[Wikimedia-l] Fwd: Report to Board: Chinese Internet Research Conference

Tue May 29 06:00:45 UTC 2012

-------- Original-Nachricht --------
Betreff: 	Report to Board: Chinese Internet Research Conference
Datum: 	Sun, 27 May 2012 18:07:54 +0200
Von: 	Ting Chen <tchen at wikimedia.org>
An: 	Board list <board-l at lists.wikimedia.org>

Hello dear all,

at Mai 21st and 22nd I attended the 10. Chinese Internet Research
Conference at the University of Southern California and this is my
report on this conference.

At the begin of the year Andrew Lih, who as you know is maybe one of the
first researchers who took Wikipedia as a research topic and certainly a
longtime Wikimedian, asked me if I can give a keynote on the 10. Chinese
Internet Research Conference that he was organizing. And I said yes. He
wanted me to talk about the Chinese Wikipedia, which is a relatively
easy topic for me.

The first CIRC took place in USC and this is their anniversary and it
again went to USC. It was organized by the Annenberg School for
Communication and Journalism. Andrew is currently an assistant professor
there. There were about 150 attendees of the conference from all arround
the world. According to Andrew the number of attendees vary in the
years. Last year for example there were only 50 attendees and this year
there were more than 100. The attendees are mostly researchers, so
university professors, doctoral and graduate students, and a few
journalists.

The topics of the conference can mainly be grouped in two: The influence
of internet on chinese politics and the situation of less previleged
peoples and their use of internet in China. On the first topic there are
a lot of papers about the microblogging [1]: The community, the
influence of the microblogging on the politics (especially on the
current events), how the government and the party regulate the
microblogging, how they use microblogging as an instrument for
themselves, etc. On the second topic there were a handful papers on
field studies about the use of internet by the migrant workers, and how
internet influenced their work and life, and studies about the use of
internet in the rural areas of China in different provinces.

To my surprise the papers are all very bold and direct in internet
censoring and GFW (Great Firewall). Before I planned my speech I asked
Andrew if I should mention the blocking and he said yes, and its
influence on the project. I was a little skeptical because meanwhile all
Wikipedians I know in China were visited by the National Security there.
So in my presentation I didn't mention blocking directly by said that we
had connectivity problems. But actually almost all papers on the first
topic mentioned censoring and blocking and deleting of blog entries as
such. Some of the papers have these topics as their main research area.

There were no paper about Wikipedia (my speech doesn't count), but all
attendees I spoke with use Wikipedia, independant of where they live and
work (US, the Netherlands, France, Singapur, mainland China, Hongkong
and Taiwan). To my surprise most of them don't know that we are a
nonprofit organization. There were a few questions about if we pay
Google to get a high ranking.

My speech was the closing speech of the conference. I organized it in
three sections: A brief history of the chinese Wikipedia, the current
state of the project and what we can offer researchers and how
researchers can help us.

There were two high-lights for me personally on this conference. One is
that I met our Advisory Board member Jing Wang [2] there. When we met
each other two years ago in Gdansk Jing just started her work on her
project NGC 2.0 in China and she told me that she is very successful in
the last two years. Her work there is concentrating on bringing the
local NGOs (mostly not registered as organizations, but more grassroot
groups) and enterprices together so that entrepreneurs who want to fund
charitable works and NGOs who do social works can find each other. In
her opinion the central government is more open and progressive then the
provincial and local governments. She experiences more troubles with the
provincial governments than the central gorvernment (which she stated is
very supportive to her work). She believes that between the two there
are a lot of room and freedom which one can use and thinks that the art
to work in China is to explore that room and freedom. She repeated that
we should try to get our chance there. She expressed her sorry about not
be able to attend Wikimania this year because at that time she will be
in China again, and not be abled to do any work for the Foundation
because she is so busy.

The other high-light for me I had already mailed you. It was the keynote
speech by Jenova Chen [3]. Jenova is a game designer and some of the
most remarkable games he designed were Flow [4], Flower [5] and Journey
[6]. Especially the design principle of Journey impressed me most. So
Jenova said in online games in most cases gamers try to kill each other
or try to group with each other to kill something. And he thought this
is a very poor social interaction. He thinks that most games explore
only one emotion: the power, to be a superhero is in most cases the
motive of a game. But the human emotion is more complex. To be able to
explore and induce the complex emotion of an attendee for example is the
difference between a good movie and a bad movie, or a good book and a
bad book. He thinks that the emotion of want to be powerful is a very
adolescent one, that is why most mature adults won't play games any
more, because they are beyond that level of emotion. So he has two
design principles, the first one is to explore the emotional
possibilities of a game. The second one is the to create a special
environment of communication between the gamers. He says that internet
(game, forums, Twitter, whatever<and I can add mailing-list, talk pages
and villege pumps>) are mostly hostile. And he wanted to create an
environment where gamers can interact with each other, but don't have
the possibility to be hostile to each other. So for example by designing
Journey he decided to not give the gamers the possibility to chat with
each other, but only to interact with each other in a non verbal way.

When he was talking I could not help as to think about Wikipedians and
how they interact with each other. Naturally, language is the essential
of our projects we cannot avoid Wikipedians talking with each other. But
then again, people always thought that games can only be successful if
they are violent, and Jenova proved that this is not the case. And what
his speech told me is, even when we always think that something have to
be done in a certain way and only in that way, there are always chances
to explore other possibilities. And we should not stop to think about
those trying and being innovative, and being innovative in an
unconventional way.

This is why I think we should invite him as a keynote speaker of
Wikimania, or at least for the staff retreat. And why I was so excited
after his speech that I mailed you immediately.

Greetings
Ting

References:
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microblogging_in_China
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jing_Wang
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenova_Chen
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_%28video_game%29
[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flower_%28video_game%29
[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journey_%282012_video_game%29