1. The Contradictions, Controversies, and Conflicts of Wikipedia Angela Beesley Starling linux.conf.au Hobart, 2009

3. 1994

4. 2000

5. 2001

6. Usabl e Comple x Volunteers Staff Donation s Sustainabl e Reader s Editor s Onlin e Print O pe n QualityQuality One wiki Many wikis Popula r Unknow n User s Bots Text Rich media Accessibl e Blocke d

7. Read by billions Edited by Hundreds? “Over 50% of all the edits are done by just 0.7% of the users, 524 people.” – Jimmy Wales “Ten years ago, the top 20 contributors contributed to the majority of changes that went into the kernel” – Jonathan Corbet

8. Read by billions Edited by Hundreds? Goal: Increase and broaden participation ¼ billion readers every month 8.7 million registered users (English Wikipedia) Core group of a few hundred make most edits But substantial content comes from outside that core group – Aaron Swartz –Automatic reporting coming soon

9. Maintained by Users or Bots?

10. Why do we want more editors? “article quality is indeed correlated with both number of edits and number of distinct editors.” HP Labs 2007

11. Planned public outreach projects –Wikipedia Academies Educator’s Guide by John Broughton Video tutorials Improved usability... Getting more people to edit

12. Usable Complex Goal: Increase and broaden participation US $890,000 (AU $1.34m) usability grant –Thanks Stanton Foundation! Users want to use powerful templates Future: programming inside articles?

13. Learning wiki syntax is a barrier to participation

14. Some features do not make editing easier Non-Wikimedia example

15. Stanton Usability Project Wikimedia’s biggest technical project yet Phase 1: Research and analysis Phase 2: Simple changes Phase 3: Redesign of the article editor

16. Wikitext

17. Non-Wikimedia example WYSIWYG

18. Upload form

19. Wikia's upload form Non-Wikimedia example

20. Reliant on Donations Financially Sustainable Goal: achieve financial sustainability Fundraising drive –raised US $6.2 million (9.3m AUD) Advertising?

21. Advertising on Wikipedia Ads cheapen the encyclopedia Ads are annoying Contributors may leave Privacy concerns Changing customers Financially unnecessary Threat to neutrality of content Threat to independence of design

22. Reliant on Donations Financially Sustainable Goal: achieve financial sustainability Seeking ‘mission friendly’ partners Possible during an economic crisis?

23. Volunteer Run Organisationally Mature Goal: Achieve organisational maturity Improvement of process, policies, structures. New staff working on public outreach, donations, partnerships, and software development. US$3 million grant (AU $4.5m) –Thanks Sloan Foundation!

24. Online In Print Goal: Increase distribution beyond the wikis On-site: Selling Books –PediaPress on Wikibooks –May be on Wikipedia this quarter Printing Posters

26. Online In Print Off-site: OLPC –Wiki Slices distributed with laptops SOS Children Wikipedia Selection for Schools –5500 checked articles relevant to UK National Curriculum

27. Online In Print Future plans more staff to improve distribution technologies new off-wiki dissemination partnerships more use of API, database dumps and static copies

28. Going Mobile Working with mobile operators and handset makers. Upcoming launch of new Wikipedia mobile platform.

29. Using wiki content in-game Non-Wikimedia example

30. Openly Editable High Quality Goal: Increase quality & the perception of quality FlaggedRevisions Research invited –all studies to date have validated the projects as high quality Pro-active media coverage

32. Deletionism Inclusionism “Wiki is not paper” versus “Wikipedia is an encyclopedia”

33. More deleted every 10 minutes than can fit on this slide

34. Candidates for Speedy deletion Nonsense Pure vandalism Attack pages Blatant advertising Short articles lacking context Pages with no indication of the subject's importance or significance

35. The Casamance national football team from Senegal.

36. Popular Unknown Goal: Foster adoption of Wikipedia globally 4 th most visited site (Comscore), ¼ billion monthly readers But still tiny in some languages Each new language edition is a grassroots effort.

37. Most African language Wikipedias have <200 articles “it may seem like we’re a long way from achieving Wikimedia's mission, but if you consider that just 3 short years ago most of these projects didn’t even exist, we’ll realise we’re doing quite well.” – Ian Gilfillan, a Wikipedian from Cape Town

38. Accessible or Blocked Wikimedia’s vision statement is: Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment.

39. Accessible Blocked Chinese Wikinews.org is blocked in China Past blocks China (all projects, all languages) Tunisia (Wikipedia) Iran (English and Kurdish Wikipedia) Turkey (Kurdish Wikipedia) UK (“Virgin Killer” article)

40. Text Rich Media File storage from 2TB to 48TB in 2008 –Thanks Sun! 3.8 million files Plans for films

41. Wiki ≠ Wikipedia

42. Wiki != Wikipedia “Wiki” often misused to mean “Wikipedia” It’s only one of millions! Wikis exist for every topic people are passionate about.

43. Explosion of wikis One example: Star Wars Star Wars Wiki (Wookieepedia) –24 language versions Star Wars Parody Wiki Star Wars Merchandise Wiki Wikis about each Star Wars game Star Wars LEGO Wiki Star Wars Fan Fiction Wiki Star Wars Comics Wiki Jedi Religion Wiki! Non-Wikimedia example

44. Get Involved! Edit! Start your own wiki Attend Wiki Wednesday Attend Wikimania Join Wikimedia Australia

45. Free Content Fair Use How free is “free enough”? “Fair use” in which countries?

46. Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima is regarded in the US as one of the most significant and recognisable images of WWII. An example

47. Imagine you're a vegan. You hear about an event - “The Vegan Potluck Dinner Anyone Can Contribute To.” A parable by Wikipedia user “Angr”

48. The first thing you notice is a large platter of fried chicken.

49. “Everyone has agreed to allow some animal-based foods under certain restricted circumstances.” Wikipedia's Non-free content criteria policy exists “to facilitate the judicious use of non-free content to support the development of a quality encyclopedia.”

50. “There is no vegan equivalent to fried chicken. It's simply not replaceable,” the host replies. “Non-free content is used only where no free equivalent is available, or could be created, that would serve the same encyclopedic purpose.”

51. “Thanks! I made it with beef stock, but there's so little meat in there you hardly notice it, do you?” “Non-free content criteria #3: Minimal extent of use. An entire work is not used if a portion will suffice.”

52. "You just can't get the right consistency with vegan ingredients. Besides, don't be so paranoid – eating meat isn't illegal; no one is going to sue us!" "Avoid copyright paranoia... only the most litigious of individuals would prosecute an unwitting infringement of copyright"

53. “We have two goals at this vegan dinner: to be vegan, and to be a dinner. And those goals sometimes conflict with each other” “The conflict between the Wikipedia's free mission and its encyclopedic mission becomes most obvious when iconic, very famous, images fail to meet this criteria”

54. “Vegan means no animal products of any kind! Ever!” So, what does a free encyclopedia mean?

55. Any Questions? Email: angela@wikimedia.org Slides + credits will soon be available at wikiangela.com/linux2009.odp Join Wikimedia Australia membership.wikimedia.org.au

57. With thanks to Tim Starling, Sue Gardner, and Sara Crouse for providing information and/or assistance for this presentation. With exception of copyrighted images, logos, and screenshots, this presentation is released under the GNU Free Documentation Licence. http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gfdl.html

58. Credits and Sources - photos Slide 1: Golden Wiki Award image created by Hill. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Goldenwiki.png Slide 3: Wiki Wiki Bus photo by zordroyd. Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:HNL_Wiki_Wiki_Bus.jpg http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/ Slide 9: Share of bot edits graph by GlimmerPhoenix. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bots_shares_total.png Slides 20 and 22: $20 note picture uploaded to Wikimedia Commons by Erin Silversmith. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:AUS$20_Mary_Reibey.jpg Slide 19: Wikia Upload Screenshot includes images from Flickr available under various free CC licenses. Slide25: Posters screenshots from the French Wikipedia include an image by Robin Taylor which is available under a Creative Commons Attribution License. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Flame_tree_mali.jpg http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ Slide 25: 2nd poster image source: http://www.wikiposter.fr/commande.aspx Slide 26: OLPC laptop photo taken by Mike McGregor and released under the Creative Commons Attribution License. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:XO-Beta1-mikemcgregor-1.jpg http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/ Slide 28: iPhone image uploaded by Bramdehaan and released into the Public Domain. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:IPhone_Apple_5th_Avenue.JPG World of Warcraft screenshot courtesy of PlayXPert includes copyrighted content from Blizzard Entertainment’s game World of Warcraft and GFDL content from the World of Warcraft wiki at WoWWiki.com. Slide 40: The "Rosenmühle" Water Mill picture is by Michael Gäbler and released under a Creative Commons Attribution License. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Water_mill_Rosenmühle_in_Lower_Saxony,_Germany.jpg http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ Slide 44: Edit button icon is available under the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike Licence. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:UniversalEditButton2.svg http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ Slide 46: Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima by Joe Rosenthal. Non-freely license image used under “fair use” on Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:WW2_Iwo_Jima_flag_raising.jpg Slide 48: Chicken photo by Moja. GFDL. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kfc_chicken_potato.jpg

59. Credits and Sources - logos The logos used here may be copyrighted and/or trademarked to their respective owners. Their use here does not imply endorsement. The MediaWiki logo was created by Erik Möller using a Public Domain sunflower by Florence Nibart-Devouard http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MediaWiki_logo.png http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MediaWiki_logo.png Wikimedia Foundation logo designed by Neolux. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Foundation_RGB_logo_with_text.svg The Wikimedia Australia logo is used under license by Wikimedia Australia. http://wikimedia.org.au/ Wikia logo designed by Mike Bohrer, © Wikia, Inc. http://www.wikia.com/wiki/Image:Wikia_logo_large_blue.jpg Wikia Search logo derived from Wikia logo. http://search.wikia.com/wiki/Image:High_res_logo.png Nupedia logo by milodesign.com. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ImageNupedia.png Sun Microsystems logo: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sun_Microsystems_logo.svg Sloan Foundation logo: sloan: http://www.sloan.org/images/mh.png PediaPress logo: http://pediapress.com/resources/images/logo.png SOS logo: http://archive.soschildrensvillages.org.uk/images/children-logo.jpg Wikimedia Australia logo: http://wikimedia.org.au//w/images/c/c9/Logo.png The Star Wars Wiki logo was designed by by Tracy Duncan and released under the GFDL. http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Image:Wiki.png The Algerian LUG wiki logo was uploaded by Wikia user TRDz. http://dzlug.wikia.com/wiki/Image:Wiki.png Linux-raid wiki logo from http://linux-raid.osdl.org/ Debian wiki logo from http://wiki.debian.org/

60. Credits and Sources - other “Wikipedia”, “The Wikimedia Foundation” and the Wikipedia and Wikimedia logos are trademarks of the Wikimedia Foundation. “Wikia” is a service mark of Wikia, Inc. Wikia, Inc. and The Wikimedia Foundation are separate organisations and mention here of Wikia is not intended to imply any relationship. Screenshots of wiki content include text which is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. Segmented circle on slide 6 created with http://tstarling.com/segments.php?r=338&segs=22&t=7&c=00137F&rotate=0 Quotation sources: –Jimmy Wales - reported by Aaron Swartz at http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/whowriteswikipedia –Jonathan Corbet – reported by Angus Kidman at http://apcmag.com/the_future_of_linux_what_it_means_for_wikipedia.htm –HP Labs - Dennis M. Wilkinson and Bernardo A. Huberman, Assessing the Value of Cooperation in Wikipedia. http://www.hpl.hp.com/research/idl/papers/wikipedia/index.html –Ian Gilfillan - http://www.greenman.co.za/blog/?p=433 –Wikipedia quotes used on the veganism parable slides from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:NFCC http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Avoid_Copyright_Paranoia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Non-free_content/Archive_26 Currency conversions from http://www.xe.com/ucc/ January 18, 2009 Slide 31: Edited screenshot of Brisbane Times article by Chris Barrett, 16 January 2009. http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/articles/2009/01/16/1231608924346.html Casamance discussion screenshot from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Casamance_national_football_team Wikipedia in 2001 screenshot from http://nostalgia.wikipedia.org/wiki/HomePage Arguments against ads on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Advertisements Veganism parable adapted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Veganism_parable - originally written by Angr and available under the GFDL.