passed with 49 votes for, none against and one abstention (including 24 proxy votes). The resolution adopted a new “Objects clause” in our constitution to make us ready to become a UK Registered Charity – our full Articles of Association are available to view here. It was explained at the meeting that discussions with the Charity Commission have been progressing well, and the Board are optimistic that Wikimedia UK will achieve charity status soon, hopefully in time for the start of the 2011 Fundraiser in November. This will enable WMUK to collect Gift Aid, and brings other advantages, such as discounts on normal business rates – and providing a more professional and trustworthy image to the public. The new CEO, Jon Davies, also answered questions from attendees.

Texas bound

2011-10-23T08:58:17+00:00

I'm off to Denton, Texas for a bit to help folks there with the Denton LocalWiki pilot! I'm hoping to meet with / connect-with a bunch of folks, spread the word and generally help them prepare to open up the project to the wider public!

More soon!-
Philip

Only Visiting NOLA

2011-10-15T15:47:47+00:00

Today, I’m in New Orleans for the NOLA Hackathon for MediaWiki. As I walked through Lafayette Square where the Blues and BBQ festival was setting up. I thought, wistfully for a bit, about how much I love New Orleans and how much I miss leaving here.

Scandals, page 1

That lasted until I sat down in PJsand looked at the front page. The top three headlines each reminded me of the corruption and cronyism that Louisiana and New Orleans are known for: Public defenders are ambulance chasing, an audit of a 13 year old construction project reveals invoice padding, and a local businessman pleads guilty to bribing the sheriff.

So, I’ll visit, I’ll enjoy hacking MediaWiki with my friends, staying with my sponsors (who live next door to my old home here), enjoy the food, and then, when it is all over, I’ll enjoy returning home to the quiet Lancaster County, PA.

Analyzing Occupy Wall Street, with Rushkoff and Wikipedia

2011-10-08T18:00:04+00:00

Doug Rushkoff has a great piece on CNN deconstructing the Occupy Wall Street motivations and goals. Just publishing this is commendable on the news network’s part, since he aims his sights right on CNN’s own anchor Erin Burnett for the shallow, gotcha journalism she debuted this week on her new TV show.

I’d also been thinking along Rushkoff’s lines. What exactly was Occupy Wall Street trying to achieve? In many ways, it resembled the WTO protests I covered in 2005 in Hong Kong. That mishmash of protesters from the “Global South,” subsidized farmers from Korea, Southeast Asian sex workers, and domestic maids, among others, had common gripes, but exhibited no central leadership or coherent manifesto. You felt the vibe. You knew what they were against. But you didn’t know where it was going.

To me, Occupy Wall Street reminds me a lot like the folks who edit Wikipedia — a leaderless grassroots gathering of passionate individuals with similar concerns, trying to find consensus. Rushkoff describes this better as: a “decentralized network-era culture,” concerned about sustainability in their movement, rather than victory.

“It is not about one-pointedness, but inclusion and groping toward consensus. It is not like a book; it is like the Internet,” says Rushkoff.

The full piece is worth the read, because it’s this type of analysis Rushkoff does best: Think Occupy Wall St. is a phase? You don’t get it – CNN.com.

Italian Wikipedians go on strike to protest national law, realize change

2011-10-06T20:00:54+00:00

Italian Wikipedians, Over the past 2 years, the Italian legislature has been steadily moving towards passing a law nicknamed "the blog-slayer", which would require publishers online and offline to broadcast a correction if someone they reported about demanded it -- regardless of the accuracy of the original information. They would have to publish the correction within 48 hours, in a similar place and as visibly as the original information was published.

Considering the fines for non-comlpiance, this would cause many people to stop blogging about anything possibly controversial. It would have even more drastic effects on collaborative sites such as Wikipedia.

After discussing how to protest this situation, Italian Wikipedians decided to "go on strike". They updated the javascript of it.wikipedia.org two days ago to redirect all visitors to a letter explaining the problems with the pending law, and how this could destroy the Italian project. They kept this message up for 48 hours, the same timeframe that would be mandated by the law. It was covered widely in the international press.

This protest drew over 270,000 likes on Facebook in those 2 days, one of the most rapid protests in modern Italian history. And the legislature responded - with a number of amendments proposed (but not passed) within a day that would exempt blogs and shared websites from the law.

The intensive discussion about how to handle a critical situation, and the outpouring of support from across Italy and around the world, were a perfect example of viral wikilove. The Wikimedia Foundation, Wikimedia Serbia, and a number of other community groups all published letters of support for the community action.

We will find out later today what the final outcome is, when the legislative session decides on what language it will pass. The community is currently planning to restore normal read access to the site around 1800 UTC.

On Steve Jobs, NeXT and the WWW

2011-10-06T00:20:55+00:00

In memoriam: excerpt from my book, The Wikipedia Revolution, talking about Steve Jobs and his role in creating the read/write Web we know today. RIP.

When Steve Jobs was forced out as the head of Apple Computer in 1987, he stayed in Silicon Valley and put his energies into a new start-up called NeXT. This was while Apple was still shipping computers with nine-inch screens and Microsoft’s most advanced product was an anemic and stiff-looking Windows 2.0. The NeXT machine, on the other hand, launched in October 1988, introduced pioneering features we’re all used to now: a high-resolution “million pixel” display, a read/write optical drive, and a true multitasking operating system. And in classic Steve Jobs style, it was clad in a sexy all-black magnesium cube form factor that made it the envy of computer science departments around the world.

The NeXT megapixel grayscale computer display was its most stunning feature. What it lacked in color it made up for in fineness and texture. It was so large and sharp, folks compared it to reading on paper. This was no coincidence—it used PostScript, a special language from Adobe Systems usually reserved for high-end paper printers.

So when [WWW creator Tim] Berners-Lee was testing out his idea for a World Wide Web to share documents, he used his NeXT cube computer that was geared toward handling high-resolution documents. The first Web browser he ever built was for the NeXT machine, in February 1991. But he had much grander plans than simply creating a “browser” for reading, and in fact called his program a “browser-editor.”

Not only did his program on the NeXT read and display Web pages, it could also alter them and save them. This was a function Berners-Lee had envisioned from the start—a read-write Web of information for sharing.

Given its rich and ambitious origins, it is then quite peculiar that the Web that became popular in the mid-1990s was known only for reading, browsing, and surfing. In the exuberance to push the reading experience, the “write” stuff, which was always meant to be part of the Web, was left behind as a cumbersome feature.

While the first Web browser from Tim Berners-Lee gained notoriety, there was a problem. The sexy features of the NeXT were not cheap. They offered only one model, and few folks could afford a $6,500 NeXT cube. Even NeXT’s follow-on budget version, the NeXT “slab,” was $4,995. It was hardly a computer for the masses.

But oh, what Steve was able to do since then. He returned to Apple, made the NeXT operating system the basis of all Macs, and came to dominate the world of music players, smart phones, and tablet computing.

RIP Steve Jobs, you really did make “computers for the rest of us.”

Wikipedia it black out

2011-10-05T00:42:52+00:00

Dear reader,

at this time, the Italian language Wikipedia may be no longer able to continue providing the service that over the years was useful to you, and that you expected to have right now. As things stand, the page you want still exists and is only hidden, but the risk is that soon we will be forced to actually delete it.

The Bill – Rules on Wiretapping etc., p. 24, letter a) states that:

«For the Internet sites, including newspapers and periodicals delivered by telematic way, the statements or corrections are published, with the same graphic characteristics, the same access methodology to the site and the same visibility of the news which they refer.»

Over the past ten years, Wikipedia has become part of the daily habits of millions of web users looking for a neutral, free-content, and – above all – independent source of Knowledge. A new, huge multi-lingual encyclopedia, freely available to all, at any time, and free of charge.

Today, unfortunately, the very pillars on which Wikipedia has been built – neutrality, freedom, and verifiability of its contents – are likely to be heavily compromised by paragraph 29 of a law proposal, also known as “DDL intercettazioni” (Wiretapping Act).

This proposal, which the Italian Parliament is currently debating, provides, among other things, a requirement to all websites to publish, within 48 hours of the request and without any comment, a correction of any content that the applicant deems detrimental to his/her image.

Unfortunately, the law does not require an evaluation of the claim by an impartial third judge – the opinion of the person allegedly injured is all that is required, in order to impose such correction to any website.

Hence, anyone who feels offended by any content published on a blog, an online newspaper and, most likely, even on Wikipedia can directly request the removal of such contents and its permanent replacement with a “corrected” version, aimed to contradict and disprove the allegedly harmful contents, regardless of the truthfulness of the information deemed as offensive, and its sources.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Article 27.

(1) Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.
(2) Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.

During all these years, the users of Wikipedia (and we want, once more, to point out that Wikipedia does not have an editorial staff) have always been available to review – and modify, if needed – any content deemed to be detrimental to anyone, without harm to the Project’s neutrality and independence. In the very rare instances it was not possible to reach a mutually satisfactory solution, the entire page has been removed.

The obligation to publish on our site the correction as is, provided by the named paragraph 29, without even the right to discuss and verify the claim, is an unacceptable restriction of the freedom and independence of Wikipedia, to the point of distorting the principles on which the Free Encyclopedia is based and this would bring to a paralysis of the “horizontal” method of access and editing, putting – in fact – an end to its existence as we have known until today.

It should be made more than clear that none of us wants to question safeguarding and protection of the reputation, honor and image of any party – but we also note that every Italian citizen is already protected in this respect by Article 595 of the Criminal Code, which punishes the crime of defamation.

With this announcement, we want to warn our readers against the risks arising from leaving to the arbitrary will of any party to enforce the alleged protection of its image and its reputation. Under such provisions, web users would be most probably led to cease dealing with certain topics or people, just to “avoid troubles”.

We want to be able to keep a free and open-to-all encyclopaedia, because our articles are also your articles – Wikipedia is already neutral, why neutralize it?

The users of Wikipedia

Our plans for 2012

2011-10-01T08:33:33+00:00

Wikimedia UK has just published its 2012 Activity Plan. Please have your say!

The Activity Plan is an outline of the work we will do in 2012, and the resources we need to support it. It is an important stage in the development of our 2012 Budget. When we’re asking people for money in this Autumn’s fundraiser, the Activity Plan will show people what we’re hoping to achieve with their donations – so it’s also important for the openness and accountability of our fundraising.

We’d welcome your views – please edit the talk page if you have any comments or suggestions. There will be plenty of scope to take feedback from the community into account when we finalise the 2012 Budget later this year in the light of the actual fundraising income.

WikiTrip: animated visualization over time of gender and geo-location of Wikipedians who edited a page

2011-09-30T21:22:15+00:00

WikiTrip allows to have a trip in the process of creation of any Wikipedia page from any language edition of Wikipedia. WikiTrip is an interactive web tool empowering its users by providing an insightful visualization of two kinds of information about the Wikipedians who edited the selected page: their location in the world and their gender.

If you want to investigate, for example, where in the world are Wikipedians who edited the page “Peace”, WikiTrip is the right tool. And you can check also the origin of edits for the equivalent page in the Arabic Wikipedia or “Amani” in the Swahili Wikipedia. Moreover, if you have ever wondered if a specific page was edited more by male or female Wikipedians, WikiTrip allows to explore this information as well. How many edits are performed by males and females respectively on Wikipedia on average? What is the page most edited by females? On Wikirip you can explore your own ideas about these questions and more.
Visualization of both information is available over time so that you can appreciate the evolution of the page over years, from its creation up to the present.
More information about WikiTrip at our whitepaper but the best way to enjoy WikiTrip is at http://sonetlab.fbk.eu/wikitrip/.
We would love to hear the Wikipedia pages you found more interesting as they are visualized by WikiTrip and of course we wait for your feedback!

Why is Video Hard? Five Shots and Patterns

2011-09-30T21:13:22+00:00

This month’s Carnival of Journalism host is Andrew Pergam, who asks “What is the role of online video in the newsroom of the future?”

I answer with a question: Why is learning (and teaching) video so hard for journalists?

I’ve taught new media journalism for over a decade and trained correspondents with news organizations (Wall Street Journal, Reuters, et al.) all over the world.

Without exception, the weakest part of training journalists old and new is understanding visual literacy while alone, shooting in the field. We can train them before they go out in the field, and coach them after. But video storytelling is technical, complicated and all too often, a lone act while shooting.

The journalist is solo and overwhelmed by all the other duties of reporting. And increasingly news organizations are asking journalists to capture video, without the right training to get it done.

It should be no surprise then, the majority of footage that comes back is shaky and unusable in the edit room, and the visual skills of journalists rarely get better without a lot more determined training.

We don’t train journalists well in video, and we need to do it better.

But there is a solution and it’s through “video patterns.”

One of the most famous, and useful of these, is Michael Rosenblum’s “five shot” method that he developed training journalists from the NY Times to the BBC. It’s actually something he’s preached since the late 1990s, and those who are fortunate enough to learn it get an insight into shooting better video, immediately.

I’ve successfully used this in the classroom to teach visual literacy, because it hones in immediately on what’s important. The five shot method always prescribes these, shot in this exact order (my handout here):

A closeup on the hands of a subject – showing WHAT is happening
A closeup on the face – WHO is doing it
A wide shot – WHERE its happening
An over the shoulder shot (OTS) – linking together the previous three concepts
An unusual, or side/low shot – providing story-specific context

Rosenblum stresses that this provides usable footage every time, and this sequence always cuts together logically in the editing room. He’s right.

And it has an Atkins Diet effect — it convinces otherwise despondent journalists that they can indeed do effective video, and that it’s more hard science than unattainable art in getting stories done well.

WSJ multimedia reporter Lam Vo and I have used this to help train professional journalists in the field. I’ve used this in the classroom at USC Annenberg to give folks the starting point for video literacy. Journalists using this have said it’s helped provide an immediate “game plan,” directing them towards good shots and techniques, and reducing training time in the field. (It doesn’t hurt that the first two shots will always be useful B-roll, which can be a savior in the editing room.)

But the method is important not because this particular pattern is a universal story sequence, but because it compels journalists to learn visual literacy by doing, to form good habits, and to understand video is a closeup medium.

By mastering the 5 shot method, they learn:

Closeups
Logical sequences
Respecting the line of action
Getting effective B-roll
Editing solutions

So where do we go from the 5 shot?

We can build on the experience of 5 shot to go on to more “patterns” as a way to rapidly gain experience in a visual storytelling. The 5 shot does not handcuff journalists to a particular sequence. It leads them to more possibilities.

At the new USC Annenberg Innovation Lab, I’m looking into how to incorporate patterns into the video shooting process through apps for mobile devices. Instead of a paper 5 shot checklist in one hand and a camera in the other, why not integrate them together into one? Imagine an iPhone or iPad interface that provides a storyboard of the 5 shots that guides the videojournalist through this shot sequence. Visual algorithms can give hints and warnings about how well a shot is framed, or if a shot is shaky (ala iPhone’s motion sensor), or if the lighting is correct.

In this way, the camera is no longer just a capture device, but an instructional device, providing direction and feedback to the operator to learn visual literacy by “doing.”

Instead of learning video shooting from a textbook, or even an e-textbook, such a device is actually an e-workbook, transforming the iPhone or iPad into an integrated capture/learning device. And imagine if we go beyond the 5 shot, to allow many other patterns to be loaded into the e-workbook, providing more visual patterns and tropes to be taught.

It has the potential to revolutionize how we learn and shoot video, opening up video storytelling to journalists and crowdsourcing efforts.

See related Carnival of Journalism posts by Michael Rosenblum and Lam Vo.

I’ll be talking about this project at the Journalism Interactive conference at the University of Maryland, in October. Andrew can be reached at andrew at andrewlih.com.

Wikisym and collective memory building of current events on Wikipedia

2011-09-30T10:32:22+00:00

In few hours I’ll start the long journey towards Mountain View, California, for the Wikisym conference where I’m going to speak about WikiRevolutions presenting the paper “Collective memory building in Wikipedia: The case of North African uprisings“.
In the paper, we highlight the intense edit activity by Wikipedians on articles related to protests and uprisings in North African countries such as Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen focusing mainly on the Egyptian revolution.
We cast the phenomenon as a process of collective memory building in which thousands of Wikipedia editors were involved as the traumatic events unfolded.
We explore and suggest possible directions for quantitative research on collective memory formation of traumatic and controversial events in Wikipedia.
I’m in a Wikisym session titled “Wikipedia as a Global Phenomenon” in which I will have the pleasure to speak after Brian Keegan that is addressing the same topic of how on Wikipedia it is possible to analyze how editors cover recent events in real time; the paper is “Dynamics, Practices, and Structures in Wikipedia’s Coverage of the T?hoku Catastrophes” (joint work with D. Gergle, N. Contractor).
Probably at Wikisym there will be also people from Ushahidi, such as Heather Ford, which recently announced WikiSweeper, a joint project with the Wikimedia Foundation to track breaking news trends on Wikipedia so I think we will have wonderful exchanges of points of views and possibly future collaborations.
I’m really looking forward for what looks like a fabolous conference!

Credit: The image on top is Creative Commons BY-SA.

P.S.: At Wikisym I’m also going to demo our web tool on comparing points of view of different language communities of Wikipedia, i.e. Manypedia.

FBK researcher awarded by Google with 50,000 dollars and … emotion ;)

2011-09-30T07:36:30+00:00

One of my colleague at Fondazione Bruno Kessler (FBK) in Trento, Carlo Strapparava, was awarded with $50,000 by Google as an incentive to continue his research, especially with the participation of young researchers. Carlo proposed algorithms for distinguishing some of the nuances and emotions expressed in written language.

Dealing with the emotional, persuasive, or other aspects of creative language content in the texts – Strapparava explains- is commonly considered to be off limits for any computational ability. Actually, these features are a key part of communicating, and it is important that research in the field of natural language processing deal with it. The usefulness of automatic recognition of these aspects is nowadays even greater, given the enormous daily production of texts on the web. Through these technologies, it will also be possible to predict the emotional or persuasive content of a text.

Congrats Carlo!

Wikizine News - Year: 2011 Week: 40 Number: 130

2011-09-29T08:52:12+00:00

Movement

[30 September] - The last day of the project Wiki Loves Monuments for this year is September 30th. So if you still have pictures of monuments, it is not yet to late to share them on Commons and maybe win a prize. Currently there are already more then 125,000 new pictures added to commons in this one month of Wikimedia Loves Monuments. Yes - 125,000 - that is correct. And ... one country is Done - Andorra has now 100% of the monuments photographed!
http://www.wikilovesmonuments.eu
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2011

[Image filter] - Discussion about ethical problems with image filter implementation on Wikisource started by John Vanderberg, one of the most active Wikisource editors and the chair of Wikimedia Australia.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Image_filter_on_Wikisource

Technical news

[Automatic photo orientation] - Brion Vibber informs us about automatic photo orientation in MediaWiki 1.18. At least if the orientation information is available in the EXIF-information.
http://leuksman.com/log/2011/09/23/automatic-photo-orientation-in-mediawiki-1-18/

[New look on statistics] - Erik Zachte created a new new look for Wikimedia statistics. Interpretation of data in editorial of this week's Opinion edition.
http://infodisiac.com/blog/2011/09/summary-reports-for-all-wikimedia-wikis/

[Wikimedia India conference] - India Hackathon 2011 will be held during Wikimedia India conference (18-20 November).
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/09/25/india-hackathon-2011/

Foundation

[Google Summer of Code] - Sumana Harihareswara, WMF's Volunteer Development Coordinator, published a report on Wikimedia-related projects from the Google Summer of Code.
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/09/22/gsoc-students-reach-project-milestones/
http://code.google.com/soc/

[Jon Harald Søby becomes Community Fellow] - Jon’s fellowship will run until February 2012. His project priorities include recruiting and coordinating more translators for more languages, building pages and processes that make it easier for new volunteers to get started, and improving systems for producing high-quality translations.
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/09/27/announcing-community-fellow-jon-harald-soby/
https://sugar.corp.wikimedia.org/translators/translators.php?referrer=wikizine -- Sign up to be a translator

Jimmy Wales

[London startup competition] - Jimmy is leading the jury for a new startup funding event kicking off in London this December.
http://thenextweb.com/uk/2011/09/22/wikipedia-co-founder-jimmy-wales-heads-up-new-london-startup-competition/

[On Wikipedia and Facebook] - Jimmy on Wikipedia and Facebook for The Huffington Post.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/26/wikipedia-jimmy-wales_n_982243.html
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/09/27/wales_no_outing_wikipedia_on_facebook/

[Why 'like' button isn't enough?] - Jimmy thinks that the 'like' button isn't enough.
http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/fast-chat-jimmy-wales-135257

Chapters

[Wikimedia India] - Wikimedia India opened blog.
http://wikimedia.in/?p=26

[Wikimedia Germany] - Wikimedia Germany published the book "Alles über Wikipedia – und die Menschen hinter der größten Enzyklopädie der Welt", which is the first ever book in the catalogue of a traditional German publisher that is published under a free license.
http://wikimedia.de/wiki/Wikipedia_Buch
http://philippebeaudette.com/great-news-from-wikimedia-deutschland/

[Wikimedia Poland] - Wikimedia Poland celebrated 10 years of the Polish Wikipedia. The Polish media covered the event.
http://www.poland.pl/news/article,Polish_Wikipedia_is_10_Years_Old,id,461162.htm
http://www.thenews.pl/1/12/Artykul/55748,Polish-Wikipedia-marks-10th-anniversary

[Wiki Loves Monuments] - Wiki Loves Monuments officially ends on 30 September, although there will be some events after the official end.
http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/2011/09/27/wiki-loves-monuments-comes-to-a-close/

[Wiki Takes Cologne] - Wiki took Cologne, Germany in one of the last events of this year's Wiki Loves Monuments campaign. Jimmy Wales got Leonardo Award in Cologne.
http://www.wikilovesmonuments.eu/2011/09/25/wiki-loves-monuments-cologne-koeln/
http://blog.wikimedia.de/2011/09/25/wiki-loves-monuments-koln/ (in German)
http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/2011/09/27/leonardo-award-in-cologne/

[Wikimedia UK CEO] - Jon Davies is the new CEO of Wikimedia UK.
http://blog.wikimedia.org.uk/2011/09/welcoming-our-new-chief-executive/

[Wikimedia UK charity status] - Wikimedia UK wants to get charity status. It will hold an Extraordinary General Meeting (a formal and required step for the organization) on 16 October to organize those efforts.
http://blog.wikimedia.org.uk/2011/09/egm-16th-october-help-us-become-a-charity/

Languages

[The difference #Urdu makes] - Gerard Meijssen published a blog post on Philippe Beaudette's blog about Urdu writing systems.
http://philippebeaudette.com/the-difference-urdu-makes/

[RTL support] - Amir Aharoni wrote on Gerard Meijssen's blog about MediaWiki RTL support during the upgrade to the version 1.18.
http://ultimategerardm.blogspot.com/2011/09/mediawiki-rtl-support-when-upgrading-to.html

[Better localization support] - Niklas Laxström presents a new way of localization in MediaWiki.
http://laxstrom.name/blag/2011/09/26/mediawiki-grows-up-no-more-playing-with-lego/

Media

[Wikipedia Signpost] - A new Wikipedia Signpost has been published. In this edition you can read: Opinion essay: The global mission, the image filter and the “German question”, WikiProject Automobiles, Top female Wikipedians, reverted newbies, WikiSym previews and so on.
http://www.wikipediasignpost.com/blog/?p=438

Anniversaries

[1 October] - Newari Wikipedia will become five years old. Newari or Nepal Bhasa or Newah Bhaye is a Sino-Tibetan language of Tibeto-Burman branch spoken by more than 800,000 people, mostly in Nepal. Newari Wikipedia has around 70,000 content pages, but it is barely active.
http://new.wikipedia.org/
http://new.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=4
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nepal_Bhasa
http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=new
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Tibetan_languages
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibeto-Burman_languages
http://new.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Statistics
http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/ChartsWikipediaNEW.htm

[Other anniversaries] - During the next month the Korean and Malay Wikipedias will become nine years old, while Abkhaz and Albanian will become eight years old. Wikimedia France will become seven years old, while Wikimedia Sweden will become four years old.

Wikizine

[Your reports] - Post your news for the next edition of Wikizine on Meta or in our Google form.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikizine/EN2011-131
http://tinyurl.com/wikizine-feedback

Events and meetups

[21 August - 6 October] - Stewards election.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards/elections_2011-2
- [21 August - 6 October] - Questions to candidates.
  http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards/elections_2011-2/Questions
- [15 September - 6 October] - Voting.
  http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards/elections_2011-2/Guidelines/en#Voters

[19 September - 4 October] - Wikimedia servers upgrades to MediaWiki 1.18
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/09/16/mediawiki118iscomin/
- [19 September] - Monday, September 19, 23:00-01:00 UTC -- Production test: test2.wikipedia.org – this stage will ensure that 1.18 is compatible with the rest of our production infrastructure. There’s a small chance that changes here could affect all wikis.
- [21 September] - Wednesday, September 21, 23:00-03:00 UTC -- Stage 1: simple.wikipedia.org, simple.wiktionary.org, usability.wikimedia.org, strategy.wikimedia.org, mediawiki.org, he.wikisource.org
- [26 September] - Monday, September 26, 23:00-03:00 UTC -- Stage 2: meta.wikimedia.org, en.wikiquote.org, en.wikibooks.org, beta.wikiversity.org, eo.wikipedia.org, nl.wikipedia.org
- [4 October] - Tuesday, October 4, 23:00-03:00 UTC -- Stage 3: remaining wikis.

[30 September] - The last day of the project Wiki Loves Monuments for this year is September 30th.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2011

[1 October] - A Backstage Pass tour is an event aimed at sharing the expertise of real-world cultural institutions with our wiki-expertise. Wikimedia UK organizes it at Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, Coventry, UK.
http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Backstage_Pass

[1 October] - Washington DC meetup #23. Wiki DC board elections.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/DC_23

[3-5 October] - WikiSym 2011 with the session "Understanding Wikipedia".
http://www.wikisym.org/category/wikisym-2011/
http://www.wikisym.org/2011/09/14/session-preview-understanding-wikipedia/

[7-8 October] - Board meeting, San Francisco, California, USA
http://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?title=Minutes/2011-08-03&oldid=68235#Welcome_.26_Housekeeping_Items

[8 October]: Cambridge 12 meetup
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetup/Cambridge/12

[8 October]: National Archives (Wikimedia DC meetup 24)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/NARA_2

[14 October]: Wikimedia UK's Extraordinary General Meeting
http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/EGM_2011

[26-30 October] - Wikipedia conference in Esperanto will be held in Svitavy’s Esperanto museum, in Svitavy, Czech Republic.
http://www.vikimanio.estranky.cz/
http://www.transparent.com/esperanto/wikipedia-conference-in-esperanto-oct-26-30-2011/
http://www.muzeum.esperanto.cz/eo/cxefa

Did you know ...

... what protocol relative URLs are?

Normal URLs look like: http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page or https://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page.
Both of these URLs define the protocol that will be used. Protocol relative URLs look like this: //test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page. Dropping the protocol from the URL allows the browser to assign the current protocol to the URL. So, if you are visiting the site in HTTPS mode, links will point to HTTPS, and if you are visiting the site in HTTP mode, links will point to HTTP.

http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/07/19/protocol-relative-urls-enabled-on-test-wikipedia-org -- full post about this by Ryan Lane
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/09/27/protocol-relative-urls-enabled-on-all-wikimedia-foundation-wikis/ -- protocol relative URLs are now live

Quote

"I’m sort of the anti-Julian Assange. I’m actually a nice person. I don’t mean to say anything negative about him, but he’s widely regarded as difficult." -- Jimmy Wales

http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/fast-chat-jimmy-wales-135257

Wikizine-seeks-editors , Editor(s): Milos, Walter - Corrector(s): nathan - Thanks to: effeietsanders - Sources-Attributions: "Did you know" is by Ryan Lane blog post - Support: Walter - Contact: http://report.wikizine.org- Website: http://www.wikizine.org - Gophersite: gopher://gopher.wikizine.org - Wikizine-loves-feedback - Wikizine.org makes no guarantee of accuracy, validity and especially but not limited to, correct grammar and spelling.Satisfaction is not guaranteed. Some content can be highlyinspired or directly copied from other sources. Those sources are listed above at "Sources-Attributions".Wikizine.org is published by [[meta:user:Walter]].Content is available under Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

suegardner

2011-09-28T21:07:30+00:00

For the past sixteen months, the Wikimedia Foundation has been having uncomfortable conversations about how we handle controversial imagery in our projects — including, a few weeks ago, the staging of a referendum on an image hiding feature requested by our Board. The purpose of this post is not to talk specifically about the referendum results or the image hiding feature: for that, I’ll be talking in more official venues. The purpose of this post is to step back and assess where we’re at, and to call for a change in tone and emphasis in our discussions.

Please note also that due to the nature of the topic, you may find yourself offended by this post, and/or the materials linked from it.

In March 2010, editors on the German Wikipedia ran a poll asking their colleagues whether they would support a rule restricting the types of material that could appear on the German home page. Thirteen voted in favour of restrictions, and 233 voted against. A few weeks later, the German Wikipedia featured the article about the vulva on its home page, which included a close-up photograph of an open vagina. Twenty-three minutes after the article went up, a reader in Berlin wrote “you can’t be serious?!,” and called for the image to be taken down. This initiated an on-wiki discussion that eventually reached 73,000 words – the length of a shortish novel. It included a straw poll in which 29 people voted to remove the image and 30 voted to keep it. The image was kept, and the article remained on the front page for its full 24 hours.

A few months later, in June, the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees began to discuss how the Wikimedia community was handling controversial imagery. Why? Because some people seemed to be using Commons to stockpile commercial porn; because the German community had put a close-up photo of a vagina on its homepage; and because upskirt photos and controversial editorial cartoons seemed to be being categorized in ways that seemed designed to be provocative, and the people who complained about them were being shot down.

The Wikimedia Foundation was concerned that a kind of market failure might be happening — that the Wikimedia community, which is generally so successful at achieving good decision quality through a consensus process, was for some reason failing to handle the issue of controversial material well. It set out to explore what was going on, and whether we needed to handle controversial imagery differently.

That triggered community members’ fears of censorship and editorial interference. And so we find ourselves today, sixteen months later, locked in angry debate. At a meeting in Nuremberg a few weeks ago, German Wikipedian User:Carbidfischer furiously denounced our Board Chair Ting Chen. The other day –as far as I know for the first time ever– somebody called someone else an asshole on one of our mailing lists. User:Niabot created this parody image. It’s unpleasant and unconstructive, and if you’re familiar with transactional analysis, or with the work done by the Arbinger Institute, you’ll recognize the bad patterns here.

The purpose of this post is to figure out why we aren’t handling this problem well, and how we can get back on track.

So: backing up.

Is there a problem with how the Wikimedia projects handle potentially-objectionable material? I say yes. The problems that led the Board to want to address this issue still exist: they have not been solved.

So what’s the solution? I have read pages upon pages of community discussion about the issue, and I sympathize and agree with much of what’s been said. Wikipedia is not, and should never be, censored. It should not be editorially interfered with.

But refusing censorship doesn’t mean we have no standards. Editors make editorial judgments every day, when we assess notability of topics, reliability of sources, and so forth. The German Wikipedia particularly is known to have extremely rigorous standards.

So why do we refrain from the expression of editorial judgment on this one issue?

I think there are two major reasons.

First, we have a fairly narrow range of views represented in our discussions.

We know that our core community represents just a sliver of society: mainly well-educated young men in wealthy countries, clustered in Europe and North America. It shouldn’t surprise us, therefore, when we skew liberal/libertarian/permissive, especially on issues related to sexuality and religion. Our demographic and attitudinal narrowness is a shame because at the heart of the projects is the belief that many eyes make all bugs shallow and yet, we’re not practicing what we preach. Instead, we’ve become an echo chamber: we hear only voices like our own, expressing points of view we already agree with. People who believe other things fall silent or abandon the conversation or are reduced to impotent rage. Or, and even likelier, they never made it to the table in the first place.

Second, we are confusing editorial judgment with censorship.

Censorship is imposed from outside. Editorial judgment is something we do every day in the projects. Applying editorial judgment to potentially-objectionable material is something that honourable journalists and educators do every day: it is not the same as censorship, nor does it constitute self-censorship.

In newsrooms, editors don’t vote on whether they personally are offended by material they know their readers will find objectionable, and they don’t make decisions based on whether the angry letters outnumber the supportive ones. They exercise empathy, and at their best they are taking a kind of ‘balance of harm’ approach — aiming to maximize benefit and minimize cost. The job is to provide useful information to as many people as possible, and they know that if people flee in disgust, they won’t benefit from anything the newsroom is offering. That doesn’t mean newsrooms publish only material that’s comfortable for their readers: it means they aim to exercise good judgment, and discomfit readers only when –on balance– discomfort is warranted.

How does that apply to us? It’s true that when people go to the article about the penis, they probably expect to see an image of a penis, just like they do when they look it up in a reference book in their public library. It’s also true that they probably wouldn’t benefit much from a gallery of cellphone camera shots of penises, and that’s why we don’t have those galleries on our articles. In lots of areas, we are currently doing a good job.

But not always.

When an editor asks if the image cleavage_(breasts).jpg really belongs in the article about clothing necklines, she shouldn’t get shouted down about prudishness: we should try to find better images that don’t overly sexualize a non-sexual topic. When an editor writes “you can’t be serious?!” after vagina,anus,perineum_(detail).jpg is posted on the front page, the response shouldn’t be WP:NOTCENSORED: we should have a discussion about who visits the homepage, and we should try to understand, and be sensitive to, their expectations and circumstances and needs. When we get thousands of angry e-mails about our decision to republish the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons, we should acknowledge the offence the cartoons cause, and explain why, on balance, we think they warrant publication anyway. None of that is censorship. It’s just good judgment. It demonstrates transparency, a willingness to be accountable, and a desire to help and serve our readers — and it would earn us trust.

I believe that in our discussions to date, we’ve gotten ourselves derailed by the censorship issue. I know that some people believe that the Wikimedia Foundation is intending to coercively intervene into the projects, in effect overruling the judgment of the editorial community. I don’t see it that way, I regret that others do, and I dislike the ‘authoritarian parent / rebellious adolescent’ dynamic we seem to be having trouble resisting.

Wikipedia is not censored. It should never be censored. That doesn’t relieve us of the obligation to be thoughtful and responsible.

So: what needs to happen?

We need to have a discussion about how to responsibly handle objectionable imagery. That discussion doesn’t need to happen with the Wikimedia Foundation (or at least, not solely with the Wikimedia Foundation). The projects should be talking internally about how to avoid unnecessarily surprising and offending readers, without compromising any of our core values.

Those community members who are acting like provocateurs and agitators need to stop. Demonizing and stereotyping people we disagree with pushes everyone into extremist positions and makes a good outcome much less likely. We need to look for common ground and talk calmly and thoughtfully with each other, staying rooted in our shared purpose. Some editors have been doing that throughout our discussions: I am seriously grateful to those people, and I wish others would follow their example.

“Wikipedia is not censored” is true. And, we need to stop using it as a conversation killer. It’s the beginning of the conversation, not the end of it.

We need to set aside anxieties about who’s in charge, and quit fighting with each other. We need to be aware of who’s not at the table. We need to bring in new voices and new perspectives that are currently lacking, and really listen to them. Those community members who’ve been afraid to talk need to speak up, and those who’ve been driven away need to come back.

The purpose of this post is to call for that responsible engagement.

Like I said at the top of this post, my purpose in writing this is not to talk about the referendum results or the image hiding feature: for that, I’ll be talking in more official venues.

Filed under: Collaboration, Editors, Social Movements, Wikimedia Foundation, Wikipedia

Wikizine Techflash - Year: 2011 Week: 40

2011-09-27T12:46:41+00:00

Re-post:

Hi again folks,

We want to run another set of banners to recruit translators for the
fundraiser this week, in some areas overlapping with the WLM banners.

If it is alright with you we would like to do it the same way we did
previously, namely with a rough 25-75 split with the WLM banners, so
they are still shown. The banners will only run for logged-in users,
so anonymous users will not be affected.

The countries that will be affected are these:

Tuesday 27th

17:00–21:00 UTC: Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands
15:00–21:00 UTC: Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Andorra

Wednesday 28th

17:00–22:00 UTC: Portugal, Spain

Thursday 29th

12:00–23:59 UTC: Poland

Friday 30th

12:00–23:59 UTC: Russia, Hungary, Estonia, Romania

Please let me know if there is a problem – and sorry about the late
notice for the ones tomorrow.

--
Jon Harald Søby
Community Fellow
Wikimedia Foundation

Request for help
[Sign-up for translation] - Frequently there are messages that need to be translated in, if possible, all the languages of the projects. If you like to volunteer to be a translator you can register yourself (see link) so when you are needed you can be contacted.
https://sugar.corp.wikimedia.org/translators/translators.php?referrer=wikizine

Self-Reflexive Wikipedia is Self-Reflexive

2011-09-27T01:10:41+00:00

Earlier today, venerable linkblogger Jason Kottke posted a link to the Disambiguation page for Disambiguation itself. His headlined commentary: “Wikipedia will eat itself”.

While Wikipedia strives to avoid self-referentiality, sometimes it cannot avoid self-referentiality. Kottke’s example above is one that’s likely to stay, and for good reason. But another comes to mind, although you have to dial back the clock a few years:

Yes, the Wikipedia article “Original research” once carried a warning asserting that it contained original research (a big no-no on Wikipedia). Today, “Original research” is merely a heading within the larger article “Research”, which is probably as it should be.

Wikizine Opinion - Year: 2011 Week: 39 Number: 129 BIS

2011-09-25T17:02:37+00:00

Wikizine needs YOU!

Wikipedia has already changed the world. Wikimedia movement is at the beginning of that task. To push the movement into that direction, Wikizine needs your bold ideas and personal perspectives! Send your ideas to us or simply add them into the appropriate section. What YOU think can change the world!
Send us email, give us feedback, write it on foundation-l, on Meta!

Editorial
- Wikizine
- In the mean time on foundation-l...
- Wikinews: Criticism and fork
- Song of the week
Personal perspective: The cows of Jimmy Walker
In the news
Time machine
- 10 years ago
- 5 years ago
From Wikipedia

Editorial by Milos

Wikizine

As you can see, there are two regular and one irregular editions of Wikizine. Wikizine News should stay more or less like Wikizine always was: plain news for Wikimedia community. Breaking News or Tech Flash are for irregular editions for important news and they existed before, as well.
Wikizine Opinion or Talk Edition or Weekend Edition (we still want to get your input about the name of this edition!) should be for longer reading, over weekends.
You can see that there are five main parts of this edition: "Editorial", "Personal perspective", "In the news", "Time machine" and "From Wikipedia".
Of those, "Time machine" debuts in this edition. It's about events in and around the Wikimedia community ten and five years ago. We should remind ourselves of past events and still modern ideas.
Thanks to Walter, Wikizine got its gopher [1] site [2]. Gopher existed before the web and it was a non-graphical hypertext protocol. Just ~150 gopher sites left on the Internet by now. I was very happy when I realized that. My only objection is that we have to find a way to have the whole site in pure gopher menus and text, as some of the pages are in HTML, which is a shame! You know, we are geeks, at last :)
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_%28protocol%29
[2] gopher://gopher.wikizine.org/

In the meantime on foundation-l...

Like with any good soap opera, after years of discussions about nudity on Wikimedia projects and filtering it, you didn't miss anything! If you join now, you would see the same people, the same relations between them, the same intrigues, but in brand new packaging. But, most importantly, something which you can't do with soap operas, YOU can raise a pro or contra argument a year old and people would discuss it seriously and with the same passion as it was at the beginning! Once again, Wikimedia community proved that it's as vital as it was years ago.
On my Gmail account I have 43 foundation-l threads for the period of 17-23 September. Of those:

21 about image filter and similar, including another of Larry Sanger's self-promotional tweets
3 about forking Wikinews
3 about friendly organizations
4 chapter-related
3 WMF and tech related
2 related to languages
3 posts by internal bulletins (Wikipedia Signpost and Wikizine)
4 miscellaneous

Wikinews: criticism and fork

Wikinews was featured on foundation-l for the first time this month when it was complained that the English Wikinews project has a "codified bias toward non-Western articles" [1].
From a personal perspective, I can say that the English Wikinews, unlike the English Wikipedia, has a significant number of native English speakers who are not willing to accept non-English sources for anything: news source or proof that a Wikinewsie is good enough editor to become accredited journalist. A couple of years ago, I had a hard time trying to convince them to give accreditation to one Serbian and one Polish Wikinewsie. But, fortunately, the core of editors are sane enough.
Last week The Open Globe [2][3], a Wikinews fork, was created. That triggered long discussions about Wikipedia's sister projects and their ability to be self-sustainable.

In 2007 I made a deal with Beta News Agency [4], the main privately-owned news agency from Serbia, to give to Wikinews short news for free. The deal is, actually, that we've got everything from Beta's site under CC-BY 2.5 license. As you can see, besides Serbian, there are news services in English [5], Hungarian [6], Romani [7] and Albanian [8]. Four existing and one non-existing edition are able to get high quality news, mostly from Serbia.
A bot is running on Serbian Wikinews and adding news from Beta. Because of that, Serbian Wikinews has almost as many articles as all other Wikinews editions [9].
However, the bot on Serbian Wikinews is not running presently, actually. For about two weeks there has been a problem with harvesting and I have to fix it. I'll do that, but the problem is the fact that one substantial part of one project depends only on the free time and willingness of one volunteer.
For four years I was trying to find just one more person interested in developing and maintaining the bot, but I didn't find anyone. With two persons, we could maintain not just Serbian Wikinews, but other Wikinews editions, as well.

News is not news two days after it has been published. Only those who research a specific event read old news. Thus, one task is to "fix" encyclopedic article, the other is to do that with news.
Because of that Wikinews is not attractive to trolls, but it isn’t attractive to regular editors of Wikipedia, either.
The main problem with Wikinews is the lack of the fulfillment which Wikipedia offers: What did I do? Wrote an article which was popular for two days, one week?
Writing news requires another kind of motivation. Relevant encyclopedias shape cultures. Relevant news outlets shape public opinion. As our contemporary society is based on short-term goals, there is much more competition in writing news than in writing encyclopedias. The threshold for making a news outlet relevant is insanely high.
But, it is possible to change things!

While waiting for one WMF programmer devoted to Wikinews (there are a lot of programmers devoted to Wikipedia), if one volunteer programmer would be interested in programming bots for Wikinews, we could use the bot not just for the English Wikinews additionally, but for other Wikinews editions as well.
WMF should employ at least one person to deal with Wikinews. Many persons are employed to deal with Wikipedia.
WMF should promote Wikinews and the other sister projects. There are other projects beside Wikipedia and Commons in the Wikimedia family.

[1] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2011-September/067943.html
[2] http://theopenglobe.org/
[3] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2011-September/068277.html
[4] http://www.beta.rs/
[5] http://www.beta.rs/default.asp?lan=en
[6] http://www.beta.rs/default.asp?lan=hu
[7] http://www.beta.rs/default.asp?lan=rm
[8] http://www.beta.rs/default.asp?lan=al
[9] http://www.wikinews.org/

Song of the week

The song of the week is [1]. Lyrics could be found, for example, here [2].
[1] http://tinyurl.com/66ctj3g
[2] http://tinyurl.com/6cdgnvm

Personal perspective

Joan Goma [1] wrote the text for this edition of Wikizine's Personal opinion. Joan Goma is the president of Associació Amical Viquipèdia [2][3], an organization which wants to be recognizes as the Wikimedia chapter for Catalonia [4].
[1] http://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usuari:Gom%C3%A0
[2] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Associaci%C3%B3_Amical_Viquip%C3%A8dia [3] http://www.viquimedia.cat/
[4] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_CAT

The cows of Jimmy Walker

In a far away country there was a town known as English where people engaged in the milk business. This is a very tricky business because you have to care for the cows, giving them food, milking them and sell the milk. The amount of milk that the cows gave never matched completely with the one needed by the population and this generated problems. To solve them they had tried all kinds of organizational systems. In a quarter of the town, if you had two cows then the district council took up the cows and they manage them taking in mind the needs of the population and not the selfishness of the owner. But then nobody had much interest on looking after them and they died.

In another quarter they let you have the cows but they took away the milk from you, this way the cows were cared of because there was that one who was interested on maintaining them and then the council decided how the milk was distributed according to the needs of the population and not based on who was richer. Then the owners of the cows had almost no income die of hunger or boredom, then no one will take care of the cows and the cows died. In another quarter they allow you to kept the cows and milk then you sell a cow and buy a bull have more and more cows and more and more milk then the price of milk falls so that you could neither feed the cows nor pay the salaries of the employees who looked after the cows and the cows eventually also died. [1]

One day a farmer named Jimmy Walker, with several crosses and genetic experiments, he obtained a new race of cattle. They were cows that give an infinite amount of milk and that did not eat any fodder. Those cows were very nice and many people liked to look after them, liked them so much that they were willing to do it for free. Jimmy started his farm with a new business model. He distributed the milk for free. At first nobody believed that this may work. Some said some cattle cared for by unpaid volunteers may not give good milk in any way. To take care of cows should be well prepared and very responsible. Others said that carers are volunteers, that cares for one day that they presented by his nickname instead of their real name and we do not know if they are really responsible for taking care of the cows. Others said that what costs nothing is worth nothing.

But Jimmy went ahead and the milk turned out to be better every day to the extent that many farmers folded because they could not compete with the milk of high quality and for free delivered by Jimmy. The business expanded. First milk was distributed only to the English town, and then he opened farms in other villages, opened in a town known as German, and in another known as Catalan. The people from Catalan town were quick to raise cows and started right away, [2] others did take a couple of months but the business also did well and soon was extended to more and more towns to virtually all world. [3]

On growing the first problem arose. Although the cows did not eat and caregivers did it for free, distribute milk cost money. At first Jimmy did not mind paying it out of his pocket but there was a moment that could not. Then he decided to set up a non-profit foundation. To find a way the foundation have income to pay the costs of transporting milk at the beginning he thought that maybe he could put ads on milk bottles. But then those that looked after the cows told him that they did not agree with this that, if he made this, they no longer wanted to continue caring for the cows for free.

Then he remembered a day walking around Prague had seen that some musicians played for free and the people who wanted giving them money. He thought that, as it was only necessary to pay the transport of the milk, perhaps there would be enough of maintaining the milk for free and without advertisements and asking those drinking the milk that give what they want. Said and done and the system worked.

The system worked so well that the foundation, with the money raised not only paid transport costs but also hired people to make technical improvements in the stables and to manage the storage and transport of milk, donations and legal requirements of handling money.

Some of those that looked after the cows were not very happy that others get paid while they worked for free. So Jimmy set up elections so that a few members of the Board of Directors of the foundation were chosen by carers of the cows. Thus, as the work of the foundation was necessary for delivering of the milk and improve the cow stables caregivers agreed to continue caring for them for free.

To encourage carers of cows foundation began to organize annual meetings called cow-mania and began to create local chapters of caregivers of cows. Encouraging carers to create associations and allowing them to use the brand of milk to promote its drink and to encourage more people to look after the cows.

Seeing that everything worked so well a new economic theory appeared. It was named cow-economics. The cow-economics consisted in obtaining a race of animals that they grew up without eating, like Jimmy's cows, and they should be very friendly then encouraging a community to take care of the animals for free. At the beginning of each business a small company paid the expenses of distributing the products obtained from animals and of organizing festivals and competitions to keep happy the community of caregivers. The products were given away for private consumption but they put advertising on packaging, they asked for donations and charged fees for uses for profit.

The cow-economic companies began to populate the economic system. Companies spent a lot of resources to studying the psychology of the caretakers of animals and build very user-friendly stables. Emerged a lot of companies like cow-how (engaged in the wool obtained from sheep), face-cow (who worked in chicken eggs) and so on, all of them with many benefits.
Suddenly the business of Jimmy began to see signs of crisis. The number of cattle keepers had stopped growing and began to fall. The amount of milk consumed also began to stop growing and it seems that also began to fall.

Faced with these threats Jimmy Walker tried to strengthen the chapters letting them raise the money from donations. The chapters were organized not by town but they were organized by race. There were many races on the basis of skin colour. There were races of people with different shades ranging from white to black. In the case of the English people they did not have a single chapter, but they were divided into several chapters according to the colour of the skin of the caregivers. In the case of the Catalan town they asked to have a chapter for all the people of the town because they were a small town and they feel comfortable working altogether.

The Catalan people was a very strange people who didn’t liked to discriminate people by skin colour and therefore they do not see anything good in being separated on the basis of skin colour. But their request was denied. They told them that they had to join the people of their same race, although they were of different towns because at the time of collecting donations and distributing the milk it was done according to race and not according to the town where the people lived and the laws on taxes and tax deductions were based on race and not the town ...

The truth is that there were cases where town agreed with a single race. Then they could have a chapter. There were also cases of very large villages where the village had many races that only lived in this place then those villages could have several chapters. The problems were in the small towns where people was of the same races than people living in neighbour villages that were much larger. They could not have a chapter. But since these were small towns that do not matter to anyone (except to themselves) the problem stayed unsolved.
Several problems arose. Some chapters raise the money but not paid to the foundation what had agreed to contribute to the maintenance of the common expenses of distribution of milk. Others had the money in the bank and did not use them for anything.

Others used it but not explained where they spent or what results they obtain. Although the primary law of this country was "presuppose good faith", seeing that there was always a very bad caretaker of cows non-compliant with the law that might thought that there were some kind of incompetence in handling of money or even corruption.
Moreover, sometimes there were problems among caregivers of cows and the chapters and or the foundation. The chapters were associations of people where not all partners were cattle keepers neither all of cattle keepers were associated. The foundation, although carers of cows appointed a few members of its governing body, had gone ahead with several initiatives which had upset carers of cows.

Another problem arose because not all races had the same economic level. The white races were very wealthy and were used to give money to non-profit activities. But the black was very poor and did not have the habit of making donations. The money collected was going mainly to the chapters of the white races and almost none to the chapters of the black races. In some cases such as in the Spanish town most of the caregivers, were quite dark but recently had created a chapter of white people that would raise the most of the money.
From here the story takes three finals. Choose what you like.

Final 1

(Centralization and decline)
Seeing all this chaos Jimmy turned to his leadership in establishing a system where money collected by the bodies of different races had to pledge for transparently managing the money and for transferring a large extent to the foundation and chapters in need in accordance with established rules. The Foundation will control and monitor the entire system.
The chapters fiercely opposed to it but as the foundation had the upper hand in controlling the distribution of milk, they had to accept it.

Then the foundation was tried to copy what the cow-economic companies did: Manage the community of caregivers making activities to attract more and redesign the stalls of cows so that they were more user friendly.
But the milk business is not as fun as wool or eggs. In addition, the foundation did not have as much money as companies engaged in this business because it could not place ads. Neither could count on much help from the chapters that were quite annoying. With a centralized structure with few resources could not encompass the diversity of races and towns with as much efficiency as other companies did.

Gradually caregivers were leaving the business. Some because they were bored, others because they sympathized with the chapters that were annoying for the affair of the money, others were simply move on to other business more fun without such problems, others assembled their own farms of cows aside. Of course there was a small core remained of irreducible who continued for a long time. They included the Catalan town; their only interest was providing their town a great deal of high quality milk.

As the cows gave infinite milk, the foundation could continue distributing milk for a long time. But nothing was ever as before again.

Final 2

(The chapters assault the foundation. General rush)
Seeing that Jimmy was proposed that the foundation overseeing the management of the money by the chapters, that not all chapters will be allowed to collect directly, and even proposed that the foundation appoint members in Chapters Board.
The chapters were quick to react against this approach. They set up a council of chapters to join forces with to face the foundation. With this organization they planned the assault of the foundation.
There were two members of the Board of the foundation that were traditionally chosen by the chapters. On the first occasion of renewing these charges ensured that the two new members of the Board agreed with its approach.

There were three more chosen by the community of caregivers of cows.
The community of caregivers of cows was totally disorganized, most had no idea what was going on. The only keepers of cattle that were organized and were informed they were the affiliated to chapters. Only 10% followed somehow what was discussed and they where basically the people's from the English town. The other towns were far away and were not aware of these discussions.
In the next election, the council of chapters orchestrated a good campaign. They promoted the presentation of three good candidates related to their postulates and asked the chapters to put all their influence to promote the vote for these candidates.

The result was a success. The 3 new members were those who promoted the chapters. With 5 members of the Board they had majority and were able to change the rules of the game to their taste.
The first thing that they did was change the way of appointing members of the Board. They increased the number of members appointed by chapters and lower the appointment of experts in various fields and those named by the community of caregivers of cows. This will ensure that they could continue controlling the foundation for ever more.

Then they left the foundation limited to the activities of distribution of milk and improvement of stalls. All that was raising money, promoting the consumption of milk and attract new carers of cows was in the hands of the chapters.
In each town the outcome was very different.
There were towns with only one race that had a good understanding between the chapter and the community of caregivers of cows, in these cases, besides if they were white and could raise a lot of money had very good cards in the game. For the German town things went very well.
Other towns had people of many races.

In the case of the English town the majority they were of white race. There were not many problems between the chapters and the community of caregivers. They saw many discussions and many caregivers left the business. But as its farm was very big it continued giving milk.
In the case of the Spanish town there are many races but the skin colour of the majority was rather dark. Only whites they have good funding. In the community of caregivers, there were many critics of the chapters and the foundation. They were devoted to discuss among themselves. They fill pages and pages of discussion and were becoming less dedicated to caring for cows.

Worst of all was for small towns. In small towns there were not enough people in any race to have its own chapter. All chapters were in bigger towns. They were left without money to promote that the people take care of their cows. Many towns were abandoned and are now ghost towns where nobody lives there. In some cases such as the Catalan people were riding back to the chapter of the Foundation and the Council of Chapters and they raise funds on their own to promote the business of milk for his people.

Final 3

(The French Revolution. Communities in power)
The keepers of cattle were beginning to see those tings were going wrong. They were not organized. Each town was living without much contact to the other and few people where involved in the tasks of organizing the farm. Most limited their activity to care a little cow and nothing more. Only when something happened that attracted much attention a few of them went out and make hear their voice.
But Jimmy remembered that the original spirit of the project included the caregivers of the cows that had to decide how best to organize the farm, therefore suggested to organize the keepers of cattle so that they could help to fix the problem.

The first step was to go for new blood. Those that is usually limited to caring for the cows and not saying anything more. Off course, there were many and not all were constant carers. Many were limited to go to the farm care for a cow during one day and never return. He thought that a reasonable approach would be bringing together all keepers of cattle that had the right to vote to choose the members of the board of the foundation. These were the ones that had helped to look after the cows for a long period and still continued doing it recently.
To go up to meet and talk to each other had to organize them by town. No matter the skin colour of each one. Said and done. In each town created a Council composed of all caregivers eligible to vote. The Council appointed representatives who took care of the relations with other towns.

The representatives of the town stayed alert of the affairs of the various farms and the distribution of milk and made a summary report to the Council. Every 3 months they sent this report to each member of the Council to keep them up to date. Also organized discussions among Council members when there were important issues and collected the outcome. The representatives of each town were gathered together to form a General Council of Cattle Carers.
The Council of each town allocated trusted caretakers of cows the task of supervising the chapters that were in the town, also ensured that the chapters of the richest races handed the money to the poorer chapters to get the best for the whole of the town.

The General Council ensured that all chapters handed the money to the foundation for the distribution of milk, to improve the stable, and to support activities to attract carers in the towns where there was no chapter .
Once organized caregivers, and once checked that everyone was involved (not just the same as always that in many cases had already been organized into chapters) then Jimmy changed the status of the foundation increasing the number of members of board elected by the communities so that caregivers so that they were majority. In this way the system was stabilized.

The case of small towns that previously could not have a chapter they discuss the matter with the Council of its town. Some decided to agree with chapters of neighbouring villages, others like the case of the Catalan town, decided to create its own chapter and were able to promote the business of milk in her town as everyone else. In the end most people were having a chapter that promoted the business of milk, either own or a neighbouring village who had come to an agreement.

With the house tidy, take care of cows was more fun than ever. In addition, the foundation could concentrate on making a much better stable. This gave a whole new air. The global milk market grew slowly and sooner or later they would cover all the demand.

In order to grow since they were enthusiastic about the subject, on the one hand they revived some businesses that had already begun and that they had not succeeded. Business of cheese, yoghurt etc. that did not work because they needed different facilities that the business of milk. They were focused on research and develop these infrastructures.
They also began to start new business ideas as the business of honey. At first this business was small but gradually grew and reached beyond the milk business.

References

[1] This is a summary. In fact they tried many more systems of organization. You can find a more expansive collection here: http://coffeehouse-economics.blogspot.com/2008/02/different-ways-of-market-systems-cow.html
[2] Although it has nothing to do and it is a pure coincidence, something similar happened with Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Multilingual_monthly_statistics_%282001%29&oldid=18596064
[3] Jimmy Walker became famous. Even the diplomatic cables of the United States made some a follow-up of its movements. As can be seen thanks to Wikileaks. By mistake they attribute him the foundation of Wikipedia but obviously should say cow-pedia: http://wikileaks.ch/cable/2008/11/08SANTIAGO1015.html

In the news

[In defense of Wikipedia] - Bryn Neuenschwander aka Marie Brennan, an American fantasy author, wrote on the Science Fiction & Fantasy Novelists site an article called "Research for Writers #2: In Defense of Wikipedia". A good sum of the arguments in favor of Wikipedia. The Guardian and Arabian Business have stories about her, as well.
http://www.sfnovelists.com/2011/09/16/research-for-writers-2-in-defense-of-wikipedia/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Brennan
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/sep/18/hari-fake-quotes-training-peter-preston
http://www.arabianbusiness.com/dubai-bashing-journo-hari-admits-plagiarism-420786.html

[Unethically abusing Wikipedia] - The Economist published a story about Independent journalist Johann Hari, who used a pseudonym to harass rival journalists and edit the Wikipedia article about himself. He made a personal apology in the Independent. Wikizine reported about this incident in the previous Opinion Edition.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/bagehot/2011/09/unethical-journalism
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-a-personal-apology-2354679.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Hari
http://en.wikizine.org/2011/09/wikizine-opinion-year-2011-week-38.html
http://blog.tommorris.org/post/10400620996/hari-gate-behind-the-scenes-at-wikipedia

[Wikipedia accurate on cancer facts, but...] - DoctorsLounge published an article about the study "Wikipedia Accurate on Cancer Facts, But Hard to Read". That story has been republished by a number of news outlets.
http://www.doctorslounge.com/index.php/news/hd/23109
http://www.rocketnews.com/2011/09/wikipedia-accurate-on-cancer-facts-but-hard-to-read-study-healthday-2/
http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/story/2011/09/16/wikipedia-cancer.html
http://machineslikeus.com/news/cancer-information-wikipedia-shown-be-accurate
http://news.yahoo.com/wikipedia-accurate-cancer-facts-hard-read-study-231410261.html
http://www.foxcarolina.com/story/15478525/wikipedia-accurate-on-cancer-facts-but-hard-to-read-study
http://www.ihealthbeat.org/articles/2011/9/19/wikipedia-content-on-cancer-is-accurate-but-dense-study-finds.aspx
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/news/fullstory_116511.html

[Poor readability] - In related news, instead of transferring the whole news about cancer facts, French Tribune extracted in a sensationalist way just "Wikipedia Offers Poor Readability!" Anyway, what should be expected from an organization which keeps default Drupal favicon on their site!
http://frenchtribune.com/teneur/117221-wikipedia-offers-poor-readability
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Favicon
http://tinyurl.com/6c22ff7
http://drupal.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drupal

[Jimmy Wales travels] - Jimmy Wales meets with Carlos Slim, the richest person in the world; discusses (on the beach) carbon emissions with Tony Blair.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-20/scene-last-night-carlos-slim-jimmy-wales-stephen-wolfram-picasso-kin.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Slim
http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/20/of-beach-sand-war-and-carbon/

[Book on Obama plagiarized Wikipedia] - White House attacks author of book on Obama, author responds.
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/09/white-house-officials-attack-book-author-with-whom-they-cooperated/
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/white-house-refutes-confidence-men-book-suggests-portion-lifted-from-wikipedia/
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0911/63991.html

Time machine

10 years ago

[19 September] - English Wikipedia User:The Cunctator proposed the creation of a 9/11 wiki.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2001-September/000478.html

[20 September] - Larry Sanger announced an article in The New York Times about Wikipedia.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2001-September/000475.html

[23 September] - Larry Sanger reported that Richard Stallman had called Wikipedia "exciting news".
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2001-September/000486.html
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2001-September/000489.html

5 years ago

[16 September] - Jimmy Wales announced Board elections and supported Oscar van Dillen and Kat Walsh.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2006-September/023349.html
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2006

[16 September] - Delpine Menard published a shortlist of Wikimania 2007 candidates: Alexandria, London, Taipei, Torino.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2006-September/023358.html

[16 September] - Citizendium announced.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2006-September/023373.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizendium
http://en.citizendium.org/

[16 September] - Rob Levin, aka lilo, President of the Peer-Directer Projects Center which operates irc.freenode.net, died in an accident.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2006-September/023396.html

[17 September] - Florence Devouard made a report from her visit to Abuja and posted her ideas about the development of Wikimedia projects related to Africa.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2006-September/023408.html
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2006-September/023409.html

[18 September] - Larry Sanger published his first post on citizendium-l, Kat Walsh reposted it on foundation-l.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2006-September/023452.html

[18 September] - Jeffrey V. Merkey wrote about events related to Cherokee and Navajo languages.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2006-September/023456.html
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2006-September/023457.html

[18 September] - Angela Beasley informed us that Tim Starling had surgery, but everything went well.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2006-September/023487.html

[18 September] - KDE wanted to use Wikiversity to train developers.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2006-September/023518.html

[19 September] - Discussion about methods to elect ArbCom started.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2006-September/027672.html

[21 September] - David Gerard wrote the essay "Wikipedia:100,000 feature-quality articles". Discussion about it started on wikipedia-l.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:100K
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2006-September/027683.html

[21 September] - Samuel Klein on Board elections.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2006-September/027698.html

[22 September] - Samuel Klein's essays "Wikipedia and the networked society", "Dreams, goals, and milestones", "Reflection and research: User surveys", "Parallels with other volunteer efforts & foundations"
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2006-September/027699.html
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2006-September/023641.html
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2006-September/027700.html
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2006-September/023642.html
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2006-September/027701.html
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2006-September/027702.html

[22 September] - Erik Zachte created galleries of Main Pages of a couple of different Wikipedias.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2006-September/027710.html
http://infodisiac.com/Wikipedia/Gallery/Gallery.htm
http://infodisiac.com/Wikipedia/Gallery/GalleryWayBack.htm

From Wikipedia

[WikiProject Cannabis] - WikiProject Cannabis is dedicated to improving Wikipedia's coverage of cannabis, including articles relating to hemp and marijuana legislation, effects, policies, trends, activists, organizations, culture, and other aspects of the plant.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Cannabis

[Caral] - Caral was a large settlement in the Supe Valley, near Supe, Barranca province, Peru, some 200 km north of Lima. Caral is the most ancient city of the Americas, and is a well-studied site of the Caral civilization or Norte Chico civilization. Caral was inhabited between roughly 2600 BC and 2000 BC, enclosing an area of more than 60 hectares. Caral was described by its excavators as the oldest urban center in the Americas, a claim that was later challenged as other ancient sites were found nearby. Accommodating more than 3,000 inhabitants, it is the best studied and one of the largest Norte Chico sites known.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caral
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norte_Chico_civilization

[Loveland frog] - The Loveland Frog (otherwise known as the Loveland Lizard) is said to be a humanoid creature with the face of a frog and is described as standing roughly 4 feet (1.2 m) tall with green leathery skin. It walks upright and has webbed hands and feet, and was allegedly first spotted in Loveland, Ohio. It is generally considered a cryptid—a creature rumored or reported to be living, but with no confirmable proof.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loveland_frog

[Argan oil] - Argan oil is an oil produced from the kernels of the argan tree, endemic to Morocco, that is valued for its nutritive, cosmetic and numerous medicinal properties. The tree, a relic species from the Tertiary age, is extremely well adapted to drought and other environmentally difficult conditions of southwestern Morocco.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argan_oil

[Clathrate gun hypothesis] - The clathrate gun hypothesis is the popular name given to the hypothesis that rises in sea temperatures (and/or falls in sea level) can trigger the sudden release of methane from methane clathrate compounds buried in seabeds and permafrost which, because the methane itself is a powerful greenhouse gas, leads to further temperature rise and further methane clathrate destabilization – in effect initiating a runaway process as irreversible, once started, as the firing of a gun.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis

[Fan death] - Fan death is a widely held belief prevailing in South Korea that an electric fan left running overnight in a closed room can cause the death of those inside. Fans sold in Korea are equipped with a timer switch that turns them off after a set number of minutes, which users are frequently urged to set when going to sleep with a fan on.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_death

[Turritopsis nutricula] - Turritopsis nutricula, the potentially immortal jellyfish, is a hydrozoan whose medusa, or jellyfish, form can revert to the polyp stage after becoming sexually mature. It is the only known case of a metazoan capable of reverting completely to a sexually immature, colonial stage after having reached sexual maturity as a solitary stage.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turritopsis_nutricula

[Prora] - Prora is a beach resort on the island of Rügen, Germany, known especially for its colossal Nazi-planned touristic structures. The massive building complex was built between 1936 and 1939 as a Kraft durch Freude (KdF) project. The eight buildings are identical, and while they were planned as a holiday locale, they were never used for this purpose. The complex has a formal heritage listing as a particularly striking example of Third Reich architecture.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prora

[Victoria Woodhull] - Victoria Claflin Woodhull (September 23, 1838 – June 9, 1927) was a 19th century American who was described by Gilded Age newspapers as a leader of the American woman's suffrage movement. She is most famous for her sensational 1872 campaign to run as the first female candidate for the Presidency of the United States.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_Woodhull

[Marsupial reproductive system] - Marsupials' reproductive systems differ markedly from those of placental mammals (Placentalia). Females have two lateral vaginas, which lead to separate uteri but both open externally through the same orifice. A third canal, the median vagina, is used for birth. This canal can be transitory or permanent. The males generally have a two-pronged penis, which corresponds to the females' two vaginas. The penis is used only for discharging semen into females, and there is instead a urogenital sac used to store waste before expulsion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsupial#Reproductive_system

[Misophonia] - Misophonia, literally “hatred of sound,” is a form of decreased sound tolerance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misophonia

[Literaturwurst] - Literaturwurst (Literature Sausage) is an Artist's book, made by the Swiss-German artist Dieter Roth between 1961 and 1974. Each book was made using traditional sausage recipes, but replacing the sausage meat with a book or magazine. The cover of the edition was then pasted onto the skin of the sausage and signed and dated.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literaturwurst

[1% rule] - In Internet culture, the 1% rule or the 90–9–1 principle (sometimes also presented as 89:10:1 ratio) reflects a theory that more people will lurk in a virtual community than will participate. This term is often used to refer to participation inequality in the context of the Internet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_%28Internet_culture%29
Wikizine-seeks-editors - Editor(s): millosh, Joan Goma- Corrector(s): nathan, Support: Walter- Contact: http://report.wikizine.org- Website: http://www.wikizine.orgGophersite: gopher://gopher.wikizine.org - Wikizine.org makes no guarantee of accuracy, validity and especially but not limited to, correct grammar and spelling.Satisfaction is not guaranteed. Some content can be highlyinspired or directly copied from other sources. Those sources are listed above at "Sources-Attributions".Wikizine.org is published by [[meta:user:Walter]].Content is available under Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Web/CC Edition of Good Faith Collaboration

2011-09-23T12:42:12+00:00

I'm pleased to announce that the Web/CC edition of Good Faith Collaboration is now available. In addition to all of the book's complete content, hypertextual goodness, and fixed errata, there is a new preface discussing some of the particulars of this edition.

The Guinness Book of Wikipedia

2011-09-22T15:31:37+00:00

A few weeks back The Economist published a brief appreciation of Guinness World Records that included a perhaps-not-too-surprising nod to Wikipedia:

Created in Britain in 1955, the first edition, then known as the “Guinness Book of Records”, was a marketing tool: a compilation of interesting facts distributed to pub landlords to promote Guinness, an Irish drink. Now this encyclopedia of extremes draws its statistics from around the world and is the bestselling copyright title of all time (a category that excludes books such as the Bible and the Koran), selling 120m copies in over 100 countries and spawning all sorts of copycat miscellanies.

Before internet search engines or the omnivorous Wikipedia, the “Guinness Book of Records” was already a popular trove of trivia. Its success lay in tapping into man’s innate curiosity about the natural world around him: the first edition included details such as the brightest star in the heavens (the Dog Star) and the biggest spider’s body (9cm long).

I’d never really thought about a connection between Wikipedia and Guinness’ venerable collection of unusual achievements, but as I recall my devotion to the thick paperback editions of my childhood—which was published in the U.S. in the 1980s as the “Guinness Book of World Records” and that is what I still want to call it—this habit of devouring Guinness-curated facts is more like how I came to be so interested in Wikipedia than any other comparable activity. And that includes blogging and the blogosphere, which is what I typically consider a forerunner to my involvement with Wikipedia.

The Economist goes on to note how Guinness’ book has changed over time: where it once included feats of derring-do like sword swallowing, those categories have since been retired in favor of ephemeral team efforts, like building the world’s largest burrito, sundae, pizza, &c. It so happens that my friend Boaz holds a Guinness record related to high-fives.

And where Guinness’ book was once a handy compilation of extreme facts about the world’s oldest, tallest, biggest, smallest, heaviest and tiniest people, places and things, the Internet broadly and Wikipedia specifically have taken its place. A similar fate has befallen Trivial Pursuit, as pointed out in Slate a few years back. Unlike Trivial Pursuit, however, Guinness has a second life: on Wikipedia, as a reliable source.

Wikizine News - Year: 2011 Week: 39 Number: 129

2011-09-22T00:53:21+00:00

Technical news

[Babel on all Wikis] - There are a great deal of templates and signs that one can put on there user page. One of the most useful are the Babel-templates that indicate the knowledge of different languages. Now is there an extension active on all wikis for that. No need to manually setup all those templates on all wikis. The structure is easy; see the excellent blog posting of Mister Internationalisation himself - Gerard Meijssen.
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/09/21/babel-extension-live-on-the-wmf-projects/

[New mobile gateway] - There is a new mobile gateway active for the Wikipedias. The the other projects will follow. This is provided by new extension of MediaWiki 1.17, the software our wikis are using. This replaces the old mobile gateway.
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/09/14/new-mobile-site-launched-on-wikipedia-soon-for-sister-wikis-too/
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:MobileFrontend

[MediaWiki 1.8] - As announced in the TechFlash upgrade of the wikis is in progress. New functions in MediaWiki 1.8 include;

             - Support for gender-specific user pages: languages that have different words for User whether the user is male or female will be able to show the male or the female version, if the user has specified their gender in their preferences.
             - MediaWiki 1.18 will make it easier for left-to-right and right-to-left text to coexist on the same page.
           http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/09/16/mediawiki118iscomin/

[Fundraiser-time?] - You could encounter the well known gigantic donation banner "personal appeal by ...". But no, it is not again the big fundraiser event. But only a banner test. If you see it then you where lucky. It is only at EN Wikipedia for anonymous users and generally only in certain countries. The tests are currently being conducted for 1 hour once a week. The real fundraiser will proably be in November. But, test or not, donations are welcome.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2011

[Techs share knowledge] - Running a massive infrastructure like the WMF is using also mean that collect knowledge how to do that. In line with the mission of the WMF detailed information about the configuration of the system has been released so that others can learn from it.
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/09/19/ever-wondered-how-the-wikimedia-servers-are-configured/

[Operations Engineer goals] - In another post, Ryan Lane gives a longer story about his goals for the past year.
http://ryandlane.com/blog/2011/09/19/ive-been-with-the-wikimedia-foundation-for-a-year-have-i-met-my-goals/

Request for help

[Petition to UNSECO] - Wikimedia Foundation, with full support of founder Jimmy Wales, is asking to support the request to the UNESCO to recognize Wikipedia as the first "digital World Cultural Heritage Site". Over 51,000 people have signed the petition already. Your are suggested to spread the word of this petition (after you signed) by all the communication channels of the modern day. If you sign the petition need to confirm by a link send by e-mail
http://wikipedia.de/wke/Main_Page

[Sign-up for translation] - Frequently there are messages that need to be translated in, if possible, all the languages of the projects. If you like to volunteer to be a translator you can register yourself (see link) so when you are needed you can be contacted.
https://sugar.corp.wikimedia.org/translators/translators.php?referrer=wikizine

Bureaucracy

[Stewards election] - You can vote in the election for new stewards until 6 October. According to the present situation, 9 Wikimedians have a good chance to become stewards: Axpde, Bencmq, Bennylin, Quadell, Quentinv57, Teles, Trijnstel, Vituzzu and Wikitanvir.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards/elections_2011-2
http://toolserver.org/~stewardbots/elections.php

Movement

[German Wikipedia] - On 15 September a poll on the German Wikipedia questioning participants about the proposed image filter was closed. German Wikipedians rejected implementation of an image filter on the German Wikipedia by a 86.23% majority (430 votes, 357 against, 57 in favour, 16 neutral).
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2011-September/068502.html
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meinungsbilder/Einf%C3%BChrung_pers%C3%B6nlicher_Bildfilter (proposal, arguments and votes)
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meinungsbilder/Einf%C3%BChrung_pers%C3%B6nlicher_Bildfilter/en (proposal and arguments translation to English)

[Germanophone WikiConvention] - Wikimedians from the three major German speaking countries gathered to share their knowledge about Wikipedia, Wikimedia and other wikis at the first ‘WikiConvention‘. More than 170 participants attended.
http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/2011/09/16/germanophone-wikiconvention-established/
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiConvention (in German)
http://blog.wikimedia.de/2011/09/06/treffpunkt-fur-freies-wissen/ (in German)

[Deletionism] - "Wikipedia needs to return to simplicity" is a blog post by Urpo Lankinen in which the author explains why deletionism is bad.
http://www.beastwithin.org/users/wwwwolf/blog/2011/09/wikipedia-needs-to-return-to-simplicity.html

[European Year of Volunteering 2011] - On September 12, 2011 a group of Polish Wikimedians took part in an open public event of the European Year of Volunteering in Warsaw.
http://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?hl=pl&ie=UTF8&prev=_t&rurl=translate.google.pl&sl=pl&tl=en&twu=1&u=http://wyborcza.pl/1,91446,10276273,W_Pawilonie_ERW_dzien_e_wolontariatu.html&usg=ALkJrhjmnsC5XwCIo-fZsSmYuiR8RmFKCA
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:ERW-2011
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_volunteering

Foundation

[WMF; no test] - The Wikimedia Foundation declined to allow developers to make a trial for restricting non-autoconfirmed users from creating articles on English Wikipedia. The rejection comes despite the support of around 2/3 of involved participants (~500 editors took a part). Discussion about the proposal on English Wikipedia started on 3 April 2011 and concluded on 27 May. Discussion about the implementation started on 11 July and concluded on 18 August. A bugzilla bug request was filled on 3 August, but developers refused to implement it. On 14 September Erik Moeller said that "[WMF] believe that creating a restriction of this type is a strong a statement of exclusion, not inclusion, and that it will confuse and deter good faith editors" and rejected the proposal, which sparked long discussion and resignation by community.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Autoconfirmed_article_creation_trial
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28proposals%29/Proposal_to_require_autoconfirmed_status_in_order_to_create_articles
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28proposals%29/Proposal_to_require_autoconfirmed_status_in_order_to_create_articles/Trial_duration
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=30208
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=30208#c43
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2011-September/068494.html

[Board minutes] - The Board has published minutes from Wikimania meeting of 3 August.
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2011-08-03

Chapters

[WM UK grants] - Wikimedia UK gives scholarships for traveling to the Wikimedia India conference for Wikimedians from UK. Deadline for applications is 27 September, 19:30 BST (UTC+1).
http://blog.wikimedia.org.uk/2011/09/wikiconference-india-travel-grants/
http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiConference_India_Scholarships

[Wikipedia promo] - Wikimedia Sverige will be present at the Gothenburg Book Fair, around 100,000 visitors are expected to come by so it will be busy. WM Sverige has made 3 short silent movies to play at there stand. Because the are silent the can be used easily also by other Chapters, Wikimedia events. Wikimedia Sverige is even willing to localize it for you on request.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/55785

Chapters reports

[Wikimedia UK] - Wikimedia UK has published August 2011 report.
http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Reports/2011/August

[Wikimedia Philippines] - Wikimedia Philippines published annual report for 2010.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WMPH_2010_Annual_Report.pdf

Science

[Wikimedia Ambassador survey] - Results from first Wikipedia Ambassador survey released by WMF.
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/09/14/results-from-first-wikipedia-ambassador-survey/

[Wikipedia on WikiSym 2011] - The technical session during WikiSym 2011 "Understanding Wikipedia" will feature four presentations: "WP:Clubhouse? An Exploration of Wikipedia’s Gender Imbalance", "Gender Differences in Wikipedia Editing", "Finding Patterns in Behavioral Observations by Automatically Labeling Forms of Wikiwork in Barnstars" and "What Wikipedia Deletes: Characterizing Dangerous Collaborative Content".
http://www.wikisym.org/2011/09/14/session-preview-understanding-wikipedia/
http://www.wikisym.org/category/wikisym-2011/

[Wikipedia's gender imbalance] - Paper "Clubhouse? An Exploration of Wikipedia’s Gender Imbalance" from Wikisym 2011 has been published. The CBC interviewed Sue Gardner and published a story about it.
http://www.grouplens.org/node/466
http://www.cbc.ca/spark/2011/09/sue-gardner-on-wikipedias-gender-gap/

Media

[Wikipedia Signpost] - A new edition of the Wikipedia Signpost has been published. Harry Burt (User:Jarry1250), the Signpost's editor-in-chief, leaves the Signpost to User:SMasters and User:Skomorokh, as his studies are going to begin soon. In this edition you can read the following stories and more: On the Wikinews fork, Back to school, ArbCom narrowly rejects application to open new case and so on.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Archives/2011-09-19
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jarry1250
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:SMasters
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Skomorokh
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-09-19/From_the_editor

Anniversaries

[Slovak Wikipedia] - 23 September 2003 is the best possible approximation of the date when the Slovak Wikipedia was created [1][2]. Slovak is a West Slavic language [3][4] spoken by 7 million people, mostly in Slovakia. Slovak Wikipedia has more than 127,000 articles [5] and more than 550 active users. Statistics [6] shows that Slovak Wikipedia is among the stable projects, which have a more or less constant number of new, active and very active Wikipedians.

[1] http://sk.wikipedia.org/

[2] http://web.archive.org/web/20030923070746/http://sk.wikipedia.org/

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slovak_language

[4] http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=slk

[5] http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=slk

[Waray-Waray Wikipedia] - On 25 September the Waray-Waray Wikipedia[1][2] will be six years old. Waray-Waray[3] is an Austronesian language[3][4] spoken by 3.1 million inhabitants of Visayas[5] and Masbate[6] provinces of Philippines. It is used as a trade language, too. The Waray-Waray Wikipedia has more than 102,000 articles. Counting the number of speakers and considering the economic situation in Philippines, Waray-Waray Wikipedia is quite an active and successful project [7][8] (note the increase of new editors in 2010 in comparison to the number of new articles added to Wikipedia). Here is a short story about the beginnings of the Waray-Waray Wikipedia by war:User:Harvzs [9], the initiator of the Waray-Waray Wikipedia.
The proposal for the Waray-Waray Wikipedia was made on or about June 23, 2005. The native speakers who volunteered to help edit was myself (User:Harvzsf in Meta) and User:v.oyzon. User:Katimawan2005 and User:Bentong from the Kapampangan and Cebuano Wikipedias were also among those who lent their support. The test-wikipedia was set up in Meta shortly after although test wikipedias weren't mandatory at that time and Incubator hadn't been in existence. The reason for the test Wikipedia was for the double purpose of creating content in the event that the request to create the wiki was granted and also to get some practice on how to create and edit the wiki. The Waray Wikipedia was created on or about September 24, 2005 along with the Neapolitan and Judeo-Spanish/Ladino Wikipedias. By a coincidence, the ISO codes for the 3 wikipedias coincided with actual one-syllable words in the English language war, nap and lad respectively :) ) Shortly after, I obtained administrator rights on the Waray-Waray Wikipedia. Ten days after the Waray-Waray Wikipedia was created, it reached 100 articles (the 100th article was war:Guiuan, Eastern Samar).

[1] http://war.wikipedia.org/

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waray-Waray_Wikipedia

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waray-Waray_language

[4] http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=war

[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visayas

[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masbate

[7] http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/ChartsWikipediaWAR.htm

[8] http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/ChartsWikipediaWAR.htm

[9] http://war.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Harvzs

[Polish Wikipedia] - On 26 September the Polish Wikipedia [1][2] Will be 10 years old. Polish is a West Slavic language spoken by more than 40 million speakers [3][4], mostly from Poland. With more than 831,000 articles [5], the Polish Wikipedia is the fifth largest Wikipedia by number of articles. During its first years of existence, the Polish Wikipedia was filled with a lot of bot-generated articles, which created significant positive feedback from Polish speakers and made the Polish Wikipedian community one of the most vital ones [6].

Wikimedia Poland [7][8] was created on 15 August 2005 thanks to the work of Polish Wikipedians. Wikimedia Poland recognizes its 10th anniversary of the project by organizing a conference to be held on September 24-25, in Poznan, Poland [9][10].

[1] http://pl.wikipedia.org/

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_Wikipedia

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_language

[4] http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=pol

[5] http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specjalna:Statystyka

[6] http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/ChartsWikipediaPL.htm (cf. new articles per day and new editors)

[7] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Polska

[8] http://pl.wikimedia.org/

[9] http://10lat.wikipedia.pl

[10] http://tinyurl.com/42tkjub (Google translate)

Press release of Wikimedia Poland is below:

The Polish Wikipedia was founded on September 26, 2001, being the eighth eldest Wikipedia to be established. Over the years, Polish Wikipedians have created over 830,000 articles, of which almost 500 have received a "Featured Article" status and additional 1,000 being categorised as "Good Articles".

In a continuation of the year-long celebration of the 10th anniversary of Wikipedia, the Polish Wikipedia community is going to celebrate the 10th birthday of the project, with a conference being held on September 24—25 in Poznań, Poland. Two weeks earlier, on September 10, the public exhibition of the winning POTY (Picture of the Year) pictures has been opened in one of the most prestigious shopping and art centres in Poland, the Stary Browar (Old Brewery). 16 pictures, chosen by Wikimedians from all over the world in an annual POTY contest, are shown at the exhibition, with descriptions provided in Polish, English and German.

The conference will take place in the heart of the very best location in Poznań. It will be open to the public, as one of the main goals of the organisers is to involve people from outside the Wikimedia movement; therefore, the conference is heavily advertised in the local media, with increasing daily press coverage.

The event will consist of about 15 presentations and talks about Wikipedia. They will discuss Wikipedia's place in court judgements; Wikipedia's role as a source of information; the now-hot topic of women in the Wikipedia community, and many more topics. They will take an outside look at Wikipedia with a public screening of the documentary film Truth in Numbers?, which will be followed by a discussion, a short surprise from the organising team, and the real celebration: a massive Wikipedia birthday cake.

The Polish chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation has generously decided to refund the costs of coming to the conference for Wikimedians from Central and Eastern Europe; as of September 20, 13 Wikipedians from Azerbaijan, Belarus, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Russia, Ukraine and even Philippines have signed up for the conference. If you can't join us and you understand some Polish, don't worry — all talks from the conference will be streamed live on a special Internet radio. After the event, all talks – audio and video – will be released under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 licence and made available on-line.

Polish Wikipedians hope to have a great event, and even if you can't join them, please keep your fingers crossed!

Stats

[RU WP] Russia Wikipedia has overtaken Japanese Wikipedia by the articles' count on 21 September 2011.

http://tinyurl.com/3cv7tlk -- RU Wikipedia

http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_Wikipedias%2FTable&action=historysubmit&diff=2916894&oldid=2913733

Events and meetups

[24 September] - Wiki Takes de Zaan (Netherlands) will be held on September 24th.
http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ontmoeten#Zaanstreek_24_september

[24 September] - Wikipedia Takes Göteborg, Sweden
http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikitr%C3%A4ffar#Fotosafari.2C_G.C3.B6teborg.2C_l.C3.B6rdag_24_sep

[24 September] - Wikipedia Takes Porto, Portugal
http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:Wikip%C3%A9dia_Toma_o_Porto

[24-25 September] - Polish Wikipedia community, supported by Wikimedia Polska, is going to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the project (founded on September 26, 2001) with a conference to be held on September 24-25, in Poznan, Poland.
http://10lat.wikipedia.pl
http://tinyurl.com/42tkjub (Google translate)

[25 September] - Wikipedia Takes Cologne, Germany
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wiki_Loves_Monuments_K%C3%B6ln

[25 September] - Wikipedia Takes Lisbon, Portugal
http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:Wikip%C3%A9dia_Toma_Lisboa

[3-5 October] - WikiSym - The International Symposium on Wikis and Open collaboration -2011 with the session "Understanding Wikipedia".
http://www.wikisym.org/category/wikisym-2011/
http://www.wikisym.org/2011/09/14/session-preview-understanding-wikipedia/

Wikizine

[Your reports] - Post your news for the next edition of Wikizine on Meta or in our Google form.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikizine/EN2011-130
http://tinyurl.com/wikizine-feedback

Quote

"Wikinews: Just because we wrote it in our pyjamas doesn't mean you shouldn't take us seriously." -- IRC quote

Wikizine-seeks-editors , Editor(s): millosh, Kpjas, Shizhao,Walter Corrector(s): nathanThanks to: kaldari, Theo10011, pgehres , Support: Walter , Contact: http://report.wikizine.orgWebsite: http://www.wikizine.org , Gophersite: gopher://gopher.wikizine.org , Wikizine-loves-feedback, Wikizine.org makes no guarantee of accuracy, validity and especially but not limited to, correct grammar and spelling.Satisfaction is not guaranteed. Some content can be highly inspired or directly copied from other sources. Those sources are listed above at "Sources-Attributions". Wikizine.org is published by [[meta:user:Walter]].Content is available under Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

New book: The Digital Potlatch

2011-09-20T14:24:21+00:00

The Wikipedia Editor Survey 2011, published last April, emphasized the importance of explicit acknowledgement and recognition of effort among Wikipedia editors as an instrumental factor to sustaing and grow its community over the next years (page 4):

Positive Reinforcement: Acknowledging the effort of editors is important to reverse the editor decline. It is a commonly held view that editors just want to see their articles improve and read by lots of people and they don’t care about the opinion of their peers. This is false. The survey finds that acknowledgement of peers via a nice note or a barnstar (or kitten) is valued even more highly than achieving featured article status. To sustain and grow our community, we need to provide each other with positive feedback, and we should create tools to make it easy to do so.

In fact, this is the central argument of “El Potlatch Digital: Wikipedia y el Triunfo del Procomún y el Conocimiento Compartido” ["The Digital Potlatch: Wikipedia and the Triumph of Commons and Shared Knowledge"], a new book that I have written along with Joaquín Rodríguez, vice-dean of EOI. The book has been published in Spanish by Ediciones Cátedra, and now it should be available in your favourite book shop.

Participation in Internet communities has been a fascinating topic for researchers, practitioners and members of these communities. A previous study by Michlmayr, Robles and González-Barahona showed evidence of lasting volunteer participation in Debian. In this work, they defined the half-life of contributors as the “the time required for a certain population of maintainers to fall to half of its initial size”. Their estimation for the half-life in Debian was 7.5 years. In other words, after 7.5 years of project evolution we can still find 50% of the initial Debian maintainers participating in the project. Enough said about commitment of Debian developers.

In the case of larger online communities like Wikipedia we need to account for the effects of casual contributors versus more active and experienced editors. In any case, our study on the inequality of contributions to Wikipedia, published in 2008, shows that the balance between casual and very active contributors has remained stable since many years ago (2004). Even more interesting is the fact that this balance did not experimented any variation from 2007 onwards, despite the well-known “plateau effect” in the monthly number of edits to the largest Wikipedias starting that year.

Unfortunately, it is not possible to infer possible causes behind this behavioral patterns from observational studies like these ones. What does it make participants to stay in online communities? What factors motivate them to contribute? Why do they stop participating? This book is an attempt to shed some light on this, mixing empirical results with qualitative investigation (interviews to editors in the Spanish Wikipedia).

Our conclusion is clear: meritocracy and effort recognition has a central role in the motivation of contributors in collaborative habitats like Wikipedia. This resembles the Potlatch, an example that let us understand how in certain contexts we need to give away our capital (material or intangible) so that the community can give it back to us as acknowledgment, recognition and renown. As a result, in these collaborative habitats the working capital does not have a monteray but a symbolic nature, under the form of reputation and popularity, and the logic of its accumulation demands unselfishness to create antoher form of social value. We don’t claim that this example is valid for all kind of Internet communities, but some of the best-known cases (such as Wikipedia) exemplify the triumph of shared knowledge and Commons over other individualistic strategies.

PS: We believed that it was a great opportunity to publish this book in Spanish, specially with a reputated publisher such as Alianza, given the lack of books about Wikipedia in our native language. However, we would be very happy to have this book also available in English. So if you can help please let us know!

Wikizine Techflash - Year: 2011 Week: 39

2011-09-20T14:12:51+00:00

Breaking news

[Wikimedia servers upgrade] - Wikimedia servers are in the process of upgrading. You may experience difficulties in reading and/or editing Wikimedia sites.
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/09/16/mediawiki118iscomin/
- Upgrade timeline:
  - [19 September] - Monday, September 19, 23:00-01:00 UTC -- Production test: test2.wikipedia.org – this stage will ensure that 1.18 is compatible with the rest of our production infrastructure. There’s a small chance that changes here could affect all wikis.
  - [21 September] - Wednesday, September 21, 23:00-03:00 UTC -- Stage 1: simple.wikipedia.org, simple.wiktionary.org, usability.wikimedia.org, strategy.wikimedia.org, mediawiki.org, he.wikisource.org
  - [26 September] - Monday, September 26, 23:00-03:00 UTC -- Stage 2: meta.wikimedia.org, en.wikiquote.org, en.wikibooks.org, beta.wikiversity.org, eo.wikipedia.org, nl.wikipedia.org
  - [4 October] - Tuesday, October 4, 23:00-03:00 UTC -- Stage 3: remaining wikis.
  Wikizine seeks editors - Editor(s): Milos ,Corrector(s): Nathan ,Support: Walter
  Contact: http://report.wikizine.org , Website: http://www.wikizine.org
  - Wikizine seeks editors
- Wikizine.org makes no guarantee of accuracy, validity and especially but not limited to,
  correct grammar and spelling. Satisfaction is not guaranteed. Some content can be highly inspired or directly copied from other sources. Those sources are listed above at "Sources-Attributions".
  Wikizine.org is published by [[meta:user:Walter]]. Content is available under Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

2011 and the Y2K bug

2011-09-17T14:22:39+00:00

It has almost been 12 years since we all had to worry about the Y2K bug right ? Well you'd think. Over the past few weeks I have been bothered by a problem with session management in one of the apps that I'm writing. I couldn't figure out why stuff was behaving so unexpectedly. At some point the hints became clearer and clearer that the dated cookies of the session were for some reason not being expired. The iOS URLConnection and the android http lib seemed to continue to send them along to the server after logging out. This was hard to confirm though, because both platforms hide the Cookie header from you when you make the request, the connection was https and I didn't have physical access to the server.

It made no sense however that iOS would have a fundamental Cookie management bug. So I build a small server and started testing cookie management on the iPhone. Everything looked just fine. Then I decided that I would copy the actual cookies the server was sending to the clients. I could get these values, because the Set-Cookie headers from the response (unlike the actual Cookie header in the requests) was visible. So I switch the values of my test server to the actual values from the server and suddenly I was able to reproduce the problem. The Set-Cookie that was supposed to expire the cookie seemed to turn the cookie into an undated cookie (so scoped to the session of the client instance).

I'm switching back to my old values and stuff starts working again. Again I copy the original server values. I select the text and suddenly I notice it.... Expires=Sat, 01-Jan-00 00:00:00 GMT; No... that can't be it. Could it ? I switch my test server to issue the year 1970 instead. Poof, suddenly it works. So first of all, 12 years after 2000 there is still a server sending a broken date format. And two, it seems the Y2K parsing support in iOS is broken. Experimentation shows that iOS can only parse double digit years in cookies between 70 and 99. So any double digit year before 1970 (epoch) cannot be converted into an actual year. And what happens if the date cannot be parsed ? Then the date is removed from the cookie altogether, and your cookie becomes a session cookie :D

Wikizine Opinion - Year: 2011 Week: 38 Number: 128 BIS

2011-09-16T20:40:59+00:00

Wikizine needs YOU!

[Name] - Working title of this edition is "Wikizine Talk Edition" because we didn't have better idea. Send us suggestions for the name!

Editorial
Personal perspective
In the news
From Wikipedia

Editorial by Milos

As you could read in Wikizine 127 [1], I took initiative and began a Wikizine revival. You may notice some changes and I can say that there will be more changes, as such changes keep all of us alive.

Editorial is one of those changes and it will have two main parts: (1) presentation of one of the Wikizine feature and (2) analysis of the most important event from the previous week or two. Opinion or Talk Edition of Wikizine will be published on Friday and “previous week” means approximately Friday-Thursday time frame.

Last week had begun with such intensity, I thought I could close this edition by Monday.
[1] http://en.wikizine.org/2011/09/year-2011-week-36-number-126.html

(Un)acceptible Foundation influence on chapters

On August 27th, almost 20 days before the conclusion of this edition, CasteloBranco, a member of the initiative for Wikimedia Brazil, sent an email to foundation-l [1] with the description of agreement inside of Brazilian Wikimedian community about chapter creation. That was the main obstacle toward formalizing the chapter, as Brazilian Wikimedians didn’t feel comfortable with the idea of having a formal organization.

That day five more Wikimedians discussed the outlines of this agreement on foundation-l, including a note from Ray Saintonge that it’s not the best idea to have a Wikimedia Foundation appointee in chapter’s Board (as suggested by WM Brazil’s agreement).

For five days discussion was dead, when Jimmy Wales said that having a WMF appointee is, actually, a good idea. That sparked long discussions on both foundation-l and internal-l (the latter one is a non-public list of the core of Wikimedia movement). A number of chapters representatives felt offended by the idea of having a WMF appointee on their boards.
[1] http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/foundation/246958

Image filter retrospective (from spring 2008 to early 2011)

For those who have forgotten what’s behind the image filter “referendum”, here is a retrospective.
The initial point of the drama started on 7 May 2008 [4]. Because of religion, of course. US-based “social conservative” site WorldNetDaily reported Wikipedia [5] because of the cover art for the Scorpions’ album Virgin Killer [6]. According to Concerned Women of America, another “social conservative” group, “Wikipedia is helping to further facilitate perversion and pedophilia.”

On 5 December 2008, in the moment of madness, worthy of the best of surreal poetry, Internet Watch Foundaiton (IWF) [7], the association of UK internet providers, listed Wikipedia as a child pornography site [8] because of the same album cover [6]. It seems that IWF needed just four days to find someone who knows what Wikipedia is. IWF reversed their blacklisting on 9 December.

In a moment of desperate need for self-promotion, Larry Sanger [9], known because he didn’t believe that his project (Wikipedia, for which has sometimes been described as a co-founder), would succeed and not so known because of a number of failed projects, reported Wikipedia to the FBI [10] on 10 April 2010 because, of course, “child pornography”.

Just a short 17 days later, Fox News discovered the hot news and published it [11] in a well known form of spreading FUD to everything which doesn’t fit to their retarded worldview.

The action of the IWF prompted discussions on Wikimedia Commons in 2008. However, just after the Commons community declined to change well defined policy toward images, which are handled based on their quality, not the biased opinion on content, on May 6th, 2010 Jimmy Wales started to delete not just poor quality Second Life animated pornography, but artworks, as well. That sparked a huge revolt among editors [13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20]. At the other side, the action was praised by Fox News, of course [21].

Between May 6th and May 9th, the most striking event was the fact that smart people from the Board were talking nonsense just to stand behind Jimmy’s irrational behavior.

The Board’s statement from May 7th [22] was actually quite good. Note that part of the statement says “In saying this, we don't intend to create new policy, but rather to reaffirm and support policy that already exists.” Yet as it could be seen, in around one month the same Board changed their mind and pushed development with the aim to implement new policy.

After that the Kafkaesque parody started. Jan-Bart de Vreede, a Board member, interpreted Board’s statement as supporting Jimmy’s deletion of artworks [23]. Ting Chen, Board chair, also supported deletion of artworks [24]. Stuart West thinks that some deleted artworks are “hardcore pornography”, as well [25].
Digression about artworks for the complete picture. Jimmy deleted [28], among others, the next images:

Painting [27] by Édouard-Henri Avril, a 19th and early 20th century French painter [28].
Graphics [29] by Franz von Bayros, a late 19th and early 20th century Austrian illustrator [30].
Graphics [31] by Félicien Rops, a 19th century Belgian artist [32].

What is interesting with all of those artists is that they belong to the Decadent movement in art [33]. Which, by the way, says that you can create the most important educational resource in the history, but not be able to make distinction between pornography and art. And no matter of your ignorance, you would be supported by your fellow Board members,.

On May 9th, 2010, by concluding his regular behavioral iteration -- first makes a problem, then does the right thing to fix it --, Jimmy abandoned his permissions [34].
But, of course, that wasn’t the end of the drama. On June 24th, 2010 Board commissioned the Executive Director to find a way to satisfy Fox News and those who take Fox News seriously. [35]

I had personal conversation with Robert Harris, the person employed by the WMF to “solve” the problem. It was a very surprising discussion. During the first iteration of our communication, at the time when he presented some facts, including a perspective of one Canadian librarian [36], which clearly stated that libraries do not mark “objectionable” content in any particular way, it was a real pleasure to hear his insights.

But a month or two later it was clear that he wasn’t employed to make a decent suggestion, based on our values. He was employed to make a decision which would satisfy Fox News adherents. Instead of mentioning anywhere that it is not usual to mark sexually explicit content, instead of giving a multicultural perspective by adding at least Muhammad depictions to the list, he just produced a conclusion to please those to whom it is much more problematic that their daughter educate herself in sexual hygiene and contraception, then to see her pregnant at the age of 15. Of course, by mentioning “multiculturalism” just when it is in favor of those, exclusively American right-wing views [37].

Then the Censorship workgroup [not able to find public link; it was likely announced on internal-l] was created. The task of the group was to articulate what the censorship would look like. I offered, hesitantly, to participate in it, as a part of the responsibility which I had as one of the most vocal opponents of that task. Not unexpectedly, all of us were happy without me on the workgroup.

After a period of workgroup work, it presented the design of censorship software [38]. To be honest, it is not bad at all. People are able to click on “show image”, nothing is cemented. In an ideal world, such an image filter would be a very good option. However, we don’t live in an ideal world.

I’ll describe current events (the second part of 2011) after enough time passes and some distance from the current events would be created.

Milos

[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image_filter_referendum

[2] http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Controversial_content

[3] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image_filter_referendum/Results/en

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Killer#Internet_censorship

[5] http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=63722

[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Killer

[7] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Watch_Foundation

[8] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Watch_Foundation_and_Wikipedia

[9] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Sanger

[10] http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/04/11/018255/Larry-Sanger-Tells-FBI-Wikipedia-Distributes-Child-Pornography

[11] http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/04/27/wikipedia-child-porn-larry-sanger-fbi/

[12] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons_talk:Sexual_content/Archive_1

[13] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons_talk:Sexual_content/Archive_3

[14] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons_talk:Sexual_content/Village_pump/2010-5-6

[15] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons_talk:Sexual_content/Village_pump/2010-5-7

[16] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2010-May/057789.html

[17] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2010-May/057791.html

[18] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Remove_Founder_flag

[19] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Petition_to_Jimbo

[20] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Undeletion_requests/Archive/2010-05

[21] http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/05/07/wikipedia-purges-porn/

[22] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaannounce-l/2010-May/000008.html

[23] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2010-May/057795.html

[24] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2010-May/057827.html

[25] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2010-May/058026.html

[26] http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=delete&user=Jimbo+Wales&page=&year=&month=-1&tagfilter=

[27] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%C3%89douard-Henri_Avril_%2827%29.jpg

[28] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89douard-Henri_Avril

[29] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Franz_von_Bayros_016.jpg

[30] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_von_Bayros

[31] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:F%C3%A9licien_Rops_-_Sainte-Th%C3%A9r%C3%A8se.png

[32] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%A9licien_Rops

[33] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decadent_movement

[34] http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/foundation/195612

[35] http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Commissioning_Recommendations_from_the_Executive_Director

[36] http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:2010_Wikimedia_Study_of_Controversial_Content&ldid=2103910#The_Librarians.27s_Perspective

[37] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2010_Wikimedia_Study_of_Controversial_Content:_Part_Three

[38] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image_filter_referendum/en#What_will_the_image_hider_look_like.3F

Song of the week

For the end of the editorial, here is the song of the week:
http://tinyurl.com/6vaxls

Milos

Personal perspective

This week we have personal perspective from Salmaan Haroon, User:Theo10011 [1].

Theo is from India. He is originally from English Wikipedia but mostly active on Meta these days. He worked extensively on the WMF strategic plan on Strategy Wiki [2] a couple of years ago. He has been involved in Movement roles since early this year. He wrote for the Signpost briefly.

He worked for WMF for 3 months last year during the fundraiser, and got the chance to interact with chapters and see the fundraising issue from different perspectives.

Wikimedia chapters council [3] is his proposal.

[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Theo10011

[2] http://strategy.wikimedia.org/

[3] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters_council

I was invited to write about my perspective on the recent chapter and fundraising issues that have been doing the rounds. Let me first start out by making this disclosure- I am not affiliated with any chapter beyond a regular membership acquired a few weeks ago, I never sat on a chapter board, attended a general meeting, and neither do I plan on starting any time soon. Given a different set of circumstance, I am not sure if my perspective would be deemed completely neutral in the following matter.

Previously, as an outsider to the internal working of Wikimedia and chapter relations, I viewed the idea of chapters as a regular unaffiliated community member would i.e. with a mix of ignorance and skepticism. Chapters are viewed in some circles as legal organizations formed in different countries by a handful of people who then use Wikimedia trademarks and fundraising to raise funds to just exist and occasionally serve as a local outreach point.

Somewhere during the last year, I actually started meeting some of these people. I began to see the other side, how chapters perceive themselves and each other. True, there is an entire spectrum where each chapter falls and how close they actually are to what they want to be. Some of these people became my friends, I started seeing things from their perspective.

Over the last year, I saw chapters organize and take on activities like Wiki Loves Monuments, something the foundation never tried to do. I saw them do local GLAM outreach and activities in Germany and France, again, something that the foundation could not take on directly. They all do their own thing individually in their part of the world whether it be some open-license lobbying to their local institutions or outreach to a local exhibition.

I can not in good conscience accept that our movement would be any better off without them being independent. They are completely decentralized, and do their own thing independently, I love that model. A few dozen organizations doing their own things in tandem in different parts of the world is an unmatched model when it comes to productivity.

Lately however, there have been overtures that this model might be under threat. The distance and the relation between the foundation and the chapters has been getting more and more strained. The fundraising issue and the board letter that started the recent debate at the core placed concerns, that really no one disagreed with. I am yet to talk to a single person who thinks that most of those concerns aren't legitimate or there isn't a need for a sustained model of accountability. Almost every chapter in private and public, agrees that the issues are serious and require some action on everyones part.

The biggest issue is however how these concerns are being addressed. Some of the foundation's recent actions are being perceived as a heavy-handed towards chapters and the community at large. The conceptual directives have been coming from the board, perceptually overlooking an important distinction someone else made earlier- the board is the Wikimedia Foundation's board, not the chapter's, certainly not the movement's, the larger community is even less inclined to agree.

When the questions about the fundraising issue started, there were 2 large concerns that took over after the board's announcement. One, if the chapters that already agreed to participate in the fundraiser being allowed to continue, and second, if new half-a-dozen chapters that wanted to participate would be able to do so. The timing as others pointed out was less than ideal, having the staff and the board in person at Wikimania didn't help and instead compounded the problems.

The cross-talk between the board and staff at that stage seemed minimal. Sue gave a lengthy explanation about the issues and the board's concern, as did several board members who offered their perspective, staff members however seemed to be on a different page. Instead of giving any time to discuss and coordinate on how to address these issues, the entire fundraising model was taken away in what some perceive as a knee-jerk reaction and being replaced quietly by a grants-only model.

In hindsight, effective planning, and better timing might have avoided the initial confusion. But springing such an important change on chapters so close to the fundraiser, even after chapters attended an entire 'fundraising summit' just a few weeks prior could not have gone well. Chapters were told how to participate in the fundraiser by WMF staff that attended the aforementioned 'summit'.

They were now being told to re-evaluate it all, and forget about fundraising and focus on a grants-based model. With all the arguments and the questions that ensued, the staff hasn't addressed most of the issues publicly.

Delphine pointed out facts about WMDE, how the ideal independent chapter, the only one who would be allowed to fundraise came to be. How its independence, and the ability to stand on its own two feet made WMDE an example to follow for others. The notion that independent fundraising by chapters wouldn't affect the money needed by the movement is a fallacy.

The movement as a whole would lose millions every year, if the chapters are not allowed to do this locally. At some point, we have to realize - a one size fits all, global solution doesn't work. Our movement is decentralized, I think it's only logical that the fundraising be decentralized as well.

There is also a general sense of questioning the ownership of the fundraiser among the larger community. There are people who believe that it is the foundation's prerogative to only allow anyone it wants to fundraise or not, since it is the sole entity in charge of everything related to the movement. This would inevitably lead to more questions about ownership of the projects, and who is entitled to raise money in the name of Wikipedia?

Non-profits around the world use a decentralized model similar to the one we might have. The current structure looks identical to theirs. if someone were to visit Oxfam.com, they would be directed to the nearest office in their region where they can donate to the cause. In our case, the biggest identity would be our projects, a banner could serve the same purpose locally. Why do we then question the same model that already exist and work elsewhere?

Around the time these discussions were going on, I recalled something that we talked about during the Chapters conference in Berlin. An idea about a Chapters council, composed of all individual chapters to say "We, the chapters...." - The community itself is large enough that it can never completely agree on any point together, an important distinctions that chapters might not suffer from.

The number of chapters are not large, and some of the issues are so central that a single unanimous voice is not hard to form. There are and have been several iterations of this body, over the years and there is a clear need for it now than ever before. I have no idea if it can bridge the gap and address some of the concerns everyone has, but I do believe, it is worth trying, now more than ever.

Chapters, should ideally be the face of the movement- young, hard-working, active and mostly unpaid volunteers that take the good-nature and ethos of our movement, offline. Be it some small project in their backyard, outreach to a local library or museum or a small exhibition in their city, they should be given freedom to decide what works for them locally and then the ability to do so. The foundation should ideally, do its best to support and decentralize this model as much as possible. When chapters work, they work excellently.

Salmaan Haroon, User:Theo10011

In the news

[Jimmy Wales and Sue Gardner in US diplomatic cable] - Jimmy Wales was mentioned in a leaked US diplomatic cable under the name Jimmy Walker. Among many people with that name, one Jimmy Walker was the mayor of New York City from 1926 to 1932. Another one is Jimmie Walker, comedian. Sue Gardner has been presented as "Wikipedia's leading editor".
http://wikileaks.ch/cable/2008/11/08SANTIAGO1015.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Walker
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Walker
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmie_Walker
http://wikileaks.org/cable/2009/05/09TELAVIV982.html

[Inventor of eBook died] - Michael Stern Hart, inventor of the eBook concept and Project Gutenberg, has died at the age of 64.
http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Michael_S._Hart

[Celebrities’ Autographs] - Crushable reports (not quite) news that Wikipedia has started including celebrities' autographs in articles about them. In a related event, User:Hindustanilanguage uploaded ~300 autographs on Wikimedia Commons in mid-August.
http://crushable.com/entertainment/wikipedia-has-started-including-celebrities-autographs-on-their-profiles-394/
http://tinyurl.com/4xxmepz

["How do i edit a page on wikipedia without it gettin removed?"] - A classic high school question about editing Wikipedia appeared on Yahoo Answers.
http://malaysia.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110902133937AAVW9a8

[Positive critique in Washington Post] - The Washington Post journalist Valerie Strauss published article on "Wikipedia is not wicked!" by The Daring Librarian, otherwise known as Gwyneth Anne Jones, on her blog.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/the-daring-librarian-wikipedia-is-not-wicked/2011/09/06/gIQAYWSF8J_blog.html
http://www.thedaringlibrarian.com/

[Branding company plays with Wikipedia] - Branding company Moving Brands, invited by Viewpoint magazine to showcase their process, created a proposal for a new Wikimedia identity. While the value of the final product could be debated, it is interesting that the company has a clear understanding of Wikipedia, Wikimedia and Wikipedia's core Five Pillars, which they included in their creative process.
http://www.movingbrands.com/
http://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/archives/wikipedia_concept.php
http://www.movingbrands.com/?category_name=wikipedia-work

[Wikipedia editors motivation] - Business life has published the article "Why do people contribute to Wikipedia for free?"
http://www.babusinesslife.com/Tools/Economics/Why-do-people-contribute-to-Wikipedia-for-free-.html

[New York Times on Wikipedia and 9/11] - New York Times published an article "On Wikipedia, Echoes of 9/11 ‘Edit Wars’".
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/12/business/media/on-wikipedia-911-dissent-is-kept-on-the-fringe.html?_r=1

[Jimmy Wales guest of Cambridge Network] - Jimmy Wales gave a lecture to the Cambridge Network members. The Cambridge Network is a commercial business networking organization for business people and academics working in technology fields in the Cambridge area of the UK. In response to his lecture, Cambridge Business Media published the article "Running Wikipedia, possibly not as easy as Jimmy Wales makes it look".
http://www.pr.com/press-release/352263
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Network
http://www.cabume.co.uk/blog/running-wikipedia-possibly-not-as-easy-as-jimmy-wales-makes-it-look.html

[The worst Kindle eBooks] - "The worst Kindle eBooks ever written" is a compilation of Wikipedia articles.
http://www.beyond-black-friday.com/2011/08/30/the-worst-kindle-ebooks-ever-written/

[Copyright in EU] - Copyright on musical recordings extended by twenty years in EU.
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Copyright_on_musical_recordings_extended_by_twenty_years_in_EU

[WikiSweeper] - Ushahidi and Wikimedia Foundation joint initiative to create a hot news tool for Wiki editors
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/wikipedia_to_add_research_mega-tool_for_hot_news_a.php
http://blog.ushahidi.com/index.php/2011/09/13/announcing-the-wikisweeper-project/

[Jimmy Wales in Indianapolis] - Jimmy Wales was talking to 3,000 marketing experts in Indianapolis.
http://www.indystar.com/article/20110913/BUSINESS06/109130390/Wikipedia-founder-shares-passion-Indianapolis-crowd?odyssey=mod%7Cnewswell%7Ctext%7CIndyStar.com%7Cs

[Columnist for Independent and Wikipedia] - The award-winning Independent columnist Johann Hari has apologized for editing the Wikipedia entries of people he had clashed with, using the pseudonym David Rose.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/sep/14/johann-hari-apologises-orwell-prize
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Hari

[Campus paper The Bell Ringer on Wikipedia] - Columnist of The Bell Ringer, the campus paper of the Augusta State University, published text "In the Defense of Wikipedia".
http://www.asubellringer.com/2011/09/14/in-the-defense-of-wikipedia/

From Wikipedia

[Hungry ghost] - Hungry ghost is a Western translation of an Eastern phrase representing beings who are driven by intense emotional needs in an animalistic way.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungry_ghost

[Fenian raids] - The Fenian raids of the Fenian Brotherhood based in the United States on British army forts, customs posts and other targets in Canada were fought in order to bring pressure on Britain to withdraw from Ireland, between 1866 and 1871.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fenian_raids

[Monte Cristo, Washington] - Monte Cristo is a ghost town northwest of Monte Cristo Peak, in eastern Snohomish County in western Washington. Prospecting in the region began in the Skykomish River drainage with the Old Cady Trail used for access. In 1882 Elisha Hubbard improved the trail up the North Fork Skykomish, from Index to Galena, then north up the tributary Silver Creek. A boom shortly followed at Mineral City. The mineral belt was traced in various directions, including north over the divide between the Skykomish and Sauk River drainages. ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Cristo,_Washington

[Persin] - Persin is a fungicidal toxin present in the avocado. It is generally harmless to humans, but when consumed by domestic animals in large quantities it is dangerous. It has been suggested as a treatment for breast cancer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persin

[Progress trap] - A progress trap is the condition human societies experience when, in pursuing progress through human ingenuity, they inadvertently introduce problems they do not have the resources or political will to solve, for fear of short-term losses in status, stability or quality of life. This prevents further progress and sometimes leads to collapse.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progress_trap

[Phosphene] - A phosphene is an entoptic phenomenon characterized by the experience of seeing light without light actually entering the eye. The word phosphene comes from the Greek words phos (light) and phainein (to show). Phosphenes are flashes of light, often associated with optic neuritis, induced by movement or sound.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphene

[HD 85512 b] - HD 85512 b is an extrasolar planet orbiting the star HD 85512 approximately 36 light-years away in the constellation of Vela. The planet was discovered by the scientists at University of Geneva, Switzerland, led by the Swiss astronomer Stéphane Udry of the GTO program of High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS), a high-precision echelle spectrograph installed on ESO's 3.6 m telescope at La Silla Observatory in Chile. HD 85512 b is one of the smallest exo-planets discovered to be in the habitable zone. HD 85512 b is considered to be the best candidate for habitability as of August 25, 2011.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_85512_b

[Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin] - Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin (May 10, 1900 – December 7, 1979) was an English-American astronomer who in 1925 was first to show that the Sun is mainly composed of hydrogen, contradicting accepted wisdom at the time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecilia_Payne-Gaposchkin

[List of people claimed to be Jesus] - John Nichols Thom (1799–1838), Cornish tax rebel who claimed to be the "saviour of the world" and the reincarnation of Jesus Christ and his body temple of the Holy Ghost[citation needed] in 1834. He was killed by British soldiers at the Battle of Bossenden Wood, on May 31, 1838 in Kent, England. Arnold Potter (1804–1872), Schismatic Latter Day Saint leader; he claimed the spirit of Jesus Christ entered into his body and he became "Potter Christ" Son of the living God, he died in an attempt to "ascend into heaven" by jumping off a cliff.[citation needed] His body was later retrieved and buried by his followers. Bahá'u'lláh (1817–1892), born Shiite, adopted Bábism later in 1844, he claimed to be the prophesized fulfilment and Promised One of all the major religions. He founded the Bahá'í Faith in 1866. Followers of the Bahá'í Faith believe that the fulfillment of the prophecies of the second coming of Jesus, as well as the prophecies of the 5th Buddha Maitreya and many other religious prophecies, were begun by the Báb in 1844 and then by Bahá'u'lláh. They commonly compare the fulfillment of Christian prophecies to Jesus' fulfillment of Jewish prophecies, where in both cases people were expecting the literal fulfillment of apocalyptic statements. ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_claimed_to_be_Jesus

Editor(s): Millosh, Theo10011, Kpjas , Corrector(s): Nathan , Support: Walter , Contact: http://report.wikizine.org
Website: http://www.wikizine.org , Wikizine.org makes no guarantee of accuracy,
validity and especially but not limited to, correct grammar and spelling. Satisfaction is not guaranteed.
Some content can be highly inspired or directly copied from other sources. Those sources are listed above at "Sources-Attributions".
Wikizine.org is published by [[meta:user:Walter]].Content is available under Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Johann Hari and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Wikipedia Edits

2011-09-15T18:04:17+00:00

Unless you follow the media, and more specifically the British media, you may be wholly unaware that there is such a person named Johann Hari, or that he has been a wunderkind columnist and correspondent, or that a lot of people find him kind of insufferable, and in that case you almost certainly don’t know that he got himself in a big heap of trouble this summer, over charges of plagiarism and meddling with Wikipedia.

Understandably, most of the criticism has been focused on the plagiarism charges. After all, that’s a crime against journalism, and by definition journalists are the ones writing about it most widely. What he did in those cases was not remotely OK, but at the moment I’m a little more animated by his improper Wikipedia activity. After all, that’s a crime against Wikipedia, and by definition The Wikipedian blogs about Wikipedia.

The matter is news again today because Hari has published a public apology in the pages of The Independent, his employer. He is sorry for everything he has done, he’s returning his prestigious Orwell Prize (which he probably was going to lose anyway) and he’s taking a sabbatical to go back to journalism school. I guess it’s a start.

About the Wikipedia controversy, Hari devotes just one full paragraph:

The other thing I did wrong was that several years ago I started to notice some things I didn’t like in the Wikipedia entry about me, so I took them out. To do that, I created a user-name that wasn’t my own. Using that user-name, I continued to edit my own Wikipedia entry and some other people’s too. I took out nasty passages about people I admire – like Polly Toynbee, George Monbiot, Deborah Orr and Yasmin Alibhai-Brown. I factually corrected some other entries about other people. But in a few instances, I edited the entries of people I had clashed with in ways that were juvenile or malicious: I called one of them anti-Semitic and homophobic, and the other a drunk. I am mortified to have done this, because it breaches the most basic ethical rule: don’t do to others what you don’t want them to do to you. I apologise to the latter group unreservedly and totally.

Hari’s Wikipedia article contains this brief account:

Several journalists, including Cristina Odone in The Daily Telegraph and Nick Cohen in The Spectator, concluded that a Wikipedia editor, ‘David r from meth productions’, who claimed to be ‘David Rose’, were in fact made by Hari. Writing in The Daily Telegraph, Odone noted that, after she had fallen out with Hari, Rose began making misleading edits to her Wikipedia article accusing her of anti-Semitism and homophobia. Nick Cohen said that misleading edits were made to his own Wikipedia article by the same editor after he had published criticism of Hari’s work. … The Times leader writer Oliver Kamm later attributed to ‘David Rose’ a change in his Wikipedia biography that he regarded as “merely an unsubstantiated judgement” but which had been made not long after a “spat” with Hari.

I am not one who believes, as a general rule, that someone should never edit their own Wikipedia article. Indeed, I’m kind of the expert on how to do it and not bring grief to yourself. But by his own admission, Hari’s editing of his own page amounts to what Wikipedia informally calls whitewashing. Hari also did not disclose that he was behind the “David r from meth productions” account, which is also, obviously, a problem. And it’s all the worse—and by worse I just mean “embarrassing”—if you’ve read any of his surreptitiously self-serving arguments in the archives of his Talk page.

But embarrassment is the bare minimum of regret Hari should feel about his “juvenile and malicious” edits to Wikipedia articles about his media adversaries. This is the part that really gets me. Others may disagree, but I see a vast gulf between sneakily trying to make yourself look better and sneakily making others look worse. And I think there’s a big difference between being an anonymous Internet critic—although it’s a type known to take things too far—and using the veil of anonymity (or in the case of Wikipedia, pseudonymity) to smear a person’s reputation.

Calling someone a “douchebag” is rude, and you may be wrong, but that’s your opinion. Calling someone a “drunk” is a specific charge of bad behavior, about which one is either right (and maybe still an asshole) or wrong, and that’s unforgivable. I don’t know which is the case, but either reflects very poorly on his character. This is the one thing that I think no apology, leave of absence, or media training, can fix.

Update: In the comments, a reader points out that Hari’s edits are even worse than I’ve described them, and he’s right. He points to apparent sustained anonymous vindictiveness on Hari’s part, and I add that Hari’s self-support included some rather absurd sock puppetry, neither of which I was aware of at the time I first wrote this. Had I the time, I would follow this up in more detail. But the upshot remains the same: as a public figure, Hari may or may not be finished—but as a respectable one, he certainly is.

Wikizine News - Year: 2011 Week: 38 Number: 128

2011-09-15T11:33:14+00:00

Wikizine

[Your reports] - Post your news for the next edition of Wikizine on Meta or in our Google form.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikizine/EN2011-129
http://tinyurl.com/5rpahqt

Movement

[Wikinews fork] - The Open Globe, a Wikinews fork, has been announced. The fork produced much discussion on Foundation-l about the causes of the fork, Wikimedia Foundation support for projects other than Wikipedia, and the nature of Wikinews.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2011-September/068277.html
http://theopenglobe.org/

[Wiki Loves Monuments] - 15,000 images from Wiki Loves Images and counting.
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/09/06/pan-european-wiki-loves-monuments-contest-receives-15000-images-from-more-than-1000-participants-and-counting/
http://www.wikilovesmonuments.eu/2011/09/01/294/
http://whatisgoingonineurope.blogspot.com/2011/09/monuments-in-europe.html
http://www.wikilovesmonuments.eu/2011/09/12/special-award-for-pyrenees-mediterranian/

[Hungarian Wikipedia] - Hungarian Wikipedia reached 200,000 articles.
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/09/12/asteroid-shower-helps-propel-hungarian-wikipedia-to-200000-articles-at-warp-speed/

[Image filter "referendum"] - Discussions on image filter still ongoing (similar size of the foundation-l archive for the half of September in comparison to the whole August). They escalated last week. The German Wikipedia opened a poll which ends today. As of Tuesday morning, more than 85% (340:56) of voters are against implementation of an image filter on the German Wikipedia. "Next steps" for the de.wp community are in the process of analysis.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2011-September/thread.html
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Image_filter_referendum/en
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meinungsbilder/Einf%C3%BChrung_pers%C3%B6nlicher_Bildfilter
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image_filter_referendum/Next_steps/en

Technical news

[Translation rally] - Wikimedia Netherlands sponsors translatewiki.net to run a translation rally.
http://ultimategerardm.blogspot.com/2011/09/localisation-rally-for-mediawiki-and.html

[Wiki Golf] - Proprietary computer game "Wiki Golf" features "six degrees of separation" on Wikipedia.
http://www.pr.com/press-release/352263

Foundation

[August report] - Wikimedia Foundation published August report.
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/09/08/wikimedia-foundation-report-august-2011/

[Wikipedia Sepedi] - Wikipedia in Northern Sotho or Sepedi has been approved.
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=30882

[Donate wiki] - Donate wiki has been opened. However, donate.wikimedia.org still redirects to Wikimedia Foundation Donate page.
http://donate.wikimedia.org/

Chapters

[Wikimedia DC becomes chapter] - Board has recognized Wikimedia DC as 36th Wikimedia chapter and the second chapter in the United States.
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Recognition_of_Wikimedia_District_of_Columbia

[Wikipedia club at University in Mexico] - In a guest post on Gerard Meijssen's blog, Leigh Thelmadatter presents the Wikipedia club at University in Mexico.
http://ultimategerardm.blogspot.com/2011/09/wikipedia-club-at-university-in-mexico.html

[Wikimedia UK's CEO] - Wikimedia UK asks Wikimedians to help them to choose a CEO.
http://blog.wikimedia.org.uk/2011/09/help-us-choose-our-chief-executive/

[WikiConference India] - WikiConference India is warming up. It will be held in Mumbai between November 18th and 20th.
http://www.penn-olson.com/2011/09/07/wikipedia-indi/
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiConference_India_2011

[Wikimedia Canada] - Wikimedia Canada offers scholarships for Wikipedia articles in medicine.
http://wikimedia.ca/wiki/Scholarship_application

[Wikimedia UK and Institute of Physics] - Wikimedia UK members visited the Institute of Physics.
http://blog.wikimedia.org.uk/2011/09/wikimedia-uk-at-the-institute-of-physics/

Chapters reports

[Wikimedia India] - Wikimedia India has published its fifth report.
http://wiki.wikimedia.in/Reports/Report_5

[Wikimedia Sweden] - Wikimedia Sweden has published its report for August 2011.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaannounce-l/2011-September/000234.html

Science

[Wikimedia Summer of Research] - Findings from the Wikimedia Foundation Summer of Research are now available.
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/09/06/summer-research-findings/

[Pupils love, teachers hate Wikipedia] - On his blog, Ziko van Dijk describes research by Wikimedia Germany about the use of Wikipedia by teachers and students.
http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/2011/09/07/pupils-love-wikipedia-teachers-hate-it/

[Wikipedia in Liberal Arts Classroom] - National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education has published a good article on Wikipedia in liberal arts classrooms.
http://blogs.nitle.org/2011/09/12/wikipedia-in-the-liberal-arts-classroom/

[Breaking news trends] - Ushahidi, a non-profit software company from Africa, has started a project to track breaking news trends on Wikipedia.
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/09/13/ushahidi-to-track-breaking-news-trends-on-wikipedia/
http://blog.ushahidi.com/index.php/2011/09/13/announcing-the-wikisweeper-project/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ushahidi
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/wikipedia_to_add_research_mega-tool_for_hot_news_a.php

Media

[Wikipedia Signpost] - New edition of Wikipedia Signpost has been published. In this edition you can find stories: Foundation reports on research, Kenya trip, Mumbai Wikiconference, 9/11 anniversary casts its shadow on the wiki, A minimalist makeover and so on.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Archives/2011-09-12

Events and meetups

[21 August - 6 October] - Stewards election.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards/elections_2011-2
- [21 August - 6 October] - Questions to candidates.
  http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards/elections_2011-2/Questions
- [15 September - 6 October] - Voting.
  http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards/elections_2011-2/Guidelines/en#Voters

[14-16 September] - [New Orleans Hackathon] - New Orleans Hackathon will take place between October 14th and 16th.
http://www.harihareswara.net/sumana/2011/09/01/0
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/NOLA_Hackathon

[16 September] - Hong Kong 57 meetup
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetup/Hong_Kong/57

[16-25 September] - Wikipedia Takes Mittelhessen, Germany
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wiki_Loves_Monuments_Mittelhessen

[17 September] - Wikipedia Takes Barcelona will be held on September 17th.
http://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viquip%C3%A8dia:Wikipedia_Takes_Barcelona

[17 September] - Wiki Takes Amersfoot (Netherlands) will take place on September 17th.
http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ontmoeten#Amersfoort_17_september

[17 September] - Wikipedia takes Fremantle (Australia) will be held on September 17th.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Takes_Fremantle

[17 September] - Manchester meetup
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetup/Manchester

[17 September] - Berkeley Wikipedia Meetup
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Berkeley

[18 September] - Wikipedia Takes Andorra
http://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viquip%C3%A8dia:Viquip%C3%A8dia_prem_Andorra

[24 September] - Wiki Takes de Zaan (Netherlands) will be held on September 24th.
http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ontmoeten#Zaanstreek_24_september

[24 September] - Wikipedia Takes Göteborg, Sweden
http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikitr%C3%A4ffar#Fotosafari.2C_G.C3.B6teborg.2C_l.C3.B6rdag_24_sep

[24 September] - Wikipedia Takes Porto, Portugal
http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:Wikip%C3%A9dia_Toma_o_Porto

[24-25 September] - Polish Wikipedia community, supported by Wikimedia Polska, is going to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the project (founded on September 26, 2001) with a conference to be held on September 24-25, in Poznan, Poland.
http://10lat.wikipedia.pl
http://tinyurl.com/42tkjub (Google translate)

[25 September] - Wikipedia Takes Cologne, Germany
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wiki_Loves_Monuments_K%C3%B6ln

[25 September] - Wikipedia Takes Lisbon, Portugal
http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:Wikip%C3%A9dia_Toma_Lisboa

[30 September] - The last day of the project Wiki Loves Monuments for this year is September 30th.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2011

[1 October] - A Backstage Pass tour is an event aimed at sharing the expertise of real-world cultural institutions with our wiki-expertise. Wikimedia UK organizes it at Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, Coventry, UK.
http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Backstage_Pass

[1 October] - Washington DC meetup #23. Wiki DC board elections.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/DC_23

Meetups are filled from Wikipedia:Meetup page at English Wikipedia. Please, add your meetup there and it will be published by Wikizine. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup)

GLAM-related events are held on Outreach Wiki. If you add your GLAM-related event there, it will be published in Wikizine. (http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Events)

For other events, please post them on our events page or send us email with short description of your event. (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikizine/Events)

Quote

"United we stand; divided we fall."
Aesop in "The Four Oxen and the Lion", Fables, also known as "The Lion and the Bulls"
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Aesop

Wikizine seeks editors - Editor(s): Millosh , Corrector(s): Nathan , Support: Walter, Contact: http://report.wikizine.org , Website: http://www.wikizine.org
Wikizine.org makes no guarantee of accuracy, validity and especially but not limited to, 
correct grammar and spelling. Satisfaction is not guaranteed. Some content can be highly inspired or directly copied from other sources. 
Those sources are listed above at "Sources-Attributions". Wikizine.org is published by [[meta:user:Walter]].
Content is available under Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License 3.0 
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Edit-a-thon at Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona

2011-09-15T00:58:28+00:00

Viquimarató at Joan Miró Foundation. Kippelboy. CC-BY-SA-3.0

Today we have done an Edit-a-thon at the Joan Miró Foundation in Barcelona, with the aim of creating or expanding articles related to the exhibition Joan Miró: The Ladder of Escape, just finished at Tate Modern that will be seen in Barcelona in October 2011, before travelling to the National Gallery of Art, Washington in May 2012. Today we have given a big push to our Wikiproject, increasing referrals to specialized information from the Library of the Foundation. We also wanted to socialize the project. Edit-a-thons are a good place for museum professionals and Wikipedians to meet.

Amical Viquipèdia has reached an agreement with the Joan Miró Foundation whereby pasted QRpedia codes will be shown next to the most outstanding works of the temporary exhibition, one of the most importants about Joan Miro curated during the past 20 years.

This is a very important project in a tourist country as Catalonia, where the population is bilingual and any text displayed on the walls of the museum should be both in Catalan, Spanish and English, at least.

Using QRpedia is a new way of seeing, a new way of visiting museums, accessing to culture. Since mobile Internet is here, the desire to immediately satisfy our curiosity is here too. We cannot wait to get home to see what are the main features of an artistic movement or what it meant when an artist painted a particular work. We want to access to knowledge in our language, now, everywhere and for free.

Museums have the mission to preserve, study and disseminate their collections.The Miró Foundation understands these concepts well integrated into the twenty-first century, making a step forward, giving a vote of confidence in the free knowledge, very aware of what it means today.

The Wikipedians have answered them with our greatest enthusiasm.

Over the next few days the articles will be translated into English and Spanish and we will ask the international community to get engaged and translate them into their own language. It depends on them that the future museum visitors can access to the knowledge in their mother tongue.

Roger Bamkin and Terence Eden, the creators of QRPedia, are revolutionizing the way to visit museums. Congratulations.

Update update update!

2011-09-13T07:46:41+00:00

Hey friends!

It's time for another LocalWiki update! What's happened since our last update? Erg, a lot!

Pilots

Folks in Denton, TX playing with the new localwiki software.

We've selected our very first few pilot communities. So far, we've been working with folks in Denton, Texas; Sydney, Australia; and San Francisco, California. Do you (or did you) live in or near Sydney, Denton, or San Francisco? Shoot us an email at contact@localwiki.org and we'll get you involved in the pilot buildout!

There are several more pilots in the queue, and we're looking to work with more folks now. We'll be more aggressively reaching out to people who've contacted us, and our Kickstarter backers will soon get a chance to vote for the next set of pilot communities.

Software stuffs

A bunch has been accomplished on the software front:

We made a slick diff scroll-through thing.
Implemented dynamic, global overview map that lets you 'dive' into different regions of the map.
Added generic files support.
Improved our file upload process.
Made a ton of editor fixes and tweaks.
Added ability to use custom map base layers.
Refactored some code ("recent changes", most notably)
Further improved copy/pasting in editor. This stuff is ridiculously complicated.
Initial version of spell checking in editor.
We created custom maps for two pilots and in the process learned a metric ton about GIS and the open source map stack
Created a plugin system for the editor. Our first two plugins are "embed media" (videos, etc) and "include page."
Cleaned up the way edit conflicts and merging merging happen when editing pages.
Improved our deployment process.
Simplified install instructions a bit.
Conducted our first semi-formal usability test.
Fixed a bunch of too-boring-to-describe bugs.

Overall, we've been improving functionality based on feedback from the initial pilots. Watching people interact with the software has been really helpful!

We're currently marching toward our next software milestone, due on the first of October. Our primary focus between now and then is to improve the installation process, the documentation, and fix all technical issues that block the public launch of pilots.

Programmer who wants to help?

Are you a programmer-type? Want to help out? Check out our first little code overview screencast, then hop on over to our development site!

Mike got hitched.

On a more personal note, two weeks ago Mike married his girlfriend of 12 years!

xo!-
Philip & Mike

HipHop packaging

2011-09-12T00:23:03+00:00

Of scripting languages used for web applications, PHP is pretty lightweight and fast. It is built to execute quickly and with little overhead, making it easy to scale.

Still, there are places where it could be better. Engineers at Facebook took this challenge and created HipHop. We at the Wikimedia Foundation would love to have HipHop packaged so that we can deploy it on our cluster. And, ultimately, while we realize we might need to do the initial work of packaging HipHop, we don’t want to be the ones responsible for keeping the package up-to-date.

Since I have some experience with packaging PHP applications and am a sometimes-active member of Debian’s PHP maintainers team, I felt this was a natural place for me to jump in.

And, because I’m lazy, the first thing I did was look for any other work on packaging HipHop that had been done. I found James DuPont’s work and built on it. Now it comes time to move this forward.

I’ve already taken his ITP for HipHop.

You’ll note that it depends on two other bugs to get the HipHop patches for curl and libevent included. These were essentially dismissed by both maintainers.

The curl maintainer pointed out that it that patch was un-needed or, at least, needed better a better defense. I can’t really provide that. I’m not sure that I can adapt the HipHop code to the suggested APIs, but I’m willing to try if the HipHop developers aren’t.

The libevent developer pointed out (in response to the Debian bug), that the patch was against an old, unmaintained version of libevent. Newer versions evidently make half of the patch un-needed and the other half needs to be adapted to the newer version of libevent.

I really want to make this happen. I really want Debian (and Debian derivatives like Ubuntu) to have HipHop packages. But I’m not sure how much time I can give to this right now since we’re in the middle of pushing out a new release of MediaWiki. If you can help solve any of the packaging problems mentioned above, please dive in!

Year: 2011 Week: 37 Number: 127

2011-09-07T22:31:36+00:00

Wikizine

[Editorial] - As Walter said in the previous edition, I took initiative and there are some changes in the Wikizine concept. But, more about them on Friday, in Talk Edition of Wikizine! Milos.

[Your reports] - Post your news for the next edition of Wikizine on Meta or in our Google form.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikizine/EN2011-128
http://tinyurl.com/3w8wg5j

Request for Comments

[ISO 639-1 => ISO 639-3] - User:とある白い猫 has started discussion about moving Wikimedia projects with ISO 639-1 code in the name (like "en") to ISO 639-3 code (like "eng"). The discussion was held in 2008 on Bugzilla, as well.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_language_ISO_639-1_%E2%86%92_639-3_proposal
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=14010

Movement

[Wiki Loves Monuments] - Wiki Loves Monuments launched last week. Press release published: Make European Cultural Heritage Accessible to the World.
http://www.wikilovesmonuments.eu/2011/09/06/make-european-cultural-heritage-accessible-to-the-world/

Technical news

[Wikidroid for Wikipedia] - Positive analysis about (likely) proprietary software "Wikidroid for Wikipedia" published on Android Pit.
http://www.androidpit.com/en/android/tests/test/392588/Wikidroid-for-Wikipedia-Knowledge-in-the-Palm-of-Your-Hand

Foundation

[Image filter "referendum" over] - It said to us what we already know: Wikimedians are multicultural and want to allow themselves to change their mind. However, no consensus emerged in relation to the most important question: should images be filtered at all? The survey questions were not asked in a form allowing "yes/no" answers; participants were asked to indicate the importance of some features on a scale. "Referendum" turnout was around 3%: ~700,000 emails were sent to eligible users, ~24,000 respondents expressed their opinions. (In comparison, Board elections have 10-15% turnout.) The next step is to analyze those numbers.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image_filter_referendum/Results/en

[GLAM report] - WMF's GLAM initiative published August 2011 reports from USA, UK, Canada, Spain, Germany, Mexico and Israel.
http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/August_2011

[Wikipedia Editor Satisfaction Index] - Mani Pande and Ayush Khanna from WMF introduced a new measurement, the Wikipedia Editor Satisfaction Index.
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/09/02/introducing-wikipedia-editor-satisfaction-index/

Chapters

[WMF representatives in chapters' boards?] - The initiative for Wikimedia Brazil presented the idea to have a WMF appointed member of their chapter Board. After Ray Saintonge noted that it's not quite regular, Jimmy Wales supported the idea, which, in turn, sparked long discussion about (un)acceptable WMF influence over chapters.
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/foundation/246958

Science

[Gender Bias] - In the Volume 5 for 2011, International Journal of Communication published a paper by Joseph Reagle and Lauren Rhue called "Gender Bias in Wikipedia and Britannica".
http://ijoc.org/ojs/index.php/ijoc/article/view/777/591 (pdf)

[Investigating editing anxiety in new users] - A project by Dr. Benjamin R. Cowan and Professor Russell Beale has been added to the Research directory.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Investigating_editing_anxiety_in_new_users

[Research committee meeting] - RCom held a meeting on September 2nd. Notes from the meeting are available on Wikimedia Etherpad.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research_Committee/Meetings/Meeting_2011-09-02
http://etherpad.wikimedia.org/RCom201109

[Virtual community research] - Stuart Easterling, WMF Virtual Community History Fellow published an update on Virtual community history research of Wikipedia in Spanish.
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/09/02/update-on-virtual-community-history-research-spanish-language-wikipedia/

Media

[Wikipedia Signpost] - New edition of Wikipedia Signpost has been published. In this edition you can find stories: Riding with WikiProject London Transport, The copyright crisis, and why we should care, Britannica and Wikipedia like "apples and chairs", Should anyone who's anyone get an article? etc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Archives/2011-09-05

Events and meetups

[21 August - 6 October] - Stewards election.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards/elections_2011-2
- [21 August - 6 October] - Questions to candidates.
  http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards/elections_2011-2/Questions
- [15 September - 6 October] - Voting.
  http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards/elections_2011-2/Guidelines/en#Voters

[10 September] - Wiki Takes Amsterdam will be held on September 10th.
http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ontmoeten#Amsterdam:_Zaterdag_10_september

[10 September] - Kolkata7 meetup
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Kolkata/Kolkata7

[11 September] - London 49 meetup
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetup/London/49

[14 September] - Workshop for GLAMs at Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, UK will be held on September 14th.
http://museumnetworkwarwickshire.wordpress.com/2011/08/15/something-wiki-this-way-comes-workshop-14th-september/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Art_Gallery_and_Museum

[14 September] - Amical Viquipèdia and Foundation Joan Miró organize the contest for improving articles about Joan Miró, on September 14th.
http://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viquiprojecte:Mir%C3%B3
http://www.viquimedia.cat/
http://www.fundaciomiro-bcn.org/

[14-16 September] - [New Orleans Hackathon] - New Orleans Hackathon will take place between October 14th and 16th.
http://www.harihareswara.net/sumana/2011/09/01/0
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/NOLA_Hackathon

[15 September] - Wiki Wildlife Bristol, an event focused on writing about endangered species for Wikipedia, will take place on September 15th.
http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Wildlife_Bristol

[16 September] - Hong Kong 57 meetup
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetup/Hong_Kong/57

[17 September] - Wikipedia Takes Barcelona will be held on September 17th.
http://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viquip%C3%A8dia:Wikipedia_Takes_Barcelona

[17 September] - Wiki Takes Amersfoort (Netherlands) will take place on September 17th.
http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ontmoeten#Amersfoort_17_september

[17 September] - Wikipedia takes Fremantle (Australia) will be held on September 17th.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Takes_Fremantle

[17 September] - Manchester meetup
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetup/Manchester

[17 September] - Berkeley Wikipedia Meetup
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Berkeley

[24 September] - Wiki Takes de Zaan (Netherlands) will be held on September 24th.
http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ontmoeten#Zaanstreek_24_september

[24-25 September] - Polish Wikipedia community, supported by Wikimedia Polska, is going to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the project (founded on September 26, 2001) with a conference to be held on September 24-25, in Poznan, Poland.
http://10lat.wikipedia.pl
http://tinyurl.com/42tkjub (Google translate)

[30 September] - The last day of the project Wiki Loves Monuments for this year is September 30th.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2011

Meetups are filled from Wikipedia:Meetup page at English Wikipedia. Please, add your meetup there and it will be published by Wikizine. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup)

GLAM-related events are held on Outreach Wiki. If you add your GLAM-related event there, it will be published in Wikizine. (http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Events)

For other events, please post them on our events page or send us email with short description of your event. (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikizine/Events)

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correct grammar and spelling. Satisfaction is not guaranteed.
Some content can be highly inspired or directly copied from other sources.
Those sources are listed above at "Sources-Attributions". Wikizine.org is published by [[meta:user:Walter]]. Content is available under Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Choosing a Content Management System in 2011

2011-09-07T04:20:43+00:00

Technology is changing so rapidly that choosing what new media tools to teach in J-school is no easy task. This is even tougher with publishing software, where a whole semester’s work hinges on selecting the correct content management system. It used to be that raw HTML, Dreamweaver and FTP were the only tools you needed, but everything has changed with the advent of many top notch open source content management systems.

So the question is, what CMS should I teach in the journalism classroom?

I’ve used the “big three” of Drupal, WordPress and Joomla in the classroom setting and each one has its positives. My brief take: the more you think you need to “graduate” from WordPress to something more sophisticated, it keeps getting better and more impressive. Drupal’s best for its community plumbing and customization, while Joomla has sophisticated and mature front-page layout features. Decide which one’s the most important for your project.

At the University of Southern California, for beginning and advanced classes, I’ve stuck with WordPress for most projects, with many of the plugins and themes suitable for most tasks. This is not to say Drupal and Joomla don’t have their appropriate roles, but WordPress is the Willys Jeep of the CMS world — you keep finding it does more and more things well.

But for those who want to dive deeper, there are lots of reasons to consider Drupal and Joomla:

Usability. From an administration viewpoint, WordPress has practically obviated the need for FTP and requiring shell/command line access for maintenance and customization. This is no small feat, as this makes training much easier, while keeping systems more secure. Don’t underestimate the headache in having to teach folks FTP and UNIX basics.

Scalability. Joomla and Drupal were built from the ground up with the ability to gracefully degrade their performance. That is, if the load on a server gets too much, they can automatically shut off intensive features so visitors can at least read the site quickly. If you think that you may need this capability, take a long look at these two.

Community plumbing. This is where Drupal shines, in that it’s a flexible system for building community-oriented features, like collaborative filtering, and even e-commerce. With little effort, you can create policies that allow your audience to each have their own blog streams and allow folks to collaboratively rank content up/down. Think DailyKOS or Digg. In 2004, I taught a class with Dan Gillmor and used Drupal to have get students to create a community blog site to gather contributions from the community. Only Drupal could have done it so easily.
http://www.cyberjournalist.net/chatter-garden-new-hong-kong-online-community-news-site/

Layout and Customization. Joomla has some nice “front page” features right out of the box. I used it in a 2005 project where students covered the WTO Ministerial conference in Hong Kong. You could reshuffle and re-rank stories quickly that re-flowed the front page 3-column layout in a snap.
http://www.thestandard.com.hk/news_print.asp?art_id=8309&sid=5982453

User roles and workflow. Joomla and Drupal have better support for “workflow” and multiple user roles if you need to have a draft-review-publish cycle with different type of editors. (In recent years, though, WordPress MU and other extensions have made WordPress similarly capable in this area).

Themes and extensions. It’s hard to out-do WordPress in this area which has perhaps *too* many to choose from. Drupal sports a number of firms that specialize in customization and programming. In terms of numbers, Joomla is more popular that Drupal though there are many high-end, high-profile sites out there that help boost Drupal’s profile beyond the raw numbers.

We are spoiled for choice and that’s a good thing. Eager to hear how other schools have used these CMS’es.

[This post originally appeared as a response to the ONA Educators group on Facebook.]

A piece of friendly advise from Siebrand!

2011-09-03T13:01:40+00:00

Howdy! It’s been a while since my last post. Today, I had a few chat with one of the heavily involved user on the BetaWiki (translatewiki) this evening. I was just asking him for some friendly advise regarding my disappearence on the Wiki’s projects nowadays. What he told me was a trully remarkable. It’s not so bad if I’m sharing it with you guys.

It was like this:

[2:47:04 PM] Muddyb Blast…: Hoi, mate.. I got a single question:

I do not know why I lost an interest on Wiki’s projects nowadays… Since you’re an expert on this projects, there is anything you can tell me (perhaps) could make me back regularly on the Wikipedia? Just a piece of friendly advice.

“”Muddyb Blast…: Oh, if you have a time, please!

“Siebrand Mazeland: hey :0
Siebrand Mazeland: great to hear from you.
Siebrand Mazeland: I think the great thing about Wikimedia projects in general is that there is so much to be done, and that there are so many areas of interest to explore, you literally will never be done!

Siebrand Mazeland: So…

Siebrand Mazeland: What are your interests in general?

Siebrand Mazeland: Content creation, content organising, administration, community management, development, translation, localisation, …?

Siebrand Mazeland: Then there are the Wikimedia chapters; the country organisations, where you can work together with people in real life.
Siebrand Mazeland: You can organise meetings, conferences, run programs, be a Wikimedia Ambassador, be on the board of a chapter, ..

“”Muddyb Blast…: I think these could ring the bell on my mind:

Translation & Localisation

“”"”Siebrand Mazeland: ok.

Siebrand Mazeland: for translation there are 3 wiki communities that come to mind:

Siebrand Mazeland: * meta.wikimedia.org where you can translate things that are important for the communication of the communities (usually Wikimedia Foundation stuff)

Siebrand Mazeland: * commons.wikimedia.org: two things. Translate documentation and certain templates so that it is available in your languages. Second: there are multi-language descriptions. If you like looking at images, just find a category, and add new descriptions about images or translate existing descriptions.

Siebrand Mazeland: * translatewiki.net: we have a bunch of documentation that needs to be translated into as many languages as possible, including outr main page.

Siebrand Mazeland: Links:

:::Siebrand Mazeland: * https://translatewiki.net/w/i.php?title=Special:Translate&group=page-0-all (all transltewiki translatable pages)

Siebrand Mazeland: * https://translatewiki.net/w/i.php?title=Special%3ATranslate&task=untranslated&group=wiki-twn-mainpage (translatewiki main page)
[2:56:08 PM | Edited 2:56:23 PM] Siebrand Mazeland: * http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Translation (this also covers content translation, of course, which I forgot to mention)

Siebrand Mazeland: * http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Localization (Commons localisation and translation)

:::Siebrand Mazeland: And then, *drumroll*!

Siebrand Mazeland: HTTPS://TRANSLATEWIKI.NET
Siebrand Mazeland:

Siebrand Mazeland: Enough translation work there to keep you busy for months full time.

“Muddyb Blast…: You’re so nice, Brand! Will have to choose some links and try my best on them.. Especially Wikimedia Commons and TranslateWiki! Enough said and thanks for a wonderful advice!

Siebrand Mazeland: We support 20 different free and open source products now, so you should be able to find a project that you can be enthousiastic about making available in your language. An overview is at https://translatewiki.net (the bottom part of our main page)

Siebrand Mazeland: No problem.

Siebrand Mazeland: My last request to you. If I recall correctly, you are a blogger, too.

::::::Muddyb Blast…: hahaha

Siebrand Mazeland: Maybe you can rewrite this chat into a blog post?

Muddyb Blast…: Yes, of-course!

Siebrand Mazeland: That would be great.
[3:00:46 PM] Muddyb Blast…: Right away!
[3:00:58 PM] Siebrand Mazeland: I just dumped my brain here, and it’s wonderful if you can make it a comprehensive “Opportunities for translation and localisation in the Wikimedia landscape” post.

That is how the story ends. The guy is prodigy, believe me. I did not think if he would provide a good advise like that one… Now I have to stay put and see what I can do on the projects which I’ve committed myself as will give contributions.

Sincerely,

Muddyb