Dear digital rights and free knowledge supporters,
A major event in the month of June is RightsCon...and Wikimedia is showing up big!
Wikipedians will be hosting and/or participating in a total of ten sessions at RightsCon
this week. Members of our movement will be championing Wikimedia approaches on emerging
challenges to a free and open internet, including privacy and surveillance, internet
access, inclusion, and internet shutdowns and disruptions.
You can find details and brief descriptions for all of the sessions below. You can also
learn more about how we're showing up at and supporting RightsCon'22 in this blog
post:
https://diff.wikimedia.org/2022/06/02/meet-the-wikimedians-promoting-free-k…
We hope to see you there!
Best,
Ziski & the Global Advocacy team
_____
1) How lawmakers in Southeast Asia can safeguard human rights while addressing online
disinformation during elections
Date: Wednesday, June 8 at 12:30 AM EDT
Format: Panel
Presenters: Rachel Arinii Judhistari (Wikimedia Foundation), Kristina Gadaingan (ASEAN
Parliamentarians for Human Rights), Members of Parliament from the Philippines and
Thailand
Details: This interactive panel seeks to broaden the discussion about human rights
safeguards within internet regulation regimes in Southeast Asia, especially the nuances
surrounding online campaigning and the rising threat of disinformation, how they influence
political conversations, and also potentially undermine electoral processes. The panel
will pose these questions to the members of parliaments, civil society, and platform
hosts. It will allow participants to contribute to the free-flowing discussion, and to
provide perspectives from their own experiences and contexts as well.
2) Fighting disinformation in Persian Wikipedia: The good, the bad, the AI
Date: Thursday, June 9 at 4:30 AM EDT
Format: Tech Demo
Presenter: Amir Sarabadani (Wikimedian)
Details: This tech demo covers two tools that members of Persian Wikipedia developed to
combat government disinformation campaigns. These tools have made it possible to share and
update information on Persian Wikipedia without the fear of persecution. As such, they
have become crucial to foster the resilience of Persian Wikipedia and may inspire other
groups to bring similar initiatives back to their communities.
3) #WikiforHumanRights: Creating and editing human rights content on Wikipedia
Date: Thursday, June 9 at 12:15 PM EDT
Format: Workshop
Presenters: Faisal Da Supremo (Wikimedia Ghana), Kolawole Oyewole (Wiki Fan Club, and
Lagos State University), Iván Martínez (Wikimedia México), Luisina Ferrante (Wikimedia
Argentina), Alex Stinson (Wikimedia Foundation)
Details: This workshop will introduce participants to the basic skills needed to create
and edit human rights content on Wikipedia. Experienced Wikipedians will teach basic
editing skills, share best practices around citing reputable sources, and answer
participants’ questions during this interactive session. Participants are encouraged to
identify articles on human rights concepts or content that are lacking or need to be
bolstered in their linguistic communities before the session. The session will provide
open editing time for participants to create or edit content on their selected topics with
the assistance of experienced Wikipedians. It will conclude with a review of best
practices, an update on the #WikiForHumanRights campaign, and a question and answer
period.
4) Using Wikipedia to advance human rights and democracy, using constructive conflict to
create quality articles
Date: Thursday, June 9 at 2:45 PM EDT
Format: Workshop
Presenters: Luisinia Ferrante (Wikimedia Argentina), Spencer Graves (Wikimedian),
Franziska Putz (Wikimedia Foundation)
Details: This workshop will demonstrate how controversy can be a productive force behind
“the wisdom of crowds” that makes it possible for websites like Wikipedia to share freely
accessible information online. Case studies on Spanish, Chinese, French, and English
Wikipedia articles will demonstrate how their development was informed by social,
economic, and political debates in each of the contexts they describe as well as by the
different perspectives and approaches between volunteer editors. This session will expose
participants to the experience of co-creating knowledge about human rights online.
5) No “right” approach, but many effective ones: Moderation approaches for online
information about political processes
Date: Friday, June 10 at 8:00 AM EDT
Format: Workshop
Presenters: Patricia Díaz-Rubio (Wikimedia Chile), Kate Levan (Wikimedia Foundation),
Nathan Forrester (Wikimedia Foundation)
Details: This immersive workshop brings together organizations with unique, community-led
moderation approaches in order to present participants with case studies on disinformation
around electoral processes. Panelists will engage participants in analyzing the issues at
hand, discussing challenges to moderating specific content, and will then walk the
audience through the moderation process employed in their context. The goal of the session
is for the audience to experience how hard the job is, as well as the variety of effective
approaches there are to content moderation, debunking the idea that there is a single,
perfect process for moderating online spaces.
In addition to these Wikimedia Foundation-organized events, Wikimedians will be hosting
and participating in the following sessions, as well:
6) Empowering Community Content Moderation
Date: Tuesday, June 7 at 1:30 PM EDT
Format: Panel
Presenters: Jessica Ashooh (Reddit), Rose Coogan (Github), Allison Davenport (Wikimedia
Foundation), Guillaume Rischard (OpenStreetMap Foundation)
Details: The panel will feature policy leadership from a variety of platforms with
community content moderation, who will discuss best practices for fostering effective,
scalable, and rights-based community content moderation online. Along with touching on the
advantages of community moderation, the panel will also discuss challenges with the model,
and how policies for digital communication can leave room for individuals to participate
in effective self-regulation, collaboration, and good faith moderation of online
content.
7) Building a digital rights initiative in the Caribbean
Date: Tuesday, June 7 at 4:15 PM EDT
Format: Social Hour
Presenters: Wikimedians of the Caribbean User Group, JAAKLAC initiative, AfroCrowd, Access
Now
Details: Social hours are an informal space where participants with common interests can
connect and expand a network or coalition. There is no participation limit, so come
along!
8) The danger of neglecting “non-lucrative” languages
Date: Wednesday, June 8 at 10:00 AM EDT
Format: Lightning Talk
Presenters: Anass Sedrati (Wikimedia Morocco)
Details: Having access to information in your mother tongue is a basic human right.
Wikimedia projects may be doing well compared to other actors, but how can they be
improved as well? Although languages in the digital world are not represented equally,
Wikimedia projects have helped to represent more languages online, since the only
prerequisites to have a Wikipedia in a particular language is an International
Organization for Standardization (ISO) code and an active community. Yet even on Wikipedia
projects this process is imperfect. This lightning talk explores the fraught manner in
which languages are represented online, and puts forward the argument that more
individuals need to be involved in enriching Wikimedia content, and in diversifying the
languages that are represented on other platforms.
9) When you can’t see your city (online): Why you don’t want a country without Freedom of
Panorama (FOP)
Date: Wednesday, June 8 at 10:30 PM EDT
Format: Lightning Talk
Presenters: Ramzy Muliawan (Wikimedia Indonesia)
Details: This lightning talk examines the freedom of panorama (FOP), and how the absence
of this limitation on copyright threatens the implementation of Wikimedia’s 2030 strategy
to “provide for safety and inclusion,” especially in countries where Wikimedia communities
are emerging. The talk will review the existing freedom of panorama regulations (or lack
thereof) in Indonesia, and propose to Wikimedia organizations and communities in
Indonesia, as well as other emerging Wikimedia communities and like-minded partners, how
to best navigate the muddy waters of the clash between the underdeveloped policy landscape
and the ever-changing nature of online efforts to preserve and free knowledge.
10) Regulation for the few or many?
Date: Thursday, June 9 at 10:45 AM EDT
Format: Panel
Presenters: Caroline Greer (TikTok), Konstantinos Komaitis (The New York Times), Rebecca
MacKinnon (Wikimedia Foundation), Jillian York (EFF), Eliška Pírková (AccessNow)
Details: This panel will discuss the risks associated with policymakers and legislators
around the world crafting legislation with a small subset of large companies in mind. The
panelists will discuss the theme using the latest policy development initiatives and
practical examples. What is the impact on the broader tech ecosystem of one-size-fits-all
laws? How can we ensure equitable policymaking that works for users as well? The session
seeks to make recommendations on how the risks can be minimized, and how we can evolve to
a more sophisticated model of tech policy- and lawmaking.