The course was designed to help those new to Wikipedia learn to write, edit, and improve articles, in the context of the site’s history and philosophical underpinnings. Of the 100 students who signed up initially, 25 went on to add themselves to the course roster on Wikipedia. During class sessions and optional lab sessions, we guided them through both technical and cultural challenges, and emphasized that the best way to learn about Wikipedia is to “be bold” and start trying things out.

Our students took on a variety of tasks, including:

• Expanding the lead section of the main article on Open Educational Resources, as well as covering the term’s definition more thoroughly
• Adding links to books and documents that are open access (available online)
• Substantially expanding a biography originally started by the subject’s relative, including several new high quality references
• Adding public domain images to unillustrated articles
• Starting a new article on government OER policies
• Adding an “info box” to an article
• Reviewing an article on its “talk page”

They learned valuable techniques, such as:

• Entering a useful edit summary with every edit
• Using the talk page to disclose a possible conflict of interest
• Referring to Wikipedia policy pages, the Manual of Style, etc. in order to resolve disagreements
• Identifying which Wikipedia articles have undergone various peer review processes

The WikiSOO Burba Badge reflects that its wearer has substantially improved a Wikipedia article, and made at least 200 edits to Wikipedia.

As a pleasant surprise, we had students working on several language editions of Wikipedia, including Greek, German, and Catalan. At the course’s conclusion, we are pleased to begin awarding the WikiSOO Burba Badge – an award recognizing a student’s successful completion of the course and final project.

We were fortunate to have help from many quarters in the Wikipedia and OER communities. Special thanks go out to our panelists from Week 4 and Week 5: Sage Ross, Lane Rasberry, Catherine Casserly, David Wiley, David Kernohan, and Nick Shockey.

The lessons, of course, were not confined to the students. As instructors, we learned a great deal about how people want to learn about Wikipedia, and how to teach accordingly in an online environment. We found that the course is more ambitious than we had imagined, and that we need to provide structure in areas we hadn’t anticipated. We got helpful feedback, including a request that students be put in pairs or small teams from the beginning, in order to get them into a collaborative context from the outset.

With these lessons under our belt, we are excited to run the course a second time! We will launch next week, on Tuesday for those in the Americas, Wednesday for those in Asia/Australia. We hope you will join us!

Cato Institute is not known as a neutral organization; indeed, their mission statement mentions limited government, individual liberty, and free markets. Their political positions often differ from my own, and maybe from yours.

So, skepticism is certainly called for. What can Cato and Wikipedia to do together, without either entity compromising its principles? It may not be immediately apparent; but I’d encourage you to take a closer look.

Jim Harper, the Cato staffer leading this project, has long been an advocate for transparency in government. He described Cato as a multi-faceted organization; his interest in Wikipedia is as a platform for working alongside others toward neutral, factual information, not as a tool for advancing a policy agenda.

This meeting is intended to support Jim’s project at Cato: a project fundamentally rooted in transparency and building bridges among politically diverse organizations. (Jim has blogged about transparency and working across the ideological spectrum here.) It’s a project that resonates strongly for me, aiming to address the kind of obstacles we encounter in trying to write articles about topics in government. This project has nothing to do with the Wikipedia article about Cato; and there’s no thought of editing policy articles to match Cato’s political or editorial agenda.

Cato is seeking to produce data and systems that will broadly appeal to organizations and individuals across the political system: something that makes it easier to compile basic factual information in a transparent way. Things like who sponsored a bill, what dates it has hearings, and what topic areas or past legislation it touches upon.

The meeting will be an opportunity for Wikipedians, along with various government transparency organizations and individual enthusiasts, to consider the best design for the system. There is no threat to Wikipedia; at worst, we can’t come up with a workable system, and Wikipedia will go on as it always has. But if we’re successful, we could end up producing a web service that helps Wikipedia editors find useful information as they compose articles; or even a bot which adds infoboxes or templates to articles. But any such outcome would only move forward if it has broad community buy-in; and as we all know, a tool that disseminates biased information would not exactly be an easy sell to the Wikipedia community.

If you agree that Wikipedia editors could benefit from better tools for researching bills in the U.S. Congress, and you’d like to weigh in on how such tools are designed, this is a rare opportunity. I hope you will consider joining us March 14 and 15 in Washington, DC; get more information here, or fill out this form to express your interest!

Why did Wikipedia move from GFDL to Creative Commons?

A core piece of what makes Wikipedia and similar broadly collaborative projects work is the concept of a free content license: an explicit agreement by every contributor to forego many of their rights as copyright holders, and permit widespread reuse with few requirements beyond simple attribution.

When Wikipedia was established, the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) was the only applicable and widespread free license. The GFDL was initially designed specifically for software manuals, and in some ways was not ideal or practical for a project like Wikipedia, which hadn’t been envisioned when it was created.

But Creative Commons built a collection of licenses intended for a much broader range of kinds of content.

The change was put to a vote of the Wikipedia community in 2009; the reasons were outlined by then-Creative Commons VP Mike Linksvayer.

It was also covered and discussed on Slashdot a couple times:

• tech.slashdot.org/story/09/04/13/2021226/wikipedia-community-vote-on-license-migration
• news.slashdot.org/story/09/05/21/2317253/wikipedia-moving-from-gfdl-to-creative-commons-license

And here’s the Wikimedia page devoted to conducting the vote and explaining the reasoning and the process.

Can I use Wikimedia Commons to host images, audio, and video for my blog or business?

How does WC handle external usage of their public resources? If their work is CC licensed, could someone effectively use WC as a free media host?

Excellent question. The Wikimedia community is delighted to have freely licensed, educational material uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, and if it also happens to serve your business interests, so much the better. However, you should make sure you carefully consider the pros and cons before doing so.

In brief, to be stored on Commons, a file needs to be:

• A media file
• In one of the free media formats permitted
• Freely licensed (permitting commercial use and derivative works)
• Useful for an educational purpose

(source)

Pros:

• no monetary cost
• assuming the file is acceptable, it is likely to stay there indefinitely without your intervention
• others may improve your file in ways you didn’t expect
• others may use your file in ways you don’t expect (i.e., you can take pride in having given freely to the world at large)

Cons:

• Wikimedia is under no obligation to keep your file, e.g. if there is disagreement about its educational use
• others may “improve” your file in ways you didn’t expect
• others may use your file in ways you didn’t expect

If you’re looking for a solution that is highly predictable, you will want a contractual/business relationship with the host; so a paid service is probably advisable. But if your goals align closely with Wikimedia’s goals, Commons may be an excellent choice, and your uploads will be very welcome. And there’s nothing to prevent you from using multiple hosts for different purposes, or as a backup.

If your organization has a large collection of public domain or freely licensed files it would like to upload to Commons, see the Guide to Content Partnerships.

Pete Forsyth presenting on Wikipedia in Boston. Photo by Sage Ross, CC BY-SA

Next Saturday (Feb. 9) in Portland, Oregon, I will be hosting an Introduction to Wikipedia and edit-a-thon. This is a great way to learn how the most successful peer-produced project in history works, and specifically, how it might relate to your job.

You can find a more detailed writeup on the Mac’s List blog. Mac’s List, a cosponsor of the event, is a weekly email update on “great jobs for Portland and beyond.” It’s a project of Portlander Mac Prichard, founder of Prichard Communications.

To sign up for the event, click here. We’re looking forward to seeing you!

Lane Rasberry • photo: Sage Ross/CC BY-SA

Lane Rasberry worked closely with Consumer Reports staff and the Wikipedia community to expand access to evidence-based consumer health information, including information produced through Choosing Wisely, a health education campaign led by the ABIM Foundation and Consumer Reports, and rooted in non-controversial information backed by broad support from health professionals.

Lane advised Consumer Reports and partner medical associations about how patients use Wikipedia to inform decisions about the risks and benefits of health procedures. He also presented the Choosing Wisely concept to Wikipedia volunteers who edit health care articles, including WikiProject Medicine, with favorable results. Specific resources he created include:

• Guides on making improvements and suggestions to Wikipedia (examples: Health Article Review Project; guide for CR staff)
• Metrics dashboards to track the reach of the articles improved (example: diabetes dashboard)

Through the efforts Lane led, Choosing Wisely content was used to improve into 58 Wikipedia articles, which were accessed 11 million times in a three month period. We also plan to add at least as much new content to Wikipedia beginning next month.

Lane also worked throughout Consumer Reports to foster an understanding of Wikipedia and the benefits of improving it. He hosted regular lunchtime presentations, offering staff informal opportunities to learn about Wikipedia; typically about seven people would attend, with half returning for more than one session. Lane also provided one-on-one training to 20 staff members throughout the organization. These explorations resulted in Wikipedia projects within two other divisions (Best Buy Drugs and the Safe Patient Project), and ongoing discussions within the organization about future improvements to Wikipedia content related to public policy, consumer protection law, and the history of the consumer movement.

—Chuck Bell, Programs Director, Consumer Reports

Aaron’s story has thrust the word “hacker” into the public discourse in the last few days. It’s an important word, one that carries several meanings. The Wikipedia article “Hacker (programmer subculture)” captures its divergent meanings well:

The Jargon File…defines hacker as “A person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and stretching their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary.” The…Internet Users’ Glossary amplifies this meaning as “A person who delights in having an intimate understanding of the internal workings of a system, computers and computer networks in particular.”… these hackers are disappointed by the mass media and general public’s usage of the word hacker to refer to security breakers, calling them “crackers” instead.… The programmer subculture of hackers, in contrast to the cracker community, generally sees computer security related activities as contrary to the ideals of the original and true meaning of the hacker term that instead related to playful cleverness.

Aaron was a hacker, without question. A common thread in this week’s coverage seems to attribute his hackerdom to his now well-publicized efforts to circumvent security systems.

But this association obscures a much more basic and important point. Aaron was a hacker, first and foremost, because he openly challenged himself to use tools to their best potential, to build a better world. In just one example, in a 2004 blog post he stated: “I want to stop repeating falsehoods. I believe the truth is more important than particular political goals, so I want to build a system I can trust. I want to know that when I make claims, I’m not speaking out of political distortion but out of honest truth. And I want to be able to evaluate the claims of other too.”

(Looking for a little inspiration? Search his blog for the word “build.”)

By pursuing his vision in an open, authentic, and articulate way, he “inspired a generation to share online, to move to [San Francisco], to not be afraid to start things, and to break down barriers,” in the words of WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg.

In a small tribute to Aaron Swartz and multitudes of others from whom I have drawn inspiration, today I would like to declare: I am a hacker. I have always been a hacker, and will always be a hacker. I do not aim to be deceptive or opportunistic; I aim to use the tools available to me to make the world a better place. To me, that is the hacker ethic. To me, that is a source of pride, and a humbling commitment. To me, Aaron Swartz was a source of inspiration.

Are you a hacker? If you’ve read this far, I bet you are. I invite you to wave the hacker flag with me, in memory of an inspiring member of our global community.

Wiki Strategies hosted this event, along with the California League of Women Voters, at Tech Liminal, a coworking space that generously donated the use of its space to bring people interested in Wikipedia, as well as longtime wiki enthusiasts, together for an afternoon of learning and experimenting.

I’ve helped lead similar events in San Francisco and elsewhere. This time, we tried a new variation on the format: we invited Wikipedia beginners to come an hour early for a lesson and introduction, so they would be better prepared to jump into the kind of free-form editing that usually emerges at an edit-a-thon. This is an approach I’ve seen work well for dance events; I was pleased to see a similar dynamic, as experienced Wikipedians began to join us as the intro session was wrapping up. The beginners were starting to come up with more and more sophisticated questions, so having an increasing and diverse group to address their questions was a perfect fit.

California League of Women Voters President Jennifer Waggoner gets expert advice from Vicky K.

In total we had about 20 participants, more than half of whom were first-time editors. We put together a short list of articles fitting the theme, “women and democracy,” and small groups formed to take on specific tasks. Our projects included starting articles on two recent California ballot propositions; expanding existing articles about feminist Dora Russell and about women in speculative fiction; and researching a new article about feminism in Germany. (more detail here)

Several founders of the newly established Sudoroom, an Oakland-based hacker space, joined us. Their presence catalyzed several discussions about what can be done to further foster wiki-oriented community in the East Bay; there have been several popular events in the last couple years, and there seems to be a strong desire to make it them happen more regularly.

Novice and experienced wiki contributors jumping into the fray

Above all, I want to call out the inclusion of Max Klein in this article. He doesn’t belong there. Ms. Blue makes two statements that are problematic:

Wikipedians In Residence are not allowed to operate if there are conflicts of interest and are not allowed to edit the pages of the organization they liaison with.

This statement is offered without attribution or sourcing. As a longtime Wikipedian and someone closely involved in the evolution of the Wikipedian in Residence role, I take great exception to this claim. Whatever its source, it should have been double-checked, and the double-checking would have revealed that it’s a fabrication. [Update: as discussed below, it turns out Ms. Blue was talking specifically about the definition of a Wikipedian in Residence, something that is indeed defined, but not enshrined in any formal policy.]

First, I don’t believe there is any person on the planet who has no conflict of interest whatsoever — much less somebody who is earning a paycheck. The absence of a conflict of interest would be an absurdly naive standard for a Wikipedian in Residence. What is expected of a Wikipedian of Residence is that he or she would manage any conflict of interest in a transparent and responsible way; not that there would be no conflict.

Second, there is no prohibition against editing the page of the organization they work with. [Note: as Lori Byrd Phillips points out below, the more important and clearer point is that there was never any suggestion that Mr. Klein edited, or intended to edit, his host institution's article. There's no tie between his advertised consulting activities and his residency.] Such a prohibition simply doesn’t exist. [Note: I should have specified, I meant as a matter of formally adopted policy, which would be needed for Ms. Blue's "not allowed"  claim to apply.] The conflict of interest guideline on Wikipedia offers some relevant cautionary notes, but that’s all. Again, a Wikipedian in Residence would be expected to draw on his or her personal experience and network, to guide the organization along an ethical path; the claim that there is a black-and-white rule about what a Wikipedian in Residence can or can’t do is another fabrication.

Ms. Blue also characterizes Mr. Klein’s offering as follows:

[an] open offer to navigate tricky Wikipedia conflict of interest rules as a service for for paying clients

Though she doesn’t say so directly, the implication of her post appears to be that helping clients understand and operate within Wikipedia’s rules is somehow unethical.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

The error Ms. Blue has made, I believe, is to confuse “navigate” with “circumnavigate.” Mr. Klein makes no suggestion that he will work with clients in a way that helps them evade Wikipedia’s rules. Wikipedia’s policies, guidelines, and culture are notoriously complex; helping a client to understand how they relate to a specific situation is a valuable service, and it’s pure speculation to suppose that Mr. Klein ever intended to do anything other than that.

The questions raised around Mr. Bamkin’s services are more complex, and, I believe, worthy of some deliberation and discussion. Perhaps unlike Ms. Blue, I have full confidence that Mr. Bamkin has worked in accordance with both the spirit and the letter of the strategic goals of the Wikimedia movement, without any intent to subvert them. I look forward to a robust discussion about the proper boundaries of Wikipedia consulting.