Jimmy Wales speaking at the conference keynote, by GreenReaper, CC BY-SA 3.0

A few months ago, I had the pleasure of presenting at the first (hopefully annual) WikiConference New York, sponsored by the Wikimedia New York City chapter with assistance from Free Culture @ NYU and the Information Law Institute at NYU’s law school. I know that I am atrociously late in writing this post, but I’m not really writing it for the Wikipedians out there. Rather, the WikiConference was an interesting experiment that seemed to apply Wikipedia’s philosophy towards editing to a conference, resulting in what the organizers called a “modified unconference.”

I had never heard of unconferences before, but they are apparently growing increasingly common in tech/programming circles, especially as precursors or followups to traditional conferences. The idea is that in order to keep administratve costs low, you don’t really organize the conference into pre-determined panels, roundtables, and keynotes. Instead, you have a general theme, a good number of open rooms, and a good number of eager participants, who set the topics of individual sessions for themselves and move from room to room on a fluid, ad-hoc basis.  The only rule is the “rule of two feet” – if you don’t like what is going on in the room you are in, leave and find another one.

The conference organizers apparently decided that this was too anarchistic, and instead opted to have a limited number of traditional sessions.  I was on one of the structured sessions, presenting my research on bots and assisted editing tools on the “Quality and Governance” panel.  It was also decided that the “open space”  time was to be segmented into blocks of concurrent sessions.  There was going to be a specific agenda for each of the open space sessions, but they were to be determined at the conference, not before; in addition, the process was to be open to anyone who wanted to propose a session.  While it seemed like an odd way to run a conference (and a bit scary seeing blank space dominate the schedule), it worked incredibly well.

Open space board at WikiConference NYC, by me, CC BY-SA 3.0

We had use of five rooms of various sizes, and one of them was dedicated for refreshments and mingling.  Outside of the largest room (which was used for each day’s opening keynote), there were sheets of paper taped to the wall, creating a table for rooms and timeslots.  After the first day’s opening keynote, sheets of paper, tape, and markers were passed around, and anybody could write something down, tape it to the wall under a timeslot/room combination, and that would be part of the initial schedule.

Given that most of us had never participated in this before, there was a good amount of milling around in front of the schedule wall – five minutes in, nobody had put up a single topic for any timeslot.  Feeling compelled to ake some initiative, I asked someone who was going to be on my panel that afternoon how he felt about a topic on macro-level decision making.  Specifically, I was interested in the approval of flagged revisions – the controversial software feature that would require some edits be approved before going live.  He suggested that I make it broader, and simply write “How do we make decisions?”

The open space wall, by Cary Bass, CC BY-SA 2.5

That seemed like a better and broader topic, so I grabbed some paper and one of the markers, wrote it down in my chicken-scratch handwriting, and taped it to the wall under the first timeslot for the second-biggest room.  Shortly after, three other sheets came up, on quite diverse topics: notability standards, libraries and librarians in Wikipedia, and translation/foreign languages.  Some had even put up sheets for other time slots, touching on nineteen issues that touched on just about every topic in and around Wikipedia.

According to the conventions of open space, the person who put the topic up was expected to start the session on time, say a few words to frame the issue, and then wrap things up at the end.  As the session began, I did just that, telling the room that I had originally thought of this as a discussion about the decision-making around large scale issues like flagged revisions.  However, it is probably good that I was not the moderator, because the room quickly got off the topic of macro-level decision-making and moved into the micro.  We ended up talking extensively about the wide variety of decisions that are made every day – whether to keep or delete a potentially unnotable article, to make an editor into an administrator, and more.

NewYorkBrad asking a question, by Sage Ross, CC BY 3.0

While this was not what I originally envisioned for the session, I was glad that the format had allowed such a swift change.  Had I been delegated to craft a speech, panel, discussion, or roundtable in a traditional conference, I probably would have taken it into a direction that most people did not want to go – of the twenty-something open sessions in the two days, nobody proposed a session on flagged revisions.  Unconferences are supposed to be directed by and for the benefit of the participants, and this was certainly the case.  In any case, the discussion on decision-making went rather well, although a moderator did end up emerging because our session ended up being one of the most popular open sessions, filling up the 75-person classroom.

Yet like in Wikipedia, the unconference didn’t simply devolve into a mass populist mob, reaching for the lowest common denominator.  The fact that we had multiple rooms, a couple of them small conference rooms, meant that less popular topics got their fair share of space.  One open session that I found interesting was on systemic bias – the fact that Wikipedia tends to implicitly favor certain topics, styles, or stances because of the demographic makeup of its contributors.  This tends to not be that popular of a topic, and only a handful of us showed up to discuss this (in my opinion) quite important issue.  However, this resulted in a very thought-provoking discussion among the five of us – that’s about three percent of the conference – who felt a need to identify, theorize, and fix Wikipedia’s systemic biases.

Open session: editing an article for the Wikipedia Signpost

Taken by GreenReaper, CC BY-SA 3.0

Another strength of the open unconference is its radical flexibility.  On the second day, the question/answer session in opening keynote speech turned into a strong debate among a few of the participants.  Because this stops others from asking questions, the typical move at conferences is to stop the debate and pledge to continue it later.  I’ve seen it happen at many conferences, but due to the rigid structure of most conferences, the continuing discussion rarely happens.  Yet in this case, the keynote speech was to be followed by open space sessions.  Realizing that there was an empty slot avaliable in one of the small rooms, the debate that emerged in the keynote Q/A was instantly given its own session.

We also had sets of lightning talks, which were presented in a keynote style.  For those of you who don’t know, lighting talks are short 3-7 minute presentations that anyone can give on the fly.  While lightning talks are held in many conferences I have been to, they tend to be pushed to the background.  Like poster sessions, lightning talks usually take place during established break periods (like lunch), or during other sessions.  This means that the only people who view them are other lightning talkers.  In our case, the lightning talks were after the lunch hour and when no other sessions were being held.  This way, I feel that the presenters got a much broader audience.

Andrew Gradman giving a lightning talk, by Sage Ross, CC BY-SA 3.0

In all, I think that the open unconference was a great success.  However, I don’t think that the “open space” model is adequate on its own – which is why I was glad that there were a limited number of keynotes and pre-arranged panels.  I was on one of the panels (discussing “Quality and Governance”), and got to give a standard 15 minute structured conference presentation, as did my fellow panelists.  I feel that that format is valuble, because I don’t think my research findings on bots and assisted editing tools (or any research findings, for that matter) could have been presented in an open space session or a lightning talk.  The two kinds of sessions are meant to facilitate two different kinds of activities: structured panels and keynotes frame discussions, while the open spaces let participants take it in any way they desire.  For example, I was very excited when the last open session of the conference turned into a user-driven showcase of assisted editing tools – completely unprovoked by myself, I promise.  Another session (one of my favorite) was a workshop in which all the participants worked collectively on writing a news article about the conference for Wikipedia’s community newspaper, the Wikipedia Signpost.

I’m not sure if these kinds of activities would have happened at a more traditional conference – and if they did, they would have probably required a lot more planning. One thing is certain though: the cost of the conference, which was the main reason for the unconference movement, was practically nil. It was completely run by volunteers, and only expenses were refreshments and food.

Director of the Library of Alexandria, Dr. Ismail Serageldin gave a keynote speech on the first day of Wikimania 2008 titled, New Paradigms for New Tomorrows.  It was quite thoughtful and inspiring – the man is one of the most amazing individuals I have heard.  He is learned in so many different areas of academic and cultural knowledge, as well as incredibly wise.  I would recommend watching the video of his speech, but if you are pressed for time you can read my notes.

This talk is more somber, as we must mention challenges. The theme for this conference is “changing the shape of wisdom” – yes, that is true, very, very true.

Problems and promises

Globalization – nation-states are becoming less important, people are moving together and faster. It generating great wealth and leaving people behind. Globalization is not seen as beneficial by some, people who feel they are being crushed by interests outside of their control. Population growth is increasingly putting pressure on natural resources. Access to fundamental rights – food, shelter, safety, education – are being denied. Young people are pressing for education, employment. Societal progression – it has happened, among women especially. But there is more to be done. Wars, terrorism, refugees, rebellions, child soldiers – why do we have them now?

What does it cost of equip a soldier vs. a classroom? Books or bombs? That is the question. Napoleon Bonaparte said, “In the long run the sword is always beaten by the spirit” He proved that quote, as his victory was wiped away, his legacy was his system of governance, of education-based government bureaucracy, civil codes, etc.

We need peace – we cannot continue to wage war. We have universal declaration of human rights. In Article 19, everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression to seek, receive information from a multiplicity of sources.

Freedom of expression

We must re-affirm the polity of humans that share those ideals. Books will stay. Book banning: censorship contravenes human rights. Information cannot be denied – like standing before a tidal wave. Social pressure is a form of censorship – freedom of expression must be protected.

Freedom of access

Print can sometimes be out of reach – not just out of print but too pricey. “We can provide all information to all people at all times” – our motto at the Library. Free flow of information is important. We’ve had a shortage of books – now with the Internet we have too much information. Like going from a drought to fire hose. We need it just right – not just for children of the rich, but children of the poor.

Sometimes copyright issues can put things out of reach. 70% of works are in copyright and out of print. But copyright is in Universal Declaration of human rights too. My credo: all information to all people at all times. Innovators and authors must benefit, but public must have broad access.

What the BA is doing

Massive amount of archiving about Egypt – ancient documents, modern Egypt documents. Digitizing 5k books / month. Creating a Supercourse for free education of all kinds throughout Egypt. Development gateway – websites of NGOs available in their local language. We want to partner with open source efforts.

The future looks great in terms of technology. The future in terms of society is another story.

In defense of values

We talk about the knowledge-based society, but we must remember that knowledge is more than information. Data -> information -> knowledge -> wisdom. Wise decisions made are different than knowledgeable decisions. No scientific answer to the normative. Knowledge requires we rethink values. Values of science: Truth, honor, creativity and imagination, constructive subversiveness – advance by overthrowing the old, tolerance of engagement, and arbitration of disputes based on rationality, evidence, and discussion.

Requires participation – wiki community has shown this. Power of the civil society forces government to be responsible and capable. Putnam – Making Democracy Work. Civil society thrives on information flows.

Parable of story of the flute and children – adjudicate who gets the flute:

1. I am poor, others are rich – equity
2. I can play the flute, others cannot – utility
3. I made the flute myself – entitlement

No scientific answer to this question.

In defense of youth

Newton, Einstein, Heisenberg, Watson, Turing – they were all young.

To change the shape of wisdom we have to trust our youth, dare to dream, we can do things different. There are forces of Arab society against us, but we can win. Look at Antarctica – a whole continent kept for a bunch of penguins and science, free of econ interests and military bases. Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement, and now Obama is a nominee for President.

It is not impossible to provide all information to all people at all times!

Wikiversity does not limit to a university style education – primary, secondary, and post-secondary education. It also does not offer degrees, no certificates, no titles.

Launched in August 2006. Scope: learning materials, activities, and communities. Major questions still to be addressed: What is learning the wiki way? How is it distinguished from other WMF projects?

Aspects of Wikiversity different from Wikipedia: It includes original research, and that is what I will be talking about. We have flexibility in NPOV. We setup Wikiversity to work out what it means to learn in the Wiki way. We want to say something to the wider world of education.

What is research in the wiki way? Several challenges: editing data – should this be allowed? Should Wikversity host any kind of research, like Nazism? Creationism? We all have our own worldviews, epistemologies, philosophies and Wikiversity challenges them.

Current research: Bloom Clock – Distributed data about what is currently in flower. People add logs to individual plants pages. Also provides a learning community on identifying plants.

Action research based on understanding a context through changing it. Usually collaborative and iterative. This project is about defining and developing Wikiversity. However, it is problematic to define as distinct from what happens anyway on Wikiversity. A Review Board might be in order, but it is possibly in tension with community processes.

The Wikimedia foundation installation is huge:

• 10,000,000,000 views per month
• 50,000 http objects/sec
• Hardware budget: $1.5 million
• Bandwidth costs: 25k/months
• Physical hosting: $10k/month
• X86_64 software, ubuntu with customized packages, RAMdisks

MediaWiki basic goals: allow open, collaborative editing of a large encyclopedia; also be easy to setup for smaller installations. It runs on LAMP, or LAMP on steroids (Squid, Memcached, many other optimizations). Wikipedia used to crash all the time, but it doesn’t now. We can focus on long term.

Recently: we got login unification working. [to thunderous applause], got flagged revisions in open beta [to no applause]. We are working on better mobile support. We’ve been improving localization.

What not to expect next year: flying cars, WYSIWYG (but you may get better template and table tools), peer-to-peer Wikipedia

What to expect: more tech staff, better operations (data center updates and expansions), dumps and backup capacity), and software.

In the software:

• Revision deletion: there is some version of a page we want to delete, but we don’t want to delete other revisions. We have oversight, but that is a hack. Hacks are bad.
• Vandalism and abuse: Globally block an IP address across all WMF projects
• Extension:AbuseFilter – automatic abuse filter for admins
• Threads and comment system
• Wikimedia Commons – especially uploading – will be updated so that “actual humans can use it.”  AfD on commons is “pretty scary” – sometimes I can’t find out why my file has been deleted, and if I can’t find it, well…

Scientific papers that have been written about Wikipedia are interesting, and there are many things to do with quantitative or statistical analysis. I however want to take a Sociological approach and ask: how does Wikipedia organize its members into the project?

Real Utopia is a concept from Eric Wright, a professor of Sociology at Wisconsin-Madison. It puts into place very idealistic places. It is an egalitarianism of many kinds, radical direct participatory democracy, where all are given the conditions necessary to ensure human flourishing. Two real utopias. 1: Participatory budgeting in Porto Alegre, Brazil. They created a system of dual power between residents and municipal assembly. 2: British Citizen’s Assembly: 160 randomly selected individuals charged with creating an electoral system.

Real utopian aspects of Wikipedia: Full and open participation, pragmatic orientation, direct and deliberative, consensus formation, alternative dispute resolution, devolution, non-hierarchical, democratic.

Future challenges: every new, innovative, and exciting project faces challenges when it begins to become bureaucratized and institutionalized. Successful institutions must be highly responsive to their members, that is, democratic. Wales remains an authority of last resort. Should the Wikimedia foundation institute a system of dual power? A volunteer assembly has already been suggested.
Perhaps a randomly selected Wikipedian Assembly, a jury picked from members of the community to resolve disputes? Who owns Wikipedia? We discussed in the Board Panel about selling a project. WMF owns all the technology, but content production – who owns that? The community does.

Question: Are you aware of What Wikipedia is Not:Democracy? Yes, and that is wrong. Consensus is democracy – it is implied.

My only real problem with Edo’s presentation was his answer to the question about WWIN:Democracy, a longstanding policy that is widely characterized as “Wikipedia is not a democracy.”  If that was what the policy said, I would have entirely agreed with Edo – consensus is effectively a democratic form of governance, when all members of a political community are taken into account when determining consensus.  However, this is not what it says.  The policy (taken from an emphatic posting on the Wikipedia mailing list by Jimmy Wales in 2005) says: “Wikipedia is not an experiment in democracy or any other political system.”

This is an entirely different idea, one with a good amount of nuance.  Wikipedia obviously contains many elements of a democracy, but democracy is not what Wikipedia is primarily about.  To rephrase: Wikipedia primarily is a project to create an encyclopedia that will give everyone the sum total of human knowledge in their own language, not primarily a project to adhere to the principles of democracy.  Now, many people will say that democracy is what makes such a project possible, and I will heartily agree.  However, changing how Wikipedia is run must be justified not in terms of democracy, but encyclopedia building.  That is, democracy in Wikipedia is not an end in itself, only a means to building an encyclopedia.

With this in mind, I feel that Edo’s presentation is flawed insofar as it couches policy suggestions in a language foreign to Wikipedia.  However, I must admit I do that too: my senior thesis on Wikipedia’s legal structure concluded that Wikipedian law (whatever that was) contained traces of Continental Law and Common Law in its legal systems, which created conflict and need to be reconsiled.  Talk about a case of wikilawyering.  Every time I feel like busting out Michel Foucault and writing on Wikipedia in that manner, I must remind myself that Wikipedia does not exist to decenter the liberal-democratic humanist subject or problematize existing knowledge/power regimes.  Yes, it might very well do that, but I am wary of anyone who uses any particular theory to claim not what Wikipedia is, but what Wikipedia should be.

When looking over his paper, I feel that he is more interested in “exporting” Wikipedia’s model to other forms than importing the concept of a real utopia into Wikipedia.  I commend him for that.  I also appreciate his call for a “social history of Wikipedia” – a project that I will be undertaking in my thesis next academic year.

I was told “Don’t break the community,” but I’ve never seen an E.D. with less power. I can’t break it even if I wanted. But why would I take a job doing this if I wanted. But that comment shows that the community cares and is passionate.
Things we did last year: Single User Login, Flagged revisions.
What we are doing: We are launching a global survey next month. We want to work with usability issues. We want to get the staff and the volunteer community together. Launching some kind of mini grants program, have earmarked money for volunteer development – bits of money to help people get stuff done. Also, more outreach into the Arabic speaking world.

Jimbo:
It has been a long journey to get where we are today. Good thing to reflect on the growth of the project and challenges we face as we move forward. I’m going to speak more about the community. I remember when I, Florence, and Angela met in Paris. We want community control of the organization through our philosophy of decision-making. The difference between us and dot-coms is that if you talk to someone at Ebay about their community, their community is out there distinct from the organization.
We’ve been through a lot – an enormous growth. It misleads a lot of people in the community and in the public. The site and the community work really well. People think there is more organization than there is. But we know it is decentralized. It is not chaos, it is just confusing.
As we grow, our community will be more diverse. There was a time when most Wikipedians were in Europe, U.S., and Japan. Not so today. We are seeing those communities struggle with the same issues we had. We need to be international – think about other people in other Wikipedia languages. It is the people who attend Wikimania who can best reach out to other people in other communities.
I am very excited about the future of this organization. We need to remember Florence and what she did. People ask if the community is sustainable. The issue is not sustainability. It is sustainability with our values intact.

Florence
In Frankfurt, there was a sign that said “Edit this conference.” I am not going to do that. I would like to thank the volunteers. I am glad to see so many women here. I ask for transparency, bottom-to-top decision-making, but we all know about that. But I am super pleased to see all the people here in Egypt. I’ve heard from many people who just heard about Wikipedia. The next day, they told me they went home and did it. I suggest having a set of computers there where people can try out Wikipedia, a Wikipedia academy.

Michael
You can edit this conference – we did it several times. That is why we had to keep handing out new copies of the schedule each day. We should keep that flexible spirit as part of Wikimania. That spirit is what has made Wikimania so great. But it is also because of our professionalization and organization. As well as the wonderful facility, and I thank the library.

Ismail Serageldin, Director of the BA
You are the architects of a global revolution where access to know is a fund right, and sharing knowledge is a fundamental duty. Changing the meaning of liberty, freedom, creativity. You are changing the shape of wisdom. Go forth and fashion the wise constraints that make people free. The Wikimedia Foundation has certainly found a magic formula for that freedom. The strength of this organization is not one to be doubted. It rests on the consent and participation of those who make up that community. On behalf of the Arab world, thank you for coming here and underlying the challenge that we face. We hope that the Arabic language Wikipedia explodes in size. I am moved by the nobility of your spirit, by the unsullied idealism, the quality of your education, nature of your hope, and soaring ambition of our dreams. You are the hope of the future. Count us, each and every one, as members of this community. And may it grow. I wish you Godspeed and great happiness. Stay the course, live the dream, be the change. We will continue to follow in that path to include the excluded, give hope to the forlorn and remember the forgotten.

Michael and Sue
Thanks to our sponsors: wikiHow and the open society institute – they are committed to supporting Wikipedia long term. Our benefactors are: Cisco, Kaltura, Sun, HP Middle East, Microsoft for Egypt, RAA, Intel Egypt, Advanced Computer Technology. Friends: Onkosh. Supporters: Wikia Entertainment, Wikia Gaming, and E-space. Looking forward to Wikimania 2009 in Buenos Aires, let me invite the organizers up.

Head Organizer for Wikimania 2009
I want to thank Mido and the Egyptian Team. I want to congratulate all of you. We have started working since March, and we are very happy for this. Spanish language use of the Internet is growing at the same rate as Chinese. Spanish Wikipedia is 9th in terms of articles and 2nd in terms of views. We hope Wikimania 2009 will promote this, as well as Portuguese as Brazil is nearby. It will include participation from all over the world: Europe, North America, Asia, now Africa, and next year South America. This builds a community. The location is the Cultural Center, the most important cultural center in Argentina, in the heart of Buenos Aires. A new multimedia center is being built and the first event is Wikimania 2009. To those who want to host 2010, I encourage you to submit a bid. Muchos gracias. And thanks to Fajro for giving me this link: we then saw a video from Wikimedia Argentina about the venue and the locale – it looks amazing.

Hoda Baraka
Thank a lot of people who worked really hard: the program committee. Lodeveik and Yakov. It was a collaborative process: Library of Alexandria, Egypt Volunteer Committee, the Program Committee, and the Wikimedia Foundation. 645 participants from 45 countries, thank all the volunteers. Thank tech support. Thank everyone.

All the volunteers were called on stage – there were a massive amount of local volunteers here, and they were all so helpful.

Michael
My first official act as chair: I want to thank all of you and declare this conference officially closed. Let us give an ovation for everyone!

Anyways, enough of my cheerleading.  Here follows my notes from his talk:

Everyone meant something different by stable versions, so we called it flagged revisions. This gives reader feedback on the quality of the articles. Currently, you can make users by default see the most recent flagged revision of an article. It enforces the four-eye principle.

Development of Stable Versions (which is not Flagged Revisions): It is the idea that the article is finished. The concept is in printed encyclopedias and Nupedia. Ideas formed early on Meta.  It was discussed since the beginning. Magnus Manski wrote a tool to rate articles – FA, Good, A, B, Start, Stub. We now have patrolled edits, active on Wikipedia.

In June 2006, we started. We asked Jimbo: “What’s up with stable versions?” Jimbo said: “You’re right, let’s just do it.” We agreed on basic parameters: 1. No voting and 2. Keep it simple. He asked the board if they would object. They said they wouldn’t. We hired a contractor to implement stable versions. Erik Moeller had become a board member and quality was one of his topics. We found Jorg Baach, he did the coding. It was put on the SVN under flagged revisions, which stuck. Wikimedia France gave 1,000 euro – the first international wiki feature collaboration. People started working on it – mailing list wikiquality. Open beta in Feb 2008. Found bugs. Now it is stable and on the German Wikipedia.

People flag and edit or they don’t. You don’t vote on it, you just make sure the people who flag are trustworthy. One flag is enough to get it approved.

Ongoing problems:
• Too few developers
• No process for giving useful input
• Developers not present in content creation
• Not enough competence in design/usability
• Not enough leadership structure in local projects

Flagged Revisions
Two flags: sighed and quality. Editors can flag something as sighed, reviewers can flag as quality. If desired, IPs see by default the last sighted version instead of the current version. Can do it per wiki or per page. Templates and Images are in this. If you flag an article, the stable revision incorporates the template and images as they were then. If an IP changes a template, that change will not be visible until someone flags the template. How to incorporate comments in this system? We were told not to think about it.

Sighed Versions: These are versions that are checked by an editor for vandalism. Basic trust – automatic procedure for granting rights, and any admin can give it. Misconception is that they are only about vandalism. They are about forcing the four-eye principle. An edit has to be checked. You guarantee a basic quality for readers: someone trustable looked at it. Any edit that is done is logged in the system. If an IP corrects a spelling a mistake, hordes of vandal fighters will look at it now, but all that needs to look at it is one trusted vandal fighter. Now, people concentrate on IPs, but what if you just created an account? They won’t have the sighted privilege.

You can use a box to check the article. Can search for pages without any sighted version, or pages where newer unsighted revisions are waiting. You see the results of your change, but if you come back an hour later, you will see the sighted version. Other people will see the sighted version. The vandal sees the results of his vandalism, but no one else will. Other people will see that there are new unsighted versions and can see them, but will not see it on the main article. With Magnus’s tool, you can get intersections with categories. These are all the unsighted edits waiting in mathematics. It would take me half an hour to look through all the math unsighted revisions.

Lih: In IRC, someone mentioned that the adminship process is radically different now. The community has morphed to the point where knowledge about policy equals knowledge about the community. You must prove through questionnaires and creeds that you are committed.

Matthews: Adminship recruits several people a week by sufficient community approval. People have their own criteria, their view of what they want in an administrator. It is the training they would proscribe. The English Wikipedia is middle aged, many things are well defined. We can’t really change it. Of the 1500 admins, how many are bad and abusive? About 1% – not a bad record. There are a lot of good people on Wikipedia who are not admins. Fine, they are creating content. It seems to be an issue of recognizing the best contributors instead of seeing the best leaders. We have a celebrity system for articles – this is how it should be. But we don’t have a good recognition system. The best people don’t need to bash vandals, and that is all admins have.

Forrester: I disagree entirely. I joined a long time ago. The process for me getting adminship was lax – I had been around for a few months. I commentated on the main page. You don’t need, but the arbitrary number of edits is 1,000 or 3,000 or 29,000 edits. We dropped the ball – we let people in the higher rank of the community even though it never meant to be that because they were trusted. The community started appointing admins who didn’t share the same core values. The community has become a lot more top down, more instructionalist and less friendly. You can’t even change policy if you’re a new admin. By saying that being an admin is not a big deal, then saying that certain people aren’t allowed to be it, you’ve got a huge problem. Then as we move to the trials, the badge of honor, I’ve gone through this process and it means something, it is much harder to become an administrator. They feel that they have special status.

Walsh: People who don’t know about internal processes ask, “Who runs the site? Who are the editors?” Answer is, “Everyone!” but that is not helpful. Then tell them about administrators, and they ask who appoints them. Well, the community does. When I got involved in 2004, adminship was becoming a big deal. People were asking how. Now you have to have been on the site on the year, make 6,000 to 10,000 edits. Have to have edited in the Portal namespace which didn’t exist until 2005. That is very troubling. Are admins becoming a higher rank? How inevitable is it that it is?  Back then, we had consensus, people knew each other. Now we have compartmentalization, without cooperation. Featured article patrol, vandalism patrol, and never the twain shall meet.

Lih: Durova’s fourth law: small organizations run on relationships. Policies continue to grow until the policies no longer work, at which point the policies remain in place while the organization reverts to running on relationships.

Walsh: It would take a force of nature to change RfA – see flagged revision controversy.

Forrester: Flagged revisions remove the life of vandal fighters. Philipp Birken is having a lot of trouble with it.

Matthews: Vandalism has never been the major problem, as we know how to fight it. Policy innovation is hard.

Walsh: Policies began as a way to integrate newcomers. Not to be a complex beast that you have to master, learn all the acronyms and intricacies.

Lih: For an outsider, of course there should be high standards to being an admin. But for folks who joined at the beginning, with Ignore All Rules, Be Bold, no hard rules that will get you banned – the culture has changed. Editors get more experience but they have never been exposed to anything as insulting as adminship. Nupedia failed because it felt like homework. We may be approaching this.

Matthews: These are problems of scale that have not been encountered. We talk about this from a pioneer point of view. We’re on our own. We are receptive to new ideas, but if we bring in another model, we will ask why you think it will work. I don’t know what to compare us to. I would agree with Durova with the exception that instead of running on relationships say it runs on politics. These are problems of success. If things were not couched in terms of “it were better six years ago” it would be much better.

Forrester: How can a Wiki council be formed when even English Wikipedia can’t decide what to do with various issues?

[Did not write who said this]: People who are new to the community need to know how we came about. Three areas of interest: policy (what it is, where it comes from, how it changes), privileged users (how this does and does not conflict with Wikipedia), and innovation (where next, changes that have happened).

The changing world: Globalization is the opening of the world to become one large society.  You still have nations, people fighting, but at another level, at the economic level, the world is becoming more and more open.  This is obviously due to the Internet.  It is more and more possible for people to communicate and exchange ideas, businesses, values, and so forth.  This has created many opportunities, including in the Middle East.  The IT industry is saturated in terms of growth.  The traditional IT industry is now mature, and growth has slowed compared to 10 to 20 years ago.  The focus of the world is on the emerging developing markets, known as growth markets.  This affects products and the type of education available.Innovation is becoming a very important part of this.  Globalization is not entirely about moving production to cheaper places.  Number one is about the right skill markets for the right job.

Evolution: Moved from National to International to Multinational.  Now “Globally Integrated Enterprise.” From “complete” to “specialized” and “value-focused.” A person can be a corporation all by themselves.  Businesses are based on differentiating themselves from others.  From concepts to optimizations to integration to commoditization/standardization.  From hardware to software and now to services.  From theoretical to experimental. From components to systems to applications. From technology focus to application focus, invention to innovation.  We are moving towards standards.  Open technology standards, trade regulations.

What could you do with a million person product development lab, or a billion person workforce?  The worldwide demand for young professional engineers can be entirely filled right now with people from India, China, Malaysia, Philippines, and Brazil, and other Latin American Countries.   They have the suitable labor pool for this, and they are the cheapest.  What about all the other young professional engineers in the world?

There continues to be a vigorous societal debate over globalization.   Many critiques: winner-takes-all, externalities, offshoring, diminishing autonomy of the nation-states.  There is a fading concept of a national economy.  Does it exist anymore?  Every nation is made up of firms that get services from others and serve others.  Many components of an economy, but not all: no tax cuts, no gov’t spending, no interest rate regulation.  But there is: corruption, infrastructure development, education.  Does a student in Sweden need the same education as one in Egypt? Probably not.  The economy in Sweden is different than the economy in Egypt.  International standards for education are therefore not productive.

What is the impact on jobs and education?  It is the Me, Inc. concept: I can be a corporation.  There is a need for global delivery systems, on and offline.  You need a different culture for us as a global society to integrate systems together.  We still speak different languages – should everyone speak English?  Do we need more than translations of words – translations of meanings, of norms?

CEOs said they must achieve: revenue growth, cost reduction, asset utilization, risk management.  They think they need to innovate business models, operations, and products/services.    But even if you improve your products, you won’t be that different than your competitor.  Biggest innovation is in the business model, not in the product or service.  New ideas come from R&D, right? No, largest contributors are employees in general, not just R&D.  2nd is business partners.  3rd is your customers.  You have to be open. R&D no longer is the citadel of innovation.

IBM: The global innovation outlook.  We opened the process to our best partners and customers.  Asked them what they think the future looks like.  In 2004, Healthcare, Government, and Work/Life.  Resulting initiative: records, IP reform, global skills forecasting. 2005-6: developing markets, future of the enterprise, transportation, environment, and energy. 2007: media, security and society, and Africa. About to start the 2008 process.

• Media and Content:  Is piracy good or bad? Very good question.  Rethinking content creation and distribution in the digital realm.  Ticket sales are not driving movie production revenues.  We don’t go out to watch movies anymore.  We watch it anywhere.  And what is a movie?  What is entertainment?  Is it two hours or thirty minutes?  Or can it be two minutes or thirty seconds?  Youtube proves it is changing: 100 million clips viewed daily.
• Security and Society: Viruses cost $55 billion in 2003, in 2008 it is much more.  Mobile devices are becoming important.
• Africa: Fastest population in the world.  1/3rd of all births are in Africa.  43% are under 15 years old.  Trade between Africa and China is growing at 40% per year.

The past: Innovation will dry up without patent protection.  IP should be private and secret.  Now: IP protection can kill innovation.  Some shared, some proprietary, and some public domain.  We can tap the larger pool of innovators that don’t work for you.
Service economy: 2/3rds of GDPs globally are from services.  How does that affect us?  We have people who specialize in: science/technology, people/culture, and business/economics.  You need interdisciplinary education for the service economy.  It is how much you know about other areas that help.

Middle East: Everyone knows it is a growth market.   The numbers are not phenomenal compared to U.S., Japan, etc, but it is growing.  It is a microcosm of the world.  You have wealthy and poor regions.  Some have more people, more skills than others.  The Middle East should help each other out through outsourcing.  Yet the Middle East can help out the world – global companies are opening up shop here, offshoring to the Middle East.  No one is going to do business in a place just because it is cheap.  You must find where your product can be made, then look at cost.  Is offshoring the key to national prosperity?  Not necessarily.  It will change a few, but not the whole country.  Need a holistic approach.

Case study: What is special here in the Middle East and Egypt? Culture and tradition.  Combining IT and culture is an interesting challenge.  Use new technologies to showcase Egyptian culture.  Use content of Egyptian culture as the core of the system.  Base the product around this.  Websites, digital guides for museums, courseware, kiosks, and mobile phone resources.  This called for a platform independent content management system.  http://www.eternalegypt.org is the site.  It creates relationships between sites, people, objects, etc.  Museums can remember which items you visit and you can go on the website, kiosk, mobile phone again and get information.
What is IBM doing in Egypt?  From Egypt, serving customers in all continents.  Have over 500 multilingual software developers.  Research into language technologies.

We are very proud that Egypt is hosting this conference. There are many young people in Egypt – our biggest asset. Now, is it education that leads to innovation and technology, or that technology leads to better education? This is an Egyptian debate we are having. Is technology in schools just a luxury?

The education framework: Environment, administration, tools, curricula, assessments, certifications, teachers, parents, and students.  All must be ready and improved.

Evolution of education: pre-industry -> industry -> internet -> web 2.0
Pre-industry:

• One to one tutoring
• Reciting, dictating, memorizing
• Learning the basics of grammar, math

Industry

• Small group of different ages
• Single teacher for all subjects
• Chalkboard, books
• Reading, writing, arithmetic
• Radio and TV broadcasting – reaches more numbers
• Acquiring knowledge, internalization of ideas, personal assessment,

Internet

• Modern school
• Multiple teachers for multiple subjects
• e-books, modern classroom
• Multiple sources of knowledge
• Hands-on experience
• Parent engaged, can follow child’s progress on website

Web 2.0

• Global school
• Collaborating, innovating, presuming
• Blogging, social networking, wiki,
• “Breaking the monopoly of the teachers”

Tv and radio education was promoted in Egypt – many recipients, all subjects, regulated by ministry of education with certification programs.  In Egypt: 40,000 schools, 16 million students, 1.2 million teachers, Ministry of Education management

Components of Internet-ready school:

• Physical spaces: Computer labs, administration, modern classroom, library
• Applications: portals, software
• Teacher training

In 2002, MoE wanted over grade 7 to have ICT in schools.
In 2008: 35 million mobile users, 2200 IT clubs, 9.5 million broadband users, PC for all imitative, Arabic eContent imitative – increase Arab content on the internet

Egyptian Educational Initiative: Cisco, Intel, Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, and more: “government wins, private side wins, and society wins”
Wiki Paradigm: Peering, sharing, mass collaboration, innovation, user-generated content, co-creation, prosumers, acting globally, openness.  Not about a school in Alexandria, but a global school. Not content coming from the Ministry of Education. Are teachers, institutions, business, children, even parents ready? I think children are most ready, but parents need to be ready. There is a massive gap between parents/children.

Education 2.0? Egyptian proverb: The teacher is more like a prophet. Is this still valid? End of unified national curricula? New model for student assessment? What is the teacher under education 2.0 and 3.0? What is quality in education 3.0? Would education 2.0 be our salvation from stagnation? Our gateway to innovation?  Finally, important challenges to remember: internet safety, cyber security.