After a brief walk through the outer parts of Berlin’s Leichterfelde West, I arrived at the Freie Universitat Berlin for day one of the Wikipedia Academy 2012, Germany. The day was under way with a series of three workshops. I attended the Wikipedia Data Analysis for Researchers session with Felipe Ortega. Not sure why, but lately I seem to be surrounding myself with programming/data analysis types, and this room was full of those. Coming from an ethnography background, I find it fascinating to see what computation scientists are doing with data sets – if the two are combined, magic. Key stuff to take away (data analysis tools):
- FLOSS is the standard open source brand in knowledge used in Europe
- Gsyc
- Toolserver.org
- github.org (query: WikiDAT)
- WikiDashboard app
- Wikistats
- WMF Labs Report Cards
- Wikitrust
- RStudio – very, very cool
Wikipedia Academy Welcoming Address
We had the official welcome in the next session, which provided us with a background on the two supporting institutions: The Alex von Humbolt Institute for Internet and Society, and Freie Institute Berlin. We were also provoked to think about how our disciplines might help address the core problems of Wikipedia: a gender skew, and unhealthy community processes. I’d like to think I can offer something to this conversation through my presentation tomorrow morning.
Keynote address by Benjamin “Mako” Hill, take away points:
- Analysing the failures also helps in addressing not so much how Wikipedia is successful, but why
- How tall is Ken Masters in real life
- If collaborativeness is important in the Social Sciences, Wikipedia is not very collaborative based on the median contributors
- His hypothesis for Wikipedia’s success is based on four areas: built around a familiar product, focussed on substantive development instead of technology, low transaction costs (drive by participation), and one other point I missed because of Twitter (!)
The following “Speed Geeking” session was fun. The idea, based on speed dating, was to place several stations of Wikipedia tools/concepts/ideas in a room and for each participant to walk around the room having three minutes with each participant. The stations included:- AKAWiki
- Wikipedia Deutschland
- Reflecting Knowledge Diversity – the Render Project
- Wikidata project
- Toolserver.org -
- VroniPlagWiki – plagerism tool
- RStudio – Rcmdr,
- Wikipedia in residence – leadership, admin, a clear management hierarchy , influence on policy
- Wikipedia mapping project
I had a particular interest in the Wikipedia in Residence station as it had a similar idea that aligns with the cultural intermediary idea I am presenting tomorrow – is Wikipedia really a free/flat organisation?
Lastly we had the final sessions of the day:
The Power of Wikipedia – Legitimacy and Territorial Control, Iolanda Pensa
- Wikipedia within Africa – Including cultural institutions into the Africanisation of Wikipedia
- National building through wiki chapters
- Education – and the impact of WIkipedia to build a strong nation state is important
- The link with the territory – chapters that are linked to particular areas
- Collaboration within the GLAM sector, requires an agreement most times
- Users tend to upload content relative to their region – is this good? Or does this challenge the open nature of Wikipedia – stifling development
- Wikipedia is negotiating with nations for the potential of free culture
- Culture as a tool for international interaction
Emima Sendijarevic – Wikipedia as Object of Study
- We normally study Wikipedia as a source of content, publicity tool, community of free labours, bureaucracy
- It isn’t studied in relation to its relationship with Google
- Wikipedia is often maintained by bots
- 39% of all adding to Wikipedia are made by bots (2008), realistically 19%
- Dependency of language on bots
- Wikipedia as cultural reference
- The Serbian war, represented in different ways depending on where the article is written – obvious tension between Bosnian and Serbian entries – political framing
- Wikipedia as a network reference and cultural reference
Thomas Petzold – Geo-linguistic Bursts: The Hidden Pattern Behind Wikipedia’s Globally Distributed, yet locally specific knowledge distribution (very good, potential cross over here)
- Concept that could become a framework
- Bursts – tense flashes of energies
- Perhaps bursts can predict human behaviour,
- Long period of rest followed by intense activity
- Apply this to Wikipedia
- Wikipedia fails to replicate itself – a problem, perhaps addressed through bursts
- Growth (success) and slowing (failure)
- Emptiness (anticipation) and activity
- It could be used for strategy and policy development on wikipedia
- Potential for using this on other projects not just Wikipedia
Panel discussion: Researchers and the researched: A difficult relationship
- Scientists are used to owning their ideas, this is problematic when publishing their work on Wiki
- Scientists are not really sure what it is all about
- Crucial to be a Wikipedian first, researcher after
- Smithsion has 19 different museums
- Buzzwords are significant within the research of Wikipedia – peer production, open platforms etc
- Wikipedians don’t like being “lab rats” – perhaps there are other ways of researching them? (I’d like to think ethnographic action research could be useful here)
I’m hoping to address some of these points raised in this last session during my presentation tomorrow.
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