[FM Discuss] wikimania and foo report # 1

[xtine]

Hey Adam,

Thanks so much for your thorough review. I really enjoyed Mayo's list  
- will flag this for future citations.

In regards to letting people know when and what kind of work needs  
contributions on FM - What if when a user signs up for a log-in at FM  
they gave the system access to their blogs or facebook pages? FM could  
comb through material we are contributing on other platforms for  
keywords in order to "know" what kind of information we may feel  
comfortable with as contributors and send automatic alerts to the  
user. If users can rate those alerts, the system gets better at  
sending them. Just a thought. As not-a-programmer, I don't really know  
what I'm talking about...but sometimes the dreamers can dig up  
something that was almost there anyhow.

Best,
x

On Aug 31, 2009, at 7:18 AM, adam hyde wrote:

> hi,
>
> I have just attended Wikimaia and foocamp to represent FM. Heres part
> one of a report to say what I got up to and what i learned/thought...
>
> So, it took a while to get to Buenos Aires. I had booked wierd tickets
> since I was needing to be in San Francisco for foocamp immediately
> after. So the result was, that I flew Berlin->Washington->San
> Francisco->Houston->Buenos Aires. It took about two days (with a 16  
> hour
> wait in San Francisco. A bit mad, but there was very little choice.
> Actually I had almost decided not to come except at the last minute  
> the
> WIkimedia Foundation (via Erik Moeller) offered to pay for my
> flight...cool....this meant I could go, which was fortunate as I had
> also a presentation scheduled as part of a panel on Open Publishing.
>
> Finally I arrived in BA, swine flu capital of the world.I expected to
> see everyone wearing masks, but I think the whole time I was in BA  
> there
> was only one person with a mask. Apparently the real risky month was
> July, and recently the government put up posters throughout the city
> congratulating the people of BA for helping get rid of the flu...
>
> I got a taxi to the Hotel Baun. If anyone has read Naomi Kleins No  
> Logo,
> you will know a little about the history of this hotel. Essentially  
> the
> hotel went bankrupt in the 90s and the workers, who needed the work,
> just took it over and ran it. Kind of like squatting a commercial
> organisation. Just 2 months ago the workers collective purchased the
> hotel. Quite a story. The hotel was real 70s with light fittings that
> would have sold for 200 euro in any Berlin second hand store...but  
> here
> everything was falling apart, and faded, but it all just added to the
> atmosphere...a very cool hotel, I highly recommend it if you are  
> ever in
> BA.
>
> Since I arrived mid morning I already missed the Richard Stallman
> presentation. He did two, the day before he did a free one for the  
> local
> community and apparently there was a queue lining up around the  
> block to
> see him. The wikimania conference was relatively expensive for locals,
> and I would say I saw much less local attendance than in the Egypt and
> Taiwan Wikimanias. Apparently the presentations were the same, but  
> there
> was some controversy with Richard Stallman yelling at some audience
> members. I didnt see it so I dont know what happened. I do know that
> when I arrived he was still there and so he asked for a meeting with
> anyone that wants to discuss the Wikipedia "gnu/linux" controversy.
> Apparently there is an issue with Wikipedia, in that there is no  
> policy
> on how to name the Operating System based on the Linux kernel, which
> simultaneously has GNU tools. The FSF wants to call it "gnu/linux" in
> recognition of the free tools developed and provided for the OS by
> gnu.org. However...there are some that disagree and so there seems  
> to be
> pointless edit wars in Wikipedia changing the name. I went to the
> discussion for about 10 minutes before deciding I needed more coffee
> before I could cope with such a pedantic (on boith sides) debate. Our
> policy on this, by the way, is that we dont have policies. I always  
> say
> to anyone from the FSF that they are welcome to edit as they like,  
> as is
> anyone else. Thankfully it hasnt resulted in edit wars as I think we  
> are
> still a little too small for this kind of thing to evolve.
>
> So, as a general overview I had the impression that there were fewer
> people here than the last two events. Also, the pricing was really  
> high
> for locals, so the crowd seemed to me to be very much the old school
> wikimanians that have been to the last 3-4 events.
>
> I first went to have a coffee, and then fronted up to the first  
> session
> which was a Wikipedia survey presented by Jan Philipp Schmidt. I was
> very surprised to find that this did not throw up any information that
> wasnt already widely known. The survey was looking to motivations for
> particpation etc, and it turned up very little that I could see of
> interest. The survey seemed also to be a little limited in terms of
> listed motivations - they had left 'having fun' (or similar) off the
> list of motivators...seemed a bit thin to me.
>
> What was interesting was something that would reoccur throughout the
> event, and this was the issue about the number of editors. Although
> wikipedia has 300 million unique readers a month, there number of
> editors that do extensive editing has leveled off - to about 100,000  
> and
> has stayed at this level for about 2-3 years. This fact came back time
> and time again, and it seems that it is something of concern to the
> Wikimedia Foundation.
>
> In the meantime, the survey highlighted a few other mildy interesting
> facts. The first is that 54% of wikipedia non-contributors in the  
> survey
> believe they don't know enough about any topics to contribute to
> wikipedia. The other (related) issue is that almost 25% of the same
> group don't feel comfortable editing other peoples work.
>
> Of this group also, and this I found not surprising but still very
> interesting - almost 41% said they would contribute if they knew there
> was a specific topic that needed their input. I find this  
> interesting as
> I think this is also something FLOSS Manuals should be thinking  
> about -
> if you register with FM, how do you know what needs to be done? At  
> this
> stage, unless you post to the mailing list or find someone in the chat
> room, you don't know what is needed. We have tried a few tools to  
> remedy
> this but so far we haven't really utilised them effectively. I think  
> we
> could do more experimentation with this, and we might also try some  
> new
> tools in the forthcoming Booki platform.
>
> Apart from these issues, the survey was relatively uninteresting.
>
> Next I saw Mayo Fuster Morell presenting on some research she had done
> on the Governance of Digital Commons.
>
> There were a couple of interesting isues Mayo outlined, however I  
> didnt
> really see how she saw these issues relating to Governance or
> 'democracy' (a term she used repeatedly in conjunction with
> participation). Mayo sees participation as an ecosystem. I like this
> since this is how I have been talking about FLOSS Manuals for quite  
> some
> time, so I'm glad to hear someone else thinking on these terms. Mayo
> outlined the following on this topic (taken verbatim from notes she
> handed out, remembering that this is wikipedia - specific) :
> 1. What is important is that the system is open to participation,  
> but it
> is not expected that everybody participate and contribute equally.
> 2. Participation has multiple forms and degrees which are  
> integrated : a
> critical mass of active developers is essential to activate the  
> project
> and maintain the content; weak cooperation enriches the system and
> facilitates reaching larger fields of information resources; and  
> lurker
> or non-participants provide value as audience or though unintended
> participation that improve the system.
> 3. Participation is decentralised and asynchronous
> 4. Participation is in public
> 5. Participation is autonomous in the sense that each person decides  
> on
> which level of commitment they want to adopt and on what aspects they
> want to contribute
> 6. Participation is volunteering. Participation is not only  
> deliberation
> but implementation.
>
> There is nothing here apart from an outline of how participation works
> on an open platform, however I think its good just to see plain facts
> stated sometimes. I would add to the idea of an 'ecosystem' that there
> must be complimentary roles. In FM, for example, there are some that
> like to write a lot of original material, some that like to edit,  
> others
> who spell check etc etc. Often many of these roles are performed by  
> the
> one person, but they are more often shared of course.
>
> Alongside this Mayo discussed the role that the owners of the  
> technology
> plays in the participatory process. I think she was interested in
> looking at the role that technology played in a 'democratic
> participative' process. For me, any talk of technology and democracy,
> with regard to participatory processes like wikipedia, gets me a  
> little
> mad. I think Mayo, for example, might be questioning if there is
> egalitarian opportunities to contribute under a technical construct
> which is owned or provided by an organisation like the Wikimedia
> Foundation. Equal access to people who are already online and want to
> contribute to wikipedia does not at any point seem to me to have a
> relationship to anything I would think of as a democratic  
> process...but
> thats my little itch...anyways, on this point Mayo examined what role
> the technology provider (the Wikimedia Foundation) had with the  
> various
> communities that use the platform. Again, verbatim from here notes,  
> Mayo
> believes there are 5 main states :
> 1. The Foundation as an adult protector of the community
> 2. Foundation as leader
> 3. Foundation as any other project which take care of issues  
> required to
> fulfill the mission
> 4. Foundation is a community tool with a voice
> 5. Foundation as a 'vampire'
>
> Mayo didn't suggest which perception of the Foundation was dominant.  
> In
> essence, apart from the unclear but interesting mention of Wikipedia  
> as
> an ecosystem, this was not such an interesting talk either. However,
> what I was starting to understand, is that there seemed to me to be a
> lot more internal pondering about the state of Wikipedia in this years
> wikimania...the theme continued as the event progressed.
>
> Erik Moeller was the next one I saw. Erik is the deputy chair of the
> Wikimedia Foundation, he was the first person I met from the Wikimedia
> Foundation Board when i went to the event in 2007. At that point Erik
> was focused on print on demand, and we had a lot to talk about. Since
> then Erik has been following FM a little, and it was Erik who found  
> the
> money from the Foundation to pay for my flight to Buenos Aires. Erik
> seems to me to be a very clear voice of reason about the position of
> Wikipedia (I have seen him present twice on this topic this year and  
> he
> has always been very clear and interesting).
>
> Erik started with discussing that there are 330 million visitors a  
> month
> to Wikipedia. Facebook by contrast has about 250 million accounts and
> 120 million daily logins. Again Erik brought up the issue that since  
> jan
> 2007, the number of contributors to Wikipedia has leveled off while  
> the
> audience continues to grow. There seems to be a leveling off of 90,000
> -100,000 people world wide that make more than 5 edits a month. Eriks
> point throughout the presentation was to ask why this number has been
> static for 2 years, and how is it possible to convert the audience  
> into
> contributors?
>
> So, it seems that in the early days of Wikipedia there were many  
> missing
> pages - these are the so called 'red link' pages...they are called  
> this
> because a link which does not yet have a page is colored red in
> wikipedia. So 'red links' are links to pages that do not exist yet.
> Together with the large number of red link pages, and that culturally
> there was, in the early days, no expectation for perfection (just
> particiption), and the initial empowerment of the "founder generation"
> lead to a huge growth in contributors. Notably, of course, the  
> number of
> contributors was much smaller but it grew very fast.
>
> If this was the condition when growth occurred, then what has changed?
> Well, first up, it might be that Wikipedia has actually reached
> saturation of the potential 'contributor' market. However, Erik  
> seems to
> think this is unlikely since there are many things that Wikipedia  
> could
> improve that may convert audience into contributors. What has changed
> since the early days Erik put down to the following :
> 1. the markup is too complex
> 2. there are other venues for contributing online
> 3. there are more rules, and the rules are harder
> 4. the content is more complete
>
> There was significant emphasis on Wikipedia being 'unfriendly' by Erik
> and also by Jimmy Wales (the founder of Wikipedia) in his key note the
> next day. It seems they are very concerned with new contributors being
> deterred when contributions do not conform to Wikipedia rules and are
> deleted or they get unfriendly notices. Every contribution now, it
> seems, is regulated.
>
> So...Erik has some strategies for moving forward, they come down to  
> the
> following :
> 1. Easy fixes
> * add a WYSIWYG editor (2 years ago the wikimedia commuity seemed to  
> me
> to be very much against this but now its a hot topic)
> * ease the workflow for uploading content
> * improve general usability (see http://usability.wikimedia.org)
> * clean up some governance issues
>
> 2. Add microtransaction features
> * allow the annotation of images
> * enable easy paragraph editing
> * enable article review and rating
> * make reporting problems easy and friendly
> * add commenting features
>
> 3. New collaborative opportunities
> * check a source
> * draw a picture
> * add a quiz
> * translate an article
> * edit or transcribe a video
> * goto an event
> * record spoken versions
>
> 4. Highlight whats possible
> * context specific social invitations
> * content specific invitations
> * build a social component
>
> 5. Physical spaces
> * become a social movement
> * buy or rent spaces
>
>
> So...this was a very interesting presentation...I will write a little
> more about this, but for now this is the end of the first part of my
> report as I need to go return the rental car :)
>
> adam
>
>
>
> -- 
> Adam Hyde
> Founder FLOSS Manuals
> German mobile : + 49 15 2230 54563
> Email : adam at flossmanuals.net
> irc: irc.freenode.net #flossmanuals
>
> "Free manuals for free software"
> http://www.flossmanuals.net/about
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Discuss mailing list
> Discuss at lists.flossmanuals.net
> http://lists.flossmanuals.net/listinfo.cgi/discuss-flossmanuals.net