<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html style="direction: rtl;">
<head>
<meta content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" http-equiv="Content-Type">
<title></title>
</head>
<body style="direction: ltr;" bidimailui-charset-is-forced="true"
bidimailui-detected-decoding-type="UTF-8" bgcolor="#ffffff"
text="#000000">
Speaking about going over long tedious Wikipedia talk pages, I know
Johanna has been exploring the issue of conflict and collaboration
integration on Wikipedia from transnational and translingual
perspectives. The case of Muhammad's depictions on the English- and
German-language Wikipedias, with the political debates that
developed around it, was one of her prominent test cases. I even had
the privilege to give her an interview about my experience in the
EN, HE and AR Wikipedias. I remember she presented some initial
findings in the poster exhibition at Wikimania 2009 in Buenos Aires.
I found the poster through her blog <a
href="http://transnationalspaces.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/johanna-poster.pdf">http://transnationalspaces.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/johanna-poster.pdf<br>
</a><br>
All the best,<br>
Dror K<br>
<br>
בתאריך 13/10/10 10:28, ציטוט Dror Kamir:
<blockquote style="direction: ltr;"
cite="mid:4CB56DA9.10609@bezeqint.net" type="cite">
<meta content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" http-equiv="Content-Type">
<p style="margin-bottom: 1cm; margin-top: 0pt; direction: ltr;">Nate
suggested that I forward this discussion to the mailing list, so
here goes... (My reply precedes Nate's original message)</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 1cm; margin-top: 0pt; direction: ltr;">----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 1cm; margin-top: 0pt; direction: ltr;">Hi,</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 1cm; margin-top: 0pt; direction: ltr;">For
the time being I read only the paragraph dealing with the
depictions of Muhammad. I should congratulate you for making the
effort to go over a long, often tedious, Wikipedia talk page and
extract such an interesting dialog from it. I often get
frustrated just by seeing the number of pages, sub-pages,
archives and strange acronyms included in such a debate.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 1cm; margin-top: 0pt; direction: ltr;">One
remark which is somewhat trivial - Basem3wad might might be
unacquainted with Wikipedia, but the nick he chose for himself
indicates some knowledge of the "Internet language". He uses
spelling known among Arabic-speakers as "chat Arabic".This
Latin-based transcription is popular among Arabic-speaking
youths in text messages (SMS), Internet chats and for short
messages in forums/FaceBook/Twitter. It is not used for long
texts. In such cases, the writer takes the effort to switch his
keyboard to AR and cater for the right-to-left parameters. The
digit 3 represents the Arabic letter ع (Ayn), so the name is
probably "Bassem Awad". Either it is his real name, or perhaps
he chose a common Arab name as an alias (like "John Smith" in
English). In any case he probably knows how to work his way
through the cyberspace.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 1cm; margin-top: 0pt; direction: ltr;">Wikipedia
is afraid of controversies. The idea of reaching consensus is
wrongly interpreted as "avoid controversy at all costs". The
fear of edit war is second only to the fear of global nuclear
war. And yet controversies are part of our knowledge. The fact
that a consensus cannot be reached, not only among the scholars
from whom we extract the information for the article, but also
among the people who wish to write about the subject, is part of
what we know about the issue. The traditional sources of
information often hide these controversies, and I remember the
feeling of "revelation" when I started my academic studies and
found out that many things I had learned from traditional
textbooks and encyclopedia are, in fact, highly controversial.
Wikipedia has the advantage of having "talk pages" (a.k.a
"discussion pages") and "history", but it still works
persistently to strangle any controversy on its "display
windows".</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 1cm; margin-top: 0pt; direction: ltr;">Most
people who complained about the historical depictions of
Muhammad were not acting in good faith, to the best of my
judgment. I believe most of them were indeed trying to impose a
certain radical view of Islam, and did not care too much about
"scientific honesty". However, in the discussion you've brought,
Basem3wad has a point. Wikipedia is not neutral, and worse than
that - it does not have a consistent line of editing. When I
read Time Magazine, for example, I know what to expect, more or
less, and how to judge the material published. On Wikipedia, I
often don't know how to interpret certain words, because I can't
know for sure under which terms I should read the text (and the
problem gets even worse if I read Wikipedia in more than one
language). Since there is no consistent line of editing, it is
indeed unclear how this Persian or Turkish depiction of Muhammad
is relevant to the article. It is highly unlikely that it shows
a genuine portrait of Muhammad, but in the articles about
Aristotle or Josephus Flavius, Wikipedia has images of protomes
that are likely to be genuine depictions of these people's
faces. Since it is probably not Muhammad who is depicted there,
how should the reader interpret their presentation on the
article? Is it meant to show what people thought of Muhammad? Is
it meant to show that Muslims were not apprehended in the past
by physical depictions of Muhammad? Is it a call for Muslim to
abandon the ban on such depiction? All of these interpretations
are valid when there is no consistent line of edit.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 1cm; margin-top: 0pt; direction: ltr;">Dror
K </p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 1cm; margin-top: 0pt; direction: ltr;">בתאריך
13/10/10 07:43, ציטוט nathaniel tkacz:<br>
</p>
<blockquote style="direction: ltr;"
cite="mid:AANLkTimVOT4bxDX+WygafFG_1PdUzffvq-X1QZhZrCte@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">hi all - i have recently published an article on the
politics of mass collaboration that uses a wikipedia entry as a
case study. the article is primarily about collaboration, and
the section on wikipedia is quite elementary, but it might be of
interest anyhow. my basic argument is that we need to develop a
theory of collaboration that can also speak to the conflicts and
political realities of open projects.<br>
<br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.culture-communication.unimelb.edu.au/platform/v2i2_tkacz.html">http://www.culture-communication.unimelb.edu.au/platform/v2i2_tkacz.html</a><br>
<br>
<br>
abstract:<br>
<br>
<em>Working together to produce socio-technological objects,
based on emergent platforms of economic production, is of
great importance in the task of political transformation and
the creation of new subjectivities. Increasingly,
“collaboration” has become a veritable buzzword used to
describe the human associations that create such new media
objects. In the language of “Web 2.0”, “participatory
culture”, “user-generated content”, “peer production” and the
“produser”, first and foremost we are all collaborators. In
this paper I investigate recent literature that stresses the
collaborative nature of Web 2.0, and in particular, works that
address the nascent processes of peer production. I contend
that this material positions such projects as what Chantal
Mouffe has described as the “post-political”; a fictitious
space far divorced from the clamour of the everyday. I analyse
one Wikipedia entry to demonstrate the distance between this
post-political discourse of collaboration and the realities it
describes, and finish by arguing for a more politicised notion
of collaboration.</em><br>
<br>
<br clear="all">
Nate Tkacz <br>
<br>
School of Culture and Communication<br>
University of Melbourne<br>
<br>
Twitter: <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://twitter.com/__nate__" target="_blank">http://twitter.com/__nate__</a><br>
<br>
Current project: <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/cpov/about-2/"
target="_blank">http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/cpov/about-2/</a><br>
<pre wrap=""><fieldset class="mimeAttachmentHeader"></fieldset>
_______________________________________________
cpov mailing list
<a moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:cpov@listcultures.org">cpov@listcultures.org</a>
<a moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/cpov_listcultures.org">http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/cpov_listcultures.org</a>
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap="">
<fieldset class="mimeAttachmentHeader"></fieldset>
_______________________________________________
cpov mailing list
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:cpov@listcultures.org">cpov@listcultures.org</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/cpov_listcultures.org">http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/cpov_listcultures.org</a>
</pre>
</blockquote>
</body>
</html>