From juliana at networkcultures.org  Mon Mar  1 12:05:51 2010
From: juliana at networkcultures.org (Juliana Brunello)
Date: Mon, 1 Mar 2010 12:05:51 +0100
Subject: <CPOV> Some intersting articles on Wikipedia
Message-ID: <39b26252f1b13027818b7fdca20e57a1.squirrel@webmail.xs4all.nl>

Some interesting articles:


Why Wikipedia beats Wikinews as a collaborative journalism project
http://www.niemanlab.org/2010/02/why-wikipedia-beats-wikinews-as-a-collaborative-journalism-project/

WikiReader:
http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/home/permalink/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20100208005644&newsLang=en

And a software to reading it offline:
http://www.maemocommunity.com/564/offline-wikipedia-mawire-for-maemo/

The challenges of filming the Virtual Revolution (BBC)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/feb/08/viritual-revolution-bbc2-filming

Google Knol: Tool for writing articles in open, moderated or closed
collaboration (not as new, but still interesting)
http://knol.google.com/k?hl=en

Tool for quantitative analysis in Wikipedia
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiXRay
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knol


More Video Coming Wikipedia's Way
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2010/02/10/more-video-coming-wikipedias-way/

How Open Source Development is Funded
http://community.joomla.org/blogs/community/1117-how-open-source-development-is-funded.html

WikiPock
http://www.androidguys.com/2010/02/23/app-review-wikipock/comment-page-1/

Wikipedia to be converted to a book in Germany
http://www.monstersandcritics.com/books/news/article_1401300.php/Wikipedia_to_be_converted_to_a_book_in_Germany

Juliana

ADDRESS:
Institute of Network Cultures
HvA Interactive Media, room 05A20
Rhijnspoorplein 1
NL-1091 GC Amsterdam

POSTAL ADDRESS
Institute of Network Cultures
HvA Interactive Media, room 05A20
PO BOX 1025
NL-1000 BA Amsterdam

http://www.networkcultures.org
t: +31 20 5951866
f: +31 20 5951840




From eweltevrede at gmail.com  Tue Mar  2 12:04:22 2010
From: eweltevrede at gmail.com (Esther Weltevrede)
Date: Tue, 2 Mar 2010 12:04:22 +0100
Subject: <CPOV> Wiki Analytics Workshop, Thursday March 25
Message-ID: <d44aba911003020304o78e5ab4ah7bd196d0b6f831a2@mail.gmail.com>

Dear CPOV participant,

The Digital Methods Initiative will host an informal wiki analytics  
workshop at the University of Amsterdam on Thursday, March 25.  
Participants of the CPOV Amsterdam conference are invited to present  
and discuss methods, tools and data among fellow Wikipedia researchers.

The workshop is in anticipation of the CPOV Amsterdam conference, in  
particular the Wiki Analytics session on Saturday March 27.

If you would like to attend, please indicate this by sending a brief  
description of your contribution to info at digitalmethods.net. Seats are  
limited so please register by Monday 15 March.

Date and time: Thursday March 25, 10:00-17:00
Location: UvA Turfdraagsterpad 9 in Amsterdam, room 0.13

The Digital Methods Initiative (DMI) is a collaboration of the New  
Media TEMLab at the University of Amsterdam and the Govcom.org  
Foundation, Amsterdam, developing methods and tools for Web research.  
The Digital Methods Initiative is directed by Prof. Dr. Richard  
Rogers. The project coordinators are Esther Weltevrede and Anne  
Helmond. Current affiliates include Anat Ben-David, Erik Borra,  
Marieke van Dijk, Andrea Fiore, Noortje Marres, Koen Martens, Sabine  
Niederer, Michael Stevenson and Marijn de Vries Hoogerwerff.

Best regards,

Esther Weltevrede
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From Mayo.Fuster at EUI.eu  Sat Mar  6 19:55:24 2010
From: Mayo.Fuster at EUI.eu (Fuster, Mayo)
Date: Sat, 6 Mar 2010 19:55:24 +0100
Subject: <CPOV> Wikimedia evolution in terms of governance and the creation
	of a Foundation
Message-ID: <F442E6A7D8139D47B32E30E689AF802C03E36793@MAILSRV2.iue.private>

Hello everyone at the CPOV list!

I hope that you are fine.

I would like to make you notice a recent post I did for the CPOV web-resource. With this post I would like to contribute to the e-list exchange with an overview of the evolution of the Wikimedia governance and the role of the Foundation across time. Furthermore, I hope it could also help to contextualise my presentation at the CPOV which will address the role of the Wikimedia Foundation for the Wikimedia eco-system and its international-global expansion. 

Here it is: http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/cpov/resources/resources_in_english/wikimedia-evolution-in-terms-of-governance-and-the-creation-of-a-foundation/

Comments, critiques and suggestions are very welcome! Mayo 

???`?.(*?.?(`?.? ?.??)?.?*).??`??
????*???? Mayo Fuster Morell ?.?.?*?`??
???`?.(?.??(?.?* *?.?)`?.?).??`??

Research Digital Commons Governance: http://www.onlinecreation.info
European University Institute - Phd Candidate
School of information Berkeley Visiting researcher
Phone Italy: 0039-3345440747 or 0039-0558409982
Phone Spanish State: 0034-648877748
E-mail: mayo.fuster at eui.eu
Skype: mayoneti
Identi.ca: Mayo


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From thekohser at gmail.com  Sun Mar  7 14:39:28 2010
From: thekohser at gmail.com (Gregory Kohs)
Date: Sun, 7 Mar 2010 08:39:28 -0500
Subject: <CPOV> Wikimedia evolution in terms of governance and the
	creation of a Foundation (Fuster, Mayo)
Message-ID: <14b1e7be1003070539ycd605k9fd09e0a734f3d3c@mail.gmail.com>

Mayo, I'm having a difficult time with your thesis, because you fail
to even mention once either Dr. Larry Sanger or attorney Alex Roshuk.
Are you familiar with the work of these gentlemen between the years
2000 and about 2004, as it related to Wikipedia and Wikimedia
Foundation genesis?  If so, was there a reason you deliberately
excluded mention of them?  If not, then I suggest you familiarize
yourself with their work and probably reconfigure your essay to
include their perspectives.

-- 
Gregory Kohs
Cell: 302.463.1354



From nathanieltkacz at gmail.com  Mon Mar  8 06:31:53 2010
From: nathanieltkacz at gmail.com (nathaniel tkacz)
Date: Mon, 8 Mar 2010 16:31:53 +1100
Subject: <CPOV> Wikimedia evolution in terms of governance and the
	creation of a Foundation (Fuster, Mayo)
In-Reply-To: <14b1e7be1003070539ycd605k9fd09e0a734f3d3c@mail.gmail.com>
References: <14b1e7be1003070539ycd605k9fd09e0a734f3d3c@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <5eca9f761003072131i41261b8bx7cbb038f6a53ca8f@mail.gmail.com>

Hi Mayo and Gregory,

I agree with Gregory that it was strange not to hear anything of these
characters. I try to avoid the kinds of esoteric name dropping competitions
that go in FLOSS discussions ("if you don't know the importance of this
character, or the significance of this or that project, then..." etc.), but
on the question of early governance I would think that Sanger's role in
particular would be crucial.

What I would like to ask Mayo, however, is on the topic of the Spanish Fork
(SF) as I am writing about software forking at the moment. I get the
impression you consider the SF a highly significant moment in Wikipedia's
history - a key event in which the project is both transformed and becomes
clear about its new direction. Is this indeed what you think, and if so
could you comment a little more?... (I would also love to hear what everyone
else thinks or has written about the SF).

As an aside, the SF is also interesting because it was centrally about
thinking how to cover Sanger's and other employees' salary, or at least that
is how the question of advertising was framed at the time. The actual online
exchange that took place is very interesting (I'm using it in my writings)
and is quite revealing on questions of power, authority and other juicy
stuff. Might be interesting for Mayo because the end of Sanger, the SF and
the emergence of the Foundation are connected in interesting ways.

Not being a Wikipedian or involved in these histories personally my
knowledge is pretty sketchy, but if there are some veterans from these
events lurking on this list it would be good to read some accounts closer to
the source.

Best

Nate


On Mon, Mar 8, 2010 at 12:39 AM, Gregory Kohs <thekohser at gmail.com> wrote:

> Mayo, I'm having a difficult time with your thesis, because you fail
> to even mention once either Dr. Larry Sanger or attorney Alex Roshuk.
> Are you familiar with the work of these gentlemen between the years
> 2000 and about 2004, as it related to Wikipedia and Wikimedia
> Foundation genesis?  If so, was there a reason you deliberately
> excluded mention of them?  If not, then I suggest you familiarize
> yourself with their work and probably reconfigure your essay to
> include their perspectives.
>
> --
> Gregory Kohs
> Cell: 302.463.1354
>
> _______________________________________________
> Cpov_listcultures.org mailing list
> Cpov_listcultures.org at p10.alfaservers.com
> http://p10.alfaservers.com/mailman/listinfo/cpov_listcultures.org
>



-- 
Nate Tkacz

Research Fellow,
RMIT University

Twitter: http://twitter.com/__nate__
Homepage: www.nathanieltkacz.net
Current project: http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/cpov/about-2/
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From juliana at networkcultures.org  Wed Mar 10 16:50:36 2010
From: juliana at networkcultures.org (Juliana Brunello)
Date: Wed, 10 Mar 2010 16:50:36 +0100
Subject: <CPOV> links
Message-ID: <67d7ea89646ee36948e1687063f4e2a0.squirrel@webmail.xs4all.nl>

Here are some links to interesting news, articles, etc.

Who Does What on Wikipedia?
http://www.physorg.com/news186945387.html
About a research carried out by Sudha Ram and Jun Liu (University of
Arizona).

Determinants of Wikipedia Quality: the Roles of Global
and Local Contribution Inequality
http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/1720000/1718963/p233-arazy.pdf?key1=1718963&key2=1099228621&coll=&dl=GUIDE&CFID=76608349&CFTOKEN=27748928
New book

Wiki-style theme for WordPress
http://wikiwp.com/
Downloadable

Nonfiction: "You are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto," by Jaron Lanier.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10066/1040360-148.stm


Interview: Encyclopedia Dramatica moderator
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/technology/1025127/interview-with-top-encyclopedia-dramatica-moderator

Wikipedia&#8217;s Decline and the 7 Types of Human Motivation
http://www.enterpriseirregulars.com/14301/wikipedia&#8217;s-decline-and-the-7-types-of-human-motivation/


Knol: The State of Play
http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2010-03-03-n10.html

Cheers, Juliana


ADDRESS:
Institute of Network Cultures
HvA Interactive Media, room 05A20
Rhijnspoorplein 1
NL-1091 GC Amsterdam

POSTAL ADDRESS
Institute of Network Cultures
HvA Interactive Media, room 05A20
PO BOX 1025
NL-1000 BA Amsterdam

http://www.networkcultures.org
t: +31 20 5951866
f: +31 20 5951840




From Mayo.Fuster at EUI.eu  Thu Mar 11 14:14:06 2010
From: Mayo.Fuster at EUI.eu (Fuster, Mayo)
Date: Thu, 11 Mar 2010 14:14:06 +0100
Subject: <CPOV> RS: Wikimedia evolution in terms of governance and
	thecreation of a Foundation (Fuster, Mayo)
References: <14b1e7be1003070539ycd605k9fd09e0a734f3d3c@mail.gmail.com>
	<5eca9f761003072131i41261b8bx7cbb038f6a53ca8f@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <F442E6A7D8139D47B32E30E689AF802C03E367C4@MAILSRV2.iue.private>

Hi everyone!

Thank you Gregor and Nate for raising attention to my post and for your suggestions. 

I think Alex Roshuk and Larry Sanger played an important role, however, there is a reason to exclude mentioning them, the same reason to exclude mentioning Brion Vibber, Angela Beesley, Florence Nibart-Devouard, Sue Garner, Erik M?ller, Samuel Klein, and a very long etc of people who had a role in the direction of the Foundation (furthermore considering not only in the early stages but the whole process until today). The only person I did mentioned is Jimmy Wales, certainly, from this perspective I could ignore who he is, too. 

My goal is not to do an account of the important people, but to analyse governance stages in the process from a cross-temporal perspective (since its creation until today) and how this is connected or not to the growth of the community. That is: how scale contribute to shape governance over time and looking at the same time how governance contribute to scaling. I found this exercise useful. Would you suggest other stages that I did not mention? Would you add other important reasons to explain those governance changes over time?. It is also en-lighting how for some cases similar moves of stages had been found in the process of creation of Foundation around FLOSS projects (see the work of O'Mahony on this). The same can not be said to the evolving of the governance acrooss time of other collective process (such as the Internatinal Council in relation to the World Social Forum). 

Other thing is to do an account of the people who had a role on the process (and more interesting by trying to understand the origens and base of their personal visions). Certainly, there is not a consensus on this on Wikipedia (which I think it is quiet common in collective process) and you can find very different accounts on the who (particularly concerning the role of Sanger).

However, I would be curious to further chat on your suggestions during the CPOV event.
 
Thank you also Nate for your comments.

>What I would like to ask Mayo, however, is on the topic of the Spanish Fork 
> (SF) as I am writing about software forking at the moment. I get the 
>impression you consider the SF a highly significant moment in Wikipedia's 
>history - a key event in which the project is both transformed and becomes 
>clear about its new direction. Is this indeed what you think, and if so could 
>you comment a little more?... (I would also love to hear what everyone else 
>thinks or has written about the SF).

I consider the Spanish Fork played a role in the creation of the Foundation. But it was not the only element, but in combination to other aspects: the Spanish Fork and the voices in favour of the non-profit character of the activity and the trust of the community as organizational form, the uncertainty of the governance structure, and the increase of costs (such as the one you mentioned on salaries of Sanger and other employees, or the servers) linked to the growing popularity and participation. In sum, it seems to be important, but in conjunction to other aspects that all together determine the creation of the Foundation.

Nate you mention you are looking to FLOSS forking, I would be very happy if you could comment (or other people on the e-list) on this and particularly how the forking relates to scale. Such as: is forking less of an option when the community growth? I think the risk of forking is a source of power of online platforms participants in front of platforms providers, however as the community scale (for several types of reasons) the possibility of forking become more complex. Any input on this would be much appreciated.

Cheers! Mayo 


???`?.(*?.?(`?.? ?.??)?.?*).??`??
????*???? Mayo Fuster Morell ?.?.?*?`??
???`?.(?.??(?.?* *?.?)`?.?).??`??

Research Digital Commons Governance: http://www.onlinecreation.info
European University Institute - Phd Candidate
School of information Berkeley Visiting researcher
Phone Italy: 0039-3345440747 or 0039-0558409982
Phone Spanish State: 0034-648877748
E-mail: mayo.fuster at eui.eu
Skype: mayoneti
Identi.ca: Mayo




-----Missatge original-----
De: cpov-bounces at listcultures.org en nom de nathaniel tkacz
Enviat el: dl. 08/03/2010 06:31
Per a: Gregory Kohs
A/c: cpov at listcultures.org
Tema: Re: <CPOV> Wikimedia evolution in terms of governance and thecreation of a Foundation (Fuster, Mayo)
 
Hi Mayo and Gregory,

I agree with Gregory that it was strange not to hear anything of these
characters. I try to avoid the kinds of esoteric name dropping competitions
that go in FLOSS discussions ("if you don't know the importance of this
character, or the significance of this or that project, then..." etc.), but
on the question of early governance I would think that Sanger's role in
particular would be crucial.

What I would like to ask Mayo, however, is on the topic of the Spanish Fork
(SF) as I am writing about software forking at the moment. I get the
impression you consider the SF a highly significant moment in Wikipedia's
history - a key event in which the project is both transformed and becomes
clear about its new direction. Is this indeed what you think, and if so
could you comment a little more?... (I would also love to hear what everyone
else thinks or has written about the SF).

As an aside, the SF is also interesting because it was centrally about
thinking how to cover Sanger's and other employees' salary, or at least that
is how the question of advertising was framed at the time. The actual online
exchange that took place is very interesting (I'm using it in my writings)
and is quite revealing on questions of power, authority and other juicy
stuff. Might be interesting for Mayo because the end of Sanger, the SF and
the emergence of the Foundation are connected in interesting ways.

Not being a Wikipedian or involved in these histories personally my
knowledge is pretty sketchy, but if there are some veterans from these
events lurking on this list it would be good to read some accounts closer to
the source.

Best

Nate


On Mon, Mar 8, 2010 at 12:39 AM, Gregory Kohs <thekohser at gmail.com> wrote:

> Mayo, I'm having a difficult time with your thesis, because you fail
> to even mention once either Dr. Larry Sanger or attorney Alex Roshuk.
> Are you familiar with the work of these gentlemen between the years
> 2000 and about 2004, as it related to Wikipedia and Wikimedia
> Foundation genesis?  If so, was there a reason you deliberately
> excluded mention of them?  If not, then I suggest you familiarize
> yourself with their work and probably reconfigure your essay to
> include their perspectives.
>
> --
> Gregory Kohs
> Cell: 302.463.1354
>
> _______________________________________________
> Cpov_listcultures.org mailing list
> Cpov_listcultures.org at p10.alfaservers.com
> http://p10.alfaservers.com/mailman/listinfo/cpov_listcultures.org
>



-- 
Nate Tkacz

Research Fellow,
RMIT University

Twitter: http://twitter.com/__nate__
Homepage: www.nathanieltkacz.net
Current project: http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/cpov/about-2/





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From nathanieltkacz at gmail.com  Fri Mar 12 00:22:03 2010
From: nathanieltkacz at gmail.com (nathaniel tkacz)
Date: Fri, 12 Mar 2010 10:22:03 +1100
Subject: <CPOV> RS: Wikimedia evolution in terms of governance and
	thecreation of a Foundation (Fuster, Mayo)
In-Reply-To: <F442E6A7D8139D47B32E30E689AF802C03E367C4@MAILSRV2.iue.private>
References: <14b1e7be1003070539ycd605k9fd09e0a734f3d3c@mail.gmail.com>
	<5eca9f761003072131i41261b8bx7cbb038f6a53ca8f@mail.gmail.com>
	<F442E6A7D8139D47B32E30E689AF802C03E367C4@MAILSRV2.iue.private>
Message-ID: <5eca9f761003111522v19fe8311h33944ac2e768ef02@mail.gmail.com>

Hi Mayo,

I think Alex Roshuk and Larry Sanger played an important role, however,
> there is a reason to exclude mentioning them, the same reason to exclude
> mentioning Brion Vibber, Angela Beesley, Florence Nibart-Devouard, Sue
> Garner, Erik M?ller, Samuel Klein, and a very long etc of people who had a
> role in the direction of the Foundation (furthermore considering not only in
> the early stages but the whole process until today). The only person I did
> mentioned is Jimmy Wales, certainly, from this perspective I could ignore
> who he is, too.
>
> My goal is not to do an account of the important people, but to analyse
> governance stages in the process from a cross-temporal perspective (since
> its creation until today) and how this is connected or not to the growth of
> the community. That is: how scale contribute to shape governance over time
> and looking at the same time how governance contribute to scaling. I found
> this exercise useful. Would you suggest other stages that I did not mention?
> Would you add other important reasons to explain those governance changes
> over time?. It is also en-lighting how for some cases similar moves of
> stages had been found in the process of creation of Foundation around FLOSS
> projects (see the work of O'Mahony on this). The same can not be said to the
> evolving of the governance acrooss time of other collective process (such as
> the Internatinal Council in relation to the World Social Forum).
>
> I am very sympathetic to focusing on other aspects of the development of
Wikipedia besides a who's who! The reason I mentioned Sanger was because I
think that he complicates the 'Benevolent Dictator' model. I guess it
depends on what kind of authority you associate with 'governance' as to
whether or not his role is significant.

>
> I consider the Spanish Fork played a role in the creation of the
> Foundation. But it was not the only element, but in combination to other
> aspects: the Spanish Fork and the voices in favour of the non-profit
> character of the activity and the trust of the community as organizational
> form, the uncertainty of the governance structure, and the increase of costs
> (such as the one you mentioned on salaries of Sanger and other employees, or
> the servers) linked to the growing popularity and participation. In sum, it
> seems to be important, but in conjunction to other aspects that all together
> determine the creation of the Foundation.
>
Yes, I'm sure the fork wasn't the only thing that brought about the change.
What I would like to know if it was the fork that made all these other
things manifest? Whether all these others factors had been there and even
acknowledged, but that it wasn't until the fork that all the issues were put
on the table and confronted? I hope your knowledge of the history of
Wikipedia governance might be able to shed more light on that question.

>
> Nate you mention you are looking to FLOSS forking, I would be very happy if
> you could comment (or other people on the e-list) on this and particularly
> how the forking relates to scale. Such as: is forking less of an option when
> the community growth? I think the risk of forking is a source of power of
> online platforms participants in front of platforms providers, however as
> the community scale (for several types of reasons) the possibility of
> forking become more complex. Any input on this would be much appreciated.
>
> My current writing is very much a critique of the way people understand
forking - both in terms of capacity to fork as well as the political
function of forking (which supposedly is a kind of safety net or exit
strategy). One thing I've found is that there is a lot of uncertainty as to
what actually constitutes a fork. Whether, for example, there has to be
intent not to re-integrate with the original community at a later stage or
whether forks have to eventually become completely "incompatible" with the
original. Can Citizendium be considered a fork of Wikipedia? Many people
would think not, although this is how the project was framed. Is a fork
necessarily about source code or "source content"? Can it be about key
members in a project who take a competing vision of the project and create
it from scratch? In my own writings I've tried to avoid these concerns by
simply accepting something as a fork if it has been described as one.

I certainly agree that forking is increasingly difficult when a project
scales. I'm tempted to say it is now impossible to fork the english
wikipedia, for example. I'm also tempted to say that forking itself has
always been impossible, a fiction made possible only by a generalised
fetish, or at least a misguided privileging of code as the site of politics.
I think Wendy Chun has made this point about software, but I might be
putting words in her mouth. My main interest in forking however, is that is
reveals existing asymmetries in FLOSS and related projects. Not everybody
has an equal capacity to fork. Moreover, forking represents a moment when
conflict is manifest and also clearly articulated. It reveals key principles
of a project that might not have been voiced previously. Of course, it would
also be a mistake to think that forking is necessarily Clint Eastwood-style
gun fight! I've been reminded in the past that many forks are rather
harmonious occurrences.

I'll post the draft I'm working on when it's done.

Best
-- 
Nate Tkacz

Research Fellow,
RMIT University

Twitter: http://twitter.com/__nate__
Homepage: www.nathanieltkacz.net
Current project: http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/cpov/about-2/
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From nathanieltkacz at gmail.com  Fri Mar 12 01:32:37 2010
From: nathanieltkacz at gmail.com (nathaniel tkacz)
Date: Fri, 12 Mar 2010 11:32:37 +1100
Subject: <CPOV> reagle's paper
Message-ID: <5eca9f761003111632l1e79275l3bc0500ab6715d15@mail.gmail.com>

You can find it here too (without the subscription wall):
 http://ws2007.wikisym.org/space/ReaglePaper



-- 
Nate Tkacz

Research Fellow,
RMIT University

Twitter: http://twitter.com/__nate__
Homepage: www.nathanieltkacz.net
Current project: http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/cpov/about-2/
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From andrew.famiglietti at lcc.gatech.edu  Fri Mar 12 01:45:59 2010
From: andrew.famiglietti at lcc.gatech.edu (andrew.famiglietti at lcc.gatech.edu)
Date: Thu, 11 Mar 2010 19:45:59 -0500 (EST)
Subject: <CPOV> RS: Wikimedia evolution in terms of governance and
 thecreation of a Foundation (Fuster, Mayo)
In-Reply-To: <148452340.1549921268354255325.JavaMail.root@mail6.gatech.edu>
Message-ID: <386801052.1552181268354759679.JavaMail.root@mail6.gatech.edu>

Hello everyone, 

I'm going to interject in this very interesting conversation in an informal and somewhat sloppy way, I hope everyone will forgive me. I don't have time to sort through my notes on the very early Wikipedia right now, I'm working on another piece! However, I just can't let this thread go by and not respond, it is too interesting! 

[Snipped section on Sanger and "governance"] 






I consider the Spanish Fork played a role in the creation of the Foundation. But it was not the only element, but in combination to other aspects: the Spanish Fork and the voices in favour of the non-profit character of the activity and the trust of the community as organizational form, the uncertainty of the governance structure, and the increase of costs (such as the one you mentioned on salaries of Sanger and other employees, or the servers) linked to the growing popularity and participation. In sum, it seems to be important, but in conjunction to other aspects that all together determine the creation of the Foundation. 

Yes, I'm sure the fork wasn't the only thing that brought about the change. What I would like to know if it was the fork that made all these other things manifest? Whether all these others factors had been there and even acknowledged, but that it wasn't until the fork that all the issues were put on the table and confronted? I hope your knowledge of the history of Wikipedia governance might be able to shed more light on that question. 

- 
I'm curious about the time frame for the "Spanish Fork" incident. This was after Sanger's departure from the project? My reading of the Wikipedia mailing list around the time Sanger left the project suggests to me (I'd be more sure with my notes!) that the move towards organizing the foundation starts here, with the rejection by Wikipedians of placing advertising on the site to raise Sanger's salary. Perhaps I'm misreading these archives? 







Nate you mention you are looking to FLOSS forking, I would be very happy if you could comment (or other people on the e-list) on this and particularly how the forking relates to scale. Such as: is forking less of an option when the community growth? I think the risk of forking is a source of power of online platforms participants in front of platforms providers, however as the community scale (for several types of reasons) the possibility of forking become more complex. Any input on this would be much appreciated. 


My current writing is very much a critique of the way people understand forking - both in terms of capacity to fork as well as the political function of forking (which supposedly is a kind of safety net or exit strategy). One thing I've found is that there is a lot of uncertainty as to what actually constitutes a fork. Whether, for example, there has to be intent not to re-integrate with the original community at a later stage or whether forks have to eventually become completely "incompatible" with the original. Can Citizendium be considered a fork of Wikipedia? Many people would think not, although this is how the project was framed. Is a fork necessarily about source code or "source content"? Can it be about key members in a project who take a competing vision of the project and create it from scratch? In my own writings I've tried to avoid these concerns by simply accepting something as a fork if it has been described as one. 

I certainly agree that forking is increasingly difficult when a project scales. I'm tempted to say it is now impossible to fork the english wikipedia, for example. I'm also tempted to say that forking itself has always been impossible, a fiction made possible only by a generalised fetish, or at least a misguided privileging of code as the site of politics. I think Wendy Chun has made this point about software, but I might be putting words in her mouth. My main interest in forking however, is that is reveals existing asymmetries in FLOSS and related projects. Not everybody has an equal capacity to fork. Moreover, forking represents a moment when conflict is manifest and also clearly articulated. It reveals key principles of a project that might not have been voiced previously. Of course, it would also be a mistake to think that forking is necessarily Clint Eastwood-style gun fight! I've been reminded in the past that many forks are rather harmonious occurrences. 

- 
It certainly seems difficult to fork a large project, and I would agree that forking the English Wikipedia at this point is probably impossible. However, it is interesting that, again based on my reading of the Wikipedia-L mailing list during 2001-2002, that early Wikipedians understood that project forking was not a realistic way to "exit" the project. Instead, they talk about the "threat" of forking, and thus disrupting the project, as a sort of check on the power of Wales and the other owners and adminstrators of the site. That is to say, they seemed to understand forking as destructive, rather than constructive, a way of withdrawing labor power... almost like a sort of wildcat strike! 

Anyway, as I said... just some quick and dirty thoughts. Who knows, when I find my notes I may have to correct myself! 

- Andy 
-- 
Andrew Famiglietti 
Brittain Fellow 
School of Literature, Communication, and Culture 
Georgia Institute of Technology 
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From nathanieltkacz at gmail.com  Fri Mar 12 02:25:29 2010
From: nathanieltkacz at gmail.com (nathaniel tkacz)
Date: Fri, 12 Mar 2010 12:25:29 +1100
Subject: <CPOV> RS: Wikimedia evolution in terms of governance and
	thecreation of a Foundation (Fuster, Mayo)
In-Reply-To: <386801052.1552181268354759679.JavaMail.root@mail6.gatech.edu>
References: <148452340.1549921268354255325.JavaMail.root@mail6.gatech.edu>
	<386801052.1552181268354759679.JavaMail.root@mail6.gatech.edu>
Message-ID: <5eca9f761003111725h62476b61m144378c55fa1f796@mail.gmail.com>

-
> I'm curious about the time frame for the "Spanish Fork" incident. This was
> after Sanger's departure from the project? My reading of the Wikipedia
> mailing list around the time Sanger left the project suggests to me (I'd be
> more sure with my notes!) that the move towards organizing the foundation
> starts here, with the rejection by Wikipedians of placing advertising on the
> site to raise Sanger's salary. Perhaps I'm misreading these archives?
>

I know from the archives that Sanger was actively involved in trying to
prevent the fork. He was definitely still around, but no longer getting
paid. Wales was pretty much silent until the very end of the discussion.

However, it is interesting that, again based on my reading of the
> Wikipedia-L mailing list during 2001-2002, that early Wikipedians understood
> that project forking was not a realistic way to "exit" the project.
>

But it happened!


> Instead, they talk about the "threat" of forking, and thus disrupting the
> project, as a sort of check on the power of Wales and the other owners and
> adminstrators of the site. That is to say, they seemed to understand forking
> as destructive, rather than constructive, a way of withdrawing labor
> power... almost like a sort of wildcat strike!
>
> interesting.

nate



>
>
> - Andy
> --
> Andrew Famiglietti
> Brittain Fellow
> School of Literature, Communication, and Culture
> Georgia Institute of Technology
>




-- 
Nate Tkacz

Research Fellow,
RMIT University

Twitter: http://twitter.com/__nate__
Homepage: www.nathanieltkacz.net
Current project: http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/cpov/about-2/
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From joseph.2008 at reagle.org  Fri Mar 12 02:47:14 2010
From: joseph.2008 at reagle.org (Joseph Reagle)
Date: Thu, 11 Mar 2010 20:47:14 -0500
Subject: <CPOV> RS: Wikimedia evolution in terms of governance and
	thecreation of a Foundation (Fuster, Mayo)
In-Reply-To: <5eca9f761003111725h62476b61m144378c55fa1f796@mail.gmail.com>
References: <148452340.1549921268354255325.JavaMail.root@mail6.gatech.edu>
	<386801052.1552181268354759679.JavaMail.root@mail6.gatech.edu>
	<5eca9f761003111725h62476b61m144378c55fa1f796@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <201003112047.15290.joseph.2008@reagle.org>


A timeline of the Spanish fork is here:
  http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Transwiki:Wikimania05/Paper-AS1
Sanger's concerns, here:
  http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Statement_by_Larry_Sanger_about_the_Spanish_wiki_encyclopedia_fork
  



From thekohser at gmail.com  Fri Mar 12 13:04:03 2010
From: thekohser at gmail.com (Gregory Kohs)
Date: Fri, 12 Mar 2010 07:04:03 -0500
Subject: <CPOV> The financial angle
Message-ID: <14b1e7be1003120404u652ec6efg75dc6ea776e70101@mail.gmail.com>

No study of early Wikipedia and the formation of the Wikimedia
Foundation would be complete without having a full understanding of
the effect of the Brian Dowling v. Chicago Options Associates (Michael
Davis) lawsuit and appeal process.  Until you understand that the
first Treasurer of the Wikimedia Foundation was actively trying to
hide from a judgment of $800,000+ against him (so much so, a court
found him to be in contempt), and that he remains the Chief Operating
Officer of Jimbo's Wikia, Inc., you're just spinning your intellectual
wheels.

-- 
Gregory Kohs



From joseph.nyu at reagle.org  Fri Mar 12 00:56:08 2010
From: joseph.nyu at reagle.org (Joseph Reagle)
Date: Thu, 11 Mar 2010 18:56:08 -0500
Subject: <CPOV> RS: Wikimedia evolution in terms of governance and
	thecreation of a Foundation (Fuster, Mayo)
In-Reply-To: <5eca9f761003111522v19fe8311h33944ac2e768ef02@mail.gmail.com>
References: <14b1e7be1003070539ycd605k9fd09e0a734f3d3c@mail.gmail.com>
	<F442E6A7D8139D47B32E30E689AF802C03E367C4@MAILSRV2.iue.private>
	<5eca9f761003111522v19fe8311h33944ac2e768ef02@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <201003111856.09357.joseph.nyu@reagle.org>

On Thursday 11 March 2010, nathaniel tkacz wrote:
> I am very sympathetic to focusing on other aspects of the development of
> Wikipedia besides a who's who! The reason I mentioned Sanger was because I
> think that he complicates the 'Benevolent Dictator' model. I guess it
> depends on what kind of authority you associate with 'governance' as to
> whether or not his role is significant.

fyi: I discuss Wales and Sanger explicitly in the context of benevolent dictatorship/authorial leadership:
	http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1296967




From jawbrey at att.net  Fri Mar 12 17:04:45 2010
From: jawbrey at att.net (Jon Awbrey)
Date: Fri, 12 Mar 2010 11:04:45 -0500
Subject: <CPOV> Welcome --> Conditions for the Possibility of CPOV?
In-Reply-To: <6C7027E3-FFA7-45EF-B604-D97F17A13CE2@xs4all.nl>
References: <6C7027E3-FFA7-45EF-B604-D97F17A13CE2@xs4all.nl>
Message-ID: <4B9A661D.1000002@att.net>

Geert & All,

I've been out of the email loop due to some monkey business
between AT&T and Yahoo, so I'll just try to pick up where
I last left off.

The most "prolegominous" question that comes to mind when
I read your acronym, CPOV, would probably have to be this:

| What are the conditions for the possibility
| of critical points of view arising, surviving,
| and thriving on the Web?

Jon Awbrey


> Geert & All,
> 
> Being still hopeful that there will arise places where critical reflective thinking
> about the impact of distributive information technology on society can take place,
> I welcome the appearance of this list.  I hope it will be a place where broader
> perspectives on social-technical architectures can be maintained, points of
> view from which we can see a way through the mists of mystification to all
> that we hoped for in the future of communication, education, and inquiry.
> 
> Jon Awbrey
> 
> Geert Lovink wrote:
>> Dear all,
>> 
>> welcome to this mailinglist on critical Wikipedia research!
>> 
>> There is an announcement of the Amsterdam CPOV event in the next email.
>> 
>> Work on this project started early 2009 when the editorial team  emerged 
>> out of the global social cloud. I met Nate in Melbourne in  December 
>> 2008 and knew of Johanna's work already for a while. Then I  ran into 
>> Sunil and Nishant in De Balie, here in Amsterdam, and quickly  agreed 
>> that should do an INC reader on the matter, prepared by two  events. 
>> The concept was ready in June and work on the production of  the two 
>> conferences, one in Bangalore, and one in Amsterdam, started  soon 
>> after. First of all there was a call for papers for the Bangalore event.
>> 
>> During the first event, on January 12-13 2010 in Bangalore, the  
>> editorial team decided to start its own mailinglist. So, here it is.
>> 
>> Here in Amsterdam at the Institute of Network Cultures we are working  
>> with a small team on the Amsterdam event. Besides me and Sabine  
>> Niederer (who will be on leave soon) who are on the original editorial  
>> team, there is the manager Margreet Riphagen, the Brazilian-German  
>> research intern Juliana Brunello and the production intern Serena Westra.
>> 
>> CPOV is about Wikipedia -- and it's not. That's the central phrase right  
>> now. Doing critical work in this field doesn't mean Wikipedia bashing.  
>> To me it is sign that Wikipedia is growing up. It is a luxury to have  
>> independent research networks that is not formally or informally  
>> attached to the big Wikimedia Mothership.
>> 
>> Let's see where CPOV will take us!
>> 
>> Greetings from a wet and cold, slippery Amsterdam,
>> 
>> Geert
>> _______________________________________________
>> Cpov_listcultures.org mailing list
>> Cpov_listcultures.org at p10.alfaservers.com
>> http://p10.alfaservers.com/mailman/listinfo/cpov_listcultures.org

-- 

inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/
mwb: http://www.mywikibiz.com/Directory:Jon_Awbrey
knol: http://knol.google.com/k/-/-/3fkwvf69kridz/1
oeiswiki: http://www.oeis.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey



From geert at xs4all.nl  Mon Mar 15 10:14:36 2010
From: geert at xs4all.nl (Geert Lovink)
Date: Mon, 15 Mar 2010 10:14:36 +0100
Subject: <CPOV> Welcome --> Conditions for the Possibility of CPOV?
In-Reply-To: <4B9A661D.1000002@att.net>
References: <6C7027E3-FFA7-45EF-B604-D97F17A13CE2@xs4all.nl>
	<4B9A661D.1000002@att.net>
Message-ID: <E6187377-BB6B-4FEE-999E-658BFC466B0C@xs4all.nl>

On 12 Mar 2010, at 5:04 PM, Jon Awbrey wrote:

> | What are the conditions for the possibility
> | of critical points of view arising, surviving,
> | and thriving on the Web?

CPOV is about Wikipedia (and it is not...). The Web is a lot, these  
days. The prime condition, in my view, would be lively communities of  
people who care, who are prepare to fight and argue, who believe that  
stuff matters. We have to fight indifference. This is why, in the end,  
we of the cpov initiative believed that we should indeed have a list  
like this. We cannot not presume that communities exist and do their  
(good) work. Not even this one. Social ties as defined by Facebook,  
Studi-VZ, Hyves and others will not do the job. In the case of  
Wikipedia the question for me would be if it is possible to build up a  
critical discourse outside of the small Western white male geek core  
that makes out the Wikimedia foundation. Wikipedia as a unique project  
deserves it to be more open, more diverse. But this will not fall out  
of the skies. There is a user culture that needs to be changed. We  
need better wiki software (a major update, please!), better interfaces  
and more contemporary multimedia content. First and foremost, the  
moderators will have to stop their harsh treatments of first  
contributors. We need to train students, academics and professionals  
to become regular contributors. This is all critical work to me.  
Debates will have to be encouraged. What the net needs right now is a  
rich discussion culture. Less insults and extreme opinions, more  
rhetorics. There is an art of debating, and projects like Wikipedia  
can help us to (re-)establish it.

Geert




From fcramer at pleintekst.nl  Mon Mar 15 12:34:45 2010
From: fcramer at pleintekst.nl (Florian Cramer)
Date: Mon, 15 Mar 2010 12:34:45 +0100
Subject: <CPOV> Welcome --> Conditions for the Possibility of CPOV?
In-Reply-To: <E6187377-BB6B-4FEE-999E-658BFC466B0C@xs4all.nl>
References: <6C7027E3-FFA7-45EF-B604-D97F17A13CE2@xs4all.nl>
	<4B9A661D.1000002@att.net>
	<E6187377-BB6B-4FEE-999E-658BFC466B0C@xs4all.nl>
Message-ID: <20100315113445.GD2619@hro.nl>

On Monday, March 15 2010, 10:14 (+0100), Geert Lovink wrote:
> to be changed. We need better wiki software (a major update,
> please!), 

In the course of the German Wikipedia controversy, Chaos Computer Club
came up with some good suggestions in this regard. CCC members heavily
criticized the Mediawiki software for being a user-unfriendly relic of
the 1990s, and pointed to alternatives. Popular Open Source content
management systems like WordPress should give the MediaWiki developers
enough clues for improved usability. 

> better interfaces and more contemporary multimedia
> content. 

The latter is a can of worms. Wikipedia already supports audiovisual
content. But providing "more contemporary multimedia content" on an
openly licensed platform is easier said than done.  Video is one big
intellectual property minefield. First of all, there no
patent-/license-free video codecs except Ogg Theora. As a matter of
fact, Theora video can already be uploaded to Wikipedia and embedded in
articles, but non-Open Source browsers including Internet Explorer and
Safari do not play back the format, partly for political reasons. Apple
was the most active force in vetoing Ogg Theora to become an official
web standard for HTML5 web video, likely because it didn't want to
endanger its own QuickTime standard and iTunes business model. It's yet
another textbook example for the intrinsic interconnections between
economics, politics, engineering and culture on the Web that critical
media studies need to grasp.

Secondly, all existing video content of mass/professional media origin
is under copyright and likewise severe licensing restrictions, and
cannot be provided under Wikipedia's Creative Commons license. (Google,
for example, pays $240.9 million royalties per year to the media
industry and collecting societies to bail out the user-uploaded content
of YouTube.) This effectively limits video and multimedia content on
Wikipedia to either vintage material whose copyright has expired, such
as the videos from the Prelinger archive, or video that has been
recorded and edited by Wikipedia contributors themselves. This rules out
any found footage that isn't public domain or freely licensed. And even
if a video is the sole creation of a Wikipedia contributor, there remain
legal risks such as the violation of privacy rights of people who have
been recorded without their knowing or consent, and who can be
identified on the recording. 

If you combine all these factors, it's simply not feasible for Wikipedia
to ever become an advanced multimedia dictionary - unless there will be
a global legal reform to redefine fair use of audiovisual content.

Florian
 

-- 
blog:     http://en.pleintekst.nl
homepage: http://cramer.pleintekst.nl:70
          gopher://cramer.pleintekst.nl



From paolo at gnuband.org  Mon Mar 15 13:21:52 2010
From: paolo at gnuband.org (paolo massa)
Date: Mon, 15 Mar 2010 13:21:52 +0100
Subject: <CPOV> Welcome --> Conditions for the Possibility of CPOV?
In-Reply-To: <20100315113445.GD2619@hro.nl>
References: <6C7027E3-FFA7-45EF-B604-D97F17A13CE2@xs4all.nl> 
	<4B9A661D.1000002@att.net>
	<E6187377-BB6B-4FEE-999E-658BFC466B0C@xs4all.nl> 
	<20100315113445.GD2619@hro.nl>
Message-ID: <8d193afa1003150521j4f97c5ebmaafb25b0a7979fa8@mail.gmail.com>

I remember Wikipedia announced a partnership with Kaltura in 2008 for
making collaborative editing and upload of videos a reality.
Thinks were slower than desired and this recent article explains why.
http://newteevee.com/2010/01/30/wikipedia-is-finally-gearing-up-for-video/

Kaltura software is open source. For a demo of it see, for example
http://wikieducator.org/Help:Collaborative_video
(wikieducator is not a wikimedia project but shares the same software,
mediawiki)

P.

On Mon, Mar 15, 2010 at 12:34 PM, Florian Cramer <fcramer at pleintekst.nl> wrote:
> On Monday, March 15 2010, 10:14 (+0100), Geert Lovink wrote:
>> to be changed. We need better wiki software (a major update,
>> please!),
>
> In the course of the German Wikipedia controversy, Chaos Computer Club
> came up with some good suggestions in this regard. CCC members heavily
> criticized the Mediawiki software for being a user-unfriendly relic of
> the 1990s, and pointed to alternatives. Popular Open Source content
> management systems like WordPress should give the MediaWiki developers
> enough clues for improved usability.
>
>> better interfaces and more contemporary multimedia
>> content.
>
> The latter is a can of worms. Wikipedia already supports audiovisual
> content. But providing "more contemporary multimedia content" on an
> openly licensed platform is easier said than done. ?Video is one big
> intellectual property minefield. First of all, there no
> patent-/license-free video codecs except Ogg Theora. As a matter of
> fact, Theora video can already be uploaded to Wikipedia and embedded in
> articles, but non-Open Source browsers including Internet Explorer and
> Safari do not play back the format, partly for political reasons. Apple
> was the most active force in vetoing Ogg Theora to become an official
> web standard for HTML5 web video, likely because it didn't want to
> endanger its own QuickTime standard and iTunes business model. It's yet
> another textbook example for the intrinsic interconnections between
> economics, politics, engineering and culture on the Web that critical
> media studies need to grasp.
>
> Secondly, all existing video content of mass/professional media origin
> is under copyright and likewise severe licensing restrictions, and
> cannot be provided under Wikipedia's Creative Commons license. (Google,
> for example, pays $240.9 million royalties per year to the media
> industry and collecting societies to bail out the user-uploaded content
> of YouTube.) This effectively limits video and multimedia content on
> Wikipedia to either vintage material whose copyright has expired, such
> as the videos from the Prelinger archive, or video that has been
> recorded and edited by Wikipedia contributors themselves. This rules out
> any found footage that isn't public domain or freely licensed. And even
> if a video is the sole creation of a Wikipedia contributor, there remain
> legal risks such as the violation of privacy rights of people who have
> been recorded without their knowing or consent, and who can be
> identified on the recording.
>
> If you combine all these factors, it's simply not feasible for Wikipedia
> to ever become an advanced multimedia dictionary - unless there will be
> a global legal reform to redefine fair use of audiovisual content.
>
> Florian
>
>
> --
> blog: ? ? http://en.pleintekst.nl
> homepage: http://cramer.pleintekst.nl:70
> ? ? ? ? ?gopher://cramer.pleintekst.nl
>
> _______________________________________________
> Cpov_listcultures.org mailing list
> Cpov_listcultures.org at p10.alfaservers.com
> http://p10.alfaservers.com/mailman/listinfo/cpov_listcultures.org
>



-- 
-- 
Paolo Massa
Email: paolo AT gnuband DOT org
Blog: http://gnuband.org



From thekohser at gmail.com  Mon Mar 15 15:41:15 2010
From: thekohser at gmail.com (Gregory Kohs)
Date: Mon, 15 Mar 2010 10:41:15 -0400
Subject: <CPOV> What dismays me
Message-ID: <14b1e7be1003150741u12d23078u6d4a82d35f03f02c@mail.gmail.com>

What concerns me most right now about Wikipedia and other free,
open-source resources on the Internet, is that they seem to be driving
out of business those traditional news- and information-gathering
businesses that (we would hope) employ content generators who have
undergone training, have experience, and know better how to synthesize
data in meaningful ways.  Ironically, it is these traditional sources
(newspapers, magazines, academic journals, etc.) that entities like
Wikipedia purportedly rely on for "reliability" in their own content
regurgitation.

If we follow this path to its bitter end, and there are no more
traditional newspapers, magazines, and academic journals... (they
having all been driven to extinction by free, open-source,
crowdsourcing miracles)... what will Wikipedia then use to verify that
its knowledge is in fact "knowledge"?

"The only source of knowledge is experience."  -- Albert Einstein.

-- 
Gregory Kohs
Founder, MyWikiBiz.com



From dqamir at bezeqint.net  Mon Mar 15 16:27:53 2010
From: dqamir at bezeqint.net (Dror Kamir)
Date: Mon, 15 Mar 2010 17:27:53 +0200
Subject: <CPOV> What dismays me
In-Reply-To: <14b1e7be1003150741u12d23078u6d4a82d35f03f02c@mail.gmail.com>
References: <14b1e7be1003150741u12d23078u6d4a82d35f03f02c@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <4B9E51F8.3030400@bezeqint.net>

Sorry if I'm repeating some things already mentioned, I couldn't 
thoroughly read the entire correspondence due to heavy workload. I had 
an interesting experience in en-wp recently that made me very concerned 
for the following reasons:


1. Wikipedia has become a complicated scene of bureaucracy. The 
bureaucracy is so cumbersome that it too often entails arbitrary policy 
or rulings with regard to the content and the status of users. Gaming 
with the system for political purposes while using the cumbersome 
bureaucracy is also very common. Currently, Wikipedia's bureaucratic 
system resembles a third-world country's tax administration. Just like 
interested cunning people with connections in the right places manage to 
pay less taxes in such administrations, interested cunning contributors 
to Wikipedia can impose their opinionated content by gaming with the 
bureaucratic system. Since Wikipedia has become the leading site in 
disseminating information, and its content has become the basis of so 
many other websites, the number of such interested cunning contributors 
is rising rapidly.


2. Wikipedia is becoming a monopoly. I am waiting eagerly for a 
competing project, as I am quite afraid of Wikipedia becoming the modern 
Oracle from Delphi. Paradoxically, the free-content approach works 
against pluralism of knowledge (pluralism in the sense that various 
angles of the information are available), because many people prefer 
taking the ready-made content of Wikipedia rather than start a new 
project altogether.


3. Wikipedia has brought the concept of "Verifiability" ad absurdum. 
Common sense judgments about what is and what is not are rejected as 
unsourced while absurd opinions are regarded as facts because someone 
dug deep enough to find an article that mentioned this opinion. Also, 
determining what constitutes a reliable source and what doesn't is often

a back-door from which biasness is introduced. You may not be "POVized" 
but if you know your way in Wikipedia, you can push a certain source, 
convince people to reject another, and have the content as you like it.


To be honest, I recently feel that Wikipedia has become the plant from 
"Little Shop of Horrors" (to make a slight overstatement). It simply 
grew too fast and became too popular, and got entangled in its own 
success. The problem is that this entanglement influences so many people...


Dror K


????? Gregory Kohs:

> What concerns me most right now about Wikipedia and other free,
> open-source resources on the Internet, is that they seem to be driving
> out of business those traditional news- and information-gathering
> businesses that (we would hope) employ content generators who have
> undergone training, have experience, and know better how to synthesize
> data in meaningful ways.  Ironically, it is these traditional sources
> (newspapers, magazines, academic journals, etc.) that entities like
> Wikipedia purportedly rely on for "reliability" in their own content
> regurgitation.
>
> If we follow this path to its bitter end, and there are no more
> traditional newspapers, magazines, and academic journals... (they
> having all been driven to extinction by free, open-source,
> crowdsourcing miracles)... what will Wikipedia then use to verify that
> its knowledge is in fact "knowledge"?
>
> "The only source of knowledge is experience."  -- Albert Einstein.
>
>   



From jawbrey at att.net  Tue Mar 16 05:08:10 2010
From: jawbrey at att.net (Jon Awbrey)
Date: Tue, 16 Mar 2010 00:08:10 -0400
Subject: <CPOV> Conditions for the Possibility of CPOV?
In-Reply-To: <E6187377-BB6B-4FEE-999E-658BFC466B0C@xs4all.nl>
References: <6C7027E3-FFA7-45EF-B604-D97F17A13CE2@xs4all.nl>	<4B9A661D.1000002@att.net>
	<E6187377-BB6B-4FEE-999E-658BFC466B0C@xs4all.nl>
Message-ID: <4B9F042A.3030602@att.net>

Geert Lovink wrote:
> On 12 Mar 2010, at 5:04 PM, Jon Awbrey wrote:
> 
> > | What are the conditions for the possibility
> > | of critical points of view arising, surviving,
> > | and thriving on the Web?
> 
> CPOV is about Wikipedia (and it is not ...).  The Web is a lot, these 
> days. The prime condition, in my view, would be lively communities of 
> people who care, who are prepare to fight and argue, who believe that 
> stuff matters.  We have to fight indifference. This is why, in the end, 
> we of the cpov initiative believed that we should indeed have a list 
> like this.

Wikipedia is a part of my past -- a promise unfulfilled.
Looking back over the last decade, I think it's fair to
say that I had better discussions on these slower paced
lists than I ever in had in the chaotic pressure cooker
vats of Wikipedia.  So maybe that tells us one enabling
condition for critical, reflective, independent thought.

> We cannot not presume that communities exist and do their (good) work.
> Not even this one.  Social ties as defined by Facebook, Studi-VZ, Hyves,
> and others will not do the job.  In the case of Wikipedia the question
> for me would be if it is possible to build up a critical discourse outside
> of the small Western white male geek core that makes out the Wikimedia
> foundation.  Wikipedia as a unique project deserves it to be more open, 
> more diverse. But this will not fall out of the skies.

No indeed.  And there is much more to diversity than geekiness, genes, and geography.
The past few decades have brought us a revival of many perennial questions about the
nature of inquiry as a community enterprise.  Many old themes have been played again,
with tunes both familiar and strange -- from values clarification, critical thinking,
learning organizations, reflective practitioners, and the scholarship of integration
to crowd-sourcing and even some buzz about "hive minding".  Sorting the eternal from
the evanescent will not be a task for bots, if you ask me.

> There is a user culture that needs to be changed. We need better wiki software
> (a major update, please!), better interfaces and more contemporary multimedia
> content.  First and foremost, the moderators will have to stop their harsh
> treatments of first contributors.  We need to train students, academics
> and professionals to become regular contributors.  This is all critical
> work to me.  Debates will have to be encouraged. What the net needs
> right now is a rich discussion culture. Less insults and extreme
> opinions, more rhetorics.  There is an art of debating, and
> projects like Wikipedia can help us to (re-)establish it.

It's always nice to have slicker tech, but I don't think it's going to
be a matter of finding or making the right app this time.  Much to the
contrary, I think that the gadget geeks need to sit down, shut up, and
listen to the academics and professionals for a change.  Social media
system designers need to leave off trying to "train" these classes of
potential contributors -- they are far more trained already than their
would-be "trainers" ever thought of becoming.  Wannabe designers need
to start trying to find out what these folks need from Future Systems --
the Wikipedia Train is already wrecked as far as serving these prior
communities is concerned -- if they want them to participate at all.

Jon Awbrey

-- 

inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/
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From plichty at colum.edu  Tue Mar 16 13:44:33 2010
From: plichty at colum.edu (Lichty, Patrick)
Date: Tue, 16 Mar 2010 07:44:33 -0500
Subject: <CPOV> What dismays me
In-Reply-To: <4B9E51F8.3030400@bezeqint.net>
References: <14b1e7be1003150741u12d23078u6d4a82d35f03f02c@mail.gmail.com>,
	<4B9E51F8.3030400@bezeqint.net>
Message-ID: <D5BA7903F469284D8F95EF6E2B835528B4A87B49EF@EXCH07MAILBOX.admin.colum.edu>

Well, in my presentation, I am goign to talk abotu the idea of a wiki-based community in general.
Wikimediae communities, although anarchic media, create emergent hegemonies which then create strange power concentrations, inversions, etc.
In many ways, they allow for ad hoc cliques to build massive cultural scaffolds and then become organizations, which, as I'm reading "The Coming Insurrenction", are in themselves problems.
I believe that there are only cosmetic differences between Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Dramatica.  We can say that one is surelylarger than the other, but in many ways, the premise, infrastructure, etc are similar, it ie merely that the mission is different, and that is basically it.  From that initial condition, you have what Keen would call "the enlightened amateur" calling the shots, or trolls, in the case of ED, or art-trolls like Kildall and Stern (kidding, as this is what Jessie Wales called them) in the case of Wikipedia Art.

I ask a bit of forgiveness in regards to the fact that i will be looking at Wiki-based communities as such and their relationship to filtering and cultural curation in general,a nd not Wikipedia specifically.  It's more of a radical analysis of the genre.

Patrick Lichty
Assit. Professor
Dept of Interactive Arts & media
Columbia College, Chicago
916/1000 S. Wabash Ave #104
Chicago, IL USA
"Better to Die on Your Feet Than to Live On Your Knees"
________________________________________
From: cpov-bounces at listcultures.org [cpov-bounces at listcultures.org] On Behalf Of Dror Kamir [dqamir at bezeqint.net]
Sent: Monday, March 15, 2010 10:27 AM
To: Gregory Kohs
Cc: cpov at listcultures.org
Subject: Re: <CPOV> What dismays me

Sorry if I'm repeating some things already mentioned, I couldn't
thoroughly read the entire correspondence due to heavy workload. I had
an interesting experience in en-wp recently that made me very concerned
for the following reasons:


1. Wikipedia has become a complicated scene of bureaucracy. The
bureaucracy is so cumbersome that it too often entails arbitrary policy
or rulings with regard to the content and the status of users. Gaming
with the system for political purposes while using the cumbersome
bureaucracy is also very common. Currently, Wikipedia's bureaucratic
system resembles a third-world country's tax administration. Just like
interested cunning people with connections in the right places manage to
pay less taxes in such administrations, interested cunning contributors
to Wikipedia can impose their opinionated content by gaming with the
bureaucratic system. Since Wikipedia has become the leading site in
disseminating information, and its content has become the basis of so
many other websites, the number of such interested cunning contributors
is rising rapidly.


2. Wikipedia is becoming a monopoly. I am waiting eagerly for a
competing project, as I am quite afraid of Wikipedia becoming the modern
Oracle from Delphi. Paradoxically, the free-content approach works
against pluralism of knowledge (pluralism in the sense that various
angles of the information are available), because many people prefer
taking the ready-made content of Wikipedia rather than start a new
project altogether.


3. Wikipedia has brought the concept of "Verifiability" ad absurdum.
Common sense judgments about what is and what is not are rejected as
unsourced while absurd opinions are regarded as facts because someone
dug deep enough to find an article that mentioned this opinion. Also,
determining what constitutes a reliable source and what doesn't is often

a back-door from which biasness is introduced. You may not be "POVized"
but if you know your way in Wikipedia, you can push a certain source,
convince people to reject another, and have the content as you like it.


To be honest, I recently feel that Wikipedia has become the plant from
"Little Shop of Horrors" (to make a slight overstatement). It simply
grew too fast and became too popular, and got entangled in its own
success. The problem is that this entanglement influences so many people...


Dror K


????? Gregory Kohs:

> What concerns me most right now about Wikipedia and other free,
> open-source resources on the Internet, is that they seem to be driving
> out of business those traditional news- and information-gathering
> businesses that (we would hope) employ content generators who have
> undergone training, have experience, and know better how to synthesize
> data in meaningful ways.  Ironically, it is these traditional sources
> (newspapers, magazines, academic journals, etc.) that entities like
> Wikipedia purportedly rely on for "reliability" in their own content
> regurgitation.
>
> If we follow this path to its bitter end, and there are no more
> traditional newspapers, magazines, and academic journals... (they
> having all been driven to extinction by free, open-source,
> crowdsourcing miracles)... what will Wikipedia then use to verify that
> its knowledge is in fact "knowledge"?
>
> "The only source of knowledge is experience."  -- Albert Einstein.
>
>

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From jawbrey at att.net  Tue Mar 16 15:24:19 2010
From: jawbrey at att.net (Jon Awbrey)
Date: Tue, 16 Mar 2010 10:24:19 -0400
Subject: <CPOV> What dismays me
In-Reply-To: <D5BA7903F469284D8F95EF6E2B835528B4A87B49EF@EXCH07MAILBOX.admin.colum.edu>
References: <14b1e7be1003150741u12d23078u6d4a82d35f03f02c@mail.gmail.com>,
	<4B9E51F8.3030400@bezeqint.net>
	<D5BA7903F469284D8F95EF6E2B835528B4A87B49EF@EXCH07MAILBOX.admin.colum.edu>
Message-ID: <4B9F9493.8030604@att.net>

Patrick & All,

The way I see it, critical practice and critical theory are all about
comparative and contextual analysis, so your radicalism may be forgiven
as an extremely venerable tradition from this reporter's point of view.

No comparison between Wikipedia and other wikis should hedge its horizon
so narrowly that it forgets the role of Jimmy Wales ''sans'' Larry Sanger,
the Wikimedea Foundation, along with its U.S. tax-advantaged status, and the
farming out of content to the profit-seeking Wikia, Inc.  That much, I think,
is enough to render the comparison with Encyclopedia Dramatica rather remote.

Wikipedia may look like anarchy or a Self-Organizing System (SOS?) to an outsider,
anyone who has been through its wringer a sufficient number of times can tell you
that it's "managed anarchy" and that the days of the "e-lightened despot" Jimbo
have yet to diminish and go into the West.  Ample data on that score can be had
by widening your horizon to encompass the English Wikipedia's sibling projects,
and don't forget the House of Lords at Meta-Wikimedia (http://meta.wikimedia.org/).

To give one timely example of JW dictating to the wiki-proletariat, there's an
especially instructive bit of "insurrection squelching" taking place as we speak
on the hyper-campus of Wikiversity.  See this thread on ''The Wikipedia Review''
for links to WV and a sample of current discussion:

http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=28850

Ciao,

Jon Awbrey

Lichty, Patrick wrote:
|
| Well, in my presentation, I am going to talk about the idea
| of a wiki-based community in general.  Wikimediae communities,
| although anarchic media, create emergent hegemonies which then
| create strange power concentrations, inversions, etc.  In many
| ways, they allow for ad hoc cliques to build massive cultural
| scaffolds and then become organizations, which, as I'm reading
| "The Coming Insurrenction", are in themselves problems.
|
| I believe that there are only cosmetic differences between Wikipedia
| and Encyclopedia Dramatica.  We can say that one is surely larger than
| the other, but in many ways, the premise, infrastructure, etc. are similar,
| it is merely that the mission is different, and that is basically it.  From
| that initial condition, you have what Keen would call "the enlightened amateur"
| calling the shots, or trolls, in the case of ED, or art-trolls like Kildall and
| Stern (kidding, as this is what Jessie Wales called them) in the case of Wikipedia Art.
|
| I ask a bit of forgiveness in regards to the fact that I will be looking at Wiki-based
| communities as such and their relationship to filtering and cultural curation in general,
| and not Wikipedia specifically.  It's more of a radical analysis of the genre.
> 
> Patrick Lichty
> Assit. Professor
> Dept of Interactive Arts & media
> Columbia College, Chicago
> 916/1000 S. Wabash Ave #104
> Chicago, IL USA
> "Better to Die on Your Feet Than to Live On Your Knees"

-- 

inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/
mwb: http://www.mywikibiz.com/Directory:Jon_Awbrey
knol: http://knol.google.com/k/-/-/3fkwvf69kridz/1
oeiswiki: http://www.oeis.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey



From juliana at networkcultures.org  Tue Mar 16 16:14:05 2010
From: juliana at networkcultures.org (Juliana Brunello)
Date: Tue, 16 Mar 2010 16:14:05 +0100
Subject: <CPOV> New Interviews on the Blog
Message-ID: <8d10165d07bf6bdd54f4a9ddde4e27a2.squirrel@webmail.xs4all.nl>

Dear all,

I would like to suggest a visit to our blog.
Check out the interviews with Alan Shapiro, Teemu Mikkonen and Amit Basole.

http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/cpov/

Comments, questions, suggestions?

Cheers,
Juliana

ADDRESS:
Institute of Network Cultures
HvA Interactive Media, room 05A20
Rhijnspoorplein 1
NL-1091 GC Amsterdam

POSTAL ADDRESS
Institute of Network Cultures
HvA Interactive Media, room 05A20
PO BOX 1025
NL-1000 BA Amsterdam

http://www.networkcultures.org
t: +31 20 5951866
f: +31 20 5951840




From geert at xs4all.nl  Wed Mar 17 10:38:19 2010
From: geert at xs4all.nl (Geert Lovink)
Date: Wed, 17 Mar 2010 10:38:19 +0100
Subject: <CPOV> fm: Beyond the legacy of the Enlightenment?
Message-ID: <968CAEA2-080B-4B9B-856C-D90E72557CE3@xs4all.nl>

Hi,

I wondered if everyone had already seen this article on First Monday:

http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2744/2428

Beyond the legacy of the Enlightenment?
Online Encyclopaedias as digital heterotopias

by Jutta Haider and Olaf Sundin

This article explores how we can understand contemporary participatory  
online encyclopaedic expressions, particularly Wikipedia, in their  
traditional role as continuation of the Enlightenment ideal, as well  
as in the distinctly different space of the Internet. Firstly we  
position these encyclopaedias in a historical tradition. Secondly, we  
assign them a place in contemporary digital networks which marks them  
out as sites in which Enlightenment ideals of universal knowledge take  
on a new shape. We argue that the Foucauldian concept of heterotopia,  
that is special spaces which exist within society, transferred online,  
can serve to understand Wikipedia and similar participatory online  
encyclopaedias in their role as unique spaces for the construction of  
knowledge, memory and culture in late modern society.



From jawbrey at att.net  Wed Mar 17 13:12:07 2010
From: jawbrey at att.net (Jon Awbrey)
Date: Wed, 17 Mar 2010 08:12:07 -0400
Subject: <CPOV> Beyond the legacy of the Enlightenment?
In-Reply-To: <968CAEA2-080B-4B9B-856C-D90E72557CE3@xs4all.nl>
References: <968CAEA2-080B-4B9B-856C-D90E72557CE3@xs4all.nl>
Message-ID: <4BA0C717.3030405@att.net>

Geert & All,

We must never let the facts blind us to a beautiful theory.

Cheers,

Jon

Geert Lovink wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I wondered if everyone had already seen this article on First Monday:
> 
> http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2744/2428 
> 
> 
> Beyond the legacy of the Enlightenment?
> Online Encyclopaedias as digital heterotopias
> 
> by Jutta Haider and Olaf Sundin
> 
> This article explores how we can understand contemporary participatory 
> online encyclopaedic expressions, particularly Wikipedia, in their 
> traditional role as continuation of the Enlightenment ideal, as well as 
> in the distinctly different space of the Internet. Firstly we position 
> these encyclopaedias in a historical tradition. Secondly, we assign them 
> a place in contemporary digital networks which marks them out as sites 
> in which Enlightenment ideals of universal knowledge take on a new 
> shape. We argue that the Foucauldian concept of heterotopia, that is 
> special spaces which exist within society, transferred online, can serve 
> to understand Wikipedia and similar participatory online encyclopaedias 
> in their role as unique spaces for the construction of knowledge, memory 
> and culture in late modern society.

-- 

inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/
mwb: http://www.mywikibiz.com/Directory:Jon_Awbrey
knol: http://knol.google.com/k/-/-/3fkwvf69kridz/1
oeiswiki: http://www.oeis.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey



From andrew.famiglietti at lcc.gatech.edu  Wed Mar 17 13:28:20 2010
From: andrew.famiglietti at lcc.gatech.edu (andrew.famiglietti at lcc.gatech.edu)
Date: Wed, 17 Mar 2010 08:28:20 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: <CPOV> fm: Beyond the legacy of the Enlightenment?
In-Reply-To: <2011609040.677831268828577862.JavaMail.root@mail6.gatech.edu>
Message-ID: <840505947.679321268828900860.JavaMail.root@mail6.gatech.edu>

Everyone, 

I actually blogged about this same idea awhile ago here: http://blogs.bgsu.edu/afamigl/2009/03/26/tasty-theory-clusters/

The thoughts in that blog post were drawn from an early draft of my dissertation, however I ultimately abandoned the notion of "Wikipedia as Heterotopia" because I found it unhelpful. After reading this article, I remain confident that I made the right decision. It's true that Wikipedia, like Borges' mythical Chinese Encyclopedia, brings together many unfamiliar elements, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_with_fraudulent_diplomas to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicron, but I'm not sure how the Heterotopia helps us understand the particular construction that is Wikipedia (and Foucault himself insists that Hereotopias are specific constructions!). Why does Wikipedia associate the particular elements that it does? Why are other things left out? Can we discover some contours to the content left behind by the endless clash of the drives to archive and the drive to erase that are embodied by those two great camps, the inclusionists and the deletionists? 

I'm still trying to answer those questions, and I'm already getting some helpful insights from participating on this list! I'm just not sure how helpful it is to define Wikipedia as "Heterotopia," even though I think it clearly fits this definition. 

- Andy 

----- Original Message -----
From: "Geert Lovink" <geert at xs4all.nl>
To: "cpov" <cpov at listcultures.org>
Sent: Wednesday, March 17, 2010 5:38:19 AM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
Subject: <CPOV> fm: Beyond the legacy of the Enlightenment?

Hi,

I wondered if everyone had already seen this article on First Monday:

http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2744/2428

Beyond the legacy of the Enlightenment?
Online Encyclopaedias as digital heterotopias

by Jutta Haider and Olaf Sundin

This article explores how we can understand contemporary participatory  
online encyclopaedic expressions, particularly Wikipedia, in their  
traditional role as continuation of the Enlightenment ideal, as well  
as in the distinctly different space of the Internet. Firstly we  
position these encyclopaedias in a historical tradition. Secondly, we  
assign them a place in contemporary digital networks which marks them  
out as sites in which Enlightenment ideals of universal knowledge take  
on a new shape. We argue that the Foucauldian concept of heterotopia,  
that is special spaces which exist within society, transferred online,  
can serve to understand Wikipedia and similar participatory online  
encyclopaedias in their role as unique spaces for the construction of  
knowledge, memory and culture in late modern society.

_______________________________________________
Cpov_listcultures.org mailing list
Cpov_listcultures.org at p10.alfaservers.com
http://p10.alfaservers.com/mailman/listinfo/cpov_listcultures.org

-- 
--
Andrew Famiglietti 
Brittain Fellow 
School of Literature, Communication, and Culture 
Georgia Institute of Technology



From jawbrey at att.net  Wed Mar 17 14:40:06 2010
From: jawbrey at att.net (Jon Awbrey)
Date: Wed, 17 Mar 2010 09:40:06 -0400
Subject: <CPOV> Beyond the Legacy of the Enlightenment?
In-Reply-To: <840505947.679321268828900860.JavaMail.root@mail6.gatech.edu>
References: <840505947.679321268828900860.JavaMail.root@mail6.gatech.edu>
Message-ID: <4BA0DBB6.8070104@att.net>

Andrew & All,

Looking back, the sources that I found most helpful
in understanding what goes on in Wikipedia are these:

John Dewey, ''The Quest for Certainty''

Argyris and Sch?n?s ideas about espoused values vs. actual values --
http://www.infed.org/thinkers/argyris.htm
http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-schon.htm
http://www.scu.edu.au/schools/gcm/ar/arp/argyris.html
http://www.scu.edu.au/schools/gcm/ar/arp/argyris2.html

Max Weber, ''The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism''
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/WEBER/cover.html

William S. Burroughs, ''Naked Lunch''

Sorrentino, Richard M., and Roney, Christopher J.R. (2000),
''The Uncertain Mind : Individual Differences in Facing the Unknown'',
(Essays in Social Psychology, Miles Hewstone (ed.)), Taylor and Francis,
Philadelphia, PA.

More details and other sources are listed here:

http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=15478&view=findpost&p=168787

As usual, the "review of the literature" exhausted my energies for the time being,
so I will have to write out the rest of what I opened this page to write later on.

Jon Awbrey

andrew.famiglietti at lcc.gatech.edu wrote:
|
| I actually blogged about this same idea awhile ago here:
|
| http://blogs.bgsu.edu/afamigl/2009/03/26/tasty-theory-clusters/
|
| The thoughts in that blog post were drawn from an early draft
| of my dissertation, however I ultimately abandoned the notion
| of "Wikipedia as Heterotopia" because I found it unhelpful.
|
| After reading this article, I remain confident that I made the right decision.
| It's true that Wikipedia, like Borges' mythical Chinese Encyclopedia, brings
| together many unfamiliar elements,
|
| from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_with_fraudulent_diplomas
| to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicron,
|
| but I'm not sure how the Heterotopia helps us understand the
| particular construction that is Wikipedia (and Foucault himself
| insists that Hereotopias are specific constructions!).  Why does
| Wikipedia associate the particular elements that it does?  Why are
| other things left out?  Can we discover some contours to the content
| left behind by the endless clash of the drives to archive and the drive
| to erase that are embodied by those two great camps, the inclusionists and
| the deletionists?
|
| I'm still trying to answer those questions, and I'm already getting some helpful
| insights from participating on this list! I'm just not sure how helpful it is
| to define Wikipedia as "Heterotopia," even though I think it clearly fits
| this definition.
|
| - Andy

-- 

inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/
mwb: http://www.mywikibiz.com/Directory:Jon_Awbrey
knol: http://knol.google.com/k/-/-/3fkwvf69kridz/1
oeiswiki: http://www.oeis.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey



From plichty at colum.edu  Wed Mar 17 15:21:37 2010
From: plichty at colum.edu (Lichty, Patrick)
Date: Wed, 17 Mar 2010 09:21:37 -0500
Subject: <CPOV> As a proviso to my presentation -
Message-ID: <D5BA7903F469284D8F95EF6E2B835528B4A87B49FA@EXCH07MAILBOX.admin.colum.edu>

In this discussion, I am a little circumspect in that i am definitely not a Wikipedia scholar, and have been involved in an art project that involved Wikipedia, and as such revealed much of its inner workings.  However, I want to frame where i want to go discursively is to not deal so much with Wikipedia as such, but Wiki-based communities, their cultural effects, and the social scaffolding that emerges from them as the basis for:
1: Creation of emergent hegemonies (Wales, et al), and the reinscription of capital-power in anarchic media
2: The creation of dominant and subcultural drivers through said communities,
3: the potentials for art production/curation under such models and the sociocultural parameters for such
4: The possible reconfiguration of culture under these paradigms.

While Wikipedia as such is a juggernaut and important place to engage in a serious cultural battle, I also feel that the phenomenon of wiki-based communities, of which Wikipedia is merely one, and the cultiral structures that they create, are far more interesting to me than Wikipedia itself.




Patrick Lichty
Assit. Professor
Dept of Interactive Arts & media
Columbia College, Chicago
916/1000 S. Wabash Ave #104
Chicago, IL USA
"Better to Die on Your Feet Than to Live On Your Knees"
________________________________________
From: cpov-bounces at listcultures.org [cpov-bounces at listcultures.org] On Behalf Of Jon Awbrey [jawbrey at att.net]
Sent: Wednesday, March 17, 2010 7:12 AM
To: Geert Lovink
Cc: cpov
Subject: Re: <CPOV> Beyond the legacy of the Enlightenment?

Geert & All,

We must never let the facts blind us to a beautiful theory.

Cheers,

Jon

Geert Lovink wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I wondered if everyone had already seen this article on First Monday:
>
> http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2744/2428
>
>
> Beyond the legacy of the Enlightenment?
> Online Encyclopaedias as digital heterotopias
>
> by Jutta Haider and Olaf Sundin
>
> This article explores how we can understand contemporary participatory
> online encyclopaedic expressions, particularly Wikipedia, in their
> traditional role as continuation of the Enlightenment ideal, as well as
> in the distinctly different space of the Internet. Firstly we position
> these encyclopaedias in a historical tradition. Secondly, we assign them
> a place in contemporary digital networks which marks them out as sites
> in which Enlightenment ideals of universal knowledge take on a new
> shape. We argue that the Foucauldian concept of heterotopia, that is
> special spaces which exist within society, transferred online, can serve
> to understand Wikipedia and similar participatory online encyclopaedias
> in their role as unique spaces for the construction of knowledge, memory
> and culture in late modern society.

--

inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/
mwb: http://www.mywikibiz.com/Directory:Jon_Awbrey
knol: http://knol.google.com/k/-/-/3fkwvf69kridz/1
oeiswiki: http://www.oeis.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey

_______________________________________________
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From joseph.nyu at reagle.org  Wed Mar 17 16:15:00 2010
From: joseph.nyu at reagle.org (Joseph Reagle)
Date: Wed, 17 Mar 2010 11:15:00 -0400
Subject: <CPOV> fm: Beyond the legacy of the Enlightenment?
In-Reply-To: <968CAEA2-080B-4B9B-856C-D90E72557CE3@xs4all.nl>
References: <968CAEA2-080B-4B9B-856C-D90E72557CE3@xs4all.nl>
Message-ID: <201003171115.01329.joseph.nyu@reagle.org>

On Wednesday 17 March 2010, Geert Lovink wrote:
> I wondered if everyone had already seen this article on First Monday:

This is similar to my own efforts to situate WP relative to what I call the "universal encyclopedic vision" -- in the dissertation, forthcoming book, and also briefly (publicly) here [1]. The notion of heterotopia is mentioned only in passing, but I've not seen Etienne?Louis Boull?e and Otto Neurath placed in this line before. (But there also many others who I think more closely relate including Wells, Ostwald, and Briet.)

I'm also thinking one could also compare the "Dictionary of Received Ideas" to the WikiSpeak dictionary.

[1]:http://reagle.org/joseph/2009/01/wikipedia-happy-accident.html



From nathanieltkacz at gmail.com  Thu Mar 18 16:49:00 2010
From: nathanieltkacz at gmail.com (nathaniel tkacz)
Date: Fri, 19 Mar 2010 02:49:00 +1100
Subject: <CPOV> Beyond the Legacy of the Enlightenment?
In-Reply-To: <4BA0DBB6.8070104@att.net>
References: <840505947.679321268828900860.JavaMail.root@mail6.gatech.edu>
	<4BA0DBB6.8070104@att.net>
Message-ID: <5eca9f761003180849w56952ad0jc7d6b7d3cdcd34a9@mail.gmail.com>

hi all - i read that article awhile back. i'm writing on the back of
thirty-odd hours in transit from melbourne to hull, but here goes...

from memory, what i liked about that article was that it was one of the few
that took the concept of the encyclopedia seriously. it gave it some
attention, which doesn't happen all that often. however, i thought the link
to heterotopias wasn't very interesting and i didn't agree with it. it
wasn't very interesting because (from memory) it didn't DO anything to the
concept. it just applied it. this kind of theorisation isn't very
interesting for me. moreover, heterotopias are those "really existing"
spaces of difference, those spaces on the margins. while some parts of (the
english) wikipedia are novel, other parts are not. in particular, the
aspects of wikipedia that align with the Enlightenment seem very
conservative and not in any way marginal. many wikipedians that i have come
across have a very naive understanding of what knowledge is - a very
positivistic understanding. from this perspective i find it hard to frame
wikipedia as a heterotopia. the other question is: what do you get out of
this "move" anyway? does calling it a heterotopia do anything to wikipedia?
does it force us to rethink anything?

best


Nate Tkacz

Research Fellow,
RMIT University

Twitter: http://twitter.com/__nate__
Homepage: www.nathanieltkacz.net
Current project: http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/cpov/about-2/


On Thu, Mar 18, 2010 at 12:40 AM, Jon Awbrey <jawbrey at att.net> wrote:

> Andrew & All,
>
> Looking back, the sources that I found most helpful
> in understanding what goes on in Wikipedia are these:
>
> John Dewey, ''The Quest for Certainty''
>
> Argyris and Sch?n?s ideas about espoused values vs. actual values --
> http://www.infed.org/thinkers/argyris.htm
> http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-schon.htm
> http://www.scu.edu.au/schools/gcm/ar/arp/argyris.html
> http://www.scu.edu.au/schools/gcm/ar/arp/argyris2.html
>
> Max Weber, ''The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism''
> http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/WEBER/cover.html
>
> William S. Burroughs, ''Naked Lunch''
>
> Sorrentino, Richard M., and Roney, Christopher J.R. (2000),
> ''The Uncertain Mind : Individual Differences in Facing the Unknown'',
> (Essays in Social Psychology, Miles Hewstone (ed.)), Taylor and Francis,
> Philadelphia, PA.
>
> More details and other sources are listed here:
>
>
> http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=15478&view=findpost&p=168787
>
> As usual, the "review of the literature" exhausted my energies for the time
> being,
> so I will have to write out the rest of what I opened this page to write
> later on.
>
> Jon Awbrey
>
> andrew.famiglietti at lcc.gatech.edu wrote:
> |
> | I actually blogged about this same idea awhile ago here:
> |
> | http://blogs.bgsu.edu/afamigl/2009/03/26/tasty-theory-clusters/
> |
> | The thoughts in that blog post were drawn from an early draft
> | of my dissertation, however I ultimately abandoned the notion
> | of "Wikipedia as Heterotopia" because I found it unhelpful.
> |
> | After reading this article, I remain confident that I made the right
> decision.
> | It's true that Wikipedia, like Borges' mythical Chinese Encyclopedia,
> brings
> | together many unfamiliar elements,
> |
> | from
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_with_fraudulent_diplomas
> | to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicron,
> |
> | but I'm not sure how the Heterotopia helps us understand the
> | particular construction that is Wikipedia (and Foucault himself
> | insists that Hereotopias are specific constructions!).  Why does
> | Wikipedia associate the particular elements that it does?  Why are
> | other things left out?  Can we discover some contours to the content
> | left behind by the endless clash of the drives to archive and the drive
> | to erase that are embodied by those two great camps, the inclusionists
> and
> | the deletionists?
> |
> | I'm still trying to answer those questions, and I'm already getting some
> helpful
> | insights from participating on this list! I'm just not sure how helpful
> it is
> | to define Wikipedia as "Heterotopia," even though I think it clearly fits
> | this definition.
> |
> | - Andy
>
> --
>
> inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/
> mwb: http://www.mywikibiz.com/Directory:Jon_Awbrey
> knol: http://knol.google.com/k/-/-/3fkwvf69kridz/1
> oeiswiki: http://www.oeis.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey
>
> _______________________________________________
> Cpov_listcultures.org mailing list
> Cpov_listcultures.org at p10.alfaservers.com
> http://p10.alfaservers.com/mailman/listinfo/cpov_listcultures.org
>
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From jawbrey at att.net  Thu Mar 18 17:10:22 2010
From: jawbrey at att.net (Jon Awbrey)
Date: Thu, 18 Mar 2010 12:10:22 -0400
Subject: <CPOV> Beyond the Legacy of the Enlightenment?
In-Reply-To: <5eca9f761003180849w56952ad0jc7d6b7d3cdcd34a9@mail.gmail.com>
References: <840505947.679321268828900860.JavaMail.root@mail6.gatech.edu>	
	<4BA0DBB6.8070104@att.net>
	<5eca9f761003180849w56952ad0jc7d6b7d3cdcd34a9@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <4BA2506E.2050100@att.net>

Nate & All,

It may be Monday before I can get back to this,
but just one thought off the cuff comes to mind:

I think we need to examine the very deep divide between
post*modern reflections on Weber's ''stahlhartes Geh?use''
and the Ayn Rand brand of "objectivism" that underlies the
Sanger-Wales model of a modern major 'pedia.

Cheers,

Jon

nathaniel tkacz wrote:
> hi all - i read that article awhile back. i'm writing on the back of
> thirty-odd hours in transit from melbourne to hull, but here goes...
> 
> from memory, what i liked about that article was that it was one of the few
> that took the concept of the encyclopedia seriously. it gave it some
> attention, which doesn't happen all that often. however, i thought the link
> to heterotopias wasn't very interesting and i didn't agree with it. it
> wasn't very interesting because (from memory) it didn't DO anything to the
> concept. it just applied it. this kind of theorisation isn't very
> interesting for me. moreover, heterotopias are those "really existing"
> spaces of difference, those spaces on the margins. while some parts of (the
> english) wikipedia are novel, other parts are not. in particular, the
> aspects of wikipedia that align with the Enlightenment seem very
> conservative and not in any way marginal. many wikipedians that i have come
> across have a very naive understanding of what knowledge is - a very
> positivistic understanding. from this perspective i find it hard to frame
> wikipedia as a heterotopia. the other question is: what do you get out of
> this "move" anyway? does calling it a heterotopia do anything to wikipedia?
> does it force us to rethink anything?
> 
> best
> 
> 
> Nate Tkacz
> 
> Research Fellow,
> RMIT University
> 
> Twitter: http://twitter.com/__nate__
> Homepage: www.nathanieltkacz.net
> Current project: http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/cpov/about-2/

-- 

inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/
mwb: http://www.mywikibiz.com/Directory:Jon_Awbrey
knol: http://knol.google.com/k/-/-/3fkwvf69kridz/1
oeiswiki: http://www.oeis.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey



From plichty at colum.edu  Thu Mar 18 17:12:36 2010
From: plichty at colum.edu (Lichty, Patrick)
Date: Thu, 18 Mar 2010 11:12:36 -0500
Subject: <CPOV> Beyond the Legacy of the Enlightenment?
In-Reply-To: <4BA2506E.2050100@att.net>
References: <840505947.679321268828900860.JavaMail.root@mail6.gatech.edu>
	<4BA0DBB6.8070104@att.net>
	<5eca9f761003180849w56952ad0jc7d6b7d3cdcd34a9@mail.gmail.com>,
	<4BA2506E.2050100@att.net>
Message-ID: <D5BA7903F469284D8F95EF6E2B835528B4A87B4A06@EXCH07MAILBOX.admin.colum.edu>

A thought that I had as well is that homotopia/heterotopia in wikipedia really depends on scale.
there may be a heterotopic landscape as you get down to user level, but the overall frame, guidance by the admins/directors, insitution create hegemony and homogeny, btu from a very odd, Keenian "emnlightened Amateur" as unpaid inforserf.  I find it perverse, actually.

Much of what i want to look at is cultural structrue as defined by Wikicommunities and how that can be translated to acuratoral model for art.

Patrick Lichty
Assit. Professor
Dept of Interactive Arts & media
Columbia College, Chicago
916/1000 S. Wabash Ave #104
Chicago, IL USA
"Better to Die on Your Feet Than to Live On Your Knees"
________________________________________
From: cpov-bounces at listcultures.org [cpov-bounces at listcultures.org] On Behalf Of Jon Awbrey [jawbrey at att.net]
Sent: Thursday, March 18, 2010 11:10 AM
To: nathaniel tkacz
Cc: cpov
Subject: Re: <CPOV> Beyond the Legacy of the Enlightenment?

Nate & All,

It may be Monday before I can get back to this,
but just one thought off the cuff comes to mind:

I think we need to examine the very deep divide between
post*modern reflections on Weber's ''stahlhartes Geh?use''
and the Ayn Rand brand of "objectivism" that underlies the
Sanger-Wales model of a modern major 'pedia.

Cheers,

Jon

nathaniel tkacz wrote:
> hi all - i read that article awhile back. i'm writing on the back of
> thirty-odd hours in transit from melbourne to hull, but here goes...
>
> from memory, what i liked about that article was that it was one of the few
> that took the concept of the encyclopedia seriously. it gave it some
> attention, which doesn't happen all that often. however, i thought the link
> to heterotopias wasn't very interesting and i didn't agree with it. it
> wasn't very interesting because (from memory) it didn't DO anything to the
> concept. it just applied it. this kind of theorisation isn't very
> interesting for me. moreover, heterotopias are those "really existing"
> spaces of difference, those spaces on the margins. while some parts of (the
> english) wikipedia are novel, other parts are not. in particular, the
> aspects of wikipedia that align with the Enlightenment seem very
> conservative and not in any way marginal. many wikipedians that i have come
> across have a very naive understanding of what knowledge is - a very
> positivistic understanding. from this perspective i find it hard to frame
> wikipedia as a heterotopia. the other question is: what do you get out of
> this "move" anyway? does calling it a heterotopia do anything to wikipedia?
> does it force us to rethink anything?
>
> best
>
>
> Nate Tkacz
>
> Research Fellow,
> RMIT University
>
> Twitter: http://twitter.com/__nate__
> Homepage: www.nathanieltkacz.net
> Current project: http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/cpov/about-2/

--

inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/
mwb: http://www.mywikibiz.com/Directory:Jon_Awbrey
knol: http://knol.google.com/k/-/-/3fkwvf69kridz/1
oeiswiki: http://www.oeis.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey

_______________________________________________
Cpov_listcultures.org mailing list
Cpov_listcultures.org at p10.alfaservers.com
http://p10.alfaservers.com/mailman/listinfo/cpov_listcultures.org



From jawbrey at att.net  Thu Mar 18 19:18:14 2010
From: jawbrey at att.net (Jon Awbrey)
Date: Thu, 18 Mar 2010 14:18:14 -0400
Subject: <CPOV> As a proviso to my presentation --
In-Reply-To: <D5BA7903F469284D8F95EF6E2B835528B4A87B49FA@EXCH07MAILBOX.admin.colum.edu>
References: <D5BA7903F469284D8F95EF6E2B835528B4A87B49FA@EXCH07MAILBOX.admin.colum.edu>
Message-ID: <4BA26E66.2030002@att.net>

Lichty, Patrick wrote:
> 
> While Wikipedia as such is a juggernaut and important place to engage in
> a serious cultural battle, I also feel that the phenomenon of wiki-based
> communities, of which Wikipedia is merely one, and the cultiral structures
> that they create, are far more interesting to me than Wikipedia itself.

Patrick & All,

Having participated in several wikioid start up projects
before I ever heard of Wikipedia, and still participating
in a wide variety of similar projects today, I share this
point of view.

The feature of social-technical architecture that most markedly distinguishes
a wiki system is its "erasability".  This is a major boon to people, like me,
who never manage to write anything anywhere near the way it needs to be on
the first 20 or 30 drafts or so.  And its aid to collaboration is clear,
at least, among folks who are capable of genuine dialogue in pursuing
joint work.

The point where erasability becomes a disabling bug in the groupware
is when some participants in a debate discover that they can "win"
arguments simply by deleting the opposing arguments.

Once that happens, even a little, the people who resort to this type of easy win
almost always become hopelessly addicted to it -- it becomes an automatic reflex,
often literally enforced by bots -- inquiry is short-circuited and the "community"
has to be protected by scare-quotes from then on out.

Jon Awbrey

--

inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/
mwb: http://www.mywikibiz.com/Directory:Jon_Awbrey
knol: http://knol.google.com/k/-/-/3fkwvf69kridz/1
oeiswiki: http://www.oeis.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey



From Alan.Shapiro at gmx.de  Fri Mar 19 11:28:57 2010
From: Alan.Shapiro at gmx.de (Alan Shapiro)
Date: Fri, 19 Mar 2010 11:28:57 +0100
Subject: <CPOV> my lecture and book presentation in Leiden on the 25th
Message-ID: <3A84CCFF0FC041878AB8A36915299837@AlanShapiroPC>

Hi all,

if anyone is interested in attending my lecture and book presentation in Leiden (45 minutes by train from Amsterdam?) on the 25th, here is information about it:

http://www.artsgenomics.org/Newsandevents/the_technological_herbarium

(sponsored by The Arts & Genomics Centre of the University of Leiden)

Thanks,
Alan N. Shapiro
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From Alan.Shapiro at gmx.de  Fri Mar 19 11:54:19 2010
From: Alan.Shapiro at gmx.de (Alan Shapiro)
Date: Fri, 19 Mar 2010 11:54:19 +0100
Subject: <CPOV> my lecture and book presentation in Leiden
Message-ID: <6D10BA4301D64128BD3B042D421543F3@AlanShapiroPC>

In some browsers, it seems to be a dead link, so please try here instead:

http://www.artsgenomics.org/


Alan N. Shapiro
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From jawbrey at att.net  Fri Mar 19 16:40:09 2010
From: jawbrey at att.net (Jon Awbrey)
Date: Fri, 19 Mar 2010 11:40:09 -0400
Subject: <CPOV> Teach-In @ Wikiversity?
Message-ID: <4BA39AD9.5040603@att.net>

CPOVers interested in trying to keep up with the fast-breaking
developments at Wikiversity may find the following links of use:

Wikiversity:Community Review/Wikimedia Ethics:Ethical Breaching Experiments
http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Wikiversity:Community_Review/Wikimedia_Ethics:Ethical_Breaching_Experiments

''The Wikipedia Review'' : "Jimbo's lording over Wikiversity again"
http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=28850

Leigh Blackall's Blog : "Is the Wikimedia Foundation going to close Wikiversity?"
http://leighblackall.blogspot.com/2010/03/is-wikimedia-foundation-going-to-close.html

Cheers,

Jon Awbrey

-- 

inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/
mwb: http://www.mywikibiz.com/Directory:Jon_Awbrey
knol: http://knol.google.com/k/-/-/3fkwvf69kridz/1
oeiswiki: http://www.oeis.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey



From abasole at gmail.com  Fri Mar 19 17:21:29 2010
From: abasole at gmail.com (Amit Basole)
Date: Fri, 19 Mar 2010 17:21:29 +0100
Subject: <CPOV> question about people in Paris
Message-ID: <8e2bace61003190921m590f43ai50a4b0c86046e95a@mail.gmail.com>

Hello CPOVers
I will be in Paris a couple of days before the Amsterdam conference and was
wondering if those on this list know some interesting groups/people to meet
in Paris. In particular I am looking to meet "knowledge activists," by which
I mean all kinds of people fighting against knowledge enclosures (against
privatization of universities, against copyrights, proponents of FLOSS) who
are thinking in somewhat broad political terms about their work or who think
in terms of relationships/conflicts between knowledge paradigms. Any
contacts (phone, email) are welcome.

Thanks,
Amit


-- 
Amit Basole
Department of Economics
Thompson Hall
University of Massachusetts
Amherst, MA 01003
Phone: 413-665-2463
http://www.people.umass.edu/abasole/
blog: http://thenoondaysun.blogspot.com/
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From gwormser at free.fr  Fri Mar 19 17:37:33 2010
From: gwormser at free.fr (=?iso-8859-1?Q?G=E9rard_Wormser?=)
Date: Fri, 19 Mar 2010 17:37:33 +0100
Subject: <CPOV> question about people in Paris
In-Reply-To: <8e2bace61003190921m590f43ai50a4b0c86046e95a@mail.gmail.com>
References: <8e2bace61003190921m590f43ai50a4b0c86046e95a@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <FE2D63750EFB4EA5AE66C60FB7F5DBA5@PCdeGrard>

Dear Amit,

Your question comes right ! I'm the founder of the Sens public digital review www.sens-public.org and I'll be present in Paris before travelling to Amsterdam on March 25th. Hence we might meet either for dinner on March 23, or for a lunch on the 24th. I'm currently setting up the international Congress "The Governance of digital publishing - between knowledge and powers", with the support of the French Research network ADONIS, the European projects DARIAH (digital infrastructures for the Arts and Hiumanities) and OAPEN (open access publishing). This event will take place in Paris in the end of April and i'll be very glad to meet you for a discussion prior to CPOV.

Just tell me where you'll be hosted - and eventually your hotel phone, and we'll try to find a place to meet.

g?rard wormser



  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Amit Basole 
  To: CPOV 
  Sent: Friday, March 19, 2010 5:21 PM
  Subject: <CPOV> question about people in Paris


  Hello CPOVers
  I will be in Paris a couple of days before the Amsterdam conference and was wondering if those on this list know some interesting groups/people to meet in Paris. In particular I am looking to meet "knowledge activists," by which I mean all kinds of people fighting against knowledge enclosures (against privatization of universities, against copyrights, proponents of FLOSS) who are thinking in somewhat broad political terms about their work or who think in terms of relationships/conflicts between knowledge paradigms. Any contacts (phone, email) are welcome.

  Thanks,
  Amit


  -- 
  Amit Basole
  Department of Economics
  Thompson Hall
  University of Massachusetts
  Amherst, MA 01003
  Phone: 413-665-2463
  http://www.people.umass.edu/abasole/
  blog: http://thenoondaysun.blogspot.com/



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From H.Arbuckle at fordfoundation.org  Mon Mar 22 03:16:18 2010
From: H.Arbuckle at fordfoundation.org (Arbuckle, Heidi)
Date: Sun, 21 Mar 2010 22:16:18 -0400
Subject: <CPOV> unsubscribe - thanks
Message-ID: <79886F084B65EE458150C23321F4BE5A5D7B7A3620@FFNYC-60-170V.fordfound.org>


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From juliana at networkcultures.org  Mon Mar 22 12:31:24 2010
From: juliana at networkcultures.org (Juliana Brunello)
Date: Mon, 22 Mar 2010 12:31:24 +0100
Subject: <CPOV> New stuff on CPoV blog!
Message-ID: <1e07287ccf80bf31f0f94783ccdfdfd0.squirrel@webmail.xs4all.nl>

Dear list members,

as most of you might know already, the CPoV has a blog online. I have been
working on it for a while now and would be nice if you could take a look
at it once in a while, comment, question, post, etc...
Some of the new stuff:
Interview with Patrick Lichty, Scott Kidall and Nathaniel Stern, as well
as with other speakers of the conference
Review on Felipe Ortega's PhD
Response to Jaron Lanier's Digital Maoism
...
http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/cpov/

Would be great if you could take some time to contribute with your ideas
as well!

Cheers,
Juliana


ADDRESS:
Institute of Network Cultures
HvA Interactive Media, room 05A20
Rhijnspoorplein 1
NL-1091 GC Amsterdam

POSTAL ADDRESS
Institute of Network Cultures
HvA Interactive Media, room 05A20
PO BOX 1025
NL-1000 BA Amsterdam

http://www.networkcultures.org
t: +31 20 5951866
f: +31 20 5951840




From mathieu.oneil at anu.edu.au  Mon Mar 22 12:49:02 2010
From: mathieu.oneil at anu.edu.au (Mathieu ONeil)
Date: Mon, 22 Mar 2010 22:49:02 +1100
Subject: <CPOV> New issue of JCOM: P2P Science
In-Reply-To: <1e07287ccf80bf31f0f94783ccdfdfd0.squirrel@webmail.xs4all.nl>
References: <1e07287ccf80bf31f0f94783ccdfdfd0.squirrel@webmail.xs4all.nl>
Message-ID: <fbe6bc551ccf4.4ba7f3de@anu.edu.au>

Hi CPOV list,

Just to let you know I have a paper coming out this week on expertise in WP and CZ in the Journal of Science Communication:

"Shirky and Sanger, or the costs of crowdsourcing"
http://jcom.sissa.it/archive/09/01/Jcom0901%282010%29C01/Jcom0901%282010%29C04

Full ToC here: http://jcom.sissa.it/archive/09/01

Looking forward to meeting in Amsterdam!,
cheers,
Mathieu





From geert at xs4all.nl  Mon Mar 22 21:47:19 2010
From: geert at xs4all.nl (Geert Lovink)
Date: Mon, 22 Mar 2010 21:47:19 +0100
Subject: <CPOV> informal meeting on thursday 25th, 5 pm
References: <EA769699-9363-43B7-9498-744C1FCF81E2@networkcultures.org>
Message-ID: <B3B1548D-8DAF-4176-B269-4E8BB11A03AF@xs4all.nl>

> On Thursday the 25th we will do a small gathering at the Jaren at  
> 17.00hrs together with more Wikipedians.
> http://www.diningcity.nl//cafedejaren/en/index.html
>
> See you there.
>
> Grtz,
> Margreet







From geert at xs4all.nl  Tue Mar 23 10:41:29 2010
From: geert at xs4all.nl (Geert Lovink)
Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2010 10:41:29 +0100
Subject: <CPOV> related event to cpov on thursday evening
Message-ID: <193014C8-9F6D-4EE8-9671-D64EBE57D3EC@xs4all.nl>

(one of the cpov presenters, Amit Basole, will speak here /geert)

http://www.factoryofthecommon.org/amsterdam-edufactory-presentation

25 March 2010, 8pm at Galerie Schijnheilig
Passeerdersgracht 23, Amsterdam

Conversation and presentation of the book:
TOWARD A GLOBAL AUTONOMOUS UNIVERSITY

Cognitive Labor, The Production of Knowledge and Exodus from the  
Education Factory
(New York: Autonomedia, 2009) edited by the Edu-factory collective  
[publisher's website]

Edu-Factory is a transnational collective engaged with the  
transformations of the global university and conflicts in knowledge  
production. The website of the global network (link) connects  
investigations and reports from university struggles.

Jos Scheren will interview:

	? Amit Basole, University of Massachussets, Vidya Ashram, Varanasi
	? Aetzel Griffioen, Erasmus Universiteit, Economics on the Border,  
Rotterdam
	? Wessel de Boer, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Universitaire Activisten
	? Kyra Weaver, Universiteit Utrecht, Kritische Studenten Utrecht

Many voices have risen to defend the integrity of the University from  
the recent interventions of the European governments. They say that  
universities are threatened by public expenditures cuttings, the  
privatization of education and the commoditization of knowledge. The  
implementation of the ?Bologna Process? is taken as one of the most  
dangerous threats to the university as we are used to know it.

But should the university ?as we are used to know it? become the  
object of a rescue operation?

The time has come to question the very concept of University, as the  
factory of universally valid and authoritative knowledge. It is clear  
that the university, which is said to be at risk in Europe, has being  
an instrument of destruction rather than of production of knowledge in  
Asia, Africa and the Americas.

This university is about to be destroyed. The only question is: who  
will destroy this university? Those academic managers who under the  
disguise of ?necessary cuts? and ?efficiency targets? are basically  
enlarging their own profitable/parasitical positions? Or those who are  
seeking to construct common knowledge: those capable of inventing  
different ways of learning, using different languages, inside and  
outside the academia?

The old university as an ivory tower is about to disappear. Will it  
all end in an ecological disaster where no knowledge can ever be  
developed or will it be something different that we do not yet fully  
know but that for sure has to be constructed in common?

Further reading:

- Amit Basole, ?Eurocentrism, the University and multiplicity of  
knowledge production sites?, in Edu-factory mailing list, April 2007
- Amit Basole, ?Some reflections on knowledge hierarchies and the  
autonomous university?, in Edu-factory mailing list, January 2008
- The Double Crisis, zero issue of the Edu-factory web journal

---

This event is organised by The Common Seminar.





From juliana at networkcultures.org  Tue Mar 23 12:11:31 2010
From: juliana at networkcultures.org (Juliana Brunello)
Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2010 12:11:31 +0100
Subject: <CPOV> The costs of knowledge
Message-ID: <605ca3477d092a3993427ce49ee08734.squirrel@webmail.xs4all.nl>

Hi all,
This is a two paragraph quote from a text published at firstmonday called
&#8216;Signs of epistemic disruption: Transformations in the knowledge
system of the academic journal&#8217; by William W. Cope and Mary
Kalantzis.

http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2309/2163

I find their questions not only interesting, but necessary.



&#8220;Everybody who writes for Wikipedia has to have another source of
income. What would happen to the global scholarly publishing industry if
academics assumed collective and universal responsibility for self
publishing, an industry supporting in 2004 a reported 250,000 employees
worldwide with a US$65 billion turnover (Peters, 2007)? What would happen
to scholarly associations and research institutes that have historically
gained revenue from the sale of periodicals and books? An ironical
consequence of a move to social production would, in the
much&#8211;trumpeted era of the knowledge or creative economy, be to value
knowledge making and creativity at zero when coal. How do knowledge
workers eat and where do they live? Without doing away with the market
entirely, we are consigning a good deal of knowledge work to involuntary
volunteerism, unaccountable cross&#8211;subsidy, charity or penury. We
know from experience the fate of workers in other domains of unpaid labor,
such as the unpaid domestic work of women and carers. Making it free means
that it is exploited. In the case of the knowledge economy, the exploiters
are the likes of Google who take the unpaid work of social producers and
make a fortune from it.

&#8230;

In this perspective, in this era of the new, digital media we might be
witnessing no more than one of the old marvels of industrial capitalism
&#8212; a technology that improves productivity. In the case of knowledge
making, the efficiencies are so great &#8212; print encyclopedias vs.
Wikipedia, celluloid movies vs. digital movies posted to YouTube, PDF
journal articles vs. print journals &#8212; that we get the impression
that the costs have reduced to nothing. But they have not. They have only
been lowered. We have become too dazzled by the reduction in costs to
notice the costs we are now paying. So low are these costs in fact that we
are can even afford to make these cultural products in our spare time, and
not worry too much about giving away the fruits of our labors to companies
who have found ways to exploit them in newly emerging information markets.
Knowledge is a product of human labor and it needs human labor to make it
available. There can never be zero costs of production and distribution of
knowledge and culture, theoretical or empirical. At most, there are
productivity improvements. Far from ushering in a new mode of production,
the driving force is more of the same engine that over the past few
centuries has made capitalism what it is.&#8221;






From diptikulkarni22 at gmail.com  Tue Mar 23 14:22:53 2010
From: diptikulkarni22 at gmail.com (Dipti Kulkarni)
Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2010 18:52:53 +0530
Subject: <CPOV>  unsubscribe - thanks
In-Reply-To: <79886F084B65EE458150C23321F4BE5A5D7B7A3620@FFNYC-60-170V.fordfound.org>
References: <79886F084B65EE458150C23321F4BE5A5D7B7A3620@FFNYC-60-170V.fordfound.org>
Message-ID: <b43106861003230622t1db37d13p787f8c056a5b49b@mail.gmail.com>

On Mon, Mar 22, 2010 at 7:46 AM, Arbuckle, Heidi
<H.Arbuckle at fordfoundation.org> wrote:
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Cpov_listcultures.org mailing list
> Cpov_listcultures.org at p10.alfaservers.com
> http://p10.alfaservers.com/mailman/listinfo/cpov_listcultures.org
>
>



-- 
Dipti Kulkarni

Research Scholar - Linguistics and Communication
Department of Humanities and Social Sciences
Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi



From juliana at networkcultures.org  Tue Mar 23 14:47:25 2010
From: juliana at networkcultures.org (Juliana Brunello)
Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2010 14:47:25 +0100
Subject: <CPOV> The costs of knowledge
Message-ID: <a0dd3b5523584a5bd736dd5bc746abac.squirrel@webmail.xs4all.nl>

Wow, I wasn't aware of such a possibility!

However, I don't know how exactly this would work in the case of
Wikipedia. Articles are edited by a different number of authors, so how to
compensate them? Divide equally? Divide per word count? How should it
actually be measured and is it possible to automate the process?

Juliana


> Hi Juliana
>
> Thats really a necessary question.
> We had in the germanspeaking Wikipedia in the last year trouble about
it.
>
> In Germany you can get money from the state, if you are publishing books or
> articles. And since two years you can get money, if you publish
> internet-articles. If your internet-article has enough clicks, than you can
> get 30-40 &#8364; for each article. If your article is published by an
organization, than you get 60% and the organization gets 40% of the
royalty.
> Each year the internet-authors in Germany get 12 million &#8364; from
the state
> (from VG-Wort).
>
> I was in contact with VG-Wort and they told me, they want also give
money
> to
> Wikipedia / the Wikipeda-Authors. But the Wikimedia-Foundation and the
German chapter didn't want to have the money. They didn't told anything
to
> the German authors. The ideology: Wikipedia-Authors have a lot of fun,
if
> they write articles for Wikipedia. It's not work, it's a hobby.
>
> If there an internet-content-organization is not part of the VG-Wort,
than
> the internet-authors can get a special distribution. VG Wort was giving
around three &#8364; for each article (if it has enough clicks). It's
not much
> money for one article, but some authors have written thousands of articles.
> The German Wikimedia-Chapter knows about this special distribution, but
they
> didn't inform the Wikipedia-Authors about this easy possibility to get
money
> for their work.
>
> Best
> Andreas
>
> 2010/3/23 Juliana Brunello <juliana at networkcultures.org>
>
>> Hi all,
>> This is a two paragraph quote from a text published at firstmonday called
>> &#8216;Signs of epistemic disruption: Transformations in the knowledge
system of the academic journal&#8217; by William W. Cope and Mary
Kalantzis.
>> http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2309/2163
I find their questions not only interesting, but necessary.
>> &#8220;Everybody who writes for Wikipedia has to have another source of
income. What would happen to the global scholarly publishing industry
if
>> academics assumed collective and universal responsibility for self
publishing, an industry supporting in 2004 a reported 250,000 employees
worldwide with a US$65 billion turnover (Peters, 2007)? What would
happen
>> to scholarly associations and research institutes that have
historically
>> gained revenue from the sale of periodicals and books? An ironical
consequence of a move to social production would, in the
>> much&#8211;trumpeted era of the knowledge or creative economy, be to value
>> knowledge making and creativity at zero when coal. How do knowledge
workers eat and where do they live? Without doing away with the market
entirely, we are consigning a good deal of knowledge work to
involuntary
>> volunteerism, unaccountable cross&#8211;subsidy, charity or penury. We
know from experience the fate of workers in other domains of unpaid
labor,
>> such as the unpaid domestic work of women and carers. Making it free means
>> that it is exploited. In the case of the knowledge economy, the exploiters
>> are the likes of Google who take the unpaid work of social producers
and
>> make a fortune from it.
>> &#8230;
>> In this perspective, in this era of the new, digital media we might be
witnessing no more than one of the old marvels of industrial capitalism
&#8212; a technology that improves productivity. In the case of
knowledge
>> making, the efficiencies are so great &#8212; print encyclopedias vs.
Wikipedia, celluloid movies vs. digital movies posted to YouTube, PDF
journal articles vs. print journals &#8212; that we get the impression
that the costs have reduced to nothing. But they have not. They have
only
>> been lowered. We have become too dazzled by the reduction in costs to
notice the costs we are now paying. So low are these costs in fact that
we
>> are can even afford to make these cultural products in our spare time, and
>> not worry too much about giving away the fruits of our labors to companies
>> who have found ways to exploit them in newly emerging information markets.
>> Knowledge is a product of human labor and it needs human labor to make it
>> available. There can never be zero costs of production and distribution of
>> knowledge and culture, theoretical or empirical. At most, there are
productivity improvements. Far from ushering in a new mode of
>> production,
>> the driving force is more of the same engine that over the past few
centuries has made capitalism what it is.&#8221;
>> _______________________________________________
>> Cpov_listcultures.org mailing list
>> Cpov_listcultures.org at p10.alfaservers.com
>> http://p10.alfaservers.com/mailman/listinfo/cpov_listcultures.org
>







From andreas.erich.kemper at googlemail.com  Tue Mar 23 13:46:18 2010
From: andreas.erich.kemper at googlemail.com (Andreas Kemper)
Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2010 13:46:18 +0100
Subject: <CPOV> The costs of knowledge
In-Reply-To: <605ca3477d092a3993427ce49ee08734.squirrel@webmail.xs4all.nl>
References: <605ca3477d092a3993427ce49ee08734.squirrel@webmail.xs4all.nl>
Message-ID: <d6f894ba1003230546l3c09d326lb14f9f22ca50a70b@mail.gmail.com>

Hi Juliana

Thats really a necessary question.
We had in the germanspeaking Wikipedia in the last year trouble about it.

In Germany you can get money from the state, if you are publishing books or
articles. And since two years you can get money, if you publish
internet-articles. If your internet-article has enough clicks, than you can
get 30-40 ? for each article. If your article is published by an
organization, than you get 60% and the organization gets 40% of the royalty.
Each year the internet-authors in Germany get 12 million ? from the state
(from VG-Wort).

I was in contact with VG-Wort and they told me, they want also give money to
Wikipedia / the Wikipeda-Authors. But the Wikimedia-Foundation and the
German chapter didn't want to have the money. They didn't told anything to
the German authors. The ideology: Wikipedia-Authors have a lot of fun, if
they write articles for Wikipedia. It's not work, it's a hobby.

If there an internet-content-organization is not part of the VG-Wort, than
the internet-authors can get a special distribution. VG Wort was giving
around three ? for each article (if it has enough clicks). It's not much
money for one article, but some authors have written thousands of articles.
The German Wikimedia-Chapter knows about this special distribution, but they
didn't inform the Wikipedia-Authors about this easy possibility to get money
for their work.

Best
Andreas

2010/3/23 Juliana Brunello <juliana at networkcultures.org>

> Hi all,
> This is a two paragraph quote from a text published at firstmonday called
> &#8216;Signs of epistemic disruption: Transformations in the knowledge
> system of the academic journal&#8217; by William W. Cope and Mary
> Kalantzis.
>
>
> http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2309/2163
>
> I find their questions not only interesting, but necessary.
>
>
>
> &#8220;Everybody who writes for Wikipedia has to have another source of
> income. What would happen to the global scholarly publishing industry if
> academics assumed collective and universal responsibility for self
> publishing, an industry supporting in 2004 a reported 250,000 employees
> worldwide with a US$65 billion turnover (Peters, 2007)? What would happen
> to scholarly associations and research institutes that have historically
> gained revenue from the sale of periodicals and books? An ironical
> consequence of a move to social production would, in the
> much&#8211;trumpeted era of the knowledge or creative economy, be to value
> knowledge making and creativity at zero when coal. How do knowledge
> workers eat and where do they live? Without doing away with the market
> entirely, we are consigning a good deal of knowledge work to involuntary
> volunteerism, unaccountable cross&#8211;subsidy, charity or penury. We
> know from experience the fate of workers in other domains of unpaid labor,
> such as the unpaid domestic work of women and carers. Making it free means
> that it is exploited. In the case of the knowledge economy, the exploiters
> are the likes of Google who take the unpaid work of social producers and
> make a fortune from it.
>
> &#8230;
>
> In this perspective, in this era of the new, digital media we might be
> witnessing no more than one of the old marvels of industrial capitalism
> &#8212; a technology that improves productivity. In the case of knowledge
> making, the efficiencies are so great &#8212; print encyclopedias vs.
> Wikipedia, celluloid movies vs. digital movies posted to YouTube, PDF
> journal articles vs. print journals &#8212; that we get the impression
> that the costs have reduced to nothing. But they have not. They have only
> been lowered. We have become too dazzled by the reduction in costs to
> notice the costs we are now paying. So low are these costs in fact that we
> are can even afford to make these cultural products in our spare time, and
> not worry too much about giving away the fruits of our labors to companies
> who have found ways to exploit them in newly emerging information markets.
> Knowledge is a product of human labor and it needs human labor to make it
> available. There can never be zero costs of production and distribution of
> knowledge and culture, theoretical or empirical. At most, there are
> productivity improvements. Far from ushering in a new mode of production,
> the driving force is more of the same engine that over the past few
> centuries has made capitalism what it is.&#8221;
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Cpov_listcultures.org mailing list
> Cpov_listcultures.org at p10.alfaservers.com
> http://p10.alfaservers.com/mailman/listinfo/cpov_listcultures.org
>
-------------- next part --------------
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URL: <http://listcultures.org/pipermail/cpov_listcultures.org/attachments/20100323/8d8837a8/attachment.html>

From andreas.erich.kemper at googlemail.com  Tue Mar 23 16:41:30 2010
From: andreas.erich.kemper at googlemail.com (Andreas Kemper)
Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2010 16:41:30 +0100
Subject: <CPOV> The costs of knowledge
In-Reply-To: <a0dd3b5523584a5bd736dd5bc746abac.squirrel@webmail.xs4all.nl>
References: <a0dd3b5523584a5bd736dd5bc746abac.squirrel@webmail.xs4all.nl>
Message-ID: <d6f894ba1003230841o345a1f0ct1f10d31857c3e87d@mail.gmail.com>

There are programs to find the main-authors. It didn't seem to be the big
problem to find the main-authors in Wikipedia. We had in the German
Wikipedia a big discussion about the question: should we name the
main-authors in the beginning of a Wikipedia-article
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Umfragen/Autorennennung_am_Artikel

and we had also a big discussion about VG Wort/Metis:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Diskussion:METIS#aktuelle_Sonderaussch.C3.BCttung

and here is my blog-article about the solidarity economy in Wikipedia:
http://klassismus.blogspot.com/2009/05/zur-solidarischen-okonomie-wikipedias.html
where I published the possibility to get royalty from the state for
Wikipedia-articles.

All this articles are in German language, sorry.

The most Wikipedia-articles have enough clicks per year to get the royalty
from VG-Wort/Metis, so Wikimedia and the German Wikipedia-Authors could get
each year a big peace of the cake (12 million Euro!), Matthias Schindler
spokes about 5 million Euro.

2010/3/23 Juliana Brunello <juliana at networkcultures.org>

> Wow, I wasn't aware of such a possibility!
>
> However, I don't know how exactly this would work in the case of
> Wikipedia. Articles are edited by a different number of authors, so how to
> compensate them? Divide equally? Divide per word count? How should it
> actually be measured and is it possible to automate the process?
>
> Juliana
>
>
> > Hi Juliana
> >
> > Thats really a necessary question.
> > We had in the germanspeaking Wikipedia in the last year trouble about
> it.
> >
> > In Germany you can get money from the state, if you are publishing books
> or
> > articles. And since two years you can get money, if you publish
> > internet-articles. If your internet-article has enough clicks, than you
> can
> > get 30-40 &#8364; for each article. If your article is published by an
> organization, than you get 60% and the organization gets 40% of the
> royalty.
> > Each year the internet-authors in Germany get 12 million &#8364; from
> the state
> > (from VG-Wort).
> >
> > I was in contact with VG-Wort and they told me, they want also give
> money
> > to
> > Wikipedia / the Wikipeda-Authors. But the Wikimedia-Foundation and the
> German chapter didn't want to have the money. They didn't told anything
> to
> > the German authors. The ideology: Wikipedia-Authors have a lot of fun,
> if
> > they write articles for Wikipedia. It's not work, it's a hobby.
> >
> > If there an internet-content-organization is not part of the VG-Wort,
> than
> > the internet-authors can get a special distribution. VG Wort was giving
> around three &#8364; for each article (if it has enough clicks). It's
> not much
> > money for one article, but some authors have written thousands of
> articles.
> > The German Wikimedia-Chapter knows about this special distribution, but
> they
> > didn't inform the Wikipedia-Authors about this easy possibility to get
> money
> > for their work.
> >
> > Best
> > Andreas
> >
> > 2010/3/23 Juliana Brunello <juliana at networkcultures.org>
> >
> >> Hi all,
> >> This is a two paragraph quote from a text published at firstmonday
> called
> >> &#8216;Signs of epistemic disruption: Transformations in the knowledge
> system of the academic journal&#8217; by William W. Cope and Mary
> Kalantzis.
> >>
> http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2309/2163
> I find their questions not only interesting, but necessary.
> >> &#8220;Everybody who writes for Wikipedia has to have another source of
> income. What would happen to the global scholarly publishing industry
> if
> >> academics assumed collective and universal responsibility for self
> publishing, an industry supporting in 2004 a reported 250,000 employees
> worldwide with a US$65 billion turnover (Peters, 2007)? What would
> happen
> >> to scholarly associations and research institutes that have
> historically
> >> gained revenue from the sale of periodicals and books? An ironical
> consequence of a move to social production would, in the
> >> much&#8211;trumpeted era of the knowledge or creative economy, be to
> value
> >> knowledge making and creativity at zero when coal. How do knowledge
> workers eat and where do they live? Without doing away with the market
> entirely, we are consigning a good deal of knowledge work to
> involuntary
> >> volunteerism, unaccountable cross&#8211;subsidy, charity or penury. We
> know from experience the fate of workers in other domains of unpaid
> labor,
> >> such as the unpaid domestic work of women and carers. Making it free
> means
> >> that it is exploited. In the case of the knowledge economy, the
> exploiters
> >> are the likes of Google who take the unpaid work of social producers
> and
> >> make a fortune from it.
> >> &#8230;
> >> In this perspective, in this era of the new, digital media we might be
> witnessing no more than one of the old marvels of industrial capitalism
> &#8212; a technology that improves productivity. In the case of
> knowledge
> >> making, the efficiencies are so great &#8212; print encyclopedias vs.
> Wikipedia, celluloid movies vs. digital movies posted to YouTube, PDF
> journal articles vs. print journals &#8212; that we get the impression
> that the costs have reduced to nothing. But they have not. They have
> only
> >> been lowered. We have become too dazzled by the reduction in costs to
> notice the costs we are now paying. So low are these costs in fact that
> we
> >> are can even afford to make these cultural products in our spare time,
> and
> >> not worry too much about giving away the fruits of our labors to
> companies
> >> who have found ways to exploit them in newly emerging information
> markets.
> >> Knowledge is a product of human labor and it needs human labor to make
> it
> >> available. There can never be zero costs of production and distribution
> of
> >> knowledge and culture, theoretical or empirical. At most, there are
> productivity improvements. Far from ushering in a new mode of
> >> production,
> >> the driving force is more of the same engine that over the past few
> centuries has made capitalism what it is.&#8221;
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> Cpov_listcultures.org mailing list
> >> Cpov_listcultures.org at p10.alfaservers.com
> >> http://p10.alfaservers.com/mailman/listinfo/cpov_listcultures.org
> >
>
>
>
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
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From andrew.famiglietti at lcc.gatech.edu  Wed Mar 24 15:14:21 2010
From: andrew.famiglietti at lcc.gatech.edu (andrew.famiglietti at lcc.gatech.edu)
Date: Wed, 24 Mar 2010 10:14:21 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: <CPOV> The costs of knowledge
In-Reply-To: <1079729737.317031269439960600.JavaMail.root@mail6.gatech.edu>
Message-ID: <869046318.318021269440061737.JavaMail.root@mail6.gatech.edu>

This is very interesting stuff! You were able to identify top editor's real identities? If there was money at stake wouldn't you have to deal with attempts to falsely claim "ownership" of an active Wikipedia account? Were there any concerns about the loss of anonymous speech? English language Wikipedians seem to have divided opinions about being identified on Wikipedia. 

I'm not surprised the Foundation declined the money, in an early post to Wikipedia-L, Jimmy Wales writes that he basically considers taxation theft... however I also wonder about practical considerations. Edit conflicts can burn hot enough as it is, would they get worse if the editor whose contributions stuck was going to get paid? 

- Andy 
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Andreas Kemper" <andreas.erich.kemper at googlemail.com> 
To: "Juliana Brunello" <juliana at networkcultures.org> 
Cc: "cpov list" <cpov at listcultures.org> 
Sent: Tuesday, March 23, 2010 11:41:30 AM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern 
Subject: Re: <CPOV> The costs of knowledge 

There are programs to find the main-authors. It didn't seem to be the big problem to find the main-authors in Wikipedia. We had in the German Wikipedia a big discussion about the question: should we name the main-authors in the beginning of a Wikipedia-article 
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Umfragen/Autorennennung_am_Artikel 

and we had also a big discussion about VG Wort/Metis: 
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Diskussion:METIS#aktuelle_Sonderaussch.C3.BCttung 

and here is my blog-article about the solidarity economy in Wikipedia: 
http://klassismus.blogspot.com/2009/05/zur-solidarischen-okonomie-wikipedias.html 
where I published the possibility to get royalty from the state for Wikipedia-articles. 

All this articles are in German language, sorry. 

The most Wikipedia-articles have enough clicks per year to get the royalty from VG-Wort/Metis, so Wikimedia and the German Wikipedia-Authors could get each year a big peace of the cake (12 million Euro!), Matthias Schindler spokes about 5 million Euro. 


2010/3/23 Juliana Brunello < juliana at networkcultures.org > 


Wow, I wasn't aware of such a possibility! 

However, I don't know how exactly this would work in the case of 
Wikipedia. Articles are edited by a different number of authors, so how to 
compensate them? Divide equally? Divide per word count? How should it 
actually be measured and is it possible to automate the process? 

Juliana 



> Hi Juliana 
> 
> Thats really a necessary question. 
> We had in the germanspeaking Wikipedia in the last year trouble about 
it. 
> 
> In Germany you can get money from the state, if you are publishing books or 
> articles. And since two years you can get money, if you publish 
> internet-articles. If your internet-article has enough clicks, than you can 
> get 30-40 &#8364; for each article. If your article is published by an 

organization, than you get 60% and the organization gets 40% of the 
royalty. 
> Each year the internet-authors in Germany get 12 million &#8364; from 

the state 
> (from VG-Wort). 
> 
> I was in contact with VG-Wort and they told me, they want also give 
money 
> to 
> Wikipedia / the Wikipeda-Authors. But the Wikimedia-Foundation and the 
German chapter didn't want to have the money. They didn't told anything 
to 
> the German authors. The ideology: Wikipedia-Authors have a lot of fun, 
if 
> they write articles for Wikipedia. It's not work, it's a hobby. 
> 
> If there an internet-content-organization is not part of the VG-Wort, 
than 
> the internet-authors can get a special distribution. VG Wort was giving 
around three &#8364; for each article (if it has enough clicks). It's 



not much 
> money for one article, but some authors have written thousands of articles. 
> The German Wikimedia-Chapter knows about this special distribution, but 
they 
> didn't inform the Wikipedia-Authors about this easy possibility to get 
money 
> for their work. 
> 
> Best 
> Andreas 
> 
> 2010/3/23 Juliana Brunello < juliana at networkcultures.org > 
> 
>> Hi all, 
>> This is a two paragraph quote from a text published at firstmonday called 
>> &#8216;Signs of epistemic disruption: Transformations in the knowledge 
system of the academic journal&#8217; by William W. Cope and Mary 
Kalantzis. 
>> http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2309/2163 
I find their questions not only interesting, but necessary. 
>> &#8220;Everybody who writes for Wikipedia has to have another source of 
income. What would happen to the global scholarly publishing industry 
if 
>> academics assumed collective and universal responsibility for self 
publishing, an industry supporting in 2004 a reported 250,000 employees 
worldwide with a US$65 billion turnover (Peters, 2007)? What would 
happen 
>> to scholarly associations and research institutes that have 
historically 
>> gained revenue from the sale of periodicals and books? An ironical 
consequence of a move to social production would, in the 
>> much&#8211;trumpeted era of the knowledge or creative economy, be to value 
>> knowledge making and creativity at zero when coal. How do knowledge 
workers eat and where do they live? Without doing away with the market 
entirely, we are consigning a good deal of knowledge work to 
involuntary 
>> volunteerism, unaccountable cross&#8211;subsidy, charity or penury. We 
know from experience the fate of workers in other domains of unpaid 
labor, 
>> such as the unpaid domestic work of women and carers. Making it free means 
>> that it is exploited. In the case of the knowledge economy, the exploiters 
>> are the likes of Google who take the unpaid work of social producers 
and 
>> make a fortune from it. 
>> &#8230; 
>> In this perspective, in this era of the new, digital media we might be 
witnessing no more than one of the old marvels of industrial capitalism 
&#8212; a technology that improves productivity. In the case of 
knowledge 
>> making, the efficiencies are so great &#8212; print encyclopedias vs. 
Wikipedia, celluloid movies vs. digital movies posted to YouTube, PDF 
journal articles vs. print journals &#8212; that we get the impression 
that the costs have reduced to nothing. But they have not. They have 
only 
>> been lowered. We have become too dazzled by the reduction in costs to 
notice the costs we are now paying. So low are these costs in fact that 
we 
>> are can even afford to make these cultural products in our spare time, and 
>> not worry too much about giving away the fruits of our labors to companies 
>> who have found ways to exploit them in newly emerging information markets. 
>> Knowledge is a product of human labor and it needs human labor to make it 
>> available. There can never be zero costs of production and distribution of 
>> knowledge and culture, theoretical or empirical. At most, there are 
productivity improvements. Far from ushering in a new mode of 
>> production, 
>> the driving force is more of the same engine that over the past few 
centuries has made capitalism what it is.&#8221; 
>> _______________________________________________ 
>> Cpov_listcultures.org mailing list 
>> Cpov_listcultures.org at p10.alfaservers.com 
>> http://p10.alfaservers.com/mailman/listinfo/cpov_listcultures.org 
> 






_______________________________________________ Cpov_listcultures.org mailing list Cpov_listcultures.org at p10.alfaservers.com http://p10.alfaservers.com/mailman/listinfo/cpov_listcultures.org 

-- 
-- 
Andrew Famiglietti 
Brittain Fellow 
School of Literature, Communication, and Culture 
Georgia Institute of Technology 
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From jawbrey at att.net  Wed Mar 24 15:25:28 2010
From: jawbrey at att.net (Jon Awbrey)
Date: Wed, 24 Mar 2010 10:25:28 -0400
Subject: <CPOV> The costs of knowledge
In-Reply-To: <d6f894ba1003230546l3c09d326lb14f9f22ca50a70b@mail.gmail.com>
References: <605ca3477d092a3993427ce49ee08734.squirrel@webmail.xs4all.nl>
	<d6f894ba1003230546l3c09d326lb14f9f22ca50a70b@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <4BAA20D8.4060107@att.net>

Andreas,

Do you know how this would apply to portions of articles
that are translated from other languages into German and
from German into other languages?

Jon Awbrey

-- 

inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/
mwb: http://www.mywikibiz.com/Directory:Jon_Awbrey
knol: http://knol.google.com/k/-/-/3fkwvf69kridz/1
oeiswiki: http://www.oeis.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey



From thekohser at gmail.com  Thu Mar 25 16:05:28 2010
From: thekohser at gmail.com (Gregory Kohs)
Date: Thu, 25 Mar 2010 11:05:28 -0400
Subject: <CPOV> On a payment/reward structure
Message-ID: <14b1e7be1003250805s76de847agaac1af9359641763@mail.gmail.com>

I've had some thought about how a "new Wikipedia" with funding (either
from the traditional donation route, or by implementing contextual
advertising) could pay editors for quality contributions.

First, one would have to say "anonymous editors may be paid, but must
identify and verify identity with the payment-governing body".  You
could still stay pseudonymous on the wiki, but at least the folks with
the money would know where to send compensation.  Probably would be a
good idea to restrict paid editors to those 18 and older.

Second, one would establish a "reputation" system, similar to eBay's
seller ratings, but ramped up another level.  That is, if I have a
reputation of 70 and you have a reputation of 35, then when I "vote"
for another editor's quality of contribution, and you vote for that
editor's quality of contribution, my vote counts twice as much as
yours.  Editors with very low reputations would forfeit their right to
be compensated.  The reputation score could even be a combination of
two or more sub-scores, such as "quality of writing", "engages well
with other editors", "authority of knowledge", etc.

Third, use a variation of the "text durability" measuring system that
(was it?) University of Santa Cruz developed.  If I create 1,200 bytes
of text in an article, of which 1,100 are still in place 100 days
later, I get credit for those 1,100 bytes, plus some kind of
commendation that 91.6% of my work is durable.  (You don't want
someone adding 150,000 bytes, just in hopes that 15,000 gets kept.)

Finally, measure article popularity by simple traffic and time-on-page stats.

You could roll these measures up (editor reputation, quantity of
durable text, popularity of destination page) to produce a relatively
meaningful "how much do we pay this editor this month" plan.  Of
course, the system would be gamed, but gamers could be "punished" by
other editors devaluing their reputation rating.

Of course, you've got to have salaried, level-headed adults governing
the entire system, who are not compensated for their editorial
activity.  That's where the Wikimedia Foundation would fail.  They
have no interest or capacity in learning how to become level-headed
adults with governing responsibility.

Anyway, that's the plan.  It might become messy over time, but
certainly couldn't be worse than the current Wikipedia model of mixing
naive free culturists with vindictive game players and subterranean
marketing folks.  I'd launch it myself, but I have a day job and I
never made it past BASIC, second semester, in computer programming.

-- 
Gregory Kohs
Phone: 484-NEW-WIKI



From andreas.erich.kemper at googlemail.com  Thu Mar 25 16:43:35 2010
From: andreas.erich.kemper at googlemail.com (Andreas Kemper)
Date: Thu, 25 Mar 2010 16:43:35 +0100
Subject: <CPOV> The costs of knowledge
In-Reply-To: <869046318.318021269440061737.JavaMail.root@mail6.gatech.edu>
References: <1079729737.317031269439960600.JavaMail.root@mail6.gatech.edu>
	<869046318.318021269440061737.JavaMail.root@mail6.gatech.edu>
Message-ID: <d6f894ba1003250843h29407244v2a0cf85b33dba3dd@mail.gmail.com>

Hi Andy

Identity: it's like the identity of book-authors. They can also publish the
books with a pseudonym and can get royalty from the state.
Conflicts: You're right. I think there are more conflicts as now when
main-authors get money.

Best
Andreas

2010/3/24 <andrew.famiglietti at lcc.gatech.edu>

> This is very interesting stuff! You were able to identify top editor's real
> identities? If there was money at stake wouldn't you have to deal with
> attempts to falsely claim "ownership" of an active Wikipedia account? Were
> there any concerns about the loss of anonymous speech? English language
> Wikipedians seem to have divided opinions about being identified on
> Wikipedia.
>
> I'm not surprised the Foundation declined the money, in an early post to
> Wikipedia-L, Jimmy Wales writes that he basically considers taxation
> theft... however I also wonder about practical considerations. Edit
> conflicts can burn hot enough as it is, would they get worse if the editor
> whose contributions stuck was going to get paid?
>
> - Andy
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Andreas Kemper" <andreas.erich.kemper at googlemail.com>
> To: "Juliana Brunello" <juliana at networkcultures.org>
> Cc: "cpov list" <cpov at listcultures.org>
> Sent: Tuesday, March 23, 2010 11:41:30 AM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
> Subject: Re: <CPOV> The costs of knowledge
>
> There are programs to find the main-authors. It didn't seem to be the big
> problem to find the main-authors in Wikipedia. We had in the German
> Wikipedia a big discussion about the question: should we name the
> main-authors in the beginning of a Wikipedia-article
> http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Umfragen/Autorennennung_am_Artikel
>
> and we had also a big discussion about VG Wort/Metis:
>
> http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Diskussion:METIS#aktuelle_Sonderaussch.C3.BCttung
>
> and here is my blog-article about the solidarity economy in Wikipedia:
>
> http://klassismus.blogspot.com/2009/05/zur-solidarischen-okonomie-wikipedias.html
> where I published the possibility to get royalty from the state for
> Wikipedia-articles.
>
> All this articles are in German language, sorry.
>
> The most Wikipedia-articles have enough clicks per year to get the royalty
> from VG-Wort/Metis, so Wikimedia and the German Wikipedia-Authors could get
> each year a big peace of the cake (12 million Euro!), Matthias Schindler
> spokes about 5 million Euro.
>
> 2010/3/23 Juliana Brunello <juliana at networkcultures.org>
>
>> Wow, I wasn't aware of such a possibility!
>>
>> However, I don't know how exactly this would work in the case of
>> Wikipedia. Articles are edited by a different number of authors, so how to
>> compensate them? Divide equally? Divide per word count? How should it
>> actually be measured and is it possible to automate the process?
>>
>> Juliana
>>
>>
>> > Hi Juliana
>> >
>> > Thats really a necessary question.
>> > We had in the germanspeaking Wikipedia in the last year trouble about
>> it.
>> >
>> > In Germany you can get money from the state, if you are publishing books
>> or
>> > articles. And since two years you can get money, if you publish
>> > internet-articles. If your internet-article has enough clicks, than you
>> can
>> > get 30-40 &#8364; for each article. If your article is published by an
>> organization, than you get 60% and the organization gets 40% of the
>> royalty.
>> > Each year the internet-authors in Germany get 12 million &#8364; from
>> the state
>> > (from VG-Wort).
>> >
>> > I was in contact with VG-Wort and they told me, they want also give
>> money
>> > to
>> > Wikipedia / the Wikipeda-Authors. But the Wikimedia-Foundation and the
>> German chapter didn't want to have the money. They didn't told anything
>> to
>> > the German authors. The ideology: Wikipedia-Authors have a lot of fun,
>> if
>> > they write articles for Wikipedia. It's not work, it's a hobby.
>> >
>> > If there an internet-content-organization is not part of the VG-Wort,
>> than
>> > the internet-authors can get a special distribution. VG Wort was giving
>> around three &#8364; for each article (if it has enough clicks). It's
>> not much
>> > money for one article, but some authors have written thousands of
>> articles.
>> > The German Wikimedia-Chapter knows about this special distribution, but
>> they
>> > didn't inform the Wikipedia-Authors about this easy possibility to get
>> money
>> > for their work.
>> >
>> > Best
>> > Andreas
>> >
>> > 2010/3/23 Juliana Brunello <juliana at networkcultures.org>
>> >
>> >> Hi all,
>> >> This is a two paragraph quote from a text published at firstmonday
>> called
>> >> &#8216;Signs of epistemic disruption: Transformations in the knowledge
>> system of the academic journal&#8217; by William W. Cope and Mary
>> Kalantzis.
>> >>
>> http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2309/2163
>> I find their questions not only interesting, but necessary.
>> >> &#8220;Everybody who writes for Wikipedia has to have another source of
>> income. What would happen to the global scholarly publishing industry
>> if
>> >> academics assumed collective and universal responsibility for self
>> publishing, an industry supporting in 2004 a reported 250,000 employees
>> worldwide with a US$65 billion turnover (Peters, 2007)? What would
>> happen
>> >> to scholarly associations and research institutes that have
>> historically
>> >> gained revenue from the sale of periodicals and books? An ironical
>> consequence of a move to social production would, in the
>> >> much&#8211;trumpeted era of the knowledge or creative economy, be to
>> value
>> >> knowledge making and creativity at zero when coal. How do knowledge
>> workers eat and where do they live? Without doing away with the market
>> entirely, we are consigning a good deal of knowledge work to
>> involuntary
>> >> volunteerism, unaccountable cross&#8211;subsidy, charity or penury. We
>> know from experience the fate of workers in other domains of unpaid
>> labor,
>> >> such as the unpaid domestic work of women and carers. Making it free
>> means
>> >> that it is exploited. In the case of the knowledge economy, the
>> exploiters
>> >> are the likes of Google who take the unpaid work of social producers
>> and
>> >> make a fortune from it.
>> >> &#8230;
>> >> In this perspective, in this era of the new, digital media we might be
>> witnessing no more than one of the old marvels of industrial capitalism
>> &#8212; a technology that improves productivity. In the case of
>> knowledge
>> >> making, the efficiencies are so great &#8212; print encyclopedias vs.
>> Wikipedia, celluloid movies vs. digital movies posted to YouTube, PDF
>> journal articles vs. print journals &#8212; that we get the impression
>> that the costs have reduced to nothing. But they have not. They have
>> only
>> >> been lowered. We have become too dazzled by the reduction in costs to
>> notice the costs we are now paying. So low are these costs in fact that
>> we
>> >> are can even afford to make these cultural products in our spare time,
>> and
>> >> not worry too much about giving away the fruits of our labors to
>> companies
>> >> who have found ways to exploit them in newly emerging information
>> markets.
>> >> Knowledge is a product of human labor and it needs human labor to make
>> it
>> >> available. There can never be zero costs of production and distribution
>> of
>> >> knowledge and culture, theoretical or empirical. At most, there are
>> productivity improvements. Far from ushering in a new mode of
>> >> production,
>> >> the driving force is more of the same engine that over the past few
>> centuries has made capitalism what it is.&#8221;
>> >> _______________________________________________
>> >> Cpov_listcultures.org mailing list
>> >> Cpov_listcultures.org at p10.alfaservers.com
>> >> http://p10.alfaservers.com/mailman/listinfo/cpov_listcultures.org
>> >
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
> _______________________________________________ Cpov_listcultures.org
> mailing list Cpov_listcultures.org at p10.alfaservers.com
> http://p10.alfaservers.com/mailman/listinfo/cpov_listcultures.org
>
> --
> --
> Andrew Famiglietti
> Brittain Fellow
> School of Literature, Communication, and Culture
> Georgia Institute of Technology
>
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From andrew.famiglietti at lcc.gatech.edu  Thu Mar 25 19:35:35 2010
From: andrew.famiglietti at lcc.gatech.edu (andrew.famiglietti at lcc.gatech.edu)
Date: Thu, 25 Mar 2010 14:35:35 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: <CPOV> On a payment/reward structure
In-Reply-To: <368379896.591801269541917133.JavaMail.root@mail6.gatech.edu>
Message-ID: <1961778652.592631269542135002.JavaMail.root@mail6.gatech.edu>

These are all very interesting notions, but I'm not sure I like the idea of trying to return the wage relationship to Wikipedia-like production. A favorite quote from E.P. Thompson comes to mind: 

"The injury that advanced capitalism did, and that the market society did, was to define human relations as being primarily economic. Marx [...] proposed revolutionary economic man. But it is also implicit, particularly in the early Marx, that the injury is defining man as 'economic' at all." 

Implicit in the Free Labor/Playbor economy that Wikipedia (and to a much lesser extent, FOSS) thrives in is a notion of labor as something people do for reasons other than just the wage. Wikipedians understand their labor as being beneficial to a community that they care about. From a certain point of view, we might call that a form of False Consciousness, and that might have some merit, do we really want to insist that all labor must be monetized? Clearly Wikipedia is much too linked to global capitalism to really fit the dream image that some practitioners (and some theorists, like Yochai Benkler) have of it, but is the answer to return Free Labor to the status of Wage Labor? Is that a step forward? 

I'd rather be discussing all these issues in person with you, but I was unable to find the meeting at the Cafe tonight. I'm just not that good at matching real faces to website headshots I guess. I'm excited to talk to everyone tomorrow!

- Andy

----- Original Message -----
From: "Gregory Kohs" <thekohser at gmail.com>
To: cpov at listcultures.org
Sent: Thursday, March 25, 2010 11:05:28 AM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
Subject: <CPOV> On a payment/reward structure

I've had some thought about how a "new Wikipedia" with funding (either
from the traditional donation route, or by implementing contextual
advertising) could pay editors for quality contributions.

First, one would have to say "anonymous editors may be paid, but must
identify and verify identity with the payment-governing body".  You
could still stay pseudonymous on the wiki, but at least the folks with
the money would know where to send compensation.  Probably would be a
good idea to restrict paid editors to those 18 and older.

Second, one would establish a "reputation" system, similar to eBay's
seller ratings, but ramped up another level.  That is, if I have a
reputation of 70 and you have a reputation of 35, then when I "vote"
for another editor's quality of contribution, and you vote for that
editor's quality of contribution, my vote counts twice as much as
yours.  Editors with very low reputations would forfeit their right to
be compensated.  The reputation score could even be a combination of
two or more sub-scores, such as "quality of writing", "engages well
with other editors", "authority of knowledge", etc.

Third, use a variation of the "text durability" measuring system that
(was it?) University of Santa Cruz developed.  If I create 1,200 bytes
of text in an article, of which 1,100 are still in place 100 days
later, I get credit for those 1,100 bytes, plus some kind of
commendation that 91.6% of my work is durable.  (You don't want
someone adding 150,000 bytes, just in hopes that 15,000 gets kept.)

Finally, measure article popularity by simple traffic and time-on-page stats.

You could roll these measures up (editor reputation, quantity of
durable text, popularity of destination page) to produce a relatively
meaningful "how much do we pay this editor this month" plan.  Of
course, the system would be gamed, but gamers could be "punished" by
other editors devaluing their reputation rating.

Of course, you've got to have salaried, level-headed adults governing
the entire system, who are not compensated for their editorial
activity.  That's where the Wikimedia Foundation would fail.  They
have no interest or capacity in learning how to become level-headed
adults with governing responsibility.

Anyway, that's the plan.  It might become messy over time, but
certainly couldn't be worse than the current Wikipedia model of mixing
naive free culturists with vindictive game players and subterranean
marketing folks.  I'd launch it myself, but I have a day job and I
never made it past BASIC, second semester, in computer programming.

-- 
Gregory Kohs
Phone: 484-NEW-WIKI

_______________________________________________
Cpov_listcultures.org mailing list
Cpov_listcultures.org at p10.alfaservers.com
http://p10.alfaservers.com/mailman/listinfo/cpov_listcultures.org

-- 
--
Andrew Famiglietti 
Brittain Fellow 
School of Literature, Communication, and Culture 
Georgia Institute of Technology



From geert at xs4all.nl  Sat Mar 27 12:30:00 2010
From: geert at xs4all.nl (Geert Lovink)
Date: Sat, 27 Mar 2010 12:30:00 +0100
Subject: <CPOV> discussion and conference on wikipedia research
References: <54268.1269651576@scottmacleod.com>
Message-ID: <2634F3E2-F6C6-48F8-BE9A-829823C5F1CE@xs4all.nl>

> From: Scott MacLeod <scott at scottmacleod.com>
> Date: 27 March 2010 1:59:36 AM
> To: "geert lovink" <geert at desk.nl>
> Cc: <jryan at cyber.law.harvard.edu>
> Subject: Re: [Air-L] discussion and conference on wikipedia research
> Reply-To: scott at scottmacleod.com
>
> Geert,
>
> World University & School plans to be in many languages, potentially  
> all, but starting perhaps with around 9 OLPC (One Laptop per Child)  
> languages and Google Translate's 52 ish languages. What technologies  
> do you know of that will translate wiki templates into other  
> language templates? And I'll let you know when the Dutch one is up,  
> and perhaps you could add content and teach and learn. Here's one  
> key contact:jryan at cyber.law.harvard.edu.
>
>
> Could you please begin to bring World University & School - like  
> Wikipedia with MIT Open Course Ware and UC Berkeley webcasts, etc.  
> -  to the attention of this wikipedia conference? There's already a  
> free Ph.D. in Education from Harvard for 2011 and 2012 posted at  
> World University and School and such degrees will grow: http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Courses#Free_Ph.D.s 
> . Check out too all the free, educational software:http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Educational_Software 
> , as well as the library resources:http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Library_Resources 
>  among other things.
>
> Will the wikipedia confernence be webcast?
>
> Sincerely,
> Scott
>
> http://scottmacleod.com
> http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/World_University




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From jawbrey at att.net  Sat Mar 27 17:00:48 2010
From: jawbrey at att.net (Jon Awbrey)
Date: Sat, 27 Mar 2010 12:00:48 -0400
Subject: <CPOV> Teach-In @ Wikiversity?
In-Reply-To: <4BA39AD9.5040603@att.net>
References: <4BA39AD9.5040603@att.net>
Message-ID: <4BAE2BB0.8030800@att.net>

CPOV Pilgrims who are following WikiPlex's Progress --
to wit, its "foundering" attempts to up-date itself
to the Year 1215 -- will find that a portion of the
action has shifted to the scenes of Meta-Wiki-Medea:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Remove_Founder_flag

Ciao,

Jon

Jon Awbrey wrote:
> CPOVers interested in trying to keep up with the fast-breaking
> developments at Wikiversity may find the following links of use:
> 
> Wikiversity:Community Review/Wikimedia Ethics:Ethical Breaching Experiments
> http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Wikiversity:Community_Review/Wikimedia_Ethics:Ethical_Breaching_Experiments 
> 
> 
> ''The Wikipedia Review'' : "Jimbo's lording over Wikiversity again"
> http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=28850
> 
> Leigh Blackall's Blog : "Is the Wikimedia Foundation going to close 
> Wikiversity?"
> http://leighblackall.blogspot.com/2010/03/is-wikimedia-foundation-going-to-close.html 
> 
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Jon Awbrey

-- 

inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/
mwb: http://www.mywikibiz.com/Directory:Jon_Awbrey
knol: http://knol.google.com/k/-/-/3fkwvf69kridz/1
oeiswiki: http://www.oeis.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey



From geert at xs4all.nl  Sun Mar 28 21:41:10 2010
From: geert at xs4all.nl (Geert Lovink)
Date: Sun, 28 Mar 2010 21:41:10 +0200
Subject: <CPOV> What does Wikipedia want? By Perro de Jong
Message-ID: <611AB5C6-ED2E-4B80-B54B-ADF6ECA8BB3B@xs4all.nl>

http://www.rnw.nl/english/article/what-does-wikipedia-want

What does Wikipedia want? Published on : 27 March 2010 - 10:00am | By  
Perro de Jong
The days when you could set about livening up the information on  
Wikipedia without fear of reprisal are over. Yet we still need to take  
a long and critical look at the popular online encyclopaedia. That is  
the conclusion reached by delegates at an international conference in  
Amsterdam.

All of the Netherlands was in uproar three years ago when it emerged  
that Princess Mabel had censored her own Wikipedia page. The greatly  
exaggerated Wikipedia reports of Apple CEO Steve Jobs are also  
notorious. Yet gaffes like this are usually tracked down quickly.

The fact that everyone can contribute information is the key to the  
unprecedented success of the encyclopaedia, which boasts an astounding  
68 million visitors a month. But that?s not to say there?s no  
supervision. Wikipedia has a whole system of rules and correction  
mechanisms. The main aim is to arrive at a 'Neutral Point of View' or  
'NPoV?, based on verifiable information.

Sockpuppets and attack pages
This policy also takes dishonourable intentions into account. Users  
who write under an assumed name to boost their own profile are known  
in wiki-speak as ?sockpuppets?. Ostensibly innocent articles which  
contain an attack on someone are known as ?attack pages?.

"The battle goes on between Wikipedia and the vandals," says Erik  
Borra, one of the speakers at the Amsterdam conference. In some cases,  
people do succeed in voicing their opinion as fact. But more often  
than not, the host of 91,000 active users are on hand to ensure that  
they don?t get away with it. And where they fail, there's Wikipedia?s  
army of automatic programs known as ?bots?.

Intelligent design
But this insistence on neutrality is becoming a problem, argues  
communications expert Florian Cramer from Rotterdam. He takes Taiwan  
as an example: an issue with two irreconcilable standpoints: either it  
belongs to China or it doesn?t. The typical Wikipedia approach is to  
state in the article that there are two standpoints.?

But that means that everyone who wants to talk about the theory of  
evolution also has to say that Creationists believe that God made the  
world in six days and that we are all descended from Adam and Eve.  
"And that is exactly what the Creationists want. To be treated at the  
same level as Darwin and therefore to be seen as equally relevant."

How neutral is neutral?
Florian Cramer believes that objectivity and universal consensus are a  
myth. What is more, belief in this ? and by association in Wikipedia?s  
policy - is very much a Western notion based on the philosopher Ayn  
Rand. She was a passionate advocate of capitalism, and a pioneer of  
right-wing neoliberals such as George Bush. Not really very neutral  
at  all.

Cramer thinks it would be better if everyone were allowed to make  
their own Wikipedia, including clearly stated standpoints. Visitors  
whose primary aim is reliability can then opt for a version that  
contains the least disputed articles. "Similar to what people do when  
they select a radio station or a newspaper."

Conflict analysis
Erik Borra, university lecturer in New Media in Amsterdam thinks this  
is not necessary at all. As he sees it, one of the advantages of  
Wikipedia is that, in addition to the end result, the discussion  
surrounding it is also saved. A user is always able to see exactly how  
an article arrived at its present state.

"Our hypothesis is that part of that conflict over opinions can be  
found there" says Borra. "We go even further and argue that the  
conflicts on Wikipedia reflect what is going on in society at large."

A single truth
He also rejects the notion that the encyclopaedia is actually  
harbouring a Western agenda. After all, Wikipedia?s search for  
neutrality does not mean that there is room for only one viewpoint.  
"The concept of a single truth has long been superseded. And that  
applies to Wikipedia too."

(RNW translation: dd)

Towards a neutral point of view:

Each Wikipedia article has a discussion page on which people can  
debate the changes that have been made. If agreement is not reached  
then a copy can be made which cannot be accessed by users. This gives  
contributors the freedom to modify and thrash out their differences to  
their hearts? content, until all agree that the rules have been fully  
complied with. Once this stage is reached, the temporary copy replaces  
the old article.


From athina.k at gmail.com  Mon Mar 29 00:56:28 2010
From: athina.k at gmail.com (Athina Karatzogianni)
Date: Sun, 28 Mar 2010 23:56:28 +0100
Subject: <CPOV> What does Wikipedia want? By Perro de Jong
In-Reply-To: <611AB5C6-ED2E-4B80-B54B-ADF6ECA8BB3B@xs4all.nl>
References: <611AB5C6-ED2E-4B80-B54B-ADF6ECA8BB3B@xs4all.nl>
Message-ID: <4a2b32551003281556n28652e68o61f7999e3c2832ae@mail.gmail.com>

Hi Everyone

I have uploaded my very hamble efforts at capturing some of the conference
here
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=409846&id=570095018&l=4125f47bb4

It was great to see you all!

Cheers

Athina

-- 
Dr Athina Karatzogianni
Lecturer in Media, Culture and Society
The Dean's Representative (Chinese Partnerships)
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
The University of Hull
United Kingdom
HU6 7RX
T: ++44 (0) 1482 46 5790
F: ++44 (0) 1482 466107
http://www2.hull.ac.uk/FASS/humanities/media,_culture_and_society/staff/karatzogianni,_dr_athina.aspx

Check out Athina's work
http://browse.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/results.asp?ath=A+Karatzogianni

Check Virtual Communication Collaboration and Conflict (Virt3C) Conference
Call
http://virt3c.wordpress.com/
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From geert at xs4all.nl  Tue Mar 30 12:31:56 2010
From: geert at xs4all.nl (Geert Lovink)
Date: Tue, 30 Mar 2010 12:31:56 +0200
Subject: <CPOV> wikileaks: recent findings
Message-ID: <70D5C3BE-6F27-499E-8469-0A34BC2BB48A@xs4all.nl>

(unfortunately we did not pay attention to wikileaks during the last  
weekend in amsterdam. we discussed it and might do something with it  
for the third planned event in taipei, in january 2011. /geert)

WikiLeaks 26. Mar. 2010:

CIA report into shoring up Afghan war support in Western Europe, 11  
March, 2010

http://file.wikileaks.org/file/cia-afghanistan.pdf

This classified CIA analysis from March, outlines possible PR- 
strategies to shore up public
support in Germany and France for a continued war in Afghanistan.  
After the dutch
government fell on the issue of dutch troops in Afghanistan last  
month, the CIA became
worried that similar events could happen in the countries that post  
the third and fourth largest
troop contingents to the ISAF-mission. The proposed PR strategies  
focus on pressure points
that have been identified within these countries. For France it is the  
sympathy of the public for
Afghan refugees and women. For Germany it is the fear of the  
consequences of defeat
(drugs, more refugees, terrorism) as well as for Germany's standing in  
the NATO. The memo
is an recipe for the targeted manipulation of public opinion in two  
NATO ally countries, written
by the CIA. It is classified as Confidential / No Foreign Nationals.





From erik at erikborra.net  Tue Mar 30 12:44:29 2010
From: erik at erikborra.net (Erik Borra)
Date: Tue, 30 Mar 2010 12:44:29 +0200
Subject: <CPOV> wikileaks: recent findings
In-Reply-To: <70D5C3BE-6F27-499E-8469-0A34BC2BB48A@xs4all.nl>
References: <70D5C3BE-6F27-499E-8469-0A34BC2BB48A@xs4all.nl>
Message-ID: <4BB1D60D.5080703@erikborra.net>

In addition, this is very interesting article on WikiLeaks, and why it 
matters: 
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/03/27/wikileaks/index.html

Best,

Erik

On 3/30/10 12:31 PM, Geert Lovink wrote:
> (unfortunately we did not pay attention to wikileaks during the last 
> weekend in amsterdam. we discussed it and might do something with it 
> for the third planned event in taipei, in january 2011. /geert)
>
> WikiLeaks 26. Mar. 2010:
>
> CIA report into shoring up Afghan war support in Western Europe, 11 
> March, 2010
>
> http://file.wikileaks.org/file/cia-afghanistan.pdf
>
> This classified CIA analysis from March, outlines possible 
> PR-strategies to shore up public
> support in Germany and France for a continued war in Afghanistan. 
> After the dutch
> government fell on the issue of dutch troops in Afghanistan last 
> month, the CIA became
> worried that similar events could happen in the countries that post 
> the third and fourth largest
> troop contingents to the ISAF-mission. The proposed PR strategies 
> focus on pressure points
> that have been identified within these countries. For France it is the 
> sympathy of the public for
> Afghan refugees and women. For Germany it is the fear of the 
> consequences of defeat
> (drugs, more refugees, terrorism) as well as for Germany's standing in 
> the NATO. The memo
> is an recipe for the targeted manipulation of public opinion in two 
> NATO ally countries, written
> by the CIA. It is classified as Confidential / No Foreign Nationals.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Cpov_listcultures.org mailing list
> Cpov_listcultures.org at p10.alfaservers.com
> http://p10.alfaservers.com/mailman/listinfo/cpov_listcultures.org
>
>

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From jeanette at wzb.eu  Tue Mar 30 21:30:33 2010
From: jeanette at wzb.eu (Jeanette Hofmann)
Date: Tue, 30 Mar 2010 20:30:33 +0100
Subject: <CPOV> Santos
Message-ID: <4BB25159.1040907@wzb.eu>

Hi everyone, since I don't exactly recall to whom I promised to send 
information regarding Boaventura de Sousa Santos, you will now all get it.

Here is a link to his website which gives you an idea what he looks like 
and access to some of his work:

http://www.boaventuradesousasantos.pt/pages/en/homepage.php

For my presentation I mainly relied on the following article:

http://tinyurl.com/yg7fvs5

The article was subject to a special issue of the European Journal of 
Social Theory 4(3).

His reply to the comments on his article I also found an interesting read:

http://tinyurl.com/yjgh5nm

If you are interested in the other contributions to this issue and have 
no access to the journal, please email me.

Thank you again to the organizers and other contributers for this very 
interesting conference.

jeanette






From majava at ifi.uio.no  Tue Mar 30 22:21:30 2010
From: majava at ifi.uio.no (Maja van der Velden)
Date: Tue, 30 Mar 2010 22:21:30 +0200
Subject: <CPOV> Santos
In-Reply-To: <4BB25159.1040907@wzb.eu>
References: <4BB25159.1040907@wzb.eu>
Message-ID: <9A6DF82F-F759-41C5-A5F1-ED2AA755D306@ifi.uio.no>

Hi all,

I am also a 'fan' of Boaventura de Sousa Santos :-) I find this  
article one of the most inspiring:

Santos, Boaventura de Sousa (2004), "A Critique of Lazy Reason:  
Against the Waste of Experience", in Wallerstein, Immanuel (ed.), The  
Modern World-System in the Longue Dur?e. Londres: Paradigm Publishers,  
157-197.

You can find it online at:

http://www.ces.uc.pt/bss/documentos/A%20critique%20of%20lazy%20reason.pdf

In the article he develops a 'sociology of absences', based on an  
analysis of monocultures and ecologies.

Jeanette, it is in this article he also write about Ernest Bloch and  
the 'not yet'.

Greetings from Oslo,

Maja

Maja van der Velden
Dept. of Informatics
University of Oslo
Norway








On Mar 30, 2010, at 9:30 PM, Jeanette Hofmann wrote:

> Hi everyone, since I don't exactly recall to whom I promised to send  
> information regarding Boaventura de Sousa Santos, you will now all  
> get it.
>
> Here is a link to his website which gives you an idea what he looks  
> like and access to some of his work:
>
> http://www.boaventuradesousasantos.pt/pages/en/homepage.php
>
> For my presentation I mainly relied on the following article:
>
> http://tinyurl.com/yg7fvs5
>
> The article was subject to a special issue of the European Journal  
> of Social Theory 4(3).
>
> His reply to the comments on his article I also found an interesting  
> read:
>
> http://tinyurl.com/yjgh5nm
>
> If you are interested in the other contributions to this issue and  
> have no access to the journal, please email me.
>
> Thank you again to the organizers and other contributers for this  
> very interesting conference.
>
> jeanette
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Cpov_listcultures.org mailing list
> Cpov_listcultures.org at p10.alfaservers.com
> http://p10.alfaservers.com/mailman/listinfo/cpov_listcultures.org

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From jawbrey at att.net  Wed Mar 31 19:32:09 2010
From: jawbrey at att.net (Jon Awbrey)
Date: Wed, 31 Mar 2010 13:32:09 -0400
Subject: <CPOV> Teach-In @ Wikiversity?
In-Reply-To: <4BAE2BB0.8030800@att.net>
References: <4BA39AD9.5040603@att.net> <4BAE2BB0.8030800@att.net>
Message-ID: <4BB38719.200@att.net>


John Schmidt has compiled a chronology --

http://sites.google.com/site/exodemic/wave-test

Jon Awbrey wrote:
> CPOV Pilgrims who are following WikiPlex's Progress --
> to wit, its "foundering" attempts to up-date itself
> to the Year 1215 -- will find that a portion of the
> action has shifted to the scenes of Meta-Wiki-Medea:
> 
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Remove_Founder_flag
> 
> Ciao,
> 
> Jon
> 
> Jon Awbrey wrote:
>> CPOVers interested in trying to keep up with the fast-breaking
>> developments at Wikiversity may find the following links of use:
>>
>> Wikiversity:Community Review/Wikimedia Ethics:Ethical Breaching Experiments
>> http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Wikiversity:Community_Review/Wikimedia_Ethics:Ethical_Breaching_Experiments 
>>
>>
>> ''The Wikipedia Review'' : "Jimbo's lording over Wikiversity again"
>> http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=28850
>>
>> Leigh Blackall's Blog : "Is the Wikimedia Foundation going to close Wikiversity?"
>> http://leighblackall.blogspot.com/2010/03/is-wikimedia-foundation-going-to-close.html 
>>
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Jon Awbrey

-- 

inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/
mwb: http://www.mywikibiz.com/Directory:Jon_Awbrey
knol: http://knol.google.com/k/-/-/3fkwvf69kridz/1
oeiswiki: http://www.oeis.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey



From joseph.2008 at reagle.org  Wed Mar 31 22:30:01 2010
From: joseph.2008 at reagle.org (Joseph Reagle)
Date: Wed, 31 Mar 2010 16:30:01 -0400
Subject: <CPOV> Is Wikipedia Neutral
Message-ID: <201003311630.01576.joseph.2008@reagle.org>


This is a bit belated, but there was a lot of interest in the question, and I just wanted to provide the reference to the paper that Andrew noted in his talk:

Joseph Reagle. Is the Wikipedia neutral? In Proceedings of Wikimania 2006. 2006. URL http://wikimania2006.wikimedia.org/wiki/Presenters/Joseph_Reagle (which eventually links to: http://reagle.org/joseph/2005/06/neutrality.html )



From joseph.nyu at reagle.org  Wed Mar 31 23:43:58 2010
From: joseph.nyu at reagle.org (Joseph Reagle)
Date: Wed, 31 Mar 2010 17:43:58 -0400
Subject: <CPOV> Wales and objectivism
Message-ID: <201003311743.58631.joseph.nyu@reagle.org>


Since the topic came up in Florian's presentation, I coincidentally read a bio of Rand in which Wales is mentioned, and I think touches on the irony/balance:

[[ http://reagle.org/joseph/blog/social/wikipedia/wales_objectivism

   I just finished an excellent biography of Ayn Rand and her philosophy
   in the context of American political culture. While reading, I couldn't
   help think of Wales' expressed interest in Objectivism and the next to
   the last page actually comments on this issue:

     One of the many ironies of Rand's career is her latter-day
     popularity among entrepreneurs who are pioneering new forms of
     community. Among her high-profile fans as Wikipedia's founder Jimmy
     Wales, once an active participant in the listserv controversies of
     the Objectivist Center. A nonprofit that depends on charitable
     donations, Wikipedia may ultimately put its rival encyclopedias out
     of business. At the root of Wikipedia are warring sensibilities that
     seemed to both embody and defy Rand's beliefs. The website's
     emphasis on individual empowerment, the value of knowledge, and its
     own risky organizational model reflects Rand's sensibility. But its
     trust in the wisdom of crowds, celebration of the social nature of
     knowledge, and faith that many working together will produce
     something of enduring value contradict Rand's adage "all creation is
     individual." (Burns 2009, p. 284)
]]