Wikipedia:Jimbo Wales discussion at Harvard Law School, April 25, 2005
 | This page is part of the April 24, 2005 issue of Wikipedia:Goings-on and is cited in the Goings-on in the week starting Sunday April 24 2005 section. |
On Monday, April 25 at 4:30 pm ET (20:30 UTC), Jimbo Wales will be discussing cyberlaw with Jonathan Zittrain of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at the Harvard Law School. During their discussion, they will field questions from students in the cyberlaw class. In addition, the Wikipedia community is invited to watch the live feed of the discussion here:
http://h2odev.law.harvard.edu/feedback/questions/wikipedia.ram
(Note: discussion will run from 4:30 to 6:30 ET. And the number of streams is limited, so get in early!)
The discussion will respond to the most popular questions proposed during the session by all those accessing the link below:
http://h2odev.law.harvard.edu/feedback/questions/list.php
In addition, feel free to post questions below. We will attempt to relay these questions to Jimbo and Zittrain as possible.
Questions
[edit]- What other areas do you feel would benefit from a "wiki"-like approach?
- Is there a hierarchy of wikipedia users? Are there contributors who have more power than paid employees?
- How much "lock-down" is too much? What happens to trigger page moderation - a certain number of edits, a pattern of use, or just certain subject-matter?
IRC Backchannel
[edit]Come into #wp-law on irc.freenode.net. Use your favorite IRC client...
Tuesday night
[edit]Wales is also giving a public talk Tuesday evening at 8:30PM.
When: 8:30 to 10:00 Where: Pound Hall 101 (center-left side of the map) Pre-talk: Donuts and wiki-art at 8:00
Transcript
[edit]Start of #wp-law buffer: Tue Apr 26 18:42 2005
[26|16:34] * Now talking in #wp-law
[26|16:34] * kornbluth.freenode.net sets mode: +n
[26|16:38] * Xirzon has joined #wp-law
[26|16:38] <msj> gruess
[26|16:38] * sannse has joined #wp-law
[26|16:38] <msj> <mic noise>
[26|16:38] <msj> on-screen:
[26|16:38] * Angela has joined #wp-law
[26|16:38] <msj> "wikipedia and commons based peer production
[26|16:38] <msj> "one-two-one-two"
[26|16:38] * MykReeve has joined #wp-law
[26|16:39] * nsh has joined #wp-law
[26|16:39] * msj changes topic to '"Wikipedia and commons
based peer production"'
[26|16:39] <msj> List of proposed questions is up on the
screen...
[26|16:39] * nsh raises the eyebrow of channel-dillution
justification curiosity
[26|16:39] <msj> alright, so! welcome...
[26|16:39] * mindspillage has joined #wp-law
[26|16:39] <msj> [zittrain talking]
[26|16:39] <msj> it seems sensible not to stand b/t us and
food...
[26|16:39] <msj> and it seems sensible that [there should be]
some benefit to actually having showed up
[26|16:39] * mark- has joined #wp-law
[26|16:40] <msj> so to those of you listening on at home,
[26|16:40] <msj> you are missing out on sme mean treats...
[26|16:40] <msj> (mary ellen, do you want to tell us what's
kosher and what's not?)
[26|16:40] <msj> [mary ellen]
[26|16:40] * ABCD has joined #wp-law
[26|16:40] <msj> for thos of you of ashkenazi background....
[26|16:40] <msj> and for those of you of sephardic
background...
[26|16:40] <msj> <jewish history omitted>
[26|16:40] <msj> [moving seats]
[26|16:41] <msj> I am delighted today to have a penultimate
session...
[26|16:41] <msj> on the wiki-blank phenomenon
[26|16:42] <msj> and I want to really open this up to
sbmissions and questions from you and from online..
[26|16:42] <msj> there are some questions already on the
screen here;
[26|16:42] <msj> you can see them vfor yourself and suggest
new ones.
[26|16:42] <msj> we thought we'd start by havin jimmy do a
presentation on his view of what the wiki phenomenon is
[26|16:42] <msj> some problems that have come up and how
they've been splved so far
[26|16:42] <msj> but we [have a] willingness to be interrupted;
[26|16:42] <msj> you should by some semaphore and other
signal...
[26|16:42] <msj> get in.
[26|16:42] <msj> for the benefit of those on the wecast, step
up to the mike to talk...
[26|16:43] <msj> you should be aware that this is being
recodrded adn broadcast out to who knows who.
[26|16:43] <msj> so that's our opt0-out privacy poilicy for
today's session.
[26|16:43] <msj> so here to tell us about a phenomenon that as
we saw from wired,
[26|16:43] <msj> si called
[26|16:43] <msj> "the most audacious experimnet of the
post-boom internet,
[26|16:43] * kim_bruning has joined #wp-law
[26|16:43] * Conti has joined #wp-law
[26|16:43] <msj> ?"
[26|16:43] <msj> jimmy wales.
[26|16:43] <msj> --
[26|16:43] <msj> [jw]
[26|16:43] <msj> I'm jimmy wales, the pres of the WMF and
[26|16:43] <msj> founder of wikipedia...
[26|16:43] <msj> how many of you hvave used/edited it?
[26|16:44] <msj> (80/50?)
[26|16:44] <msj> one of the big things a out it is that it's
freely licensed,
[26|16:44] <msj> so ohte rpeople can redisribute our work,
commercially or non
[26|16:44] <msj> it's been around for just over 4 years...
[26|16:44] <msj> what is the foundation? it's our non-profit
org
[26|16:44] <msj> the goal is to ditribute a free encyclo to
every single person in their own planguage
[26|16:44] <msj> we mean every piece of that.
[26|16:44] <msj> so 'every person o nthe planet'
[26|16:44] <msj> goes beyond just our goals ion the internet
[26|16:44] <msj> we want to get our work out to areas wher
ethye don't even have access to drinking wate
[26|16:44] <msj> rso that oes beyond the internet, into print
and so forth.
[26|16:44] <msj> the foundation is resp for wp and all the
ssite oroject...
[26|16:45] <msj> we're funded by donations and varoius grants
[26|16:45] <msj> we've gotten a gran tofr $40k from the
lounsbery found, and other grants.
[26|16:45] <msj> so why the free license?
[26|16:45] <msj> the most crucial htings:
[26|16:45] <msj> the content remains non-rpoprietary
[26|16:45] <msj> this is on of the things that empowers the
volunters.
[26|16:45] <msj> you're contributing to the common good, can
never be lokced up by anybody
[26|16:45] <msj> people don't congritibute to the make jimbo
rich rund, they contribue to the good of the world..
[26|16:45] <msj> it decreases the indiv sense of ownership,
and increases shared ownership
[26|16:46] <msj> [jz]
[26|16:46] <msj> are there insteances wher ethe wp has been
thoroughly crawled and replicated elseehere wholesale?
[26|16:46] <msj> [jw]
[26|16:46] <msj> absolutely.
[26|16:46] <msj> we actually make available the full downloads
of the databasees;
[26|16:46] <msj> you can dl it, install mysql, install our
software...
[26|16:46] <msj> there are over 200 sites ofund that are wp
clones of some type
[26|16:46] <msj> [jz]
[26|16:46] <msj> and this is the sincerest form of flattery,
afayc?
[26|16:46] <msj> [jw]
[26|16:46] <msj> yes. most of these sites don't attempt to
frok the community/editing
[26|16:46] <msj> they're mainly just spammers and don't care
about the community [management]
[26|16:46] <msj> so yeah, it's perfectly fine, and veyr common.
[26|16:47] <msj> [jz]
[26|16:47] <msj> do you require attribution?
[26|16:47] <msj> [jw]
[26|16:47] <msj> yes. we require tath they link back to us.
[26|16:47] <msj> and one of the legal q's is,
[26|16:47] <msj> we use the GFDL
[26|16:47] <msj> and its predates PW
[26|16:47] <msj> if you read the gfdl, it's veyr had to wrap
your mind around how it's supposed to work on the web,
[26|16:47] <msj> for sth like wp
[26|16:47] <msj> when you [write something designed] by 2
authors, it's going to be updated a year from now by another
autheor...
[26|16:47] <msj> it's v. hard to figure out what to do about
that.
[26|16:47] <msj> when I'm talking to ,s ay comnsumer web
companies,
[26|16:48] <msj> this part is sth thye have a very hard time
grasping
[26|16:48] <msj> if we make our content available on the web,
why should people come back to us?
[26|16:48] <msj> well, if you give it away and require people
to link back, it increases you rpopulrity termendously,
[26|16:48] <msj> and spreads [your] brand
[26|16:48] <msj> that's a nice corproate way of putting it,
anywya,
[26|16:48] <msj> we put our name out ther.e
[26|16:48] <msj> wp has an NPOV policy
[26|16:48] <msj> this is a central pillar of the community tat
brings people togehte..
[26|16:48] <msj> we have people w/ a tremendous diversity of
rel and pol background...
[26|16:48] <msj> e have an npov policy.
[26|16:49] <msj> it's not directly bout truht, ojectivity,
unbiased...
[26|16:49] <msj> it's a social concept of organization.
[26|16:49] <msj> we say:
[26|16:49] <msj> if there's any kind of controverys, wp itself
shouldn't take a stand;
[26|16:49] <msj> we want a way for people working on it to
write in a way that is maximally satisfying to people out
there.
[26|16:49] <msj> [jz]
[26|16:49] <msj> hjowwould that play out on a holocaust
article,
[26|16:49] <msj> wrt people denying its existence?
[26|16:49] <msj> [jw]
[26|16:49] <msj> we would basically attemt to represent...
[26|16:49] <msj> we don't say thetrer's noone out there who
denies it
[26|16:49] <msj> but in proportion to how it's treated in
mainstrem history,
[26|16:49] <msj> we'll have a standrad article' at the top
we'll say
[26|16:49] <msj> this is the starndad presentation;
[26|16:50] <msj> wlesewhere it iwll not e there are holocasut
deniers
[26|16:50] <msj> and there will be a seperate article aobut
the dniers.
[26|16:50] <msj> writing [a good article]
[26|16:50] <msj> we aren't necc goin got get a 100% concsensu
from everyboyd.
[26|16:50] <msj> that's impossible; some people are just crazy.
[26|16:50] <msj> but there's a vast marjority of people who
will agree on what the ocntroversy is about.
[26|16:50] <msj> often there are llot of sides, but they can
agree on who said what,
[26|16:50] <msj> and rpeesent it in such a way that it makes
sense.
[26|16:50] <msj> impo, it turns out that some of the most
idealog people are best at this
[26|16:50] <msj> if you're not afraid you're right, you're not
afraid to see a pres ofboth sides..
[26|16:51] <msj> it's the people with a stron gopinion who are
a little insecure about it,
[26|16:51] <msj> that have a hard time letting otuher people
have their say.
[26|16:51] <msj> this policy is NOT a magic bullet
[26|16:51] <msj> but it wworks pretty well to get a large
group of people together to get high-qualtiy stuff
[26|16:51] <msj> there's plenty of lingering questions for it
[26|16:51] <msj> free software:
[26|16:51] <msj> .
[26|16:51] <msj> everything we use on the site is free
softeware
[26|16:51] <msj> our wiki engine is released under gpl
[26|16:51] <msj> we use off-the-shelf tools...
[26|16:51] <msj> lamp
[26|16:51] <msj> we use a couple things not completely
popular, like memchached
[26|16:51] <msj> but all free sw.
[26|16:51] <msj> [jz]
[26|16:52] <Xirzon> memcached
[26|16:52] <msj> if two people say they want to edit a wp
article
[26|16:52] <msj> and each make changes,
[26|16:52] <msj> and one submits, and then the other,
[26|16:52] <msj> how dpoes that get handled?
[26|16:52] <msj> [jw]
[26|16:52] <msj> when you edit, you're not doing anytihgn to
the article at all.
[26|16:52] <msj> if you submit your changes, they come to us
and we save them
[26|16:52] <msj> when someone else submits, we can tell they
su bmitted from a diff version; we show a diff
[26|16:52] <msj> and you're given an edit box to reconcile it.
[26|16:52] <msj> [jz] the second writer is presented with a
form?
[26|16:52] <kim_bruning> (is this a live transcript or
something? :-))
[26|16:52] <msj> [jw] yes. hopefully that doesn't happen too
often...
[26|16:52] <msj> <yes>
[26|16:52] <msj> [jw]
[26|16:53] <kim_bruning> (cool)
[26|16:53] <msj> personall,y it bothers me so much, I never
edit when someone else is editing
[26|16:53] <msj> [charlie nesson]
[26|16:53] <msj> <ask questions in this chan if you have
them...>
[26|16:53] <msj> have you had experience with wiki, with
audiences deeply divided into two camps
[26|16:53] <msj> where wiki is a moderating social force?
[26|16:53] <msj> [jw]
[26|16:53] <msj> yes I would say so.
[26|16:53] <msj> within wpo, we have had any major
contrivoardsial otpic... weh have article sabout
[26|16:53] <msj> these attract people who are intersted.
[26|16:53] <msj> it does seem to have a moderating force;
[26|16:53] <msj> sometimes people come in
[26|16:54] <msj> they are really gung-ho, on one side,
[26|16:54] <kim_bruning> <amen to jw on that, though it gives
me a headache to get it to work ;-) >
[26|16:54] <msj> but then they come to learn that you've got
to present things in a way that's noeutrally stated... some
people just leave, 'casue they cant take that
[26|16:54] <msj> one of the htingsabout our community, a
selfselected bunch: wp'anstend to be extremely friendly
people
[26|16:54] <kim_bruning> <but someone has to teach them>
[26|16:54] <msj> I came ro realize, when I started meeting
them, that people how areh not frienldly odn't like the wiki
environment, otherwise you get fed up with it.
[26|16:54] <msj> I think it would be interesting... joi ito
was asking this q about ther ecent conflice, japan and
china, riots in china:
[26|16:55] <msj> putting together gorups of people to diswcuss
this, using a wiki to repsent a neutral pres of what the
issue is
[26|16:55] <msj> that mght be reall helpful for bot side3s..
let's just get oteht er and agree we're going to talk about
the issue.
[26|16:55] <msj> that alone might help solve the problems.
[26|16:55] <msj> [charlie]
[26|16:55] <msj> what you just said is enormously helpful
[26|16:55] <msj> tyvm
[26|16:55] <msj> [jz]
[26|16:55] <msj> another q on this front:
[26|16:55] <msj> paid shills
[26|16:55] <msj> who stay b/c they're getting a paycheck, via
a pr firm or anywhere else?
[26|16:56] <kim_bruning> <jw should get an irc teleprompter
;-P >
[26|16:56] <msj> the day that walmart discpovers that a high
hit from wp is the way to get linked in google...
[26|16:56] <msj> ;)
[26|16:56] <msj> Walmart decides: it's important, b/c ofthe
succes fof the site, to have the entry reflect what you'd
call a WPOV
[26|16:56] <msj> how do you deal with that?
[26|16:56] <msj> [jw]
[26|16:56] <kim_bruning> <we kick them, ban them, keelhaul
them, find their address, and visit them with a flamethrower
of course!>
[26|16:56] <msj> I assume it has happened to some extent.
[26|16:56] <msj> what happens is, if you come into wp and post
heavily one-sided things, there's a certin
[26|16:56] <msj> mutulaly-assured destruction logic to how a
wiki works..
[26|16:57] <msj> if you do sth that's really biasee, you'll
just get nuked, or blocked from editing.
[26|16:57] <msj> it wouldn't surprise me --
[26|16:57] <msj> the only things I know of are a few famous
celebrities - authors, etc - who either complained or edited
their own articles
[26|16:57] <msj> typically they understand tey can't turn it
into their press-pub bio
[26|16:57] <msj> but it's prefectly valid for them to come in
and present their changes
[26|16:57] <msj> [jz: it has equal standing with anyone else's
[edits]]
[26|16:57] <msj> [jw]
[26|16:57] <kim_bruning> <tell me if I'm disruptive and I'll
just be quiet and listen :-) >
[26|16:57] <msj> yes... if the nike corporation see's the
article has ane dti saying
[26|16:57] <msj> "the nike corp has been accuesed of doing
this"
[26|16:57] <msj> thye can't erase criticism of themeslves,
[26|16:58] <msj> but they can say "there's info here eople can
researhc, they coan come to our website and see our side of
the story"
[26|16:58] <ABCD> <kim_bruning: don't worry>
[26|16:58] <msj> that ought to satisfy them a bit
[26|16:58] <msj> on the one hand, we ought to pay attention to
thing like this,
[26|16:58] <msj> on the other hand, we can be a distruptive
forcde...
[26|16:58] <msj> if it [comes out that say MS is editing itsw
own article]
[26|16:58] <mark-> kim_bruning: there's always /ignore ;-)
[26|16:58] <msj> it will come off really poorly for MS
[26|16:58] * brettstil has joined #wp-law
[26|16:58] <msj> I see a lot ofapple users around her. I have
an apple; those of use wh are apple users
[26|16:58] <msj> tend to be sth like fanatical religious types
[26|16:59] <msj> we might want to edit the article to reflect
our biases.
[26|16:59] <msj> that's a lot tougher to fight against.
[26|16:59] <msj> If it's just fanatical fans
[26|16:59] <msj> (not someone at the company)
[26|16:59] <msj> that's a more difficult social problem.
[26|16:59] <msj> .
[26|16:59] <msj> so.
[26|16:59] <msj> how bigg is WP? huge.
[26|16:59] <msj> <quack>
[26|16:59] <msj> oh man, this noise... have to stop it
[26|16:59] <msj> <computer noise>
[26|16:59] <msj> en, de, ja, fr...
[26|16:59] <msj> the fr will actually pass the ja before the
end of this year
[26|16:59] <msj> they've got more people working
[26|16:59] <msj> [oops! --ed]
[26|16:59] <brettstil> <laughs>
[26|16:59] <msj> [jz]
[26|17:00] <msj> the french by # of articles, or ?
[26|17:00] <msj> the fr has more people working...
[26|17:00] <msj> sv is quite large
[26|17:00] <msj> very small # of speakre, but active wp
[26|17:00] <msj> nearly 1.5M article
[26|17:00] <msj> s*
[26|17:00] <kim_bruning> <Why doesn't JWales have the numbers
on that! :-) >
[26|17:00] <msj> among 200 lngs...
[26|17:00] <msj> but that's not really fair
[26|17:00] <msj> we've got the interface translated into a lot
of languages, but...
[26|17:00] <kim_bruning> <oh he does>
[26|17:00] <msj> voer 20 versions have at least 10k articles,
[26|17:00] <msj> over 50 has at least 1k articles.
[26|17:00] <msj> [jz]
[26|17:00] <msj> who reads the eo: veresion of wp??
[26|17:00] <msj> [jw]
[26|17:00] <brettstil> <more laughs in room>
[26|17:00] <msj> actually, it's probably in the top 10 lagns...
[26|17:01] <msj> thye'very passionate about their ang... qiute
intelligent, have q1uite a lot of articles.
[26|17:01] <msj> basically, this is a better measure of how
active? they are
[26|17:01] <msj> if you've got 10k, that's a good community...
1k, a good start...
[26|17:01] <msj> [audience]
[26|17:01] <msj> how many arts in a typical World Book?
[26|17:01] * phyzome has joined #wp-law
[26|17:01] <msj> [jw]
[26|17:01] <msj> en: is about twice the size of Britannica.
[26|17:01] <msj> how popular:
[26|17:01] <msj> this is sth that keeps changin
[26|17:01] <msj> b/c our traffic doubles every few months
[26|17:01] <msj> we're morre opu;lar than expedia, paypal,
excite, geocities, nyt...
[26|17:02] <msj> now wer'e so far ahead of playboy, it's not
even worth mentioning
[26|17:02] <msj> [jz]
[26|17:02] <msj> do you have a Clean Point of View?
[26|17:02] <msj> is wp PG, roughly speaking?
[26|17:02] <msj> [jw]
[26|17:02] <msj> uh, no.
[26|17:02] <msj> we have all kinds of hair-rasiing stuff on wp
[26|17:02] <msj> the key there is,
[26|17:02] <msj> for info n varios sexual positions, etc
[26|17:02] <msj> we present this in a very neutral manner...
[26|17:02] <msj> [jz]
[26|17:02] <msj> so it's a Boring Point of View...
[26|17:02] <msj> [jw]
[26|17:02] <msj> yes, if people come looking for the dirty
bits...
[26|17:02] <msj> they'll be dispapointed...
[26|17:02] <msj> w2e tend to come down pretty strongly against
hte side f censorship
[26|17:02] <msj> this is one of the arguments that is never
going to end...
[26|17:02] <msj> [jz]
[26|17:02] <ABCD> <def not PG - remember the auto* debates>
[26|17:03] <msj> so, the article on proornography on wp, which
I'm looking at right now..
[26|17:03] <MykReeve> <who can forget?>
[26|17:03] <msj> it's dry, it's not prurient as we know the
word prurient.
[26|17:03] <msj> [jw]
[26|17:03] <msj> it's all pretty dul,.
[26|17:03] <msj> we try to keep it that way; informative,
educational
[26|17:03] <msj> it's the only way to get the articles to
survive those of the more censorious spirit...
[26|17:03] <msj> .
[26|17:03] <msj> we've got about 500M pageviews monthly
[26|17:03] <msj> we ust strrongly passed the NYT very recently
[26|17:03] <msj> (acc to Alexa)
[26|17:03] <msj> that's actually af un thing
[26|17:03] <msj> when reproters as=k me what's our busines
smodel
[26|17:04] <msj> I just show them spomething like this, and say
[26|17:04] <msj> don't worry about our business model, worry
about yours...
[26|17:04] * ziedoros has joined #wp-law
[26|17:04] <msj> .
[26|17:04] <msj> there's this slashdot thing on the internet...
[26|17:04] <brettstil> /.
[26|17:04] <msj> now we barely even notice when we get
slashdotted.
[26|17:04] <msj> I joke sometimes with the devs that the next
time they write something about us, we can wikipedia them
instead...
[26|17:04] <msj> instead, we worry about... the pope dying.
[26|17:04] <msj> here's the prev dya
[26|17:04] <msj> when the new pope was anounced, our traffic
wnt through the roof.
[26|17:04] <brettstil> pope dotting
[26|17:04] <ABCD> wp /. :)
[26|17:04] <msj> fortunately, that was to cached pages, so it
didn't kill us...
[26|17:04] <msj> but it shows how ew've become a source of
information.
[26|17:05] <msj> [clarif of the graph]
[26|17:05] <msj> we'vae had some huge spikes in traffic.
[26|17:05] <msj> in addition to wp,
[26|17:05] <msj> we have a lot of siste projects...
[26|17:05] <msj> most of thes were creatd out of a social
pressure within the comunity
[26|17:05] <msj> these were aguments about whether we needed
synonys and antonyms in the encyclo
[26|17:05] <msj> wreally we decided a dict is a rdiff kind of
resource than an encyclo
[26|17:05] <msj> this is tpically how a lot of these other
proejcts were staretd...
[26|17:05] <msj> the Commons is w2here we put all common media
files
[26|17:05] <msj> the simple reason we had that is,
[26|17:06] <msj> when you have a pic of the Eiffel OTower in
fr:
[26|17:06] <msj> that's fine
[26|17:06] <msj> but itreally can go into all wpos'
[26|17:06] <msj> so we needed a common way for people to get
it,
[26|17:06] <msj> in*
[26|17:06] <msj> =wikinews is the latest.
[26|17:06] <msj> we've seen how wp is really good at
respondieng to current events..
[26|17:06] <msj> on 9/11
[26|17:06] <msj> there was aussden rush to fill in wp with all
kinds of bg info
[26|17:06] <msj> the kind that media doesn't usulaly supply
[26|17:06] <msj> like "who is the architedct hwo designed the
WTC?"
[26|17:06] <msj> all that kind of info
[26|17:06] <msj> wikines is an attempt to see, maybe we can do
news reporting the wiki wya
[26|17:06] <msj> so
[26|17:06] <msj> ew've got 50 servers now
[26|17:07] <msj> this isn't a tech audience, so I'll just go
through this quickly...
[26|17:07] <ABCD> really?
[26|17:07] <msj> (showing sexy server farm diagram)
[26|17:07] <ABCD> (about the servers)
[26|17:07] <msj> <yes>
[26|17:07] <msj> very standard architecture...
[26|17:07] <msj> squids in france and fl...
[26|17:07] <msj> soon we'll move to an rchitecture where we
have 5 or 6 datacenters
[26|17:07] <msj> so some of the squids may move based on that.
[26|17:07] <ABCD> <msj - fl = florida? >
[26|17:07] <msj> this is one of the things about how wp works
[26|17:07] <msj> the volunteers are there all times of the
night,
[26|17:08] <mark-> <yes>
[26|17:08] <brettstil> not a tech audience in the law school
classroom
[26|17:08] <msj> watching the servers monitorsing...
[26|17:08] <msj> <yes>
[26|17:08] <msj> I was recently at a journ conference, sitting
wit th ehad of USAToday.com
[26|17:08] <msj> he was talking about"really big websites like
ours... 300M pageviews a monht"
[26|17:08] <msj> they have 180 people on staff to manage the
servers
[26|17:08] * MykReeve has left #wp-law ("Leaving")
[26|17:08] <msj> and do all that kind of stuff
[26|17:08] * MykReeve has joined #wp-law
[26|17:08] <msj> we have one part-time hardware guy
[26|17:08] <msj> and we just hired our lead developers.
[26|17:08] <msj> r*
[26|17:08] <msj> [jz]
[26|17:08] <msj> so it's not that you have fewer people
wokring on it,
[26|17:08] <kim_bruning> <did anyone hear about the extra
webcenters? ;-) I got prenews on that :-P >
[26|17:08] <msj> you just have fewer FTE's working on it
[26|17:09] <mark-> <webcenters?>
[26|17:09] <msj> there's other things that we just can't do
[however]
[26|17:09] <msj> b/c it's just not fun
[26|17:09] <msj> you've got a job that just needs doing...
[26|17:09] <msj> people who volutntere for the red cross or
something
[26|17:09] <msj> you're in tune with the bigger purpose, so
you just do it.
[26|17:09] <msj> but for instance, whne we talk about stats of
how many pageviews we have...
[26|17:09] <msj> we don't bother counting so often.
[26|17:09] <msj> I do it some times by downloading the logs...
[26|17:09] <msj> b/c I have to do these talks
[26|17:09] <msj> but this is v different form most companie
hwhere they have to go out and [proselytize[] and they need
to know...
[26|17:10] <msj> so... we'rae a kind of strange organization
in that way. .it's very chaotic.
[26|17:10] <msj> it's sort of a wiki organization.
[26|17:10] <msj> .
[26|17:10] <msj> mediawiki
[26|17:10] <msj> one of many engines...
[26|17:10] <msj> one thing we want to suppor tis developers
[26|17:10] <msj> if we put our software out there, they can
benefit from and contribute to the code...
[26|17:10] <msj> .
[26|17:10] <msj> page history
[26|17:10] <msj> this is sth that our wiki software does beter
than most
[26|17:10] <msj> [diffs]
[26|17:10] <msj> you can actuall ysee the chnages really
quickly.
[26|17:10] <msj> so...
[26|17:11] <msj> JZ asked me to tlak a lot about how the
comunity is organized.
[26|17:11] <msj> this is the first slide that really gets into
that.
[26|17:11] <msj> we try not to vote on things very much...
[26|17:11] <phyzome> <hah!>
[26|17:11] <msj> a lot of people asked aobut features in the
ostware that support decision-making; there's basically none.
[26|17:11] <msj> therw's a movie called 'twisted issues'
[26|17:11] <msj> supposedly there's an underground film from
'88
[26|17:11] <msj> ]this first person says it fails the google
test
[26|17:11] <msj> [jz] the google test is?
[26|17:11] <brettstil> <laughs in room>
[26|17:11] <msj> [jw] "if its' not in google, it probably
doesn't exist..."
[26|17:12] <msj> there's a lot of controversy about this.
[26|17:12] <msj> this is a very natural thing to do [however]
[26|17:12] <msj> so someone says "no, I found it in a video
guide..,."
[26|17:12] <phyzome> <*cough* GRider *cough*>
[26|17:12] <msj> then a lot of Keeps
[26|17:12] <msj> Keep Keep Keep...
[26|17:12] <msj> when an admin comes by later to count the
votes,
[26|17:12] <msj> even if there ahad been 35 deletes and these
last 5 keeps,
[26|17:12] <msj> they would pay attention to the keesp, b/c
there's new information there.
[26|17:12] <msj> people often ask, why don't you just
automaticlaly collate the ovtes?
[26|17:13] <msj> well, if we did that, we might save some
effort, but...
[26|17:13] <kim_bruning> <That's the theory, in reality what
happens is utterly random and not related to the discussion
anyway :-p >
[26|17:13] <brettstil> sj introduced!
[26|17:13] <mark-> <shush :)>
[26|17:13] <brettstil> sj talking
[26|17:13] <MykReeve> <damous wikipedian - respec'>
[26|17:13] <MykReeve> <*famous>
[26|17:13] * cyberlawguy has joined #wp-law
[26|17:13] <brettstil> sj: discussing people on slide that sj
knows
[26|17:13] <brettstil> sj: small site at first
[26|17:14] <brettstil> then found it again about a year and a
half ago
[26|17:14] <brettstil> z: do you remember your first edit?
[26|17:14] <brettstil> sj: yes, page on centuries
[26|17:14] <brettstil> that caused me to create an account
[26|17:14] <kim_bruning> <sj == User: ... ? >
[26|17:14] <brettstil> <z pulls up centuries page>
[26|17:15] <brettstil> <z finds sj edits>
[26|17:15] <brettstil> <z compares>
[26|17:15] <brettstil> <z diffs sjs edits, right align>
[26|17:15] <brettstil> <laughs>
[26|17:15] <phyzome> <What happened to msj?>
[26|17:15] <sannse> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Sj
[26|17:15] <brettstil> sj: i wanted it to be pretty page
[26|17:15] <brettstil> z: how much time spend per week?
[26|17:16] <brettstil> sj: 10-15 hours
[26|17:16] <brettstil> z: class credit?
[26|17:16] <brettstil> sj: not yet
[26|17:16] <brettstil> <laughs>
[26|17:16] <msj> [jw]
[26|17:16] <msj> ...
[26|17:16] <msj> a former britannica editor wrote a scating
article about wp
[26|17:16] <msj> one of the things he wrote:
[26|17:17] <msj> "by some unspecified quasi-darwinian process
will assure that those writings and editiogs by contributors
of greatset expertise
[26|17:17] <msj> will survive; articles will evnetually reach
a steady state that correspondes to the highest degree of
accuracy. Does someone actually believe this? Evidently
so."
[26|17:17] <msj> [jw]
[26|17:17] <msj> the mergent phenom model says,
[26|17:17] <msj> there are htousands of users whpo don't know
one another,
[26|17:17] <phyzome> <emergent phenomenon>
[26|17:17] <msj> and somehow thoruhg [trial and error] this
all manages to work
[26|17:17] <msj> and the other view is that there is a
community
[26|17:17] <msj> and all these people, wp'ans who know each
other...
[26|17:18] <msj> <discussion about wikipedia meetups, and
where we've met before...>
[26|17:18] <brettstil> z: when did jw first meet sj?
[26|17:18] <brettstil> z: level above administrator?
[26|17:18] <brettstil> jw: jimbo
[26|17:18] <brettstil> <laughs>
[26|17:18] <msj> [jw, from before: you can see my bias
emerging here, b/c I hav epictures of all my friends up on
the screen]
[26|17:19] <msj> emergent omdel: need reputation mechanisms,
like ebay, slashdot
[26|17:19] <msj> users are tiny, have no power
[26|17:19] <msj> community mode: reputation is a natural
outgrowh of huma ninteractions
[26|17:19] <msj> users are powerful, must be respected.
[26|17:19] <msj> I've always thought of the second goal... how
I manage the site depends crucially on which of thse two
things is tru.
[26|17:19] <brettstil> 80/10 rule
[26|17:20] <msj> If I base some of my decisions on people who
hang out and talk to me in irc all the time, and they don't
really have anything to do with the site... that wouldn't be
good.
[26|17:20] <msj> 10% of users make 80% of edits...
[26|17:20] <msj> 5% make 66% of eits.
[26|17:20] <msj> half of all edits are made by just 2.5% of
all users.
[26|17:20] <msj> [jz] unevennesses of coverage
[26|17:20] <msj> b/c of what those 2.5% of users know?
[26|17:20] <msj> [jw]
[26|17:20] <msj> if you look at the heavy users, it turns out
to be a geek-heavy, tehc-heavy crowd.
[26|17:21] <msj> it turnss out that one of the uses of wp ois
: on the surface thir quals are v different from what they
do on wp.
[26|17:21] <msj> my classic example:
[26|17:21] <brettstil> <power law distribution ?>
[26|17:21] <msj> the beareded math prof, who edits articles on
WWII history
[26|17:21] <msj> [jz]
[26|17:21] <msj> what's his name?
[26|17:21] <msj> [jw]
[26|17:21] <msj> oh, I don't know. it's a hypothetical
example.
[26|17:21] <msj> Charles Matthews... he's [at least] a bearded
math professor.
[26|17:21] <msj> so look at this
[26|17:21] <msj> : he's got "william robinson, historian"
[26|17:21] <msj> [jz] so look, this is just what he's been
doing today...
[26|17:21] <msj> now, if you were his employer...
[26|17:22] <brettstil> <laughs> all his edits today
[26|17:22] <msj> [jw]
[26|17:22] <msj> b/c of the way modern society ucntions, he's
been narrowed into a particular field for his professional
routine
[26|17:22] <msj> it doesn't mean he's not qual'ed to do htis
work...
[26|17:22] <msj> but here ther's a "reference clas problem" I
assume that's math, too.
[26|17:22] <msj> [jz]
[26|17:22] <msj> we could actually track his waking and
sleeping...
[26|17:22] <msj> [jw]
[26|17:22] <msj> ye, probably so.
[26|17:22] <brettstil> <laughs> can track his waking
[26|17:22] <msj> there's probably users like angela who you
couldn't track, b/c she's up 24 hours a day
[26|17:22] <msj> .
[26|17:23] <msj> edits by anons:
[26|17:23] <msj> anons make about 18% of all edits
[26|17:23] <msj> used to be 22%, last year 18%. why that's
declining, I don't konw
[26|17:23] <msj> anecdotally, many reg users report they do
this by accident, or as a quiet form of Sock Puppeting
[26|17:23] <msj> (to avoid editing under your own identity)
[26|17:23] <msj> [jz] why would you do that?
[26|17:23] <msj> [jw] there's bad and good reasons.
[26|17:23] <msj> I just got an email from someone who will
remain anon, just the other day;
[26|17:23] <msj> they said, is this okay? I use two accounts.
[26|17:23] <msj> I/'ve bene editing articles related to pedo
[26|17:24] <msj> even though I'm not biased myself, I wanted
to add some scientific information,
[26|17:24] <msj> I didn't want my colleagues to associate
those edits with me.
[26|17:24] <phyzome> <pedo?>
[26|17:24] <msj> pedophilia
[26|17:24] <msj> maybe someone's a britney spears fan,
[26|17:24] <msj> secretly, and doesn't want anyone to know.
[26|17:24] <msj> bad reasons: voting twice for something,
trolling...
[26|17:24] <msj> a very bad social faux pas. we do have means
for detecting tha.t
[26|17:24] <msj> there have been a few cases for that
[26|17:24] <msj> where people have two accounts, using one for
evil and one for good.
[26|17:24] <msj> [jjz]
[26|17:24] <brettstil> <laughs> wiki jail
[26|17:25] <msj> and ther is a form of wiki jail... how does
that work?
[26|17:25] <msj> [jw]
[26|17:25] <msj> yes... we can block ip numbers... we can
block an account from editing.
[26|17:25] <msj> if you're a member of the community with
social standing, this is a [dramatic] form of social censure
[26|17:25] <msj> I can't imagine yself, if I wer a user who
had made some friends,
[26|17:25] <msj> ...
[26|17:25] <msj> [jz]
[26|17:25] <msj> is this like the country club with a list of
people who haven't paid their dues? is there a scarlet list
of people...
[26|17:25] <msj> [jw]
[26|17:25] <msj> well, there's a block log...
[26|17:25] <msj> the thing is, it's really hard in wp to get
yourself banned.
[26|17:26] <msj> we want to basically bea s open and
welcoming... you can get banned for persistent behavioral
issues.
[26|17:26] <msj> [jz]
[26|17:26] <msj> and once you're banned, ar eyou bnaned for
life?
[26|17:26] <msj> [jw]
[26|17:26] <msj> it varies. avery few people have been
permanently banne.d
[26|17:26] <msj> that's actually... it's probably within the
ocmmjunity my sense that there ar epmore people who feel we
should be mores trict than we are,
[26|17:26] <msj> than the other way around.
[26|17:26] <msj> we tend to put up with people far lioger...
[26|17:26] <msj> part of the reason is that to proser and
surivvve in a wiki context,
[26|17:26] <msj> you have to be really friendly, forgiving ,
thourhgtufl...
[26|17:27] <msj> which measn that we're sort of co-dependendt
with our trolls sometimes
[26|17:27] <msj> b/c we're trying to see the best in them
[26|17:27] <msj> [jz]
[26|17:27] <msj> trying to 'tolerate intolerance'
[26|17:27] <msj> [jw]
[26|17:27] <phyzome> <thourhgtufl=thoughtful>
[26|17:27] <msj> yes. I've heard it said in the community
someties...
[26|17:27] <msj> boy, nobody's editing articles anymore,
[26|17:27] <msj> all we're doing is editing talk pages...
[26|17:27] <msj> it turns out the %s by namespace are stable,
2002, 2003, 2004
[26|17:27] <msj> good thing to find out.
[26|17:27] <msj> .
[26|17:27] <msj> so WP governance, how does that work out?
[26|17:28] <msj> well, it's a confusing, but workable mix, of
the following:
[26|17:28] <msj> Consensus [if you start to vote, it becomes
easy to dig in your heels once you've got 70% and say to
hell with the minority view]
[26|17:29] * ziedoros has left #wp-law
[26|17:29] <msj> [but in the end, we do vote on some issues;
but voting processes are sometimes open-ended
[26|17:29] <msj> ... there are basically a lot ofconventions
within wp, that nobody can say why they are that way...
[26|17:29] <msj> except that people say, it's always been that
way]
[26|17:29] <msj> 2. Democracy (that was the above voting)
[26|17:29] <msj> 3. Aristocracy
[26|17:29] <msj> I love to give this presentation with angela.
[26|17:30] <msj> everyboyd loves angela,
[26|17:30] <msj> the reason she can get away with being [heard
loudnly] is taht she would never violate any rules
[26|17:30] <msj> (and is the only person who knows all of them)
[26|17:30] <msj> [jz]
[26|17:30] <msj> she's basically the Robert Byrd of Wikipedia?
[26|17:30] <msj> [jw]
[26|17:30] <msj> exactly.
[26|17:30] <msj> and then there's Monarchy
[26|17:30] <msj> and that's my role.
[26|17:30] <msj> in the free software community, there's a
long tradition of the benevolent dictator model...
[26|17:30] <msj> when you've got a bunch of volunteers working
together on a rough consensu model
[26|17:31] <msj> whenever conssensus fails, adn we can't
agree, we'll just trust what Linus Torvalds says, and go
with that.
[26|17:31] <msj> we have a certian degree of that,
[26|17:31] <msj> but I don't like the term Benevolent Dictator
[26|17:31] <msj> b/c I'm not a dictator... and I'm not
benevolent
[26|17:31] <msj> ...
[26|17:31] <msj> that usually gets a much better laugh
[26|17:31] <msj> <tardy laughter :>
[26|17:31] <msj> ...
[26|17:31] <msj> ex:
[26|17:31] <msj> there's a website called stormfront
[26|17:31] <msj> they posted on their bboard,
[26|17:31] <msj> oh, wp, it's all run by Jews
[26|17:32] <msj> we're some white people, we're going to go
vote on some stuff there...
[26|17:32] <msj> they got a bunch of peope to come vote on VfD
[26|17:32] <msj> they had somethig like 80 to 18 on a vote
[26|17:32] <msj> people were wroreid: what happens if someone
goes in with a big group and overwhelms the process?
[26|17:32] <msj> I said, I'm not going to let this become a
neonazi webiste. we won't have it.
[26|17:32] <msj> [jz]
[26|17:32] <msj> so the opneness is the means, not the end
[26|17:32] <msj> [jw]
[26|17:32] <msj> yes. to some extent, WP is both the
encyclopedia and the community,
[26|17:33] <msj> but it's a community organized around the
encyclo.
[26|17:33] <msj> all of our [precepts] the free licensing, the
methods... are for developing the encyclopedia; that's what
the community will defend
[26|17:33] <msj> I stand here ready to defend that core goal
against any process going haywire.
[26|17:33] <msj> this acutlaly enables us to have certain
structures wthin the comm with less fear.
[26|17:33] <msj> when we started to have an arb comm
[26|17:33] * ABCD is now known as ABCD_away
[26|17:33] <msj> (I used to do the banning personall'y it was
very draining emotionally)
[26|17:34] <msj> we moved to a model of: first appointed, now
elected,
[26|17:34] <msj> the questions was, is the arb comm going to
go haywaire, and start banning people for no reason?
[26|17:34] <msj> one of the reasons the community was willing
to let it go this way,
[26|17:34] <msj> w2as that I wad I was going to retian the
power to overrule what they decided if they were going
haywire.
[26|17:34] <brettstil> is abcd the harvard abcd user groups?
[26|17:34] <msj> ooh, good Q
[26|17:34] <msj> <sorry, that was to breett>
[26|17:34] <msj> the underlying poin is wikipedians are fvery
flexible about our underlying methodology...
[26|17:35] <msj> Questions?
[26|17:35] <msj> .
[26|17:35] <msj> Good.
[26|17:35] <msj> so: how can such a large comunity scale?
[26|17:35] <msj> one of the things is the recentchanges patrol
[26|17:35] <msj> I used to check every change every day
[26|17:35] <msj> so an example is... people organize
themselves into rc patrol
[26|17:35] <msj> so they can go in and say, I checke all the
edits, 10-11, 11-12
[26|17:35] <msj> or there are ideas about automating that...
(softare feature)
[26|17:35] <msj> through policy (mediation arbitration)
[26|17:35] <msj> and through an atmosphere of love and respect.
[26|17:36] <msj> it's difficult to talk about love,
[26|17:36] <msj> and I think that in a room full of vicious
law students who are going to go out an dbecome harvard
lawyers,
[26|17:36] <msj> there's not a lot of talk about love...
[26|17:36] <msj> ...
[26|17:36] <msj> [jz]
[26|17:36] <msj> love is often uneasy
[26|17:36] <msj> [jw]
[26|17:36] <msj> <laughter> all these kinds of things are
really important about how the community functions.
[26|17:36] <MykReeve> <love is often on the exam - I heard it
as>
[26|17:36] <msj> [jz]
[26|17:36] <msj> how many people in raw numbers is that?
[26|17:36] <msj> [jw]
[26|17:37] <msj> 20k people have made at least 100 edits... if
you take a really hard-core user,
[26|17:37] <msj> 100 edits doesn't really put you in the elite.
[26|17:37] <msj> the really core community: there's a gorup of
people who hang out on irc all the time, from many different
langs...
[26|17:37] <msj> [jz]
[26|17:37] <msj> john, a question?
[26|17:37] <msj> [john]
[26|17:37] <brettstil> <yes, love is often on the exam>
[26|17:37] <msj> are you still flying under the radar of
traditional brick-and-mortar publishing houses?
[26|17:37] <msj> [jw]
[26|17:37] <msj> [john] do you have to deal with [legal
threats]
[26|17:37] <msj> [jw]
[26|17:38] <msj> we're just like... (service providers) yahoo
groups, etc
[26|17:38] <msj> we fall udner dmca safe-harbor provisions.
[26|17:38] <msj> it's fairly routien...
[26|17:38] <msj> we have a really strong policy against
copyvios and plagiarism
[26|17:38] <msj> there's a whole gorup of people who police
for copyvios.
[26|17:38] <msj> typcially, someone will, come c&P a block of
text form a website
[26|17:38] <msj> if you were already a member in good stnading
from the comunity, you woul dnever do this
[26|17:38] <msj> but if you're not, it would set off bells...
[26|17:38] <msj> usually we'd find it, delete it, take care of
it.
[26|17:38] <msj> it's not a major worry for us at the time,
[26|17:38] <msj> at least not on the website...
[26|17:39] <msj> [john]
[26|17:39] <msj> are you worried about information vanishing
as people edit, b/c people are changing it?
[26|17:39] <msj> [jw]
[26|17:39] <msj> you can link to a specific revision in the
history...
[26|17:39] <msj> usually that's the right way to do it to link
to sepcific information.
[26|17:39] <msj> it dependson what you mean by 'acepted by
academics'
[26|17:39] <msj> normally if you're turning a paper at
harvard, I asume it's not acceptable to quote a source like
EB
[26|17:39] <msj> [jz]
[26|17:39] <msj> you want a *betteR* source
[26|17:39] <msj> [jw] yes. if you're tlking about shakespeare,
you shouldn't be...
[26|17:40] <msj> you should rad the encyclo to get background,
but then you should go read real books.
[26|17:40] <msj> [jz]
[26|17:40] <msj> as we keep going, maybe you can keep an eye
on the... questions page
[26|17:40] <msj> I also think maybe Zephyr had a question in
the back there.
[26|17:40] <msj> [zephyr] I can yell...
[26|17:40] <msj> of your article, say 500k of them
[26|17:40] <msj> how many have more than one edit?
[26|17:41] <msj> [jw] that's a good question... [almost all]
of them
[26|17:41] <msj> it would be very rare to find one that has
only one edit...
[26|17:41] <msj> it's very rare that I go to an article and
look in the edit istory and can't find anyone at all in the
history who I don't know.
[26|17:41] <msj> a lot of this is part of the friendly
culture... if you see a newcomer coming to edit wp
[26|17:41] * jz has joined #wp-law
[26|17:41] <msj> usually someone will go to edit the article,
to make them feel like there's someone in the community
working with thjem.
[26|17:41] <msj> [reading]
[26|17:42] <msj> is ther esik of defamation by either good or
evil users mitigated by the 'truth-finding?' process?"
[26|17:42] <msj> I guess it depends on what you mean by the
risk of this.
[26|17:42] <jz> (Hi - Joining from class)
[26|17:42] <msj> I've been corresponding with this police
officer...
[26|17:42] <msj> <hi jz!>
[26|17:42] * nsh has quit IRC ("10 minute phone use")
[26|17:42] <msj> he's saying this firend, he was said he's
gay... it's been deleted form WP a long time ago, but it's
still in the history; can it be deleted from the edit
history?
[26|17:42] <msj> [jz]
[26|17:42] <msj> and you don't have an edit history that says
'this history has been edited' ?
[26|17:42] <msj> [jw]
[26|17:42] * mindspillage is now known as mind|wandering
[26|17:42] <msj> I don't know about that...
[26|17:43] <msj> we don't have much concert about the articlse
themselves libellin people...
[26|17:43] <msj> we don't tak e a strong position on aything,
[26|17:43] <brettstil> meta history of removed edit would be
in old sql dumps
[26|17:43] <msj> whenever there is something fcontorversial,
we try to attribute it to a published source.
[26|17:43] <msj> that saves us a lot of grief.
[26|17:43] <msj> what happens if someone in england is upset
aobut something?
[26|17:43] <msj> their libel laws are a lot more open than
ours are...
[26|17:43] <msj> (there are issues there)
[26|17:43] <msj> [jz]
[26|17:43] <msj> in what ways is this concern manifest?
[26|17:43] <msj> [jw]
[26|17:43] <msj> me worrying about it...
[26|17:43] <msj> [jz]
[26|17:43] <msj> otherwise, full speed ahead?
[26|17:43] <msj> [jw]
[26|17:44] <msj> we're not in the biz to defame people. a lot
of this is mitigated by our good will.
[26|17:44] <msj> fi someoen complains about this, we repspond
and say, we want to get this right.
[26|17:44] <msj> also, there's not much benefit to [people] to
go to court over this, if it gets fixed.
[26|17:44] <msj> we hope that trying to do our best will be a
good defense against a lot of things.
[26|17:44] <msj> [question]
[26|17:44] <msj> can you say a littel bit about this q of
academmics participating,
[26|17:44] <msj> and the kind of elitism v. populism of the
approach?
[26|17:44] <msj> [jw]
[26|17:44] <msj> there was recently somre iscvussion about
whether wp is anti-eleitist.
[26|17:44] <msj> I think it's not;
[26|17:45] <msj> I think i'm about as elitist as I can get.
[26|17:45] <msj> what I'm not is credentialist.
[26|17:45] <msj> we don't require people to have a phd or
prove where they came from...
[26|17:45] <msj> but I'm passionat ea=bout the idea that there
are really smart people out ther,
[26|17:45] <msj> and htos ear ethe people we want to [hear]
from
[26|17:45] <msj> whether or not they're credentialled is
another q.
[26|17:45] <msj> and, then again, here I am,
[26|17:45] <msj> I'm lecturing at harvard law schol, and I
didn't even get into harvard.
[26|17:45] <msj> so it doesn't say everything... I was joking
that in the future,
[26|17:45] <msj> every tv quiz show propgram will be run by WP
[26|17:46] <msj> in editing wp, you end up learning about and
editing all kinds of [crazy subjects]
[26|17:46] <msj> does that ansewr the q?
[26|17:46] <msj> there is... something about the open editing
process... people make an asusmption that b/c it is open to
editing yanyboyd, that we have a bleief that everyone's
opinions are equally valid with everyone else's
[26|17:46] <msj> that's not really true; the open editing is
=our means; it's a way to get involved, to participate
[26|17:46] <msj> it doesn't mean that everyone's opinoin is
eqully valid.
[26|17:46] <msj> sometiems [one] edits wp and we just [revert
it] b/c we say it's stupid.
[26|17:46] <msj> and that happens pretty often.
[26|17:47] <msj> now, whethe rhte CDA applies...
[26|17:47] <msj> we/'re a big example of how openness and
fredom of information
[26|17:47] <msj> and letting people say whatever they want
[has good benefits]
[26|17:47] <msj> [jz]
[26|17:47] <msj> I assume people writing the question is
talking about holding someone responsible for publihsing
what another speaker says...
[26|17:48] <msj> [jw] ah yes, that would definitely come into
play.
[26|17:48] <msj> <next q>
[26|17:48] <msj> what oether areas do you think would benefit
from a wiki-like approach?
[26|17:48] <msj> well, I think a whole lot of things...
[26|17:48] <msj> if I asked everyone in ther oom to write
about Harvard law school, everyone woul dhave an opinion;
[26|17:48] <msj> we all agree on what it basically would be
about, and that makes it easy to collaborate...
[26|17:48] <msj> if I asked you to write a poem about the
maning of rain,
[26|17:48] <msj> that would be a lot harder to agree on or to
collaborate on.
[26|17:49] <msj> [looks up [[Harvard Law School]] and the
[[Styvesant School]]? ]
[26|17:49] <msj> [jw]
[26|17:49] <msj> wow, that's painful to see
[26|17:49] <msj> I think this is an example of systemic
bias...
[26|17:49] <msj> [jz]
[26|17:49] <msj> notice how they're talking on the talk page
about how all the vandalismis coming from Hunter
[26|17:49] <brettstil> <laughs>
[26|17:49] <msj> and there's no vandalism of the Hunter page
by Stuy kids
[26|17:49] <msj> [jz]
[26|17:49] <msj> someone was poited out that Kirkland House is
in WP, and was recently subject to a VfD
[26|17:50] <msj> because, who cares about Kirkland House?
[26|17:50] <msj> but, not ethat it's still there...
[26|17:50] <msj> [jw]
[26|17:50] <msj> do I meet a lot of wikipedians?
[26|17:50] <msj> yes, I meet wikipedians all over the world...
[26|17:50] <msj> when I go to meetups, the [gender division]
is about 80/20,
[26|17:50] <msj> but wehn I look at the administrative/organiza
tional positions, the gender divide is about 50/50...
[26|17:50] <msj> <next Q>
[26|17:51] <msj> has WP ever been blocked in pursuing its
mission of providing information to all?
[26|17:51] <msj> <A>
[26|17:51] <msj> yes, in two instances were wre briefly
blocked by China...
[26|17:51] <msj> there's a form you can filled out, to be
unblokced
[26|17:51] <msj> they finally got to the ISP and we were
unblokced;
[26|17:51] <msj> my understanding form talking to Andrew Lih,
a journalism professor from Hong Kong university...
[26|17:51] <msj> is that this top-down system isn't quite what
we think it is.
[26|17:51] <msj> there is a group of administrators all over
the country, who can block or unblock...
[26|17:52] <msj> our stragtegy is that we are neutrla, not
ooppposed to the chinese gov't and not for the gov't
[26|17:52] <msj> wikipedia isn't anti-communst, pro-communist,
or antyinhg.
[26|17:52] <msj> we're just raw, simjple information, not
political.
[26|17:52] <msj> on the other hand, there's osmehting depely
political aout saying that people should have basic
information for empowering decision0-making
[26|17:52] <msj> but that's a lot harder to oppose
[26|17:52] <msj> [than political bias]
[26|17:52] <msj> there are no major blockages that I know
of... but we do wonder.
[26|17:52] <msj> <next Q>
[26|17:52] <MykReeve> <I thought China tended to block around
June 4 - mainly blocking every website with Tiananmen Sq
references. That was last year's, at least>
[26|17:53] <msj> Isaac Asimov and ? have articles orders of
magnitude larger than Virtor Hugo, Gunther Grass, etc... is
this a bad thing?
[26|17:53] <msj> <A>
[26|17:53] <msj> yes, this is a bad thing. it's getting
better... as we've attracted people and gotten more mature,
ew have broadened out in to other ares.
[26|17:53] <msj> we've talked a lot about what are the
barriers to gettoing people involved, barriers to editing?
[26|17:53] <msj> they have to be not too afraid to click an
edit and change something
[26|17:53] <msj> the wiki synta is supposed to be designed to
be user friendly...
[26|17:54] <msj> even if you don't know the syntax, you can
just click edit and put a bunch of words in there...
[26|17:54] <msj> but I think in the future, you're going to
see a lot more,
[26|17:54] <msj> get wysywig edits, etc
[26|17:54] <msj> and we want to get english professors and
people like that to help flesh out all of these areas.
[26|17:54] <msj> we would like to see the gneder breakdown to
be closer to 50/50
[26|17:54] <msj> this room doesn't seem to be predominantly
male... there's no real reason that it hsould be that way.
[26|17:55] <msj> [how orthodox is the style of wp?]
[26|17:55] <msj> [jw]
[26|17:55] <msj> we have a lot of rules on wp
[26|17:55] <msj> but one of the core rules is, ignore all the
rules.
[26|17:55] <msj> if the rules make you nervous, just ignore
them
[26|17:56] <msj> it's not an invite to vandalize, it's an
invite to relax.
[26|17:56] <msj> and it's supposed to tell [other] pepole
[26|17:56] <ABCD_away> <and deal with the consequeses>
[26|17:56] <msj> that you're not suposed to yell at people if
htey add content that's not in the right format...
[26|17:56] * ABCD_away is now known as ABCD
[26|17:56] <msj> you should go in and explain to them, here's
what you did, here's how you could have formatted that...
[26|17:56] <msj> you shouldn't get yelled at for doing it
wrong.
[26|17:56] <msj> [jz]
[26|17:56] <msj> of course the website for this course has
been since the begining of the term, a wiki
[26|17:56] <msj> and almost everything there has been edited
or added by someoe other than me, or someone deputized by me.
[26|17:57] <msj> I wonder after having this convg, if were
were only haflway through this ourse, it would change the
way our wiki lloked...
[26|17:57] <msj> now that ew've been exposed to some ideas
about wiki culture...
[26|17:57] <brettstil> <room is silent>
[26|17:57] <msj> I'll make a deal: if someone answers the
question, I'll lower the shades...
[26|17:57] <msj> [student]
[26|17:57] <msj> one thing about our ase is that, it verges on
chaotic sometimes
[26|17:57] <msj> poicx of things that people liked
[26|17:57] <msj> a list of the class that half-got mdae and
then peterd out
[26|17:58] <msj> and from everything that jimbo said
[26|17:58] <msj> there kind of was no dictatorial hand on top
of our page
[26|17:58] <msj> you [jz] suggested things, but yo uhever
said, guys, you need to get on it..
[26|17:58] <msj> I wonder how this would have been different
if we'd had readl marching orders or a theme...
[26|17:58] <MykReeve> <is the link for this page accessible
from outside Harvard Law school? can someone post a link?
just being nosey>
[26|17:58] <msj> and does the incentive system
[26|17:58] <msj> that seems to make wp work
[26|17:58] <msj> [jz here]
[26|17:58] <msj> bulding reputation in a community...
[26|17:59] <msj> are these incentives that would work in our
case?
[26|17:59] <msj> [student]
[26|18:00] <msj> I wonder if it;s the same thing,
[26|18:00] <msj> [since the studnets are all sort of forced to
use the site]
[26|18:00] <msj> [jw]
[26|18:00] <msj> it turns out that
[26|18:00] * nsh has joined #wp-law
[26|18:00] <msj> I was talking to the head of a big
corporation the other day,
[26|18:00] * Rdsmith4 has joined #wp-law
[26|18:00] <msj> and they want to have a wiki
[26|18:00] <msj> for users of their suoftware to be able to
use a wiki
[26|18:01] <msj> to talk about the software and ...
[26|18:01] <msj> many people there at the time were in support
of [the idea]
[26|18:01] <msj> [jz]
[26|18:01] <msj> but the quesiton is whether people when they
go home would actually use it...
[26|18:01] <msj> [jw]
[26|18:01] <msj> wikis have been [big] since [at least] 1995...
[26|18:01] <msj> some of those original pioneres had said that
wikipedia is not a wiki, b/c we don'tdo everything in a wiki
way
[26|18:02] <msj> if you have a class wiki, and you just say
here it is, use ti for the class,
[26|18:02] <msj> everyone will use it in some koind of chaotic
way.
[26|18:02] <msj> but if the class assigniment were, we're
goign to produce some kind of document on the CDS.
[26|18:02] <msj> we'll produce a document on the cda to help
people from small webistes get their minds around this law;
[26|18:02] <msj> some peopl emight do a ton of work, others
would just pitch in a little bit, but you'd have a metric
for determining whether an edit furthers htis purpose or not.
[26|18:02] <msj> so whenr I talk to this company, it's rpetty
clear: they want to document their software.
[26|18:03] <msj> where I think it may not succeed is getting
people out in the wider world to use it.
[26|18:03] <msj> another thing, recently:
[26|18:03] <msj> Microsoft is adopting a wiki-like model for
Encarta.
[26|18:03] <msj> you can go to encarta, and on each article
you can see a link that says "edit this page"
[26|18:03] <msj> and then it looks a lot like wikipedia
[26|18:03] <msj> [demonstrating online]
[26|18:03] <msj> of course then you don't se your changes
right away...
[26|18:03] <msj> it gets vetted by someone else.
[26|18:04] <msj> and of course you don't have control ove
ryour changes.
[26|18:04] <msj> now, I think this is stupid.
[26|18:04] <msj> <laughter, applause>
[26|18:04] <msj> of course this is not npov
[26|18:04] <msj> I'm sort of biased.
[26|18:04] <msj> but I wrote about this on my blog;
[26|18:04] <msj> now people have a choice: they can either
work for free to make MS richer,
[26|18:04] <msj> or they can work for a public project [to
make the world richer]
[26|18:04] <msj> now, MS has hired people form the Washington
school for information science
[26|18:05] <msj> ... I 'm really eager to go and give a talk
there
[26|18:05] <msj> and [see what their goals are; if they'll
come work on wp :)]
[26|18:05] <msj> The thing about WP is,
[26|18:05] <msj> it's all under af ree license, if you don't
like the way we're running it, you can take all our content
and run your own.
[26|18:05] <msj> that gives people a lot of confidence
[26|18:05] <msj> .
[26|18:05] <msj> [jz]
[26|18:05] <msj> here's Lessig's Code site...
[26|18:05] <brettstil> jz: digital sweatshop <laughs>
[26|18:05] <msj> any thoughts on that (book)
[26|18:06] <msj> [digi sweatshop: re the Washington school
students]
[26|18:06] <msj> [jw]
[26|18:06] <msj> I haven't really looked at this:
[26|18:06] <msj> whether the edits/updatesw to his books are
supposed to be corrections of typos, etc;
[26|18:06] <msj> but a book like tihs is an editorial
statement of Lessig's views;
[26|18:06] <msj> [jz]
[26|18:06] <msj> it's supposed to be LPOV
[26|18:06] <msj> [jw]
[26|18:06] <msj> exactly. I't shard to see how people could
do this, but I tihnk it's a great experiment.
[26|18:06] <msj> [jz]
[26|18:06] <msj> I was going to say:
[26|18:06] <msj> Wikipedia, "the" free encyclopedia
[26|18:06] <msj> you must have thought a bit about the diff
between
[26|18:06] <msj> calling it "the" free encyclopedia and "a"
free encyclopedia
[26|18:06] <msj> [jw]
[26|18:07] <msj> well, somebody did... not me :)
[26|18:07] <msj> it's very interesting.
[26|18:07] <msj> [jz]
[26|18:07] <msj> have you thought about a non-fork separate
encyclopedia?
[26|18:07] <msj> [jw]
[26|18:07] <msj> that's very interesting; there are forks out
there; most of them not very successful. there is something
about..
[26|18:07] <msj> eric raymond wrote a great essay about
Homesteading the Noosphere
[26|18:07] <brettstil> <on screen: cc wiki license>
[26|18:07] <msj> there's one thing to say "you can fork" and
you can...
[26|18:07] <brettstil> <version 0.5 beta>
[26|18:07] <msj> but as long the leadership of the community
try to be asa ccomodating as they can,
[26|18:08] <msj> there's no reason to leave.
[26|18:08] <msj> in Germany for instance, there's a fork by
someone who's a... deletionist.
[26|18:08] <msj> we talk about deletionists and inclusionissts.
[26|18:08] <msj> should we have a nencyclopedia aout this
podium here?
[26|18:08] <msj> obviously now.
[26|18:08] <msj> should we have an article about something
like - kirkland something?
[26|18:08] <msj> [jz] kirkland house
[26|18:08] <msj> [jw] - apparently important raound here.
[26|18:08] <msj> the german form by uli -- I like uli, I tend
towards his point of view,
[26|18:09] <msj> he believes wp shouldn't have all these
articles about pokemon etc.
[26|18:09] <msj> will he be successful, I don't know.
[26|18:09] <sannse> <uwe?>
[26|18:09] <msj> b/c I suspect that most of his users are
comofrtable where we are.
[26|18:09] <Xirzon> <sannse: Ulrich Fuchs, www.wikiweise.de>
[26|18:09] <msj> but his stuff is under a free license
[26|18:09] <msj> so if he becomes really successful, we could
use [one another's] content.
[26|18:09] <msj> there's also [larry?] who thinks there will
be an academic fork
[26|18:09] <msj> I said, if somebody wants to organize
something like that,
[26|18:10] <msj> we've got the servers, we've got the support,
we've got the people
[26|18:10] <msj> if you want ot do that, let's talk aobut it!
we want to do a reviewed version, a stale version
[26|18:10] <Xirzon> <stable :-)>
[26|18:10] <msj> (:
[26|18:10] <msj> we want to do it in a way to develop a
respected community
[26|18:10] <msj> [zephyr teachout]
[26|18:10] <msj> about wikinews
[26|18:10] <msj> it looks like a lot of the content is
derivative.
[26|18:10] <msj> ?
[26|18:10] <msj> [jw]
[26|18:11] <msj> I don't conisder wikinews a fork
[26|18:11] <msj> b/c it 's a different community, a different
goal
[26|18:11] <msj> it might be something like a fork if it
started to draw contributors away from wp
[26|18:11] <msj> ... as the comunity gets larger, I wouldn't
think that it continues to have systemic bias issues
[26|18:12] <msj> (talking about how much romanian content
there is)
[26|18:12] <msj> (looking at American who owns BenedictXVI...)
[26|18:12] <msj> I think that alo tof the [curent] strength in
wikinews is synthesizing media reports
[26|18:12] <brettstil> <laughs> American who owns
BenedictXVI.com ...
[26|18:12] <msj> if you think of te front page of the paper
and the editorial page,
[26|18:12] <msj> wikinews is a response to the front page
[26|18:12] <msj> now we have an interest in original reporting
[26|18:12] <msj> that's a really tough social pro blem.
[26|18:13] <msj> in wp we have no original research...
[26|18:13] <msj> how do you certify people as being ttrugted
by the community?
[26|18:13] <msj> suppose you say, wp will be much more
successful than the AP, b/c we will have many more poeople
than they could possibly muste.r..
[26|18:13] <msj> but will we have more people who we *trust*?
[26|18:13] <msj> when wikinews was getting started, around the
ukraine crisis,
[26|18:14] <msj> we were wondering, can we get forntline
reports?
[26|18:14] <Rdsmith4> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title
=Alex_Rodriguez&curid=212472&diff=0&oldid=12811220 <-- E-Rod
or A-Rod?
[26|18:14] <msj> that's a problem. if we don't alkready know
someone in that world,
[26|18:14] <msj> ow do we know we're not ust hearing a
partisan POV?
[26|18:14] <msj> [belize ref]
[26|18:14] <Rdsmith4> oops wrong channel
[26|18:14] <msj> :)
[26|18:15] <brettstil> wikinews scooped with man on ground
[26|18:15] <brettstil> jz: who edits front page?
[26|18:15] <brettstil> jw: just wikinewsians
[26|18:15] <brettstil> question: competing with google news
like aggregator?
[26|18:15] <brettstil> jw: yes
[26|18:15] <brettstil> jz: but not just links, actual news on
wikinews
[26|18:16] <brettstil> jw: yes, want to synthesize
[26|18:16] <brettstil> diverse viewpoints fox news, cnn, al
jaze. etc
[26|18:16] <brettstil> jw: why are all laptops ibm?
[26|18:16] <brettstil> jz: no, just lemmings :)
[26|18:16] <brettstil> special deal with harvard
[26|18:17] <brettstil> jw: colin powell article very biased
either way
[26|18:17] <brettstil> but can sleep at night because article
will be there
[26|18:17] <brettstil> but article "colin powell resigns"
different
[26|18:17] * Rdsmith4 has left #wp-law
[26|18:17] <brettstil> problem, how do you get it right in
short period of time?
[26|18:18] <brettstil> <main page history>
[26|18:18] <brettstil> over representation of romania on front
page
[26|18:18] <brettstil> <laughs>
[26|18:18] <brettstil> jz: flights hardly news worthy
[26|18:18] <brettstil> jw: then get busy writing
[26|18:19] <brettstil> <response in talk page>
[26|18:19] <msj> if ilya makes an original report, we'll say
[26|18:19] <msj> yeah, we know ilya, so we can trust that
report
[26|18:19] <msj> that's very similar to what goes on in a news
org
[26|18:19] <msj> yo uhave a hiring process, you trust people,
you get to know them...
[26|18:19] <msj> <Q>
[26|18:19] <msj> would we ever accept advertising?
[26|18:19] <msj> <A>
[26|18:20] <msj> I'm opposed to having advertising in
wikipedia;
[26|18:20] <msj> there's something really sweet about wp the
way it is.
[26|18:20] <msj> but I wouldn't say that never under any
circumstances would we consider it.
[26|18:20] <msj> there's oging to be a time when the amount of
money we'd be turning down every month from sth like google
ads
[26|18:20] <msj> is so much that we have to consider how not
turning it down would affect our charitable goals.
[26|18:21] <msj> and how, by doing that, do we miss out on
large-scale grants or donations?
[26|18:21] <msj> that kind of opportunity mght be denied to
use if we became just another site with advertising.
[26|18:21] <msj> it's all in the non-profit foundation, so
nobody could make any money out of it...
[26|18:21] <msj> I suppose I could pay myself a salary, but so
what, if I need a job I could get a job.
[26|18:21] <msj> the only need is if there were enough money
there to do soemthing about our charitable goals.
[26|18:22] <msj> [so it's unlikely, but I'm not going to rule
it out entirely.]
[26|18:22] <msj> <Q>
[26|18:22] <msj> re: the proposed mediation, ja/zh disagreement
[26|18:22] <msj> would that mediation be part of WP or WN?
[26|18:22] <msj> jw: no, that was just... joi ito is a very
prominent internet guy, and a big blogger and so forth
[26|18:22] <msj> he was talking about the possibility of using
a wiki to have a conversation about what's going on there;
it wouldn't take place on our servers.
[26|18:22] <msj> some of that is proably going on on articles
related to... but
[26|18:22] <msj> <Q>
[26|18:22] <msj> would you ever ese WP or WN becoming a fourm
like this:
[26|18:23] <msj> wehre you have a comon story/thread wher
eparties that disagtree...
[26|18:23] <msj> [jw]
[26|18:23] <msj> to some extent that 's arleady happening, to
the extent that
[26|18:23] <msj> if you go to PW right now,
[26|18:23] <msj> I assume that we have an article in WP itself
about the recent riots in china,
[26|18:23] <msj> the anti-Ja protests
[26|18:23] <msj> on those pages, ther eare probably people of
diff viewpoints trying to get that story right.
[26|18:23] <msj> I do think it would be useful to have
special-purpose websites like that.
[26|18:23] <msj> during that last election campaign, there was
this quesitons about john k's miliatry servifce, medals, etc
[26|18:24] <msj> a lot of lames were going bakc and forth. the
wp article, I thought was pretty good
[26|18:24] <msj> but wouldn't it be intereswting to ge people
together from both sides to say,
[26|18:24] <msj> let's agree on [this central core thing]
[26|18:24] <msj> how possible is that?
[26|18:24] <msj> it all depends on how reasonable and friendly
people are, I think
[26|18:24] <msj> there's a lot of issues where ther are
reaosnable divergences of viewpoint
[26|18:24] <msj> wher epeopleshould be able to cooperate to
poresent a cetnral view of it.
[26|18:24] <msj> it would be a cool webiste, if it worked
out...
[26|18:24] <msj> I don't know how well it would work.
[26|18:24] <msj> [JZ]
[26|18:25] <brettstil> <on screen: dokdo page restricted from
editing>
[26|18:25] <msj> I just picked [[Dokdo]]
[26|18:25] <msj> a page about a hotly contested [set of?]
island[s] b/t ko: and ja: ...
[26|18:25] <msj> [jw]
[26|18:25] <msj> we have a few rules about this:
[26|18:25] <msj> if you're personally involved in an edit
dispute, you shouldn't protect the page.
[26|18:25] <msj> if you do, that's uncool.
[26|18:25] <msj> of course, to what extent does that really
help?
[26|18:25] <msj> but generally that's our policy.
[26|18:25] <msj> ...
[26|18:26] <msj> generally, one reason to protect a page is
that there are two sides tha have just gotten too angry...
[26|18:26] <msj> so the page is protected for people to calm
down.
[26|18:26] <msj> another is, sometimes there's just a lot of
vandalism.
[26|18:26] <kim_bruning> <we'll get a tidied version of this
presentation on the wiki later, right?>
[26|18:26] <msj> there was an article at some point about WP
during the elections
[26|18:27] <msj> saying that the edit war over gwbush et al
was tearing the community apart...
[26|18:27] <msj> but most editors didn't notice that.
[26|18:27] <msj> (see [[m:presentations]]? not really.)
[26|18:27] <msj> <Q> on this dokdo page,
[26|18:27] <msj> we're lookign at the en: versoin
[26|18:27] <msj> on the left hand side, you can see ja: and
other languages;
[26|18:27] <msj> can you talk a bit about what we would see if
you go to the other languages?
[26|18:27] <msj> [jw]
[26|18:27] <msj> unfortunately, I only read english.
[26|18:28] <msj> in general, I'm told the language diversity
is not so bad, and they are largely the same across
languages.
[26|18:28] <msj> there are instance,s I hear, of pages where
one article says the wright brothers invented the airpland,
and in french someone else is credited;
[26|18:28] <msj> it would be better if both articles said that
in english-speaking countries the wright brothers are
credited, and in french-speaking countries, someone else
is...
[26|18:29] <msj> this would be great, because then you would
learn something from each of these articles...
[26|18:29] <msj> most books like to present one side.
[26|18:30] <msj> [from earlier: "in the next version of the
software, there will be a feature to delay edits to certain
pages, by 30 seconds or 5 minutes to mitigate this kind of
rapid vandalism while letting people edit]
[26|18:30] <brettstil> jz: might not be npov on the japanese
version
[26|18:30] <brettstil> of dokdo
[26|18:31] <brettstil> jz: why didnt you use cc license?
[26|18:31] <brettstil> jw: answer, we pre date cc so it didn't
exist at the time
[26|18:31] <brettstil> gfdl assumes document written by two
people, cover text, etc
[26|18:31] <brettstil> thinking about a book clearly
[26|18:31] <brettstil> not a wiki on the web
[26|18:31] <brettstil> talked to fsf, etal
[26|18:31] <msj> I've talked to richard stallman, to everyone
on the board of the fsf.. in the futuer, my hope is that
[26|18:32] <msj> the FDL will be radically simplified.
[26|18:32] <msj> when I was comoing here (I just say lessig in
CA) I said, I'm going to talk to a bunch of law students
[26|18:32] <msj> what should I tell them to work on?
[26|18:32] <msj> he said: license incompatibility.
[26|18:32] <msj> the problem is, the FDL is exactly the same
spirit (as CC) yet if there's work under CC-SA you can't
just copy and paste into WP and vice-versa.
[26|18:32] <msj> they all say sth like "you can release this
work under 'the same terms as this license'" and there's no
easy ansewr to making these things compatible.
[26|18:33] <brettstil> problems coudl be solved be revising a
new release of the license
[26|18:33] <brettstil> but takes time
[26|18:33] <msj> I've never met [ward] and never talked to
him; we've exchanged 2 or 3 emails...
[26|18:34] <msj> he's been invited to our conference.. we're
having our first big international conference this summer.
[26|18:34] <msj> and sj is on the committee organizing the
conference this summer
[26|18:34] <msj> and he invited ward, and he said yes, and so
[I'm going to meet him]
[26|18:34] <msj> there's a famous quote from him from the very
beginning of wikipedia;
[26|18:34] <msj> and he said "oh,
[26|18:34] <msj> that's a great idea, but it will be still be
a wiki, not an ecnyclopeida"
[26|18:34] <msj> (I wonder if he still thinks that now)
[26|18:35] <msj> and wired mag had me up for a tech innovator
this year;
[26|18:35] <msj> and I laughed, b/c I don't innovate
anything; I just hang out on irc all the time
[26|18:35] <msj> [jz]
[26|18:35] <msj> do you still edit wp yourself?
[26|18:35] <msj> [jw]
[26|18:35] <msj> I never edited much at all. occasionally a
spelling ifx.
[26|18:35] <brettstil> wikipedia is not so much a technical
innovation as a social innovation
[26|18:35] <msj> in the early days of wikipedia, I thought it
was important that it not be viewed as 'jimbopedia'
[26|18:35] * Raul654 has joined #wp-law
[26|18:35] <msj> that it didn't reflect my political views.
[26|18:35] <msj> furthermore, once we got rolling
[26|18:36] <msj> and I played this role of monarhc of the
community, resp0lving these disputes,
[26|18:36] <msj> you can't resolve disputes when you're
involved [in them]
[26|18:36] <msj> I don't htink I'd be a very good editor
[26|18:36] <msj> I'm really too opinionated.
[26|18:36] <msj> [jz]
[26|18:36] <msj> so we come full circle..
[26|18:36] <msj> we started this course with a story about
ICANN
[26|18:36] <msj> about the first bits of gov't of the internet
itself
[26|18:36] <Raul654> is this video available in a less evil
format than real player?
[26|18:37] <brettstil> <on screen: jon postel on google images>
[26|18:37] <msj> ... if people didn't like it, they could have
done their onw protocols. but the laws he makes only make
sense in sofar as the wiki community wants to rally around
them.
[26|18:37] <msj> s/wiki//
[26|18:37] <msj> and so many of the themes have been echoed in
what jimmy has said today,
[26|18:37] <msj> something that reports to be a repositpry of
humankinds knowledge...
[26|18:37] <msj> it still remainds to be seeing where we are
going,
[26|18:38] <msj> but i hope it gives some flavor to the way
we're really beginning to turn the corner,
[26|18:38] <msj> and may really not have what we seem to have
now.
[26|18:38] <msj> what really matters ot me is:
[26|18:38] <msj> how sustainable these models of informality,
that explicitly rejet law and instead go for something else
--- an-archy, or sth much more webby if not entirely without
govt -- as its guiding principle
[26|18:38] <msj> and maybe, not under god or law, but under a
guy
[26|18:38] <msj> who we trust is going to do the right thing
[26|18:38] <msj> and seeing how much those models can last
[26|18:38] <msj> when they really hit the harsh glar eof
success
[26|18:39] <msj> and of lots of people wanting in who arelnt
part of this beautifully insular but still [open] community
[26|18:39] <msj> and it's one we have to look at in every weay
as our society
[26|18:39] <msj> generates and trades and consumes law
[26|18:39] <msj> copyright law; the ways people get incented
to do stuff,
[26|18:39] <msj> are or aren't challenged by models that are
really standing up
[26|18:39] <msj> like this one.
[26|18:39] <msj> .
[26|18:39] <msj> we're at time;
[26|18:39] <msj> I think right now, we should thank the people
online
[26|18:39] <msj> and especially thank jw
[26|18:40] <msj> for such an elucidationg and interesting
presentation.
[26|18:40] * cyberlawguy has quit IRC
[26|18:40] <MykReeve> go enjoy the food, msj... good typing,
thanks.
[26|18:40] <brettstil> sj: ja users says korean bias and vice
versa
[26|18:40] <kim_bruning> Thank you VERY VETRY VERY much msj!
[26|18:40] <brettstil> en pov is pro korean bias
[26|18:40] <kim_bruning> you're a hero!
[26|18:41] <ABCD> thx
[26|18:41] <kim_bruning> Now go put ointment on your poor
wrists and fingers! :-)
[26|18:41] <ABCD> thx msj
[26|18:41] <msj> no prob!
[26|18:41] <kim_bruning> in other news
[26|18:41] <msj> john mcbride is saying he's going to write a
report on everything
[26|18:41] <kim_bruning> we should get jimbo a PDA thingy with
WIFI support
[26|18:41] <kim_bruning> and have an irc prompter up for him
;-)
[26|18:41] <msj> on a side-poroject (wiki?)
stuff up for him ;0)
[26|18:42] <Angela> thanks sj. I was listening to it too, but
still useful to have the written version to look at when the
sound wasn't clear :)
End of #wp-law buffer Tue Apr 26 18:42 2005