Wikimania 2013 Report/Alastair McCapra

Wed 7th August

Education Programme Pre-Conference

The main point from this session was the emphasis on making sure that a newly-established education programme had very clear objectives, and on making sure that these were the objectives of the instructor, rather than of the wider Wikimedia movement. To be successful, an education programme has to deliver clear benefits to the instructor. These benefits are usually associated with helping students familiarise themselves with a topic or field, developing expository writing, and learning the importance of sourcing material properly and sifting different sources for reliability. For Wikipedia the ‘accidental byproduct’ of this is the creation of new articles. However al the evidence shows that if a new education programme tries to shift the emphasis away from pedagogical benefits to the instructor and towards building Wikipedia, the programme will fail. The presenters were very clear that the only direct and immediate benefit of education programmes is in building content. Education programmes are not particularly successful at recruiting editors and if they are approached in this spirit they will be judged a failure both by the Wikipedia community, because few editors will stay, and by the instructor, because the programme will lose its focus on what they need it to do.

Thursday 8th August

Multimedia Round Table

This was a session in which WMF IT staff presented ongoing development projects and asked for feedback/steer on what developments to prioritise and which features would be most helpful. There is not much to report on this. My clear impression was that a very small team of developers in the US has an enormous backlog of technical issues to deal with, and that if the entire WM movement depends on them, we are not going to be able to keep the whole WM technological environment adequately up to date. Peoples’ expectations of how a site will work are constantly being reshaped and we need a large community of people working on a range of possible solutions if the WM operating environment is to keep up with those expectations. There was a comment the end of the session that although it had been billed as ‘multimedia’ in fact the presenters had only talked about uploading and categorising images. Nothing had been said about audio or video.

Free Knowledge Advocacy Group EU

There is an excellent set of pages detailing the background to this initiative on the Meta-Wiki at meta:EU Policy. In essence it is a German-led drive to ensure that WM chapters in EU countries do not allow laws hostile to the free exchange of knowledge to be passed by the EU by default. The call is for more chapters in EU states to take part in lobbying EU institutions to ensure that laws are develop which promote free exchange.

Next steps. The leaders of the initiative will work between now and the end of 2013 to develop a manifesto on three key topics – 1. For the EU to make all of its own publications and research freely available 2. Freedom of panorama and 3. Freedom to publish copyright orphan works. The aim is to have a common platform adopted by a number of WM chapters across Europe and to use it for the 2014 European elections by asking the European parliamentary groups in Brussels to commit to the manifesto’s demands.

My feeling was that this is a very useful initiative, which is currently running on very sensible and modest lines, which we could support without placing a great burden on our financial or staff resources.

WCA Council Meeting

This was the low point of Wikimania for me. France had let it be known in advance that they were intending to withdraw from the Association as they felt it was doing nothing useful. When the meeting opened the Chair and Deputy Chair resigned; France then pulled out. An untidy series of discussions followed, at the end of which inquorate(?) votes were taken not to abolish the WCA and not to suspend its constitution. Since nothing could be formally decided and there was plainly not sufficient energy or enthusiasm to do anything, WCA just toppled into a cryogenic vat, where I suggest we leave it.

Friday 9th August

Evaluation of GLAM Outreach Activities

This session was an exchange of experiences on methods of evaluating the success of GLA outreach activities. There is some follow up on the outreach wiki at outreach:GLAM/Evaluation of GLAM-Outreach Activities.

The main points were the importance of having clear objectives before starting a programme; securing high level support from the GLAM institution; having sufficient time on the programme to serious have an impact; and clear evaluation criteria from the outset. It was agreed that for most programmes the most important criterion was the number of trained volunteers who continued contributing to Wikipedia some times after the end of the programme.

Wiki Ecology

Difficult to report anything from this. It was delivered at a fairly breathless rate. Basic conclusion was that researchers re using big data to analyse editor behaviour on Wikipedia, and now know more than they did. wm2013:Submissions/Wiki Ecology

Big Brother is watching

A puff for the author’s forthcoming book. Topic adequately described at wm2013:Submissions/Big Brother Is Watching - Obsession of Control In a Seemingly Free Movement.

The User Metrics API

Nothing to add to the description at wm2013:Submissions/The UserMetrics API: Measuring participation in Wikimedia projects.

Saturday 10th August

How to submit an awesome application

In this session we were compelled to impersonate animals in hope that the tradeoff would be some powerful insights into what the FDC is looking for in the next year’s funding applications. We did not really gain any insight into ‘how to submit an awesome application’, beyond having it drilled into us that FDC is very much focused on impact, so there is a great weight placed on evidence of effectiveness. Applications which are not supported with evidence or with a clear methodology showing how evidence is to be collected in future will not be funded.

New Global South Strategy

There was much interesting discussion in this session, but the main lesson for the UK is that the main strategic drive for WMF worldwide is to build Wikipedia in more languages and to support the development of some of the major languages other than English to significantly increase their number of pages. Among the languages which WMF wants to focus on are Turkish and the major Indian languages. At the moment the UK chapter is the third or fourth most heavily funded chapter. The clear inference for us must be that WMF cannot continue to fund us at current levels without denying resources to countries where it has strategic priorities. We need to become as independent of FDC money as possible as soon as we can.

Discussing Legal Strategy

Nothing to add to wm2013:Submissions/Discussing Our Legal Strategy Going Forward: A Talk with the WMF General Counsel.

Challenges to the Arabic Wikipedia

Saad and I attended this session. Group of Arab wikipedians are currently struggling against a number of technical, organisational, legal and cultural obstacles. They are forging ahead as best they can but need encouragement and occasional help from outside. Both Saad and I indicated that we would be helpful to them, particularly in seeking WMUK support for the creation of an Arab world chapter. Aside from this we will be supportive in our personal capacities and there will be no draw on WMUK resources.

Sunday 11th August

Wikipedia mobile: the Trojan horse

I can’t remember any more detail than is set out at wm2013:Submissions/Wikipedia Mobile The Trojan Horse - Why MediaWiki has a separate mobile site.

Engaging Users on Wikipedia

I can’t remember any more detail than is set out at wm2013:Submissions/Engaging users on Wikipedia.

Freedom of Panorama/Bad Apple

This was a presentation of a case from an Israeli lawyer, reviewing how WMF had handled a freedom of panorama case which came up last year, and arguing that a different course of action could have been taken. WMF counsel refuted the arguments made, but the presentation of arguments was interesting. As there is freedom of panorama in the UK there was no immediate application for our chapter.

Whose fault? Civil liability on Wikipedia

This presentation was about civil liability under Brazilian law, which operates on completely different principles to UK law, so while it was interesting there were no immediate lessons for us.

Hacking Brussels: Giving free knowledge a voice

This was essentially a recapitulation of the earlier session on the Free Knowledge Advocacy Group EU, and it was curtailed because earlier sessions had overrun.