On Sat, Sep 29, 2018 at 4:31 AM Chris Keating chriskeatingwiki@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Lodewijk,
If Wikimania was an entity rather than an event, it would be in the top 5 entities in the movement - a smaller budget than WMF, Wikimedia Deutschland and the Wiki Education Foundation but larger than anything else...
Chris, you seem to have a particular angle determined through fitting particular data to your conclusion. A point by point breakdown will be mired down in bickering, so let me address some misconceptions while also embracing and agreeing with some of your feedback.
Since I've been to every single Wikimania and serve on the steering committee, obviously I don't share your existential doubt about Wikimania's role in our movement. But read on for things I do agree with you on regarding the future of the conference. Again: I'm not speaking on behalf of the commitee. This is just me.
- "If Wikimania was an entity rather than an event" - But it's not. The goals, format and audience is completely different and makes for a problematic financial comparison. But even if you get past that, I would argue that annual Wikimania is indeed one of the "top 5" occurrences in our community each year, even if it's not universally accessible to all volunteers. It's where ideas and experiences are exchanged and the only systematic way WMF openly interacts with the community in a face to face format. Recall - WMCON/Wikimedia Summit is casting off the "learning and capacity-building" and will be capped at 200 participants. This makes Wikimania even more crucial in this role.
Important initiatives of our movement started at Wikimania. You state in your user page you took part in one of the first GLAM engagement with the British Museum in 2010 with the Hoxne Challenge. Did you know that the GLAM movement had its genesis with Wikimania 2008 in Alexandria, Egypt, when Liam Wyatt and the Wikimania organizers had the first "backstage pass" and meeting with their staff? [1] [2]
- "it doesn't have any objectives" - But it does if you read the Wikimania page, even if it is not down to the level of detail of an academic conference or a board retreat. Wikimania is intentionally wiki-like in this aspect, which may be what is perceived as a lack of objective. By design, the ability of each team to run with a new concept is part of dynamic. One of Wikipedia's pillars is "we're here to build an encyclopedia," and people fill it with meaning. Similarly, the goal of Wikimania as "an annual gathering of the Wikimedia community" is filled differently with meaning from year to year with a BE BOLD ethos with different visions and parameters of the organizing team. Some years there is an experimental idea like 2016 Esino Lario.[3] Sometimes there is a button-downed public sector co-conference like 2012 Tech@State. [4]
- "online discussion that reached a conclusion that no-one appears willing to support" - As Lodewijk mentioned previously, there were significant issues with the way the consultation was run so that the conclusion was dubious. If you asked me to find the least desirable time period to do a consultation, it would be exactly the one chosen – "15 December 2015 to 19 January 2016" when globally, most folks in the professional world and academia are disengaged or removed from a computer screen. Additionally, it is hard to produce useful dialogue around strict voting for three rigid options. [5] Chris Schilling of the Foundation who oversaw the process was clear in Esino Lario's meeting that the consultation was not binding as was but one part of the discussion.
- Here's what I agree with you on:
-- Better reporting on results and evaluation of effectiveness - We do have reporting on the outcomes on meta wiki, including detailed stats and figures for each conference, as they need to be compared with the original bid. But the long term analysis is often lacking, with folk knowledge being more influential in decisions than explicit reporting and strategy. This year's Wikimania evaluation by Douglas Scott was presented at the September activities meeting and can be seen on the Youtube video. [6] But we rarely get a chance to evaluate long term trends or effectiveness.
-- Diversity in the Wikimania Committee - We should go beyond the existing practice of tapping previous Wikimania leads to be members. I was brought on as part of that trend, but it should be continued to expand the size and diversity of backgrounds of the committee. To be fair, it's a rather thankless job that was cobbled together over the years out of necessity rather than by design. But we should do better here.
- My overall view - Wikimedia/Wikipedia is a multibillion dollar brand that is consistently in the top 10 most visited web sites in the world. It shares that rarified air with companies in the hundreds of billions of dollars in valuation. Wikipedia is built on the efforts of volunteers, and it is vitally important we nurture that community or we die. Think about it – spending in the area of $1 million is a paltry sum compared to the value to our community and to the world. In fact, I'd argue we are very much underspending in this area, and way too insular in how we work. We are not systematically embracing our partners in open culture such as Internet Archive, Creative Commons, Mozilla Foundation and GLAM institutions, while they are running broad-based inclusive international conferences with a big tent. We are consistently seen in the public eye as the hallmark of open knowledge and the power of volunteerism, yet we do not lead with this conference nor do we readily open our doors to collaborators.
Thanks for your feedback. I don't want a debate on this issue to be seen as a silencing tactic. Far from it. It should be a way to sharpen existing practices and encourage new ideas.
As the Wikimania Committee liaison with the Sweden 2019 team, I've encouraged them to take on some of the things discussed above, such as working more closely with like-minded institutions and to not necessarily repeat all aspects of previous conferences. Discussions like these help bring these issues to the fore and make the whole process more transparent, which is a good thing.
-Andrew
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GLAM/British_Museum [2] - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimania_2008_-_The_Wikimedia_deleg... [3] - https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2016_bids/Esino_Lario [4] - https://wikimania2012.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech@State:_Wiki.Gov [5] - https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Towards_a_New_Wikimania/Outco... [6] - https://youtu.be/TTtb4dEypQk?t=3m24s