RecentChangesCamp 2009, international wiki conference

Building the schedule at RecentChangesCamp 2008

In the McCarthy era, American citizens were jailed for the crime of being “collaborators” or “informers.”

Today, even multi-million dollar companies are tripping over themselves trying to figure out how to foster better collaboration and manage information more effectively.

How times have changed! (Hat tip to Jeremiah for the metaphor.)

Wiki technology and culture is at the core of how our society is making that transition. Many of us form and join new communities on a regular basis, using wikis and other collaborative Internet tools.

But what’s a community without handshakes, shared meals, beer and wine, or a spontaneous game of catch?

The international wiki community gathers once a year for an “unconference” called RecentChangesCamp. It’s free. That has two meanings: it costs no money and it liberates your soul.

If you’re part of the evolving world of online collaboration, we need you at the 2009 RecentChangesCamp. We need you to lead a discussion, or participate in one. Or to set up the table with nametags or clean up a spilled drink. We’re finding better ways to collaborate online, and to do that, we need to get together in person once in a while!

RecentChangesCamp will be held at Portland (Oregon) State University, the weekend of February 20–22. Or come early if you want, and get those synapses warmed up at Ignite Portland!

Sign up on our wiki (based on the innovative Wagn software). Or view (or edit!) our online invitation. But above all — COME ON DOWN!!

Thanks to AboutUs, WikiHow, and Portland State University for their generous contributions to make this conference possible!

 

WikiProject Oregon at Day On, Not Day Off

This is just a quick notice for Oregonians that members of WikiProject Oregon will be at CubeSpace in Portland to help as best they can with Geeks Day On.

Day On connects nonprofit organizations that need advice and assistance with volunteers who are ready to help. Today’s inaugural project is Geeks Day On, a day of service during MLK Day, Monday, January 19, 2009 where geeks will offer free technology and Internet communications advice and assistance to nonprofit organizations.

Learn more about how you can get help or volunteer during Geeks Day On.

Update:

The wiki crew arrived somewhat late to Geeks Day On, but since we’re familiar with the MediaWiki-style editing of the site and there’s no news coverage to verify a Wikipedia article with (yet!), we built DayOn.org their own AboutUs page.

 

Mini 2008 Recap – DYKs

The power of trivia exists in many ways on Wikipedia. One way, trivia about obscure topics, is something Wikipedia is well known for with articles about various cartoon characters and the like. Another way is via trivia within articles about standard topics such as information about some celebrity eating at a cafe in Small Town, USA. This type of trivia is discouraged, often deleted, and often gets re-added later. But we’re trying to write an encyclopedia, so technically it shouldn’t be in the pedia.

Another, and encouraged form or trivia, is through the Did You Know program that encourages article creation and massive expansion with the reward of featuring the article on Wikipedia’s main page. Trivia is encouraged via the “hook” that is usually an interesting (i.e. trivial) bit from the article. Although a spot on the main page is not in the class of honors such as a Nobel Prize, it is a nice reward, and leads to many extra page views for the article. For instance the Alvin T. Smith House in Forest Grove was featured last March and received 5,000 hits the day it was featured on the main page, which is a bit more than the 5-10 per day it usually gets.

Last year, WikiProject Oregon had 153 DYKs, or just under one every two days. That’s pretty good, and a decent increase from 2007. This year, my hope is we can get it to once every other day, or about 183. Right now, through 18 days we 10, so we are on pace.

 

Brion is Busy: two new MediaWiki features we noticed at WikiProject Oregon

With 2009 underway, Brion Vibber and the rest of the great staff developers of MediaWiki at the Wikimedia Foundation have put their noses to the grindstone once again, rolling out one minor but distinctive feature on Wikipedia and testing another very significant one.

It’s the little things that make a difference

The first is the addition of friendlyclock. Once only a part of Friendly, an optional collection of JavaScripts that many Wikipedians use to automate common editing tasks, friendlyclock is a simple feature that adds an updating UTC clock in the top right-hand corner of the screen next to the usual links for logged in editors. Clicking it also acts as a purge of your page cache.

on the far right

Friendlyclock may not sound so exciting, but once you spend even an hour or two editing, you’ll come to appreciate having both of those features handy. In fact, I’ve had a JS gadget enabled that does the exact same thing for months now. It’s just this kind of incremental but gratifying change to the software that shows how sensitive Brion and the Wikimedia Foundation has been to the needs of the core community over the years.

Important new functionality.

The second MediaWiki addition is a full extension that Brion announced Friday. Currently in beta on test.wikipedia.org, the aptly named Drafts extension is a serious advance in MediaWiki and wiki software in general.

It doesn't get much easier than this.

At least once, everyone has written an extensive draft only to see it disappear when human error, a browser crash or saving problems cause you lose all your hard work. In fact, several months ago I saw this exact experience happen to wiki inventor Ward Cunningham when using a MediaWiki installation.

Needless to say, an inability to save drafts in a wiki without a live version being saved as well has been frustrating at times. A lot of other great platforms (such as WordPress) have drafts capability built in already. But as far as I know, there is no wiki engine with native drafts functionality.

From some test edits to the Sandbox I made, I can tell that drafts is a delightfully AJAXy addition to the ecosystem of MediaWiki extensions. Drafts can be saved via an easily accessible button and are saved every 120 seconds regardless. Not only can you save and view drafts from a particular page, but you get a special list of all your drafts.

I found the interface for viewing saved drafts extremely intuitive.

When it comes to wiki software, and MediaWiki in particular, I tend to be something of a stick in the mud. I’m used to MediaWiki and I like it just fine the way it is, thanks. But Drafts is one extension that I think is inarguably useful, and makes up for a key weakness in wiki software to date.

 

Hurray, it’s Wikipedia Day! The World’s 8th Most Popular Website Turns 8.

Every year on the 15th of January, Wikipedians of all stripes stop for a moment to celebrate Wikipedia Day, the anniversary of the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit going public. This time around, the eighth most popular website in the world turns eight, and somehow it just feels extra special.

We’ve had our fair share of scandals and trolls still haunting the environs, but in retrospect, it’s been an unthinkably brilliant year for the free encyclopedia. Why am I so excited? Let me count the ways. Eight in fact…

1. We didn’t reach another full million like in 2007, but we have nearly  2.7 million articles. At the current rate of increase, we should have our three millionth article well before the end of ‘09.
2. You can now be knighted for editing Wikipedia. Seriously. Florence Devouard, who rose from within the ranks of everyday contributors to become the Chair of our Board of Trustees, was awarded the French National Order of Merit by President Sarkozy in May.
3. In middle of a total economic meltdown, 125,000 people still found Wikipedia valuable enough to donate more than six million dollars.
4. In addition to the six million dollars Wikipedia raised to cover operating costs, we received a special grant from the Stanton Foundation of $890,000 to make it easier for anyone to edit.
5. Academics, who have either banned Wikipedia outright or simply ignored it in the past, are now engaging with us in new and interesting ways. A prime example are any scientists submitting work to RNA Biology, who must now simultaneously publish in Wikipedia.
6. Educators aren’t just softening to Wikipedia, they’re actually having their students help write it in droves. Both higher and lower education has been working in Wikipedia for a while, but 2008 was a landmark year. Case in point: a University of British Columbia project contributed the 2,000th Featured Article (our best peer-reviewed work), in addition to hundreds of other great articles written by students at the request of profs.
7. The worst scandal about founder Jimmy Wales was some boring garbage about his ex-girlfriend. It would seem people still respect the man enough for his personal appeal to mean something come fundraising time, and to read his CNN editorial with Andrea Weckerle about Obama’s CTO.  Either way, if your founder isn’t killing everyone’s confidence by stepping down due to failing health, you’re in good shape (no pun intended).
8. We’re not even close to being done. Normally, volunteers might be reluctant to admit that their mission is perpetually incomplete, but (in case you hadn’t noticed) Wikipedia is different. Not only are 10 million pages in 260 languages not enough to satiate our geeky lust for information, but we admit from the start that Wikipedia will never be finished. An encyclopedia already so big that you could never finish it, but still not complete? Now that’s exciting. Happy birthday Wikipedia, and here’s to another productive year ahead.

 

Learn to blog at a free workshop!

Do you want to set up your own blog — or contribute to a group blog (like this one, perhaps) — but don’t know where to start? If you’re in Portland, there’s a free seminar this Saturday afternoon that will help you get up to speed!

The Portland Beer and Blog community is hosting “End Bloglessness” at CubeSpace, on Saturday afternoon, January 10. Click the link for all the details!

 

Crafting a more nuanced approach to image licensing

Lyza Danger Gardner contributed this image, from a Fred Meyer supermarket, to Wikipedia.

 Last night, I had two separate conversations (by coincidence) with mostly-amateur photographers Lyza and Cam, who want to contribute images to Wikipedia.

Both were driven by a desire to contribute to a common repository of knowledge and beauty, and both were frustrated by Wikipedia’s requirement that their contributions be made available for commercial use.

This is not a new debate, but it’s one worth delving into a bit.

The key befuddlement, of course, is this: why would Wikipedia (and related Wikimedia Foundation projects), which is a non-profit venture both in spirit and its technical classification, require that photographers release their property for unlimited commercial use?

The answer appears to date back to the Wikimedia Foundation’s decision to use the GFDL as its basic license. I haven’t been able to uncover the deliberation that led to that decision, but the reason is generally this: we’re seeking to create an encyclopedia that can be freely republished, in many formats and with many variations, so that it can be available to an enormous number of people in an enormous number of ways.

For instance, I just installed a neat program called Quickpedia on my new cell phone. This program fills a need that Wikipedia itself hasn’t, and possibly never will: it makes it really easy to browse Wikipedia articles on my mobile phone. But the program contains advertising, making it a commercial enterprise.

If Wikipedia allowed photographers to upload content that doesn’t permit commercial use, that would mean programs like this couldn’t exist; or at least, it would massively increase the complexity of making such a program, and force the developers to create an incomplete version of Wikipedia, absent of any photos that don’t permit commercial use.

I brought this up to Lyza; she explained that as far as she’s concerned, programs like Quickpedia are Wikipedia; she’d be happy to use a license, if it were available, that permitted uses like that, but that disallow people making commercial products (advertising, calendars, etc.) that are completely unrelated to Wikipedia.

So, my question is this: is there a way for the copyleft geeks and attorneys of our community to craft a license that hews closely to Lyza’s stated desires?

 

Wikisource: meet the redheaded stepchild

As you probably know, the Wikimedia Foundation hosts several wiki-based projects in addition to the wildly popular Wikipedia. None of them (with the possible exception of Commons, a free media repository) has an editing community that’s nearly as active as Wikipedia; however, there’s high-quality work going on all over the place.

One of my personal favorites is Wikisource. This site serves as a repository for historical documents. Unlike the other projects, Wikisource editors don’t create content, but instead gather it from existing sources, and update its formatting to make it more web-friendly. Why is this such a good thing? Well, let me give you an example:

My biggest project on Wikisource, currently underway, has been “wikifying” the Oregon Constitution. Wikipedia editor Athelwulf has set a high standard for making a clear presentation of this foundational document.

The Constitution is, of course, online on a couple of different State web sites; but it’s presented in ways that scream “best of the web, circa 1995.” The formatting makes it very difficult to read lists; there are few if any web links to clarify concepts, or indicate which ballot measures approve certain amendments; and numerous other problems make it much less useful than it should be.

But no matter. With Wikisource—and because the Constitution is in the public domain, owned by the people of Oregon—it’s in our power to build a better resource. In time, I hope this will set the standard for the state’s presentation of this vital document. Or if not, perhaps Wikisource will become a core resource for law students, legislative aides, historians, and others all over the state.

Like what you see? Please help us finish the project! Article I (the Bill of Rights) is more or less complete, but most of the others still need a lot of work.

 

Snowed in? Join the Collaboration of the Week.

It's so weird to see these in Portland, that people come out of their homes in below-freezing temps. to take photos of them.

It has been a banner year for the Collaboration of the Week at WikiProject Oregon.

With 32 seven-day collaborations, more than 60 articles have been worked on. There have been nearly a dozen Did You Know? entries from COTW appear on the front page of Wikipedia, and two Good Articles have been produced. Now, you have a chance to participate in one of the last Collaborations of 2008.

For Portland residents in particular, the weather these past weeks has been pretty unusual in Oregon. With freezing rain and much more snow than we’re used to, it seemed like the perfect time to have fun with Snow Bunny, the article for a recreation area on the south face of Mt. Hood. We’re also continuing to improve WikiProject Oregon’s already pretty spectacular political coverage with a focus on Margaret Carter, a Democratic member of the Oregon State Senate.

Please join us on improving these articles however you can. Even just a quick stop by to fix a typo or make discussion page suggestion would be a big help to all Oregonians. In the meantime, stay warm and dry!

 

Decision ‘08 … on Wikipedia

Wikipedia is a cooperative project run on consensus, not voting. Everyday decisions about the content of articles and other activity is left up to whomever is interested in participating. But while we are neither a democracy nor a bureaucracy, we do hold semi-formal elections for a handful of key positions within the community.

One of these is the Arbitration Committee (called ArbCom for short). Today, the December 2008 elections for the Committee ended with the appointment of ten new members by Jimmy Wales.

For those not familiar with it already, ArbCom is a panel of users (currently about 17) who together make binding decisions to resolve disputes on Wikipedia. They are the absolute last resort in the dispute resolution process, and even have the power to overturn decisions by our founder. For WikiProject Oregon in-specific, we are proud to say that no conflict within our project has ever had to be resolved by ArbCom.

Please welcome these new members of the Committee, and give them the big thanks they deserve for pledging their time to make sure that the biggest encyclopedia in history functions smoothly. I’ve listed them below according to the vote tally. Feel free to peruse their candidacy statements to get a feel for what they’ll bring to the job.

1. Casliber
2. Risker
3. Roger Davies
4. Cool Hand Luke
5. Rlevse
6. Jayvdb
7. Vassyana
8. Carcaroth
9. Wizardman
10. Coren