The Berkman Center just came out with a report on the public
discussions surrounding the SOPA-PIPA actions; drawing on the Media
Cloud work by Yochai Benkler and others.
It provides context for the discussions on the English Wikipedia, and
captures the differences between the grassroots and top-down decisions
by different organizations and media channels who took part in the
blackout.
An interactive time-visual shows how the conversation was driven at
different times by different communities:
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/research/mediacloud/2013/mapping_sopa_pipa/#
SJ
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Publication Release: July 25
Social Mobilization and the Networked Public Sphere: Mapping the
SOPA-PIPA Debate
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
The Berkman Center for Internet & Society is pleased to announce the
release of a new publication from the Media Cloud project, Social
Mobilization and the Networked Public Sphere: Mapping the SOPA-PIPA
Debate, authored by Yochai Benkler, Hal Roberts, Rob Faris, Alicia
Solow-Niederman, and Bruce Etling.
Social Mobilization and the Networked Public Sphere: Mapping the
SOPA-PIPA Debate
>From the abstract: In this paper, we use a new set of online research
tools to develop a detailed study of the public debate over proposed
legislation in the United States that was designed to give prosecutors
and copyright holders new tools to pursue suspected online copyright
violations. Our study applies a mixed-methods approach by combining
text and link analysis with human coding and informal interviews to
map the evolution of the controversy over time and to analyze the
mobilization, roles, and interactions of various actors.
This novel, data-driven perspective on the dynamics of the networked
public sphere supports an optimistic view of the potential for
networked democratic participation, and offers a view of a vibrant,
diverse, and decentralized networked public sphere that exhibited
broad participation, leveraged topical expertise, and focused public
sentiment to shape national public policy.
We also offer an interactive visualization that maps the evolution of
a public controversy by collecting time slices of thousands of
sources, then using link analysis to assess the progress of the debate
over time. We used the Media Cloud platform to depict media sources
(“nodes”, which appear as circles on the map with different colors
denoting different media types). This visualization tracks media
sources and their linkages within discrete time slices and allows
users to zoom into the controversy to see which entities are present
in the debate during a given period as well as who is linking to whom
at any point in time.
The authors wish to thank the Ford Foundation and the Open Society
Foundation for their generous support of this research and of the
development of the Media Cloud platform.
About Media Cloud
Media Cloud, a joint project of the Berkman Center for Internet &
Society at Harvard University and the Center for Civic Media at MIT,
is an open source, open data platform that allows researchers to
answer complex quantitative and qualitative questions about the
content of online media. Using Media Cloud, academic researchers,
journalism critics, and interested citizens can examine what media
sources cover which stories, what language different media outlets use
in conjunction with different stories, and how stories spread from one
media outlet to another. We encourage interested readers to explore
Media Cloud.
The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University was
founded to explore cyberspace, share in its study, and help pioneer
its development. For more information, visit
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/.
Dear all,
in its July voting, the WCA has decided to open up membership for
thematic organisations and give user groups a voice. If you are a
representant of a thematic organisation or a user group and would like
to know more about the WCA, feel free to get in touch!
Now we're facing a situation where the name (Wikimedia _Chapters_
Association) is inconsistent with who we actually define as our member
base. So we need to change name.
Our first stab was "Association of Organisations". It was not accepted,
but hey, I'm not overly sad. I guess, we can do better. But we need your
ideas! What's a good name? Put your suggestions here or support a
proposed name:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimedia_Chapters_Association/…
Eternal fame awaits you if our suggestion is chosen. Oh, apropos.
Decision upon a new name shall be made in Hong Kong on Thursday, August 8th.
For those who are wondering what the WCA is doing, here's a short
update. We are here to help Wikimedia organisations in their various
matters of daily and strategic business. Among the projects we do are:
* WCA Journal [1]: a medium to keep up to date in the organisations world
* Chapters Manual [2]: a resource to look up any questions regarding
operating a Chapter
* Peer Review: we offer to double check your organisations strategy,
funding requests or projects
* Organisations Seminar [3]: Two days packed with experience and
discussion about running Chapters and Wikimedia organisations.
Best,
Markus
[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Chapters_Association/Journal
[2] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WCA_Chapters_Manual
[3]
http://wikimania2013.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Chapters_Association_-_Or…
--
Markus Glaser
WCA Council Member (WMDE), Chair
Wikimedia Deutschland e.V.
Hi,
there is a famous quote on courage by Winston Churchill, a British Prime
Minister, who once wisely said: "Courage is what it takes to stand up
and speak. Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen."
Over the weekend, more than 440 editors of the German Wikipedia took
part in an RfC-like process ("Umfragen") at
<https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Umfragen/VisualEditor_Opt-in>
and voted against the activation of the VisualEditor for anonymous
users, asking the WMF to revert to an opt-in phase instead of the
currently existing opt-out.
This is yet another signal coming from the community that there is
something very broken about the process in which VisualEditor is being
rolled out. Most of the criticism has been ignored so far, but on the
other hand, we haven't yet seen such an enormous community objection
against the VisualEditor anywhere.
Let us therefore use this opportunity, and have the courage to sit down
and listen. Or, perhaps, in the wiki spirit, let's edit this quote, and
let us sit down and talk.
And, together, let's learn a lesson from this, and correct the errors so
that they don't become mistakes.
Tomasz
Why not make the visual editor the default with opt-out for 5% of
newly registered editors and anonymous IP page loads, and opt-in for
everyone else until there is evidence that it is not decreasing the
number of edits?
All,
The developer team at Wikimedia is making some changes to how accounts
work, as part of our on-going efforts to provide new and better tools
for our users (like cross-wiki notifications). These changes will mean
users have the same account name everywhere, will let us give you new
features that will help you edit & discuss better, and will allow more
flexible user permissions for tools. One of the pre-conditions for
this is that user accounts will now have to be unique across all 900
Wikimedia wikis.[0]
Unfortunately, some accounts are currently not unique across all our
wikis, but instead clash with other users who have the same account
name. To make sure that all of these users can use Wikimedia's wikis
in future, we will be renaming a number of accounts to have "~” and
the name of their wiki added to the end of their accounts' name. This
change will take place on or around 27 May. For example, a user called
“Example” on the Swedish Wiktionary who will be renamed would become
“Example~svwiktionary”.
All accounts will still work as before, and will continue to be
credited for all their edits made so far. However, users with renamed
accounts (whom we will be contacting individually) will have to use
the new account name when they log in.
It will now only be possible for accounts to be renamed globally; the
RenameUser tool will no longer work on a local basis - since all
accounts must be globally unique - therefore it will be withdrawn from
bureaucrats' tool sets. It will still be possible for users to ask on
Meta for their account to be renamed further, if they do not like
their new user name, once this takes place.
A copy of this note is posted to meta [1] for translation. Please
forward this to your local communities, and help get it translated.
Individuals who are affected will be notified via talk page and e-mail
notices nearer the time.
[0] - https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Unified_login
[1] - https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Single_User_Login_finalisation_announcement
Yours,
--
James D. Forrester
Product Manager, VisualEditor
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
jforrester(a)wikimedia.org | @jdforrester
Dear all,
The next WMF metrics and activities meeting will take place on Thursday,
August 1, 2013 at 6:00 PM UTC (11 AM PDT). The IRC channel is
#wikimedia-office on irc.freenode.net and the meeting will be broadcast as
a live YouTube stream.
The current structure of the meeting is:
* Review of key metrics including the monthly report card, but also
specialized reports and analytics
* Review of financials
* Welcoming recent hires
* Brief presentations on recent projects, with a focus on highest priority
initiatives
* Update and Q&A with the Executive Director, if available
Please review
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Metrics_and_activities_meetings for further
information about how to participate.
We’ll post the video recording publicly after the meeting.
Thank you,
Praveena
--
Praveena Maharaj
Executive Assistant to the VP of Engineering and Product Development
+1 (415) 839 6885 ext. 6689
www.wikimedia.org
I know I've been critical of Zack Exley for technical reasons over the
past year, but I think very highly of him as a person. If I was
recruiting colonists for an interstellar colonization mission, he
would likely be in the top 100 based on his accomplishments,
orientation, drive, and social skills alone.
But even if he weren't, his new project is outstandingly spectacular
on its own merits, and I want to urge everyone reading this in or from
the U.S. to sign up and join it:
http://www.fivethirtysix.org/
I predict that anyone with even a passing interest in U.S. politics
who doesn't follow FiveThirtySix will first regret it, and then end up
following it afterwards to prevent further such regret.
Also, congratulations to Megan and Lisa!
Sincerely,
James Salsman
Dear friends,
On German Wikipedia, our dear Superbass has contributed a short opinion
piece on the principal resistance against the Visual Editor. I think that
it should be withhold from you, and I hope that my translation transfers
its wit.
Ziko
Let us not fool ourselves: The imperfection of the Visual Editor will have
an end once; the legitimate arguments to hide it from public will loose
their strike capablity. Maybe in half a year, maybe after one whole year,
one will implement the thing. What then? Will anybody be capable to
contribute? Why did I swot for months to learn wiki code, can now - with
some copy and paste and consulting three help pages - code a nearly
flawless sortable table and even build a reference without any tool. Was
that all for nothing?
Will we then stand on a Medieval Fair, alongside coopers, tinkers,
charburners, stenographs and Brockhaus editors, and tell children how
Wikipedia has been made once? And in the meanwhile every Tom, Dick and
Harry edits without any programming skills our articles. Professor of
German, ethnologist emeritus and clerk at eye level with students of
computer science, supported by a trivialised input interface. My grandma
does professional image editing, champagne can be purchased at Walmart, the
type setter is replaced by a content management system and now
democratization, or even, ragtagization of Wikipedia.
No lemons help, but don't worry, the last fortress still stands: our set of
rules which we have set up with our bare hands from dull basic principles.
Complex, convoluted, and permanently differentiating itself, it will also
in future distinguish the pimpf from the pro, and hold back the
gentrification of the free online encyclopedia. At least, as long as the
Foundation creates no tool for that, too.
Machen wir uns nichts vor: Die Unvollkommenheit des Visual Editors wird
irgendwann ein Ende haben; die berechtigten Argumente, ihn noch vor der
Öffentlichkeit zu verstecken, verlieren an Schlagkraft. Vielleicht in einem
halben Jahr, vielleicht in einem ganzen, dann wird man das Ding einsetzen.
Was kommt dann? Kann dann hier jeder mitmachen? Wozu habe ich mir
monatelang Wikicode erschlossen, kann inzwischen – mit etwas Copy and Paste
und Nachschlagen auf drei Hilfeseiten – fast fehlerfrei eine sortierbare
Tabelle coden und sogar ohne Hilfsmittel einen Einzelnachweis bauen. War
das alles umsonst? Können wir uns dann zu den
Küfern<http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%BCfer>,
Kesselflicker <http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kesselflicker>,
Köhlern<http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%B6hler>,
Stenotypisten <http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stenotypist> und
Brockhausredakteuren auf den Handwerkermarkt stellen und den Kindern
zeigen, wie man früher Wikipedia gemacht hat? Und währenddessen bearbeiten
Krethi und Plethi bar jeder Programmierkenntnis unsere Artikel.
Germanistikprofessor, pensionierte Ethnologin und Sachbearbeiter auf
Augenhöhe mit Informatikstudenten, mittels eines trivialisierten
Eingabeinterfaces. Meine Oma macht professionelle Bildbearbeitung, den
Champagner gibts bei Aldi, statt des
Schriftsetzers<http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schriftsetzer>hats ein
Content-Management-System<http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content-Management-System>und
jetzt auch noch die Demokratisierung, was red ich, Pöbelisierung der
Wikipedia. Da helfen auch keine Zitrusfrüchte, aber keine Sorge, noch steht
die letzte Bastion: Unser Regelwerk, das wir mit unserer Hände Arbeit aus
kargen Grundprinzipien aufgebaut haben. Komplex, verschachtelt und sich
permanent ausdifferenzierend scheidet es auch in Zukunft den Pimpf vom
Profi und hält die Gentrifizierung der freien Online-Enzyklopädie auf.
Jedenfalls so lange, bis die Foundation auch dafür ein Tool entwickelt. --
Superbass <http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Superbass>
(Diskussion<http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer_Diskussion:Superbass>)
23:13, 28. Jul. 2013 (CEST)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ziko van Dijk
voorzitter / president Wikimedia Nederland
deputy chair Wikimedia Chapters Association Council
Vereniging Wikimedia Nederland
Postbus 167
3500 AD Utrecht
http://wikimedia.nl
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------