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Recent Changes Camp 2011: Canberra
  •  Agenda
  •  Register
  •  Sponsors
  •  Team
  •  Australia
  •  Lodging
  •  
 
Wikiculture
 
How do we cope with the volunteerism in wikis, the sometimes hostile politics, the fickle participation
 
Generational issues play a role. Differences between baby boomers, gen x, gen y. 
Some generations need permission to act.
 
Problem editing the Recentchangescamp.org, copy of the agenda here: http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/University_of_Canberra/RCC_Canberra_2011
 
Wikipedia Culture
Discussion of the culture at Wikipedia.
There is also a core of people at Wikipedia that make new people welcome.
Important to develop the culture online: purpose, sharing
Start developing a certain culture at wikipedia.
 
What is the scope of Wikipedia?
Is it about the quality of the articles?
 
Is there an umbrella wiki culture out there?
 
There needs to be a culture of forking.
Example: open source software
 
We don't need wikipedia for a neutral voice. We need them to give us a perspetive on a topic.
 
Defining scope and principles are important.
 
Apropedia
Few rules, let it emerge
Extending the likes of Wikipedia. WP has no How-To, so Apropedia does that.
 
What are key facilitation capacities help create successful wikis?
 
Outcome - We can come up with a list of key facilitation capacities, tell some success stories and look at common themes for good facilitation. We could also define what is a successful wiki? Put outcome on RCC Canberra wiki and all can use it and develop it further
 
What Principles should we use for this conversation?
 
- Create opportunity for everyone to contribute
- Our diversity is captured in some ways
- Be aware of when we stray from central topic/keep focused on the goal
- Use the 3 Open Space principles
 - who ever comes is the right people, 
   whenever it starts and finishes is the right time,
  whatever happens is the only thing that could of happened
- step away if you become too emotionally charged (one strategy that we explored a bit more - see below)
 
How are we dealing when emotions come up?
- Wikipedia experience - sometimes is best to walk away.
- If someone gets emotional, let's put ourselves in their shoes. 
- Give feedback to the frustrated person.
- Get very specific about the difference. Help people unpack their thinking.
 
Hot areas in wikipedia: When you visit the article, you can smell that the editor is emotional.
Step away if you become too emotionally charged
vs
let's engage with it
 
Facilitator: Role of a guardian. Also as a supporter /gardener/nurturer of editors
 
Challenges:
- dealing with how to keep a volunteer in as an editor
- just because they are acting obnoxiously, doesn't mean that they are not working in good faith
 
Bring out contentious ideas
knowledge levels are different
 
What key facilitation capacities help create successful wikis?
- awareness of emotional content
- read between the lines of online text
- don't trust your own judgement - check or test your assumptions
- assume good faith and treat people consistently as if they are not evil
- identify when people get labelled or excluded from the system
- acknowledge people who want to belong to the system
- respect everyone
- turn articles for deletion into a good faith process
- allow things to happen and let the community manage it
 
One key facilitation capacity from each participant (to get diversity)
- harnessing/being comfortable with conflict
- staying focused on the dynamics
- try to read between lines (get the smell)
- ok to be wrong. Wrong doesn't mean not respected.
- understand the drivers of the people in dispute
- be completely neutral in my own opinions (is this possible?)
- Can I remove my own emotional input?
- listening to all perspectives
- read between the lines, carefully read betrween the lines (be instinctive but not react subjectively, react objectively)
- calmness, distance, pathos - empathy
- explain the reasoning behind my thinking and support others to do the same
- laser focus on understanding the difference
- democratic community ownership
- avoid making decisions unilaterally
- understand the cultural norms
 
Successful Examples: Wikihow has a positive culture
- conscious effort to build a friendly community
- less academic
- fair bit of tolerance
- good open leadership, encouraging others to be good leaders
 
Wikipedia: 
- is a successful wiki
- vastly different opinions creating high quality output
- Finely tuned dispute resolution process works really well, but a lot of people don't last long enough to go through the process
1) bring in third opinion
2) further backup plans
3) informal mediation
4) formal mediation
5) than the committee
 
Other points:
Incentive
Conservapedia - working in the right place
 
Most valuable insights from this conversation
  • good hearing diverse opinions
  • hero's story in mythology: wrestling with the troll is worth it
  • this conversation encourages the isolated editor
  • open leadership is key
  • good to be reminded of things I should be doing
  • importance of context
  • good to hear from all our experience
  • great to hear and celebrate how amazing people are
 
Next steps/directions
  • understand how to create successful wikis should be a default
  • what happens long term especially to small wikis? Do they get archived?
  • use more language of open leadership every day
 
What is a successful wiki?
 
Let's reverse brainstorm: Why wikis don’t work?
-people have different goals & in a wiki people have to collaborate & they do it better on their own
-too hard to use (info architecture, structuring)
-we don’t have the skills
-ugly
-Unreliable technology
-People won’t agree
-it is public, the permanency frightens people & functions
- WE have enough info out there (google)
-too much time, too busy, sb else can do it
-wikis are messy
-what’s the point if it gets changed anyway
-lack of facilitation
-people want control over content, they want power
-you challenge people’s world view in a wiki
-Stepping backwards (ie. categories, they are really sophisticated taxonomies out there)
-Tech is poor
-lack of good tagging
-readability
-vandalism
-wordpress is much easier
What is a wiki? Core features to a wiki: participation – you meet sb via an edit, complete history about the changes => accountability, creates a sense of ownership
-primacy of authorship (people want their own spaces)
-Solo-isolation of content
-People don’t get it, wikis are full of pdfs
-You can’t see how it works compared to blogs, twitter. You instantly see how it works
-lack of trust (in content) & legitimacy in large orgs
-fear
Why do wikis work?
-creative process
-Once sb gets over fear, people start participating
-Trainspotting phenomenon
-Wikis harness accuracy
-low entry barrier, 2 secs to edit
-I can create a structure that I want
 
Sidetrack Wikipedia: Why Wikipedia is going to fail?
The correct question is if it is going to fail before it is fixed?
Achievements: WP build a comprehensive database about academic journals
-Since wp, I am frustrated that I can’t edit Sydney Morning Herald online
-Success of WP was good PR
 
Context and Linearity - Jani Patokallio
Introduction
-wiki structure works well for an encyclopedia
How can you built hierachies?
 
 
content needs to flow, nice overview of the content
"include extension" Parser extension for hidable links
they have a tab, so author can choose what he/she wants to see
creates the view on the fly 
#include
 
expand function
 
Labelled transclusion didn't work for lonely planet
Wikisource doesn't use nested content, but it currently does get to an overloaded syntax 
 
Interesting wiki solution wagn.org
 
Advanced Wiki Skills session: http://meetingwords.com/advanced-wiki-skills
Closing circle
Wikimedia Australia to support wikis, outreach and open content development in Australia
Sponsored various people to come to the conference
 
University of Canberra NISS
National Institute of Sports Studies
 
About Us
a wiki for all webpages
supported this conference as a sponsor
 
Marketing (facebook, tweeting the event to support this type of event)
 
Future conference
Planning RCC event in New Zealand
Open space facilitator needed
Idea for NZ: Wikis in Research
Theme is important to get certain target groups interested and for people to get organisational support
Ministry of Education might be a good entry point as they are planning to put content on wikieducator
webstock should be involved
2-day event suggested: might be easier for people to receive funding
 
What have we achieved during the 3 days:
Field of Health at university has this type of experience every day
3-day-intense faculty event to get a faculty experience
 
Networking opportunities
Role of champions/ambassadors is very important to get people to attend your event
it is a professional reason to attend an event like thiss
 
Canberra RCC should probably keep the educational focus
 
 Other ideas:
 an event in Newcastle aound 'This is not Art'-festival
 
World of iterative knowledge involvement
Open collaboration
 
Conference in Adelaide in November
No name just yet
Critical improvement, not criticism
honours or HDR
double-blind peer reviw optional
workshops
wikiversity
ethics panel
academic journa
wikiversity can be the platform to organise this