This March, the Community Department will be heading to Brazil to talk with supporters of Wikimedia’s mission. Our aim is to better understand how Portuguese-speaking editors and donors, many of whom are located in Brazil, view Wikipedia and the projects, in order to better tailor the fundraiser and all our programs to them.
First up, Maryana Pinchuk and I will be holding four meetups with active editors, in order to talk with them about what makes Portuguese Wikipedia unique. They are in…
Our colleagues in Global Development and at Wikimedia Brasil are working hard on several initiatives to reach out to new editors in the country. The Wikimedia Engineering team also has a number of large scale projects, such as the Visual Editor, that will deeply impact Portuguese Wikipedia.
The purpose of our visit is to gain a deeper understanding of the Brazilian Wikipedian community and to start a dialog with them about improvements they would like to see in Portuguese Wikipedia – something that we hope can be of assistance to everyone here at the Foundation. (To that end, Wikimedia Storyteller Victor Grigas will also be at the meetups, in order to interview interested Wikimedians one-on-one about the project and their perspective on it.)
In addition to editor meetups, Megan Hernandez will also be holding several donor focus groups in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. Last year’s fundraising vastly improved on our ability to support donations from around the globe, but we still have work to do to optimize the localization and donor experience for readers in different countries.
If you’re an editor interested in joining, there’s still plenty of time to sign up for the meetup near you. We’ll be reporting back on our visit and discussions with the community, so look for a follow-up post come mid-March.
Obrigado!
Steven Walling
Community Organizer, Wikimedia Foundation
I am excited to announce that today the United States National Archives has released a new audio recording from the John F. Kennedy assassination to Wikimedia. You can find the files on Wikimedia Commons:
As a work of the American federal government, the recording is in the public domain. This two-hour tape recording of the communications of Air Force One personnel following the assassination is a new discovery which was recently donated to the National Archives. As part of NARA’s roll-out strategy for this high-profile item, the digitized recording was uploaded to Wikimedia Commons at the same time as it was revealed on archives.gov. We hope that the upload of these files to Wikimedia Commons will help increase their exposure while encouraging Wikimedians to add value to them through transcribing them or using them as encyclopedic source material and subject matter.
In preparation for the release, NARA provided me an advance copy of the 1.4 GB raw WAV files from the digitization (you will only get MP3 from NARA’s site). I must also thank Wikimedia Poland, who kindly donated server space to store and convert the files to OGG before upload. According to the National Archives press release:
The Raab Collection recently discovered two ¼” open reel audio tapes containing identical excerpts from the Air Force One flight on Nov. 22, 1963… The tape also includes communication between the White House Communications Agency (WHCA) and a second aircraft of the Presidential fleet, known as 86972 (by its tail number), which was en route to Tokyo at the time of the assassination with members of the President’s cabinet.
The recording includes references to new code names and incidents. Among them are a private conversation by head of the Secret Service Jerry Behn about the disposition of the President’s body; an expanded conversation about how to remove the body from the plane and where to take it; an urgent effort by an aide to Air Force Chief of Staff Curtis LeMay to reach General Clifton; and attempts to locate various Congressmen from Texas. (read more)
We’re also running a multilingual featured article contest and are encouraging transcriptions on Wikisource. And when the National Archives’ new Citizen Archivist Dashboard was launched, garnering lots of buzz within the archival community, it included Wikipedia editing and Wikisource transcription missions for the public. In addition, NARA has hosted a series of on-site events for Wikipedians which included tours into the stacks, scanning parties, and even a trip on board the real Air Force One (albeit the one on display at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California). If you would like to get more involved, the NARA collaboration has WikiProjects on Wikipedia, Wikisource, and Commons.
Dominic McDevitt-Parks
Wikipedian in Residence, National Archives and Records Administration
Después de la versión en inglés, abajo, versión en español
Sometimes innovation is the result of being in the right place at the right time as well as being flexible. I am an English as a foreign language teacher in central Mexico and a long time learner of Spanish. Needing intensive Spanish reading practice, I discovered the benefits of writing Wikipedia articles about Mexico (researching in Spanish, writing in English) to both myself and to the encyclopedia. Wanting to share this experience with my students, in Fall 2007, I designed and taught a Wikipedia-based class for ITESM-Campus Toluca’s most advanced English students as an experiment with support of my department.
ITESM students participate in an edit-a-thon in cooperation with the Children's Museum of Indianapolis.
As these students were already well-versed in vocabulary and grammar, real world practice or “authentic communication” was more important. As most language learners know, the best way to learn a language is to be immersed in a situation where its use is necessary. Computer technology, especially the virtual world of the Internet, has created a number of virtual “worlds” and social groups, not the least of which is the Wikipedia community. The goal in the Fall 2007 class was to introduce this virtual world of English language Wikipedia and explore ways to participate, culminating in the writing of a complete article from scratch as a final project. Mind you, this was before the advent of many of the programs the Wikimedia Foundation has today, such as the Wikipedia Global Education Program.
The class revolved around intercultural communication – learning about potential differences and strategies for coping. For this aspect of the course, the Wikipedia community was introduced as a culture, a group of people with a shared set of values and means by which they interrelate… something the students would have to adapt to as they learned how to write articles and deal with wiki mark up. As it was very different from any other English class they had ever experienced, almost all the students struggled in some way in the course. However, most improved their English language skills, based on TOEFL test scores taken before and after the semester. These findings were presented to the MexTESOL 2008 conference in León, Guanajuato, Mexico.
Leigh Thelmadatter, Regional Ambassador for Mexico
In 2008, I transferred to the Ciudad de México (Mexico City) or CCM campus of the same school system to establish and run their self access language learning laboratory (think of a hybrid of a traditional language lab and library). Since that time, I have done smaller Wikipedia-based assignments with students, writing smaller articles in groups and moving to translation exercises – mostly English language Wikipedia articles into Spanish. Translation has proven to be a good introduction to Wikipedia editing for many students. It is one way students can improve Wikipedia in their native language. It is easier to translate from one’s non-native language into one’s native language, but it has been noted that the English of the original article still causes transference errors into the Spanish version. This problem has been dealt with through peer review – students doing translation in groups, checking each other’s work and then groups exchanging translated articles for final review. This often leads to interesting discussions about how English and Spanish differ rhetorically, that is, how each writing style prefers to express information. This, too, is part of intercultural communication.
So far, there have been two major lessons learned from the use of Wikipedia. First, the demands of acculturating oneself into the Wikipedia community is a good experience in that many students experience the real frustrations and symptoms of culture shock. But this benefit is not for everyone. It is by far best for students who see the value in the experience, despite whatever frustrations might occur. In the Fall of 2011, I worked with four such students, who led on projects such as creating articles on Mexico’s Festival Internacional Cervantino. Not only did these students research and write articles in both Spanish and English, they also contacted Festival organizers and various international artists to obtain photographs and other assistance. Second, the use of translation assignments is also extremely useful. It provides a template of how Wikipedia articles are generally set up and is a good introduction to technical aspects of contributing to Wikipedia. It allows for learning through imitation, rather than learning abstract rules then guessing how to apply them. It also provides a way to work with Wikipedia which is less intense and easier to incorporate into classes, especially language classes.
ITESM-Campus Ciudad de México continues to be committed to developing working with Wikipedia. The campus library director, Lourdes Epstein has dedicated space in the facility for Club Wikipedia and students working on Wikipedia-related assignments. Several departments, including Global Studies, promote involvement with Wikipedia to their students and faculty. For the Spring 2012, a pilot program with the campus’s high school level International Baccalaureate program begins. A select group of students will set up semester-long projects based on their interests and abilities mentored by myself as part of their CAS or social service requirement.
Wikipedia es una cultura extranjera
A veces la innovación es el resultado tanto de encontrarse en el lugar indicado, en el momento indicado, como de ser una persona flexible. Yo enseño inglés en México y hace mucho tiempo que estudio y hablo español. Viéndome en la necesidad de practicar lectura en español de manera intensiva, descubrí los beneficios (tanto para mí como para la enciclopedia) de redactar artículos de Wikipedia sobre México (investigando en español y redactándolos en inglés). Con el deseo de compartir esta experiencia con mis alumnos, en la segunda mitad de 2007, diseñé e impartí, en el Campus Toluca del ITESM, un curso basado en Wikipedia, para los alumnos de inglés más avanzados, con el apoyo del departamento para el que trabajaba.
Como esos alumnos ya habían estudiado vocabulario y gramática en varios cursos, lo más importante, en términos de aprendizaje, consistía en la práctica de situaciones conversacionales auténticas. Como la mayoría de los estudiantes sabe, la mejor manera de aprender una lengua es la inmersión en una situación donde hablar sea imprescindible. La tecnología informática, sobre todo el mundo virtual de la Internet, ha creado muchos “mundos virtuales” y grupos sociales. La comunidad de colaboradores de Wikipedia es una de las más importantes. La meta de aquel curso de 2007 era doble: presentar el mundo virtual de Wikipedia en inglés y explorar las formas de colaboración con ese mundo; y esa meta se conseguía redactando de cero un artículo, como proyecto final. Hay que recordar que esto ocurrió antes del inicio de muchos de los programas actuales de la Fundación Wikimedia, tales como el Global Education.
El curso se centraba en la comunicación intercultural – aprender sobre las diferencias potenciales entre ambas culturas y las posibles estrategias de adaptación. Para cumplir con ese objetivo, se presentó a Wikipedia como una “cultura”; es decir, como a un grupo con valores compartidos y maneras de interactuar…algo que los alumnos debían adoptar mientras aprendían a redactar artículos y se familiarizaban con los aspectos tecnológicos del sitio. Dado que la propuesta difería mucho de cualquier otra clase de inglés que hubieran cursado previamente, casi todos los alumnos experimentaron distintos tipos de dificultades durante el semestre. Sin embargo, la mayoría mejoró su desempeño lingüístico en inglés, como lo mostraron los resultados del examen TOEFL (realizado antes y después del curso). Presenté toda la información recogida entonces en la conferencia de MexTESOL, realizada en León, Estado de Guanajuato (Estados Unidos Mexicanos), en 2008.
En 2008, comencé a trabajar en el Campus Ciudad de México con el fin de establecer y coordinar el laboratorio de aprendizaje autodirigido (self access), que es una mezcla de laboratorio de idiomas tradicional y biblioteca. Desde entonces, junto con mis alumnos, realizo tareas menores para Wikipedia, como redactar en grupos artículos más breves y encomendar la traducción de artículos, principalmente del inglés al español. A muchos estudiantes, la traducción les resultó una buena introducción a la preparación de artículos de Wikipedia. Es una manera de que ellos mejoren Wikipedia en su lengua materna. Es más fácil traducir de otra lengua a la propia, aunque todavía se nota que el inglés de los originales causa errores de transferencia en la versión española. Esta cuestión se resolvió mediante la revisión de las distintas versiones entre los mismos traductores. La traducción se realiza en grupos, revisando cada uno de los traductores los borradores de sus compañeros, y después se intercambian los artículos completos en vistas de una revisión final. Frecuentemente, esto lleva a debates interesantes acerca de las diferencias retóricas entre el inglés y el español; o sea, acerca de cómo, en cada lengua, las figuras retóricas expresan la misma información. Esto, también, forma parte de la comunicación cultural.
Hasta la fecha, se obtuvieron dos lecciones importantes gracias al uso de Wikipedia. Primero, las exigencias de aculturación de cada participante a la comunidad de Wikipedia es una experiencia valiosa, porque así muchos alumnos pueden experimentar las dificultades y los síntomas reales del choque cultural. Sin embargo, no todos se benefician de esto; los que más provecho sacan son los alumnos que perciben el valor de la experiencia a pesar de los obstáculos. En la segunda mitad de 2011, trabajé con cuatro de estos alumnos, que se abocaron a la redacción de los artículos relativos al Festival Internacional Cervantino. Estos estudiantes no solo investigaron y redactaron los artículos en inglés y español, sino que también se comunicaron con los organizadores del festival y con varios artistas internacionales para obtener fotografías y otros tipos de ayuda. En segundo lugar, las tareas de traducción son extremadamente útiles porque proveen un molde para el formato de los artículos de Wikipedia y son buenas también para introducir los aspectos técnicos de Wikipedia. Traducir permite aprender por imitación en lugar de primero aprender reglas abstractas y luego intentar aplicarlas de alguna manera. También muestra un modo de trabajar con Wikipedia que es menos intenso y más fácil de incorporar en las clases, sobretodo en clases de lenguas extranjeras.
El Campus Ciudad de México no ha cejado en su compromiso de colaborar con Wikipedia. Lourdes Epstein, Directora de la Biblioteca del campus, apartó un espacio especial, en el mismo edificio de la biblioteca, para el Club Wikipedia y para otros alumnos que colaboren en tareas afines. Varios departamentos universitarios, como el de Estudios Globales, promueven la participación de sus alumnos y docentes. En el primer semestre del corriente año, dará comienzo un programa piloto en el que participarán los alumnos del Programa del Diploma del Bachillerato Internacional del campus. A fin de cumplir con el requisito de servicio social “CAS”, un grupo seleccionado de alumnos va a idear proyectos, asesorados por mí, de un semestre de duración, basados en sus intereses y habilidades.
I’ve had ten hours of sleep in the last three days, and I just ate my first proper meal since Saturday. My inbox is clogged with messages I may never read. I am tired, but happy.
The Wikipedia blackout is over. Our goal was to raise awareness about SOPA and PIPA and to encourage readers to make their voices heard — and we’ve been successful on both counts. More than eight million people used our look-up tool to find their elected representatives, and millions more made their voices heard on social media. Thousands of journalists wrote news stories featuring the Wikipedia blackout screen.
We’ve made history together, all of us. And I think it’s important we understand what’s happened here, because the ground has just shifted under our feet.
Journalists see this as a conflict between old media and new media. They are wrong.
They see it that way because it fits with how things normally work.
That’s why NPR, the Associated Press, Fox News – all label this fight as Hollywood versus Silicon Valley. It’s why stories like this one from Bloomberg compare how much money television, movie and music companies are spending in Washington, versus what Google and Facebook are spending. People are imagining that post-blackout we are playing the same game, just with new participants.
That’s not what this is.
There’s a lovely Clay Shirky talk floating around the Internet today. In it, Clay says what’s at risk with SOPA and PIPA isn’t just websites, or website owners: it’s our ability to share things with one another, as individual human beings. We are the people, Clay says, that SOPA and PIPA aim to police, because the biggest producers of content on the Internet are not Google and Yahoo. It’s us.
We know that’s true, because the people who led the blackout yesterday weren’t the CEOs of Google or Yahoo or Facebook or Twitter. It wasn’t the Wikimedia Foundation. The blackout was led by ordinary Internet users. At its centre were people like Osarius and SiPlus and FT2 and Titoxd and Fluffernutter. These are the people at the forefront of online content creation.
Wikipedia’s involvement in the fight against SOPA proves this wasn’t about powerful interest groups, and it wasn’t about money. Wikipedia is operated, and not controlled, by a non-profit — it’s got no corporate interests to protect and it doesn’t make any money from piracy or copyright infringement. It’s written by ordinary people. Reddit is a bunch of people sharing links and talking about them. Metafilter is the same. Tumblr, Craigslist, the Cheezburger network, The Oatmeal, 4chan, identi.ca. These are not mega-corporations.
The Internet has been giving ordinary people access to the means of production for more than fifteen years. Sometimes we use it to create pictures of cute cats. Sometimes it’s the world’s largest encyclopedia. Sometimes, we bring down corrupt regimes.
What happened yesterday is that around the world, Internet users found their voice — fighting back against people who wanted to threaten their freedoms. It is true that copyright infringement poses a problem, and it’s reasonable that those affected want to get their problem solved. But their problem is not more important than the ability of ordinary people to express themselves, to share and to learn.
It sounded today like Congress is starting to come back to technology firms and their users and ask what they want. What compromises to SOPA and PIPA would be acceptable. Would OPEN work. Do they need to draw up something new.
The message of the Wikipedia blackout, and the other responses to SOPA and PIPA, wasn’t “Let’s talk about how we can combat online copyright infringement.” It was: “Don’t hurt the Internet. It’s too important. Let us do our work. Let us learn and create and share.”
I want to thank everyone involved with the blackout. Below is a quick list of people I worked with, or saw working. If you helped but you’re not named here, please consider yourself thanked :-)
In completely random order: Dario Taraborelli, Lori Phillips, Moka Pantages, Nicholas Bashour, Luke Faraone, Jan Ainali, Puki, André Savik, Dcoetzee, Vituzzu, Stacey Merrick, Dan Rosenthal, Michael Snow, Sumana Harihareswara, Wikitanvir, Jim Redmond, Kaganer, PeterSymonds, Mikołka, ZeaForUs, Spiritia, Iliev, Anubhab91, Ali, Haidar Khan, Joan manel, Davidpar, Cameta, Mormegil, Okino, Sir48, Giftpflanze, Rbmj, Tecsie, BreadMaker, Antonorsi, Mariadelcarmenpatricia, Huji, Tommikovala, Nikerabbit, Lamiot, Seb35, Zetud, Amire80, Rekp, איש המרק, Eranb, עידן ד, Trần Nguyễn Minh Huy, Itzike, Vibhijain, Ruy Pugliesi, Roberta F., Tgr, Kelly Kay, Pagony, Alensha, William Surya Permana, Gombang, Gregorovius, Civvì, Gnumarcoo, Austroungarika, Miya, Whym, Takot, Melberg, Omshivaprakash, Idh0854, Freebiekr, Diagramma Della Verita, RajeshPandey, Mathonius, Romaine, Mwpnl, Whaledad, Wpedzich, Sp5uhe, Przemub, Ency, Przykuta, Teles, Vitor Mazuco, Lvova, OC Ripper, Euriditi, Maduixa, Wikiwind, Јованвб, A1, Олег-літред, Violetbonmua, Prenn, Cheers!, Sameboat, Tbayer (WMF), OhanaUnited, Tom Morris, Wdchk, Sarah Stierch, Risker, Billinghurst, NuclearWarfare, Jimmy Wales, Orionist, Ryan Kaldari, John Du Hart, Aaron Schulz, Kat Walsh, Cherian Tinu, Mike Godwin, Jim Burger, David Gerard, Johnuniq, James Forrester, Prodego, Fluffernutter, Dana Isokawa, Fae, Andrew Lih, Brandon Harris, Jeremyb, Michelle Paulson, DeltaQuad, Pete Forsyth, Fetchcomms, Heather Walls, Rachel Farrand, CMBJ, Erik Moeller, Fifelfoo, James Alexander, Itzik Edri, Katie Horn, Iván Martínez, Matthias Schindler, Ben Hartshorne, Jon Davies, Anthere, Slobodan Jakoski, Victorgrigas, Dimce, Jerry-Yuyu, Patricia Morales, Stephen LaPorte, Varnent, Lennart Guldbrandsson, Neil Kandalgaonkar, Greg Maxwell, Ian Baker, Jeandré, Howie Fung, Ryan Faulkner, Beatriz Busaniche, Philippe Beaudette, Ziko van Dijk, Oliver Keyes, Dimce Grozdanoski, Keegan, André, Guillaume Paumier, Maggie Dennis, Mentifisto, Phoebe Ayers, Arne Klempert, Mike Peel, Gorilla Warfare, Geoff Brigham, Swarm, Peter Gehres, Megan Hernandez, Leslie Harms, Tomasz Finc, Pretzels, Jay Walsh, Whenaxis, Liberaler Humanist, Sam Klein, Andrew Gray, Fifelfoo, Zack Exley, Katie Filbert, Victor Vasiliev, Guy Chapman, Avi, Kenneth/MD, Stu West, Harry, Ryan Lane, Josh Lim, Matthew Roth, Richard Symons, Gayle Karen Young, Yuvaraj Pandian, Evangeline Han, Milos Rancic, James Hare, Adrienne Alix, Samat, Tomasz Ganicz, FT2, Alessio Guidetti, Galileo Vidoni, David Richfield, Alison Wheeler, Siska Doviana, Erlend Bjoertvedt, Анастасия Львова, Steven Walling, Casey Brown, Tim Starling, Patrick Reilly, Arthur Richards, Asaf Bartov, Alolita Sharma, CT Woo – and of course, the 1,800 English Wikipedians who made the decision to black out the site.
I am happy to add new names to this list — if you want to nominate anyone, just say so in the comments :-)
Thanks also to the sister projects that chose to support the enWP blackout with their own protests: the Albanian Wikipedia, Arabic Wikipedia, Bulgarian Wikipedia, Catalan Wikipedia, Chinese Wikipedia, Croatian Wikipedia, Dutch Wikipedia, Georgian Wikipedia, German Wikipedia, Greek Wikipedia, Japanese Wikipedia, Korean Wikipedia, Indonesian Wikipedia, Italian Wikipedia, Norwegian Wikipedia, Portuguese Wikipedia, Russian Wikipedia, Serbian Wikipedia, Spanish Wikipedia, Swedish Wikipedia, Ukranian Wikipedia, Vietnamese Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons.
Sue Gardner
Executive Director, Wikimedia Foundation
Today, the Wikipedia community announced its decision to black out the English-language Wikipedia for 24 hours, worldwide, beginning at 05:00 UTC on Wednesday, January 18 (you can read the statement from the Wikimedia Foundation here). The blackout is a protest against proposed legislation in the United States —the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the PROTECTIP Act (PIPA) in the U.S. Senate— that, if passed, would seriously damage the free and open Internet, including Wikipedia.
This will be the first time the English Wikipedia has ever staged a public protest of this nature, and it’s a decision that wasn’t lightly made. Here’s how it’s been described by the three Wikipedia administrators who formally facilitated the community’s discussion. From the public statement, signed by User:NuclearWarfare, User:Risker and User:billinghurst:
It is the opinion of the English Wikipedia community that both of these bills, if passed, would be devastating to the free and open web.
Over the course of the past 72 hours, over 1800 Wikipedians have joined together to discuss proposed actions that the community might wish to take against SOPA and PIPA. This is by far the largest level of participation in a community discussion ever seen on Wikipedia, which illustrates the level of concern that Wikipedians feel about this proposed legislation. The overwhelming majority of participants support community action to encourage greater public action in response to these two bills. Of the proposals considered by Wikipedians, those that would result in a “blackout” of the English Wikipedia, in concert with similar blackouts on other websites opposed to SOPA and PIPA, received the strongest support.
On careful review of this discussion, the closing administrators note the broad-based support for action from Wikipedians around the world, not just from within the United States. The primary objection to a global blackout came from those who preferred that the blackout be limited to readers from the United States, with the rest of the world seeing a simple banner notice instead. We also noted that roughly 55% of those supporting a blackout preferred that it be a global one, with many pointing to concerns about similar legislation in other nations.
In making this decision, Wikipedians will be criticized for seeming to abandon neutrality to take a political position. That’s a real, legitimate issue. We want people to trust Wikipedia, not worry that it is trying to propagandize them.
But although Wikipedia’s articles are neutral, its existence is not. As Wikimedia Foundation board member Kat Walsh wrote on one of our mailing lists recently,
We depend on a legal infrastructure that makes it possible for us to operate. And we depend on a legal infrastructure that also allows other sites to host user-contributed material, both information and expression. For the most part, Wikimedia projects are organizing and summarizing and collecting the world’s knowledge. We’re putting it in context, and showing people how to make sense of it.
But that knowledge has to be published somewhere for anyone to find and use it. Where it can be censored without due process, it hurts the speaker, the public, and Wikimedia. Where you can only speak if you have sufficient resources to fight legal challenges, or, if your views are pre-approved by someone who does, the same narrow set of ideas already popular will continue to be all anyone has meaningful access to.
The decision to shut down the English Wikipedia wasn’t made by me — it was made by editors, through a consensus decision-making process. But I support it.
Like Kat and the rest of the Wikimedia Foundation Board, I have increasingly begun to think of Wikipedia’s public voice, and the goodwill people have for Wikipedia, as a resource that wants to be used for the benefit of the public. Readers trust Wikipedia because they know that despite its faults, Wikipedia’s heart is in the right place. It’s not aiming to monetize their eyeballs or make them believe some particular thing, or sell them a product. Wikipedia has no hidden agenda: it just wants to be helpful.
That’s less true of other sites. Most are commercialy motivated: their purpose is to make money. That doesn’t mean they don’t have a desire to make the world a better place –many do!– but it does mean that their positions and actions need to be understood in the context of conflicting interests.
My hope is that when Wikipedia shuts down on January 18, people will understand that we’re doing it for our readers. We support everyone’s right to freedom of thought and freedom of expression. We think everyone should have access to educational material on a wide range of subjects, even if they can’t pay for it. We believe in a free and open Internet where information can be shared without impediment. We believe that new proposed laws like SOPA –and PIPA, and other similar laws under discussion inside and outside the United States– don’t advance the interests of the general public. You can read a very good list of reasons to oppose SOPA and PIPA here, from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Why is this a global action, rather than US-only? And why now, if some American legislators appear to be in tactical retreat on SOPA?
The reality is that we don’t think SOPA is going away, and PIPA is still quite active. Moreover, SOPA and PIPA are just indicators of a much broader problem. All around the world, we’re seeing the development of legislation intended to fight online piracy, and regulate the Internet in other ways, that hurt online freedoms. Our concern extends beyond SOPA and PIPA: they are just part of the problem. We want the Internet to remain free and open, everywhere, for everyone.
On January 18, we hope you’ll agree with us, and will do what you can to make your own voice heard.
Today (January 15) Wikipedia is celebrating its 11th year on the web. Happy Birthday, Wikipedia! Look who/what else you share your birthday with.
Last year was a big one for Wikipedia, rounding out an incredible decade of growth and impact around the world. Over 450 parties took place across virtually every continent, and the world had an amazing story to tell.
Just a year later and we’ve already seen more milestones achieved and records broken. In 2011 Wikipedia blew well past the 20 million article mark, now pushing towards 21 million articles. Wikimedia Commons, the repository of media files for Wikipedia and its sister projects broke 10 million files in 2011. The global page view from unique visitors count leapt up to and over 400 million, and our individual page requests across all Wikimedia projects broke 16 billion per month (see more of our updated stats here). Access on mobile platforms is skyrocketing, and Wikipedia is currently available in 282 languages.
Our global community of volunteers and chapter organizations are also celebrating. Get-togethers are planned around the globe, including meet-ups, hack-a-thons, a bicycle rally, a kite festival in India, and a picnic in Caracas. It’s not too late to host an event in your own neighborhood.
Here in the United States, and certainly in many other parts of the world, Wikipedia Day is also taking on a new meaning and urgency. The US House of Representatives is reviewing a new piece of legislation, the Stop Online Piracy Act, that – if passed – would hurt the free, open, and secure web. This topic has already been explored on our blog – here and here. Wikimedia Foundation is joining a long list of other web organizations in opposition to SOPA, and today the global community of Wikipedia volunteers is talking about a day of protest here in the US against SOPA. You can join the conversation and voice your thoughts. On January 18 – just a few days after Wikipedia Day, make your views on SOPA known.
Wikipedia was born in a free and open web, and its future and success in all parts of the world is at stake. Let’s make sure our project is as strong and free for Wikipedia Day in 2013 as it is today.
By Professor Juliana Bastos Marques – UNIRIO (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro State, Brazil)
One late night in 2006, while I was struggling with my PhD thesis, I went looking for a quick reference for a Latin author in Portuguese Wikipedia, only to find out that there was nothing about him there (it was the Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus). Indignant, I finally decided to register in order to write the new article myself. Soon I realized that was the tip of an iceberg: a lot of work was needed on other history-related topics, and I needed more help.
Professor Juliana Bastos Marques at the Wikipedia in Higher Education Summit in July 2011
Wikipedian turned professor some years later, I thought it would be a good idea to recruit my students to write some good content and fix the disturbing mistakes we repeatedly found. Indeed, the state of the Portuguese Wikipedia, while counting more than 700,000 articles, is still usually written by non-specialists; this means several outdated theories and approaches, low-quality references and incomplete information. My other concern was quite practical: I needed to convince my own students that the additional information they used for my classes and exams was NOT to be looked for on Wikipedia, to avoid plagiarism for a start! In fact, all my friends who taught at primary and secondary schools also had the same problem: whether we want or not, Wikipedia is probably the most popular learning material in Brazil – and, in the current state, a bad one.
Serendipity came to my doorstep soon, when I first read an article about the Public Policy Initiative in Inside Higher Ed in September 2010, and later attended an event with Jessie Wild and Kul Wadhwa from Wikimedia Foundation on the following January, only to learn that WMF had plans for the expansion of the Global Education Program in Brazil. I also had the opportunity to attend the Wikipedia in Higher Education Summit, last July, in Boston. While I was only a spectator there, for my class would start in August, it was very exciting to see that other professors had already come to similar conclusions as to the value of Wikipedia for the university.
With the course taught, mistakes made and also success achieved, I have some input to share on my experience. First of all, I’d have in mind that the goal of using Wikipedia in class is ultimately to improve weak articles. This works perfectly for the case of the Portuguese Wikipedia, and certainly with dozens of other languages. In the case of more developed Wikipedias such as the English one, I believe this means a careful selection of potential new or stub articles to work with.
The course I taught improved substantially a set of articles related to Roman History, but it was peculiar in the sense that it was an elective course with 25 students. They had a combination of traditional lectures with work in the lab, always with the aid of a Campus Ambassador (who happened not to be a student, but a very proficient and participating member of the Portuguese Wikimedia community), two also very proficient Online Ambassadors and a dedicated mailing list. All students worked in their sandboxes until I graded and revised the content, and the Ambassadors approved the technical Wikipedia format, code and writing. This was crucial in preventing early deletions and distrust from the community, which would certainly discourage the students. Also, I decided to engage the Portuguese-speaking Wikipedia community early on, mostly through the Wikimedia Brasil mailing list, in order to make them aware of what we were planning. The members were very supportive and eventually helped the students in their discussion pages, teaching them to avoid plagiarism and to write with neutrality.
In due time, I realized I should not be concerned whether I was creating a new set of editors, which I believe to be a somehow misleading goal. All Wikipedia editors are volunteers, and their will to contribute will always be beyond a class, a grade or our encouragement as teachers. However, I feel we have created multipliers: even if they never edit again, my students will eventually teach on their own, and they will tell their students about how knowledge is never ready and finished, is never to be trusted without critical reflection, and can be improved through their own learning and work.
The students very soon learned that the set of skills they needed to practice was somehow different from what it was expected in academia. After all, writing for encyclopedias requires strict objectivity, impartiality and anonymity, so that the voice of the writer is not to be distinguished. However, together with other skills such as knowing when and how to use references correctly, or learning how to distinguish and explain different points of view regarding a subject, these abilities helped them understand the subject and their own learning results in a much more clear and precise way than before. For instance, I had to go with them phrase per phrase sometimes, until they could really master what they meant to say – a careful dynamic that all professors know is impossible to follow when grading a pile of papers.
Last but not least, the students ultimately learned that an encyclopedia is a starting point. And it was their own work that could make it a solid starting point for both themselves and any other reader. For the next semester, starting here in Brazil in February, I will continue using the opportunity that Wikipedia gives for professors and students to teach, to learn and to work with quality and rigor, while sharing our knowledge from the often closed corridors of academia to the entire world. I’d easily say that this has been to me the biggest reward of using Wikipedia for teaching.
CUNY professor Michael Mandiberg was drawn into editing Wikipedia like many subject matter experts are – by editing pages in his area of expertise, art and design. As Michael began to tinker around with Wikipedia more and more, he started to think of ways to incorporate it into his coursework for his History of Design and Digital Media course at the College of Staten Island.
“Traditionally for term papers, students go and do some research about a particular topic, and they demonstrate their mastery by regurgitating some facts about it. Hopefully there’s a thesis, but sometimes it’s just a summary. Reading these papers is pretty boring, and the ritualistic production of those papers is kind of useless and in a way tedious for the students as well,” he says. “I decided to harness some of that creative energy for the greater good by channeling that work into something that has a utility beyond just the ritual of the classroom.”
Michael was no stranger to useful assignments; for previous courses, he’d had students redesign local nonprofits’ websites. In another assignment geared toward understanding licenses, he had asked students to upload freely licensed images from Flickr to Wikimedia Commons. Past students had also contributed to Wikipedia Illustrated. In the fall 2011 term, he wanted his students to write Wikipedia articles on designers or design principles referenced in the course’s textbook. Michael spent some time conceiving the course project, and then stumbled across the Wikipedia Education Program.
He recruited a reference librarian at College of Staten Island, Mark Polger, and asked one of his students, Nicole Boffa, to become Campus Ambassadors.User:SMasters filled out Michael’s pod as an Online Ambassador. Mark handled teaching students how to use the library and the basics of how to use references on Wikipedia, while Nicole helped students understand editing basics. User:SMasters was there to help when disputes arose, which did a handful of times, including twice in which the individuals where the subject matter of the Wikipedia articles students were writing reverted some of their edits.
Students from Michael Mandiberg's class got a personalized tour of a Museum of Modern Art exhibit, then worked with Wikipedians from the Wikimedia New York chapter to write Wikipedia articles on the works.
That experience in itself – students’ relationship to power – is one of four reasons Michael is glad he asked his students to edit Wikipedia for class. He gave students extra credit for contacting the subject of their Wikipedia article to request they release a photo of themselves or their work under a CC-BY-SA license, and gave bonus points if the subject actually did so.
“These students are suddenly engaging with the subject of their writing directly,” Michael says. “Is it okay to email someone you’re writing a research paper about? No. Is it okay to write somebody you’re writing about on Wikipedia for your class? Completely. You can write them and say, ‘I’m writing for Wikipedia for my class. I would really like it if you could give me an image of your work or an image of you to put on that page.’ I watched the students who followed through on that become transformed as students. And many of them used the word ‘empowering’ in their reflective papers to describe the experience.”
The second reason, Michael says, is that students gained valuable research skills. He asked students to write reflective papers at the end of the term, and students reported that the work they did with Mark to prepare to write their Wikipedia articles was extremely valuable.
“They almost all said that it was the most research they had ever done,” Michael says. “They used the library more than they’d ever used, and they learned substantially about research.”
Third, Michael says, was that students were more motivated because they felt like their assignments were working toward a good cause or the greater good of society.
The fourth and final of Michael’s reasons for liking the Wikipedia assignment is that students who are used to getting by on college papers by close paraphrasing or outright plagiarizing works discover they simply can’t do that with a Wikipedia assignment, since students had to cite every sentence. Writing for Wikipedia made it easier for him to catch students’ plagiarism early, and he was able to help students understand why they needed to use original voice.
“This assignment was really hard for the students,” he says. “I asked them to write at least 1,200 words, and most of them ended up somewhere around 900 because writing for Wikipedia is different from the writing they’re used to and requires so much more work. They’re used to just filling up 5 pages and getting credit for it.” But, he adds, students came around to the idea. “In their reflection papers, almost all the students said they really didn’t want to do the assignment, that it was really hard, but they were glad they did. It was highly productive.”
Michael’s students also got the chance to see the real-world impact of their work through an event organized by the Wikimedia New York chapter, including Ambassador Richard Knipel. Ten of Michael’s students joined him and some Wikimedia New York editors at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan, where they received a tour of the Talk to Me exhibit with educators from the MOMA. Students then worked with Wikipedians from the chapter to create articles about the exhibit and its works. Michael says it was transformative for the students who went, as the museum educators and the Wikipedians treated students with respect, encouraging them to share their views and contribute to Wikipedia.
“For these students, it was mind-blowing that they could sit down and collaborate with these experienced Wikipedians. What the students realized was they had valuable knowledge, and that was really amazing for them,” he says. “The students who did that field trip came back to the classroom with much more confidence.”
Michael is excited by the experience his students had on Wikipedia last term, and he’s looking forward to giving his Ph.D. students at the CUNY Graduate Center in spring 2012 an assignment on Wikipedia as well. And just like his students, he’s glad their contributions are helping the greater good, enhancing the content freely available about design.
“We did something worthwhile,” he says. “This section of Wikipedia is a little less of a blind spot.”
I am happy to announce that we have completed the most collaborative, interactive drafting of a proposed terms of use for any major website. For more than 120 days, the Wikimedia community reviewed, drafted, and redrafted with more than 200 edits modifying the original proposal. While accumulating 19,000 page views, community members offered comments, edits, and rewrites. Complete or partial translations appeared in 20+ languages. With over 4500 lines of text and as many words as Steinbeck’s classic “The Grapes of Wrath,” discussion helped ensure a thoughtful process.
These proposed terms of use are intended to replace our present version. It is not commonly known that our present terms are nothing more than a licensing agreement, not traditional terms of use. The new proposed terms of use represent a step forward and a more comprehensive view of the Wikimedia projects. Among other things, they provide for:
Better understanding: The proposed agreement includes an easy-to-read template summary to help facilitate understanding of the terms.
Stronger security: The proposed agreement prohibits a number of actions – like installing malware – that could compromise our systems. We thought we should be clear as to what is unacceptable in this area, though most of these restrictions will not be surprising or represent any real change in practice.
Clearer roles: We have heard a number of community members asking for guidance, so we set out clearly the roles and responsibilities of the community, including editors and contributors. The proposed agreement also seeks to provide guidelines to help users avoid trouble.
More community feedback: With this version, and with each major revision afterwards, we want the community to be involved. So the proposed agreement gives users at least a 30-day comment period before a major revision goes into effect (with Board approval). There is a 3-day exception for urgent legal and administrative changes.
Clearer free licensing: We feel our present agreement is somewhat confusing on the free licensing requirements. The proposed agreement attempts to explain more clearly those requirements for editors (without changing existing practices).
More tools against harassment, threats, stalking, vandalism, and other long-term issues: The proposed agreement would make clear that such acts are prohibited. Novel for us, the agreement raises the possibility of a global ban for extreme cross-wiki violations, a need that we have heard expressed from a number of community members. While the global ban is authorized by the terms of use, it will be implemented by community policy.
Better legal protection: The proposed agreement incorporates legal sections that are commonly used to help safeguard a site like ours, such as better explanation of our hosting status as well as disclaimers and limitations on liability for the Foundation.
Specifically, in its more than 320 printed pages of discussions, the community raised, discussed, and resolved more than 120 issues. There were many substantive and editorial changes that greatly improved the document. Much language was deleted or tightened at community request. As part of this process, the community addressed a number of interesting topics, such as:
Whether we should emphasize that the community (not WMF) is primarily responsible for enforcing policy: We agreed to underscore this primary responsibility of the community to avoid any confusion.
Whether we should include an indemnification clause to the benefit of WMF: We chose to delete it in light of community concerns.
Whether we should adopt a “human-readable” version to facilitate understanding: We agreed to incorporate such a summary.
Whether we should expressly prohibit linking to certain sites: We chose not to, deleting earlier language unacceptable to the community.
Whether we should require civility and politeness: With varying views, we decided to “encourage” it.
Whether the WMF should provide resources to support forks: We chose not to address this now, though we agreed to highlight the discussion to the Board for its consideration.
Whether we should emphasize the independent roles of chapters: We chose to do so.
Whether we should increase the liability limitation for WMF from $100 to $1000: We answered affirmatively.
Whether we should provide for additional comment time after the posting of translations in three key languages: We said “yes” to address international community concerns.
From a process standpoint, the legal department will circulate the proposed terms of use within the Wikimedia Foundation internally, and then the department anticipates recommending their adoption to the Board. We expect the Board will take some time to review before reaching a final decision.
Needless to say, this project would have been impossible without the hard work and expertise of our community. Through their tireless effort, the community mentored important and deep discussions on critical subjects for Wikimedia. The process forced us to think about issues that we had never addressed directly. In short, the value of collaboration quickly became obvious. Its magic created a document many times better than the original.
For about ten days in December, Frank Schulenburg, Moushira Elamrawy, and I met with various professors, students, and local Wikipedians in Cairo, Egypt. The initial Arabic Catalyst Project trip from October showed that there is potential in working with faculty members and students on improving the Arabic Wikipedia; this December trip made clear that there is a very high level of interest among people at universities in Cairo to do so.
The Cairo pilot project – the newest part of the Wikipedia Education Program – will begin in early 2012. Its primary goal will be to improve the quality and quantity of the Arabic Wikipedia, which is currently very small (only about 150,000 articles) even though as the fifth most common language in the world Arabic has about 400 million speakers worldwide (compare this to Japanese, which has about 130 million speakers worldwide but almost 800,000 Wikipedia articles). As part of the Cairo pilot, students from Ain Shams University and Cairo University will contribute new content to the Arabic Wikipedia or translate content from another language into Arabic on Wikipedia. The plan is to have about 4-6 classes in the pilot, and only the top 3-15 students from each of these classes will actually contribute to Wikipedia. We want to keep the pilot very small, to make sure that we’ve figured out what works and doesn’t work before we expand the project to more people and more places.
Wikipedia Education Program staff meet with Arabic Wikimedians in Cairo, Egypt, in December 2011.
We were surprised by how many instructors in Egypt were excited about participating in the project. Everybody we talked to was convinced that growing and enhancing the Arabic Wikipedia would be a good idea – in fact, many professors and students told us they felt the responsibility to make free knowledge in Arabic better. We have identified about six professors for participation in the pilot, based on their understanding of Wikipedia, their genuine interest in enhancing the Arabic Wikipedia, and the writing skills of their students. Almost all the students we met also showed genuine interest in learning more about Wikipedia and contributing to it.
We are also very happy to have the support of local Wikipedians. Essam Sharaf – a long-term Wikipedian and a student at Cairo University – connected us with professors and students, helped us maneuver the streets and campuses of Cairo, and enhanced our understanding of Egypt’s social, cultural, and political context. Frank, Moushira, and I also met with an active group of Cairo-based Arabic Wikipedians and went on a photo-walk with them, during which we took pictures of Old Cairo and then uploaded them onto Wikimedia Commons (including the panoramic photo now on this Wikipedia article). We’ve also been communicating with other members of the Arabic Wikipedia community, whom we’ve found to be extremely helpful and inspiring. We feel very fortunate that this group of enthusiastic, smart, and motivated volunteers has expressed genuine interest in becoming Wikipedia Ambassadors (who teach students how to edit Wikipedia) and laying the foundation to make the Cairo pilot a success.
-Annie Lin (آني/سمر)
Wikipedia Education Program Manager
