---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Stefan Merten <[email protected]> Date: 2010/3/30 Subject: [ox-en] Impressions from CPOV Wikipedia in Amsterdam To: [email protected] Hi list! Last weekend there was another conference in Amsterdam. It was called CPOV Wikipedia (Critical Point of View). Again the following are some impressions from the conference. I'd also like to thank Geert for organizing this conference. It was a medium conference with I guess 100-120 attenders. Though the presentation style of some talks was quite improvable over all the conference was very interesting. The general topic of the conference was about the governance in Wikipedia - insofar it was a hot conference for the topics we are discussing here. I had hoped for a talk explaining all the governance facilities which are in place in Wikipedia - like mediators and facilitators but unfortunately there were no such talk. I'd love to have a good overview here. Jeanette Hofmann gave an interesting talk where she made the often seen phenomenon of high expectations in the beginning of a project and deep frustration later own. She asked the very necessary question on how to conceptualize this properly. Well, my guess would be to start with realistic expectations in the first place. Which fits well with Jeanette's observation that when starting a project people are often *so* a-historical in the sense that they always think that they are the first who tried it that way. A point I also made a couple of times already. Jeanette also quoted Boaventura de Sousa Santos a lot. This person made a lot of useful contributions around this topic. Probably worthwhile checking out. Another interesting point Jeanette made was about the tension of regulation and emancipation. Jeanette said that the goal or regulation is order while the goal of emancipation is good order. Whenever the order from regulation becomes bad emancipation steps in. Though I'd not use these terms I think this describes the dynamic of social systems quite well. A couple of the most interesting talks were about empirical studies about Wikipedia. One talk by Esther Weltevreden and Erik Borra studied controversies on the article about climate change (IIRC). It was very interesting to learn about how the controversies were handled in this case. One of their most interesting statements was that the new mode of knowledge production moves from truth and facts to the process of knowledge production. The talk of Andrew Famiglietti also was focused on disputes and their resolution in Wikipedia. One of the highlights was the talk by Felipe Ortega. He did an extensive statistical research on Wikipedia. He researched not only the English Wikipedia - which is usually researched - but the Wikipedias in the top ten languages. It was very interesting to see similarities and differences. For instance for all Wikipedias the growth is flattening over the years. Felipe stressed that these numbers can be and have been interpreted in various ways. One say that Wikipedia stalled, other say that Wikipedia matured. Together with Felipe I think the latter is the better interpretation - there is similar a limit to what can be represented usefully in an encylopedia. Another figure Felipe presented is that though everyone *can* edit in practice 5% of the registered users do 90% of the edits. However, it was not yet clear of which quality these edits are - may be a lot spelling correction or some such is part of these 90%. Stuart Geiger gave also an interesting talk from a study about the bots which are active in Wikipedia. He illustrated an example where a bot adds signatures in Talk pages if people don't do it themselves. One of Stuart's statements was that order is increasingly produced through technical means. It is indeed one of the governance questions arising from "Code is Law". As someone who "in the scene" for years now there was Florian Cramer. As he said himself Florian feels himself to be in the deep frustration phase Jeanette talked about. He outlined a couple of things peer production should have been / become but which didn't get reality. For instance the re-using of material is by far not as massive as expected. He also pointed out that Jim Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, has an extreme neo-liberal background (Ayn Rand and Friedrich van Hayek). This reminds me of the point I'm having in mind for quite some years now to understand the synthesis aspect of peer production better. One of his deep concerns is that peer production works only on a very generic level like Free Software and Wikipedia where everyone can agree easily. In fact an interesting thought which definitely needs to be explored further - beginning with the question what he means exactly. An interesting point in one of the discussions was that in the beginning of Wikipedia the main concern was about getting enough volunteer labor while meanwhile the main concern is to retain the available volunteer labor. A general critique I had for some speakers was the "they-should"-style they seemed to be so proud of - while at the same time taking all the benefits of Wikipedia like massive transparency of the project simply as granted. Meanwhile I'm a bit tired of this style probably. The more I was pleased by the statement from Joseph Reagle that people should make productive contributions. I think this is yet another important point where the Left differs from peer production. In peer production "I do" is much more welcome and useful than "they should". May be that's a point which needs further analysis anyway. A short thought goes in the direction that this "they should"-style is probably well for criticizing the state or other institutions which have some (alienated?) power. But Wikipedia? Well, as I said: An interesting point to explore further if we think about a peer production based society. Again the social aspect of the conference was very nice. I met a couple of people I just saw in Hull and a couple of other old friends. I also get to know a few new people. Again I made some notes about possible speakers for a possible 5th Oekonux Conference. Grüße Stefan -- Diego Saravia [email protected] NO FUNCIONA->[email protected] -- Diego Saravia [email protected] NO FUNCIONA->[email protected]