Wikipedia Virgin No More

Posted on Published by Eugene Eric Kim

Yesterday, Erik Moeller asked me to look at the Wikipedia entry on Intellipedia. Curious as to the timing of the request, I checked my feeds, and sure enough, a few articles on Intellipedia had cropped up.    (LGQ)

I figured the best people to review the accuracy of the article were those involved, so I passed Erik’s request along to them. However, in reviewing the article myself, I noticed that somebody had linked to my picture of the Intellipedia shovel, along with a short description. The description was slightly off, so I decided to fix it. In doing so, I lost my Wikipedia virginity.    (LGR)

If you want to be technical about it, I wasn’t a real Wikipedia virgin. I’ve vandalized the site anonymously on more than one occasion. That’s right, vandalized. It was a cool trick I picked up from Ross Mayfield as a way to demonstrate in front of a live audience that yes, anyone really can edit Wikipedia, and more importantly, that Wikipedia is self-healing. I don’t do it anymore, because the bots have gotten smarter, thus eliminating one of the main points of the demonstration.    (LGS)

The first time I told this story to Wikipedians was when I was introducing myself at the Hacking Days Wiki developers summit at Wikimania 2005. I said, “I’ve never edited Wikipedia, but I have vandalized it on more than one occasions.” I thought it was pretty funny, but no one laughed. It could have been that people had a hard time picking up on the irony in English, but I think people just didn’t think it was funny. So for all of you Wikipedians hearing this story for the first time, blame Ross.    (LGT)

I nearly edited Wikipedia for real in 2004, when I was finishing up my research on Open Source adoption in Brazil. In my original draft, I told some great stories about the rise of grassroot communities in Brazil, and to my horror, the editors cut them out. I decided to insert them into Wikipedia, but I never got around to it. Maybe I’ll revisit this, especially now that Lula is back in the news.    (LGU)

I’ve spoken at both Wikimanias, and I’ve talked to many folks about Wikipedia, so I’ve always felt a little guilty about not having actually edited it. Then at this year’s Wikimania, I learned that Ward Cunningham hasn’t edited it yet either. (It’s captured on this recording.) That helped, but now the guilt is gone for good.    (LGV)

How does it feel to have finally edited it? To be honest, it’s no different than editing any other Wiki. Personally, I find that really cool. It’s further confirmation that as big as Wikipedia has become, at its core, it’s still just a Wiki. It reminds of the original exchange between Jimbo Wales and Ward Cunningham on Ward’s Wiki about Wikipedia:    (LGW)

My question, to this esteemed Wiki community, is this: Do you think that a Wiki could successfully generate a useful encyclopedia? — Jimbo Wales    (LGX)

Yes, but in the end it wouldn’t be an encyclopedia. It would be a wiki. — Ward Cunningham    (LGY)

Of course, my assessment isn’t quite fair, either. I haven’t experienced a Wikipedia edit war first-hand or a negotiation over Neutral Point Of View. More things to look forward to!    (LGZ)

WikiMania 2006, Day One

Posted on Published by Eugene Eric Kim

Day one is over. Brain is overloaded. Very tired. Attending conference during day/evening, then working late into night — bad. Law school dorms with no air conditioning in Cambridge in August — also bad.    (KWO)

Still, much to share. And amazingly enough, I will — at least a bit. There’s something about this conference that actually gets me to blog, rather than simply promising I will. Besides, I’m going to set a new record for responsiveness to Tom Maddox, even if it is via blog.    (KWP)

It is incredibly surreal to be back at my alma mater surrounded by post-college friends and colleagues. What makes it even more surreal is that folks from all facets of my professional life seem to be here, not just Wiki folks. I mentioned having my fingers in a lot of pies, right? Well, all those pies are unexpectedly well represented this weekend. It started yesterday when I discovered that Chris Messina and Tara Hunt were on the same flight to Boston, and culminated at dinner with Greg Elin (whom I first met at the FLOSS Usability Sprint, and who invited me to join him for dinner), Daniel Perry (a lawyer who’s been an important contributor to recent Identity Commons discussions), Tom Munnecke (first introduced to me by Jack Park when I was just starting Blue Oxen Associates), and Doc Searls (who needs no introduction). Also at the dinner: Ellen Miller, Micah Sifry, David Isenberg, Britt Blaser, and Yochai Benkler. Quite a contrast from last year, when I was hanging with grassroots Wiki peeps every night. I’m not complaining, though. The conversation was fascinating, even if we didn’t talk much about Wikis.    (KWQ)

Keeping with this theme, I didn’t hear much about Wikis today, other than my interview with Ward Cunningham. I kept my questions pretty basic, as a lot of folks there had never heard him speak, but I managed to slip in a few probing questions for myself. I asked Ward about the evolution of Wiki culture, and I specifically mentioned the culture of anonymity that he strongly encouraged in the early days, but that seems mostly absent in today’s Wikis. Ward seemed resignedly ambivalent. I asked him about what makes a Wiki a Wiki, and he was decidedly agnostic in his response: anything that facilitates a permissive spirit and mode of collaboration. I’m not sure whether he was being political or whether he truly feels this way. My guess is a bit of both, but I’ll press him on this if I get a chance later this weekend.    (KWR)

I showed up late to Larry Lessig‘s keynote, but I was unconcerned, as I had heard him give his Free Culture speech before. It’s excellent, but he recycles it often. Sure enough, he was doing the same speech, and I started tuning out. Fortunately, my brain was paying partial attention, or I would have missed what may end up being the most intriguing development of the conference.    (KWS)

Larry started talking about the interoperability of licenses, and how it was silly that the FDL and Creative Commons BY-SA licenses could not be relicensed interchangeably, even though the two licenses were equivalent in spirit and intent. He then proposed an interoperability clause as well as a neutral organization whose purpose would be to classify equivalent licenses. His talk was followed by a really good panel discussion between him and Eben Moglen. This stuff is really complicated and important, but it looks like Larry and Eben are serious about working together towards a common solution. Apparently, Jimbo Wales deserves a lot of credit for getting these two to cooperate. Did I mention that I love this community?    (KWT)

Quick hits:    (KWU)

  • I shared a flight and T ride here with Chris Messina aned Tara Hunt. (Chris was presenting on Bar Camp.) Chris extolled the virtues of Voodoo Pad, which apparently has autolinking features a la my Markup Free Auto Linking Wiki idea.    (KWV)
  • Was excited to see two of my roommates from last year: Kurt Jansson, a German doctoral student and president of the German chapter of Wikimedia Foundation, and Juan David Ruiz, a Chilean lawyer.    (KWW)
  • Saw Erik Zachte in the morning, who does awesome Wikipedia work. Erik immediately told me about two cool projects I had never heard of: FON and Wikimapia.    (KWX)
  • Caught up with Rory O’Connor after my session with Ward. Rory’s a filmmaker who came to last year’s Wikimania to make a documentary on Wikipedia. What I didn’t know was that he was so inspired by the proceedings, he decided to release all 13 hours of his footage under a Creative Commons license to encourage folks to mix their own documentaries from the event. Check it out, and mix away! There’s some interview footage of me somewhere in there, and I make a cameo in Rory’s 11-minute rough cut, in the background of Jimbo’s interviews yukking it up with John Breslin.    (KWY)
  • Somehow, I got recruited by multiple Wikipedians to help with the lightning talks due to my process expertise. My expert advice: “Move those chairs into a circle, and be firm with the time limit.” Yes folks, this is why I get paid the big bucks.    (KWZ)
  • Briefly got a chance to chat with Tim Starling about the OpenID integration in Mediawiki. Tim explained that they’re going to unify the user databases across all the different Wikimedia properties. This was further validation that Yoke‘s identity proxy approach is useful. Of course, one of these days, I’m going to have to actually write down what that approach is, so that I can convince people of its utility.    (KX0)