Mathieu, thank you for your research and for connecting so many dots.
On Thu, Aug 9, 2018 at 6:40 AM mathieu lovato stumpf guntz <
psychoslave(a)culture-libre.org> wrote:
Although Mastodon doesn't seem to be what I was
looking for at start, I do
think it would be great to launch a Wikimedia instance and completely in
phase with the aim of becoming an essential infrastructure of the ecosystem
of free knowledge. So let me know if I can help in any way on this regard.
:)
In my professional role, I think it is worth considering the idea of
approaching Wikimedia to the Fediverse as part of
Knowledge as a service: To serve our users, we will
become a platform
that serves open knowledge to the world across interfaces and
communities.
We will build tools for allies and partners to
organize and exchange free
knowledge beyond Wikimedia.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2017/Direction
In fact, I have started some very casual conversations about these ideas
(equivalent to chats by the coffee machine, except that I'm remote and I
don't drink coffee), partially motivated by this thread.
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T198363 is a good umbrella task. If
someone wants to develop the idea of creating a Wikimedia instance in the
Fediverse (official or not), then that would deserve its own discussion.
Where to start this discussion? IdeaLab? Maybe it doesn't matter as long as
we have one place well advertised.
There are at least three aspects to consider:
* Technical: Creating i.e. a Mastodon instance somewhere is technically
simple, running that instance in Wikimedia production servers is another
story. While there is no need to start with a service in production, it is
useful to consider the scenario early on.
* Legal: Aiming for an official Wikimedia instance has implications of
trademarks, legal requirements, and so on. While there is no need to start
with an official instance, it is useful to consider the scenario early on.
* Social: While creating an instance would be simple, having a critical
mass of Wikimedians aware of it and using it regularly is not. There is no
lack of brilliant ideas that failed because the people didn't follow. And
here you would be fighting against resistance to change e.g. from those
believing that Wikimedians should focus on wikis only, from Wikimedians
well invested in corporate social networks (Facebook, Twitter, etc) and of
course with everyone being "too busy to join another channel". Whoever
drives this initiative must be ready to work hard explaining, promoting,
supporting...
Bottom line: this would be an initiative relatively simple to start, that
has a clear risk of complications coming if it succeeds. Considering that
the likely scenario for any new experiment is that it will close in less
than a year, I think those complications caused by success is a problem the
promoters of this initiative would want to have.
PS: In my personal time I am a Fediverse enthusiast and a Mastodon instance
admin, and for this reason I am being cautious about bias / being too
passionate. :)
Cheers.
[1]
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2018-April/089977.html
Le 11/04/2018 à 11:17, Quim Gil a écrit :
(These are personal opinions based on my own personal interest in free and
volunteer-driven social networks, not an opinion as a WMF member.)
On Mon, Apr 9, 2018 at 9:46 AM, Leinonen Teemu <teemu.leinonen(a)aalto.fi>
<teemu.leinonen(a)aalto.fi>
wrote:
Hi,
I have been looking for social networking service that would be fair: not
abusing personal data, funded by community, respecting privacy, accepting
anonymity, free/libre/ open source etc. Haven’t found many. The Diaspora*
Project[1] is not moving forward very fast and the Mastodon[2] is more a
microblogging service rather than a social network service.
Can it be that the difference between "microblogging service" and "social
network" might be too subtle and subjective to be noticed by the majority
of their users? And for the problem you are presenting here?
Would it make sense for Wikimedia movement to build its own social network
service?
Depends on what you mean by "build". If you mean create the software for a
new social network service, I don't think it makes sense. Providing support
and development of multilingual wiki
projects<https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Our_projects>
<https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Our_projects> to collect and develop
educational content to empower and engage people around the world is
already a daunting task in terms of software development, and there is so
much to do.
If you mean to run the software developed by someone else, sure, why not
experimenting. Thanks to free software licenses anyone can try, and thanks
to Wikimedia trademarks licenses I am sure a decent solution could be found
by whoever wants to run this experiment.
In the "2017 Movement strategy” we state: “By 2030, Wikimedia will become
the essential infrastructure of the ecosystem of free knowledge”. If we
consider discussions and information shared on social network services to
be “knowledge”, I think we should have a role in here too.
With some caveats and observations, I agree on the principle, just not on
the implication that this means we need to create a free social network for
us from scratch, starting with a first line of code. If we consider social
networks useful, and free social networks the right and consistent thing to
use in an ecosystem of free knowledge, then the first step can be as simple
as opening a Mastodon instance. Dozens (hundreds) of volunteers (including
amateur sysadmins) are doing just that without much discussion, just
scratching their own itch, or for fun, or to learn, or to experiment...
We have 33 million registered users and fulfil all the requirements of
being a “fair service”. A minimum list of features to make Wikimedia Social
would be:
(1) Status updates
(2) Comments
(3) Likes
This is provided by Mastodon, GNUSocial, etc today. They look like minimum
features for a social network indeed.
(4)Groups
Mmm can you specify your use cases here? There is a chance, that the need
for "groups" actually belongs to different use cases, and we don't need
one
"social network" tool to resolve everything.
One use case could be instant communication. We have seen Wikimedia groups
in Telegram flourishing around events and perhaps more. Again, someone
scratched their itches, they just did it, others followed.
Another use case could be more structured and specialized communication,
which puts us closer to mailing lists, forums, and our very own Talk pages.
For what is worth, some of us are experimenting around this use case with
Discourse. Again, scratching own itches and experimenting. More
athttps://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T180853
maybe:
(5) Events
Well, this is quite a beast on its own, and I believe not a simple one. A
few days ago I unassigned
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T1035 to myself
because I could not find enough time & focus to push this problem in some
productive direction.
I am pretty sure that by integrating this to other Wikimedia services
(Commons etc.) we could achieve something awesome.
I agree that there is potential in this area, but I would look more at
using and supporting tools developed by others on their own mission, and
then think of single-sign-ons and APIs to bridge.
- Teemu
[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_(social_network)
[2]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastodon_(software)
--
Quim Gil
Senior Manager of Community Relations @ Wikimedia Foundation
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Qgil-WMF