Page 40 – WMUK

A model for digital democracy

This post was written by Stevie Benton, Wikimedia UK’s head of external relations, was originally published on the Demos blog here

A sense that all citizens of a state have a stake, and a say, in the process of government is in some ways crucial to our sense of identity as citizens. It is something that history suggests we as a nation are both proud and protective of. People fought and died for the rights and responsibilities offered by democracy.

But there is something of a disconnect between the democratic process as it exists and the levels of public engagement with that process that democracy demands in order to be truly representative. There is more to a fully functional, healthy democracy than placing an X in a box on election day.

If the latest from the Hansard Society is any measure, democracy in the UK is in trouble. However, for quite some time there has been an expectation that the internet would welcome a new era of mass participation in the democratic process. Digital democracy is an idea which has been widely discussed, but successful implementation on any large scale remains elusive.

Some international initiatives have proved to be worthwhile, particularly when it comes to politicians and governments increasing their openness and transparency: one example being the Open Government Partnership. The challenge is finding ways to engage with large numbers of citizens in a meaningful way which gives them real power and influence over policy and legislation away from the ballot box.

This is where the wiki model can lend a hand. Wikipedia is the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. In just over 13 years it has grown exponentially and now boasts over 4.5 million articles in English, and more than 31 million articles in total across more than 280 languages. Behind the articles there is a vast community of people who write and edit content, share openly licensed images and – the area that’s most interesting in this context – write and enact policy.

Carl Miller, Research Director of The Centre for the Analysis of Social Media (CASM) at Demos, contacted Wikimedia UK to draw our attention to a recent call for evidence from the Speaker of the House of Commons relating to digital democracy, which the Speaker himself discussed at an event last night.

We wondered if the community-driven ethos of Wikipedia could be replicated in a way that could make a meaningful contribution to the digital democracy landscape. (By the way, if you have an interest in this topic then Carl’s recent piece for Wired is a must-read.)

Wikipedia is by no means a democracy. It is not driven by a concept of the most popular idea, or the most popular position, being accepted, either as content or as policy. Rather, it is a consensus-driven process which is open to all. It is rare for either a Wikipedia article, or a Wikipedia policy, to truly be finished. The idea is that all contributions build on those that came before.

Demos and Wikimedia UK want to see if this open, consensus-driven process can work when applied to digital democracy. We have now jointly embarked on an ongoing attempt to take the collective know-how and experience of Wikipedia editors – Wikipedians – and attempt to crowdsource a submission to the Speaker’s call for evidence.

While I’m unsure if this has been tried before, early indications are that this can work. At the time of writing there have been more than 50 edits made to the page and its linked talk page. The call is open for anyone who would like to get involved, and I’d encourage you to do so. Simply follow this link, click the edit button and edit the copy. You can also view, and participate in, the discussion which is helping to shape the evidence, which is here.

What I find personally exciting about this is that neither Wikimedia UK nor Demos know what the finished evidence will look like. Neither organisation is trying to influence the course of the evidence, beyond encouraging as wide a body of participation as possible. It will reflect the collective, distilled wisdom of the crowd – which to me, is the essence of democracy.

New Media Academy – a foray into Polish cultural institutions and Wikimedia projects

This post was written by Daria Cybulska, Wikimedia UK’s Programme Manager

Earlier this year I was invited to participate in a “New Media Academy” initiative run by a City Culture Institute in Gdańsk, Poland. The Academy is an ambitious two year programme with regular events which started in May 2014, aiming to raise awareness and skills of culture sector professionals in Poland around online education and engagement.

It focuses on new media and showing the audience how they can use it creatively in their work – topics planned include using blogs, storytelling, issues around public domain and copyright considerations, and of course Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia projects. The initiative is based on some projects already delivered by Medialab Gdańsk.

It’s the Wikipedia cooperation that I focused on in my afternoon workshop that took place on 29 May. The aim was to talk the group through possible models of cooperation with the Wikimedia movement, building up to the idea of hosting a Wikimedian in Residence. Being informed that the audience will be new to the topics, I had a somewhat tall order of explaining the idea behind openness, free licences, Wikipedia, GLAMwiki movement, and the residents.

The group was open to learning about these areas, with some real revelations along the way (“I can use the CC licensed images for free?”, “Wikipedia’s mission is similar to many cultural institutions’ aims!”, “I can see a whole history of contribution to an article?”). We worked through breaking down some of the resistance to Wikipedia (e.g. uncertainty about how incorrect content is dealt with), and looked at the positive aspiration of the project of making the sum of human knowledge available to all. During the brainstorm elements, the group was taken by the possibilities of various types of content being released and made available for use on Wikipedia. We have, however, felt that copyright considerations may be a big stumbling block in these ideas, which is why the copyright introduction session planned for 18 June was seen as a key one to attend.

One take away for me was that although many of the participants came from enthusiastic institutions who want to engage with their visitors, a focus on public engagement is yet to become an established trend in Polish cultural organisations. In many countries presenting Wikipedia as a way to reach out to wider audiences is received as a very powerful argument, and I feel in Poland institutions will progress towards such an approach.

You can see the presentation I used (with notes), together with the photos taken, here

Any cultural institutions in Poland interested to get involved with the Academy could find out more by visiting their website. The first port of contact to working with Wikimedia projects in the area would be the Wikimedia Polska organisation.

Wikimania fringe: Free culture weekend

This weekend sees the latest in the programme of fringe events leading up to Wikimania. The Free Culture Weekend takes place at The Barbican Centre, London.

The two-day event is open to all, but is especially suited to those who are digital artists and media creators, inventors and licensors, curators and archivists, lawyers and librarians, journalists and publishers, and anyone else interested in free culture and intellectual property.

The aim of the event is to gain greater understanding of open culture projects, to build closer ties between organisations and people interested in all aspects of open culture and to plan for future collaboration.

Day one, Saturday, is open for attendees to deliver talks about their open culture activities and how they relate to other open projects, ranging from 5 minutes to 20-30 minutes. Lightning talks can be held in reserve for unforeseen gaps in the programme.

Day two, Sunday, will have a focus on building and making digital tools, planning future projects, a session on funding applications and a “wikijam”.

Both of these events are free but please do register in advance. You can find more details here and registration is here.

Your Wikimania Needs You!

This blog post was written by John Cummings, Wikimania support at Wikimedia UK and Harry Mitchell, Wikimedia UK volunteer.

Wikimania 2014 is a 2000+ person conference, unconference, festival, meetup, workshop, hackathon, and party, spread over five days in August 2014, preceded and followed by fringe events. It’s the official annual event of the Wikimedia movement, where you’ll discover all kinds of projects that people are making with wikis and open content, as well as meet the community that produced the most famous wiki of all, Wikipedia!

Attending Wikimania

The main event itself is held from the 8–10 August in and around The Barbican Centre in London, UK. All are welcome, whether you’re an expert, enthusiast, beginner or just curious! Early Bird Registration is available until June 15th, Single day tickets are £30, full conference and hackday tickets are £55, click here to register.

There are also a number of fringe events that are free to attend:

7–8 June Free Culture Weekend (this coming weekend, places are still available)
21–22 June Future of Education Workshop
5–6 July Open Data Weekend
19–20 July Open Scholarship Weekend
Hackathon: 6–10 August 2014

There are a number of local Wikipedia meetups being organised locally, a member of the Wikimedia UK Wikimania team will be available at each one to answer questions.

Volunteering opportunities

There are many opportunities to get involved in Wikimania; we will need volunteers in the run-up to the conference and to help with the smooth running of Wikimania itself. For most tasks you don’t need to be a Wikipedia editor and you don’t need any experience – just a willingness to help! We need volunteers to:

Talk to the public about Wikipedia
Teach people to edit Wikipedia
Moderate sessions (making sure the sessions run smoothly)
Tweet about the day’s events and spread the word via other social media
Video sessions and help with any technical issues
Direct people to and around the venue and to be on-hand in the hotels
Meet and greet speakers
Assist attendees as they arrive into the UK
Talk to the media
Staff the registration desk
Other general tasks to help with the smooth-running of the conference.

For volunteering opportunities at Wikimania please sign up here, for questions contact hera@wikimanialondon.org

Scholarships are available

If you’re based in the UK, or you’re a British citizen living abroad, and you would like financial support to attend Wikimania, Wikimedia UK may be able to provide you with a scholarship to help with your registration fee, or with the costs of travel and/or accommodation. Scholarship applications are open until the 15th June. For more details, including how to apply, please see this section on the Wikimedia UK water cooler.

For questions about Wikimedia UK scholarships please contact katie.chan@wikimedia.org.uk

Social Machines Weekend

This post was written by Chris McKenna of the Wikimania support team

The Wikimania 2014 fringe programme kicked off with a successful first event on the 24 and 25 of May when the Barbican centre played host to a weekend of discussion about Social Machines.

The event featured a teleconference with Philippe Beaudette, the director of Community Advocacy at the Wikimedia Foundation.

Social machines are the interaction between humans and machines that produce output that would not be possible without both of them – Wikipedia is a large example. Discussions at the largely free-form event ranged over a broad variety of topics and included the granularity of Wikimedia projects and how both the whole and several portions can each be regarded as a social machine.

Also discussed were the many emergent aspects of Wikipedia – things that have organically grown up within and around the encyclopaedia rather than being planned. Examples include WikiProjects, the Signpost internal newspaper, chapters and thematic organisations, edit counters, Wikimedian associations such as inclusionists and deletionists, the various WikiFauna like trolls, gnomes and giants and real-word meetups.

Structure to the event was provided by the teleconferences with several key people in the Wikimedia Foundation:

Brandon Harris, Senior Designer
Philippe Beaudette, Head of Community Advocacy
Fabrice Florin, Product Manager
Jessie Wild, Global Learning & Evaluation
Aaron Halfaker, Resident Research Scientist

The thing that most sticks in my mind from the event came from Philippe’s introduction to his Community Advocacy department when he noted that they deal with around 60 threats from people to harm either themselves or others. While most of those are fortunately blatantly false, Wikipedia is responsible for directly and indirectly saving lives.

The rest of the fringe programme should be just as good, if not better, than this event so come along and get involved.

Connecting knowledge to power: the future of digital democracy in the UK

Wikimedia UK and Demos are encouraging Wikimedians to participate in an attempt to crowdsource a submission to a call for evidence on digital democracy from the Speaker of the House of Commons.

The Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, has established a Commission on Digital Democracy. It will report to Parliament in early 2015 with recommendations on how Parliament can use technology to better represent and engage with the electorate, make laws and hold the powerful to account. As part of their work, the Commission have issued a series of calls for evidence. These are open invitations for members of the public, either as individuals or groups, to submit responses to a series of questions. They have attracted responses from unions, academics, non-governmental institutions and private individuals. The first theme was ‘making laws in a digital age’, and the second on ‘digital scrutiny’. The Commission plans to shortly publish the final three themes.

There is a growing sense that the growth of the Internet has not paid the democratic dividends that it could. Turnout in formal political elections is steadily decreasing, and trust and support in the institutions and offices of mainstream political life are low and falling. Despite many innovative attempts from both within and outside of Government, the daily reality of democratic engagement for most people in the UK would be familiar to generations of British citizens who predate Facebook or email. The rise of the Internet has, broadly, done little to challenge concentrations of power or structures of unequal representation.

Demos is one of Britain’s leading cross-party think tank and it has an overarching mission to bring politics closer to people. They contacted Wikimedia UK to propose an experiment: can an online community be used to source a response to this call? Can the ethos, community and technology like that of Wikipedia be used to engage Wikipedians to come together and collaborate to create a reply? In particular, Carl Miller, Research Director of the Demos Centre for the Analysis of Social Media, wrote this piece for Wired in which he describes Wikipedia as a masterclass in digital democracy.

This conversation has led to what is an experimental attempt to do just that. In theory there are many lessons that any attempt to increase engagement with digital democracy can learn from Wikimedia projects, especially Wikipedia. These include the participatory nature of content development and the nature of content (and policy) being arrived at by consensus. Wikipedians are from a wide array of backgrounds and represent a broad spectrum of views. This could lend itself to effective drafting of the kind of evidence that the Speaker is looking for. Wikimedia UK and Demos would like to establish whether this is indeed the case. In particular, we are seeking answers to the following questions:

How can technology help Parliament and other agencies to scrutinise the work of government?
How can technology help citizens scrutinise the Government and the work of Parliament?
What kinds of data should Parliament and Government release to the public to make itself more open to outside scrutiny?

Everyone is encouraged to try to answer these questions collaboratively, in much the same way Wikipedia articles are approached – using the main page for content and talk page for discussion. Stevie Benton from Wikimedia UK and Carl Miller from Demos will happily answer any questions on the talk page but are equally happy to let the process take its course.

At this point there is no fixed deadline for evidence on the theme of digital scrutiny. However, the Speaker’s Commission will be publishing publishing a single call for evidence covering our last three themes (yet to be announced). The conversation and crowdsourced evidence will be reviewed at the end of June with a view to either continuing the process or submitting as is. If there is appetite among the community, and if the first attempt is successful, there may be further attempts to develop submissions to the later three themes.

At the end of the process Demos and Wikimedia UK will prepare a report on the process and the effectiveness of this kind of approach to crowdsourcing policy and evidence. This paper will be released under an open licence. It is a real opportunity for Wikimedians to influence the debate about digital democracy and both Wikimedia UK and Demos thank you for engaging with this idea.

You can find the consultation page here and we look forward to hearing from you.

Fabian’s thoughts on a few weeks in post

In this post, Fabian Tompsett, Wikimedian and co-ordinator of the Wikimania support team, shares his views on his his first few weeks in post

It has now been a couple of weeks since I started as one of the three Wikimania support staff taken on by Wikimedia, along with Chris McKenna and John Cummings. We started by catching up on all the preparations which have been going on behind the scenes. That has provided us a good basis to work from. Now it’s a matter of getting out there, whether it is amongst our fellow Wikimedians through Wiki Meetups (watch out for some new ones coming up), or spreading the word amongst educational, heritage or open knowledge groups.

Our team has been allocated desks together at the end of the office, which helps us maintain a close working relationship. We each have our particular focus, and a lot of my time goes on following up and developing links in the educational field. There is a real shift in how educators regard Wikipedia: they now see it as much less of a threat, even if they are not quite sure what it has to offer them as educators. Another interesting aspect is that whilst Wikipedia is a household word, not very many people realise that it is the product of a new kind of on-line community. Sometimes explaining the relationship of Wikimedia UK, the charity, to this broader community can be complicated, but more and more people are getting it.

One element we have been involved in is working on the five pre-Wikimania fringe events. These are taking shape now, and offer an opportunity to develop input for Wikimania itself. We are currently looking for volunteers to get involved in these as well. Keep an eye out for a volunteer open day on Saturday 12 July.

Cancer Research UK, Royal Society and Women Fellows…

This post was written by John Byrne, Wikimedian in Residence at both Cancer Research UK and the Royal Society

I’m fortunate to have been appointed as Wikipedian in Residence at Cancer Research UK (CRUK), the world’s largest cancer research charity, funding over 4,000 research staff working on cancer. The role will run until mid-December 2014, and is funded by Wellcome Trust, a large UK medical research charitable foundation. I’ll be based at CRUK’s London headquarters, the Angel Building in Islington, working there four days a week. Alongside this, until early July I will also be continuing my six month term, on a one day a week basis, in the same role at the Royal Society, the UK’s National Academy of Science.

Part of the role at CRUK will be to work with the existing medical editors on the English Wikipedia to improve our articles on cancer topics, in particular those on the four common cancers which are widely recognised as having the greatest “unmet need” because there has been little improvement in survival rates in recent decades. These are cancers of the lung, pancreas, brain and oesophagus. CRUK has just announced a new research strategy with an increased focus on these, and my role will complement that. But I will also be addressing other cancer-related content, for example in relation to the Medical Translation Project of WikiProject Medicine.

CRUK has access, through its own staff and its access to other researchers and clinicians, to tremendous amounts of expertise, both in terms of science and the communication of science, where they have teams trained and experienced in communicating with a wide range of distinct audiences, from those who write their patient information pages in very plain English to the different teams who produce material for scientists and for a general audience. My boss, Henry Scowcroft, writes for CRUK’s award-winning science blog, and is a Wikipedian. I’ll be exploring a number of approaches to bringing all this expertise to bear on Wikipedia’s content.

Wikimania 2014 in London, about a mile from CRUK’s HQ, gives a great opportunity to bring CRUK and many medical Wikipedians together face to face. A novel aspect of the role is that we are planning to conduct research into the experiences of a range of different types of consumers of Wikipedia’s cancer content. There has been very little formal qualitative research into the experiences of Wikipedia’s readers – we hope this project will begin to address this gap, as well as encouraging others to carry out similar projects.

I will also be making presentations and conducting training for key groups of CRUK staff and researchers at their five main research centres in London, Manchester, Glasgow, Oxford and Cambridge. Some of this will be traditional workshop how-to-edit training, but I will also be doing some aimed at people expecting to be able to contribute reviews and comments, but not to do much editing themselves.
On another tack, I will be working on releasing suitable CRUK images on open licences and uploading them to Wikimedia Commons. I think the medical diagrams CRUK has created will be especially useful in Wikipedia articles, and we’re already making substantial progress towards a substantial release of content.

Meanwhile, in another part of town…

At the Royal Society the programme of public events continues with an editathon on Neuroscience on June 7th, bringing scientists and experienced Wikipedians together to improve articles, with the emphasis on key topics in the field. I will also be conducting further training within the Royal Society community, for the Research Fellows, who are early or mid-career research scientists whose work is funded by the Royal Society.

Over the last month I’ve been able to announce that the Royal Society has agreed that the photos it takes of each new Fellow on their election will be released on open licences and uploaded to Commons. The photos of this year’s 50 Fellows will be taken at the formal induction day in July. Other image releases are being discussed, and I’m hopeful will be agreed before my period at the Royal Society ends.

The Royal Society has also offered Wikipedians one year subscriptions to its range of scientific journals, via the Wikipedia Library. Applications are open until May 25th. It is hoped this offer will continue in the future, as with other publishers.

I’m also working on other ideas for things that can continue after my term ends in July. The Royal Society is keen to continue working with the Wikimedia movement, so I expect to be able to leave a solid legacy when my formal term ends.

Women Fellows of the Royal Society

The 2014 elections of fellows took place on April 30, and 50 new Fellows, plus 10 foreign members, were elected. User:Duncan.Hull was as usual wonderfully quick in creating List of Fellows of the Royal Society elected in 2014, which as usual showed that most did not have Wikipedia biographies! Currently only 15 of the 50 have articles on the English Wikipedia, with one (Professor Demetri Terzopoulos FRS) having one on the French WP. Of the Foreign Members, 9/10 have articles, with Professor Jean-Marie Tarascon (who doesn’t even have one on French WP) the only exception. As far as gender goes, there are 7/50 and 1/10 women, who initially had 2/7 (now 4/7) and 1/10 articles. So the overall percentage with biographies is 15/50= 30% , with the women at 2/7= 28.5%. For the 10 Foreign Members we have 90% and 100%.

I see this as reinforcing my suspicions about the often-heard idea that Wikipedia coverage of women scientists is currently poor compared to that of male scientists. This is no coincidence, as there has been considerable effort over recent years put into improving coverage, with several events at the Royal Society and many more across the world, and it has paid off. I continue to see Wikipedia as part of the solution here, rather than part of the problem (to use a favourite figure of speech of that famous woman scientist and FRS, Margaret Thatcher).

Until this new batch of Fellows, 100% of all the female FRSs (past and present) had articles, many very short of course, and I can forecast with some confidence that the three that are still without articles will have them at the latest after the next Ada Lovelace Day in October or International Women’s Day in March, as these dates see a particular concentration of Wikipedia events on Women in Science.

That won’t be the case for the men – taking for example List of Fellows of the Royal Society elected in 2012, there were 44 fellows elected, but only 17 have articles yet. This includes Julian Lewis (biologist), just created very recently after the early death of this cancer researcher and author. As it happens he was the former director of one of CRUK’s research institutes, the London Research Institute, as well as being a FRS.

Two of the women in the 2014 intake already have had new articles started, with Dorothy Bishop (psychologist) now a good length, though Karalyn Patterson remains a one-liner. So then there were three …. to be precise Amanda Fisher, Jenny Nelson, and Sheena Radford (and of course, plenty of men). Let’s hope the arrival of photos on Commons after the July ceremony helps to turn the remaining red links blue.

You can contact John directly about both of these projects on his Wikipedia user page. For the Cancer Research UK project go here, and for the Royal Society project go here.

Falling to pieces: Wikipedia and history

This post was written by Richard Nevell, Assistant Office Manager

Ruins are fascinating. From the columns of ancient Greece to the shattered remains of Coventry Cathedral, they evoke all sorts of emotions. Wonder, incredulity, nostalgia, reverence. During the 18th and 19th centuries they helped inspire romanticism. There’s an exhibition about them at the Tate: Ruin Lust. However, the descent into ruin is often a traumatic event.

In March 2014 the BBC reported on the damage suffered by Krak des Chevaliers, a 13th-century crusader castle in Syria and a World Heritage Site. The damage inflicted during the Syrian civil war contrasted with the view of T. E. Lawrence, better known as Lawrence of Arabia, more than a century earlier, who described it as “perhaps the best preserved and most wholly admirable castle in the world”. Reasonable praise from a man who wrote a dissertation on the subject and got a First from Oxford.

While the castle still stands, one of the most important historic sites in Syria, and a piece of international history, did not escape unscathed. The BBC report shows the damage on the Hall of the Knights, a building of elegance and finery in what appears from the outside an emphatically military complex. Wikipedia has an excellent photo of the hall and it contrasts with the present state. It’s one of nine pictures on Commons of the hall, images which have gained importance as historic documents because of the changes the site has since undergone. That picture, taken in 2009 by User:High Contrast and uploaded four years later as part of Wiki Loves Monuments. Without that competition, the image may never have come to light, but now is a valuable addition to the collection of free images.

As one of the most famous castles in the world, Krak des Chevaliers is well documented in English, and much better in French. But what about less celebrated sites? In May 2012 two earthquakes struck northern Italy. Included in the damaged caused as the Rocca Estense. The Italian Wikipedia naturally has an article on the 14th-century castle, but sadly no other Wikipedias do. However, Commons hosts nine pictures of the castle, six in its state before the earthquake. Three of those images were uploaded as a result of Wiki Loves Monuments, two of them documenting the castle pre-2012.

War and earthquakes may seem a world away from the UK, but our environment is always changing. High-profile historic sites are curated and maintained, but the sheer number means that many fall into disrepair. There are more than 1,000 entries on English Heritage’s buildings at risk register. While archaeological groups may perform photographic surveys, Wikimedia Commons offers the chance for heritage to be preserved in a way everyone can share.

Next time you’re out with you’re out with your camera, maybe you can help preserve a piece of history.

Bekka Kahn to co-ordinate the Open Coalition

Wikimedia UK is delighted to announce a new collaborative project, the Open Coalition. This project will be co-ordinated by Bekka Kahn, who will be working out of the Wikimedia UK office in London.

The Open Coalition is a joint project involving people from Wikimedia UK, Creative Commons, Mozilla, Open Knowledge, OpenStreetMap and other organisations in the open governance, open data and open educational spheres. The objective of the Coalition is to support the development of a stronger network of organizations working in the areas of open knowledge and open access, share experiences, build potential collaborations and find better ways of communicating what work is being done. It will also help other organisations who wish to find ways of becoming more open in their working practice.

Bekka has worked in the open movement since 2005, first as a writer and researcher at iCommons and the African Commons Project, and later as a community manager, administrator and general wrangler at P2PU, where she still works on various projects. She’s written extensively about Open Access, copyright, IP and Open Education, particularly in reference to the developing world.

How you can get involved

There are some simple things you can do to help us build the coalition:

Tweet this: Help spread open collaboration across the web. Join the #opencoalition http://bit.ly/1kXcJuy
Follow @opencoalition on Twitter
Send us an email: bekka.kahn@wikimedia.org.uk
Join our mailing list (coming soon, email Bekka to subscribe)
Join the coalition: take a look at the Wikimedia UK wiki project page, sign up and help to shape the coalition!