If you were at the conference in Amsterdam, you have probably noticed that there was a parallel tweet conversation going on. For the ones who would like to read them again, and for the ones who would like to read them for the first time, just click on the following link:
http://www.twapperkeeper.com/hashtag/cpov

The German WikiWars and the Limits of Objectivism Presentation by Florian Cramer for the Critical Point of View (CPoV) conferece in Amsterdam, 27.03.2010 Cramer started his presentation by pointing out to some fictions about collaborative media. He believes it is mostly a utopia, what leads to a big history of disappointments. On the positive side, Wikipedia, with all its problems, is nevertheless the only large-scale working community of collaborative authorship. The implications of that are not all positive though: If one considers the hypertext/hyperfiction utopia by Nelson, Bolter and Landow in the 1990s, their ideas, especially when applied to literature, have gone almost nowhere. The notion of collective intelligence by Pierre Levy has also failed in most cases, if one considers the huge amount of single authors and single articles. Wikipedia, in this case, is what comes closer to his ideal of collaborative writing. The p2p, another utopia, ended up being used for consumption instead of being a media for cultural production. Finally, the creative commons idea, whose works are rarely re-used. He thinks that these hopes for collaborative media are 'a bit old European', and the one that persists the most is the hope for a CPoV instead of a NPoV. This means, that Wikipedia is founded precisely on the opposite of CPoV. This is a question of what inspired the creation of Wikipedia. He continues his critique by showing the Wikipedia page on Jimmy Wales ('largely edited by himself') and emphasizing his influences, which involve Ayn Rand's Objectivism - which is 'hard core neo-liberalism' and 'capitalist philosophy'. This philosophical stream believes that there is an objective reality and that therefore it is possible to have a NPoV of things. He believes that Wikipedia is the only successful appropriation of the notion of Open Source for works other than software. Free marked and the free flow of ideas were also incorporated (see 1998s the Cathedral and the Bazar). In other words, the NPoV is the translation of Ayn Rand's school of thought and other libertarian influences into the project. Wikipedia, as well as other FLOSS movements, are built on consensus. The main problem is that this consensus is built on fictions. In Wikipedia there are implicit social contracts based on objectiveness, what holds the community of editors in Wikipedia together. However, this fiction/myth of having an objective reality does not scale. Once the project grows and controversies arise, it leads to subsequent disappointments. A further design problem in Wikipedia is that it tries to create its neutrality/consensus/objectivity by the way the article page is designed. It looks like one unitary source of information that does not reflect the actual editing history. Cramer finalizes his presentation by introducing Annemieke van der Hoek, who developed a tool called Epicpedia. EpicPedia (based on the epic theater by Bertold Brecht) is a tool that translates Wikipedia pages into a theatrical kind of way. For more information check:

• Short Bio
• Abstract
• Piet Zwart Institute

Unlike the other speakers, such as Reichert (Foucault-inspired), Shapiro said that he is less critical: "The critique is all right, however, it should be a component of a larger view, and the larger view should be pragmatic and constructive". According to Shapiro, Hofmann’s ideology critique is insufficient. Blindness and ignorance are a weak thesis within ideology critique. Shapiro is inspired by the work of Gustave Flaubert: "He shows that knowledge is based in society and as such Wikipedia not only represents knowledge, but also stupidity. And what most people believe in society is based on accepted clichés". We must separate the real knowledge from the clichés and the stupidities. Shapiro says that Wikipedia is about the democratization of knowledge and the promise of popular education (a Gramsci-inspired view). We need balance between the consensus culture such as Wikipedia and respect for the work of the scholar who has dedicated a lot of research on particular issues. A model for balancing these two contributory streams needs to be developed. So, is Wikipedia cool? Shapiro thinks that baseball fans think that Wikipedia is cool. A lot of these articles on baseball are really good because they are based on information in a non-controversial area instead of a mixture of clichés and real knowledge in controversial areas, as in many articles. During his talk, Alan showed some examples in the Baudrillard article at Wikipedia. In this example one of the clichés is that Baudrillard would Be a philosopher; but Baudrillard never considered himself to be a philosopher so you can't describe him that way according to Shapiro. Another example is that Baudrillard also has been described as a sociologist, but he disliked sociology, was skeptical towards the concepts of politics, and did not consider himself to be a sociologist. The Wikipedia article mentions Baudrillard's collaboration with CTHEORY (which really happened, and they published translations of many of his essays), but fails to mention his crucial and essential collaborations with the French journals Utopie and Traverses. During his long enumeration, Shapiro received a question from the audience if ever pushed the submit button. He did , and he is now going to undertake the project of trying to submit step-by-step revisions of the Wikipedia articles on Baudrillard, Star Trek, and Flaubert's novel Bouvard and Pecuchet. Alan Shapiro would also want to address the question of how the structure of the database as technological artifact will be upgraded by the New Computer Science; but unfortunately he was running out of time. What he did say was that Wikipedia is a conventional database whereas what we need is a new logic engine, which applies Derrida's deconstruction in computer science, we need to deal with post-structures instead of structures in the database of Wikipedia. For more information about him:

• Interview with Alan N. Shapiro
• Short Bio
• Abstract

By Nadesh van der Post First of all I want to apologize because I’m not sure that I fully understood Hans Varghese Mathews core message during the CPOV conference. So I hope that with a little more research, I will be able to enlighten Varghese Mathews main conception. There are a lot of discussions going on how to obtain crucial information that concerns Wikipedia’s ever growing body of knowledge. One Wikipedia page is even considered to be a textual dynamic research object because of continuous augmentation and revision. As Varghese Mathews puts it: The sheer volume of the website necessitates – and its digital form abets – the automated essay of its contents for evidence upon which to found such inference and interpretation as is proper to the eliciting of such history. And so he has developed an algorithm that will provide a way to collect data that goes beyond human interpretation. Through realizing the page editing history or as he calls it the narrative, Varghese Mathews wants to detect pack editing behavior. He elaborated the tool intentions by introducing us to the algorithm instead of giving a PowerPoint presentation. To do so he used the retrieved data, and explained that the tool clusters the contributors to a Wikipedia page. The Evolution is an example of such a Wikipedia page. The various editors of the frequently edited Evolution Wikipedia page can provide inside when particular interests are clustered. With the help of his tool one could distinguish different editors and cluster them together by some particular interest. The tool functions with minimal human intervention. And despite the fact the some supervening of human judgement is needed, Varghese Mathews - or anyone else of that matter – could use the tool for interesting insides. This tool is aimed at producing information that will allow anyone to analyze editing behavior on Wikipedia. It is too bad that we couldn’t see more of the collected data or results. Okay, I admit he did show some results. But the main issues there is that his story wasn’t structured enough. The only message that I could distill was that he had developed a tool for massive analytical use. Non the less I do find his tool exciting. More information about him:

• Short Bio
• Abstract
• REPORT OF AN EXPERIMENT IN CLUSTERING by Hans Varghese Mathews, The Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore
• Analysing Wikipedia : A First Attempt at Clustering by Sriram Rangan
• Analysing Wikipedia: A First Attempt at Clustering. Report of an Experiment in Clustering by Kiran Jonnalagadda

Developing open source software Ortega xeroxed the ten top language Wikpedia sites to present us with an impressive quanititave corpus of data. In his presentation he cast a critical eye in the developement and publication of quantitative data in on-line research worldwide, calling for more open practices. He pointed to the lack of comparative studies,  the need for open data to assist global comparisons. Indeed, Ortega experienced the lack of a worldwide perspectives in quantitative studies at first hand when he started his research,  as most data was not avaliable in the public domain or didn't use open software, or even worse used categories that made comparisons impossible. His work is to a large extent a reaction to this lack. Ortega created wikixray- the ultimate open wiki machine, instead of using of the shelf software. Wikixray is  now made avaliable to reseachers worldwide, together with the pull of data findings of his research. Ortega was eager to note that the software is easy to use on any wiki website. In his research design,  Ortega, decided to include some open questions such as "is Wikipedia a sustainable project" or "what type of parameter affect Wikipedia" to analyse somewhat 7 terra bytes of content, that is the 10 most popular language wikipedia sites! Ortega found there are 4,805,713 registered editors in the top ten languages Wikipedias. These users use Wikipedia at least 346.9 days in time, something like 141,6 in average. His analysis shows that in all language versions growth follows an exponential growth patern, i.e.  it starts slowly and then accelarates. This is particularly surprising in the light of the difference in the number of contributors. The same pattern repeats in creation of pages in all ten languages. For Ortega these patterns point to a key question: Does Wikipedia reach a maturity stage were activity stops progressing, and if this is so why cant it grow? Ortega mentioned that in answering this question the media have interpreted his data in opossite ways! Ortega also compared tiny vs standards articles. For example in the english version 80% of pages are talk pages, in the polish Wikpedia there are no talk pages. With regard to the sustainability issue Ortega was keen to show that the number of edits by people has remained stable since 2007. He also briefly pointed to the Wikipedia general survey of 130,576 poeple, which showed that 65% of users are readers, 10% are regular contributors ( 50% of answers came from russia), and only 13% are women. He was carefull, however, to point to the fact that the survey does not sample users and therefore is limited in terms of how one can interpret the results. Ortega also noted the inequality of contributions amongst editors. For example 5% of authors accounts for more than 90% of total number of revisions. Finaly Ortega showed that 4 years ago the inequality in distribution reached a plato and has been equal each month wordwide since then. In Ortegas view in order for Wikipedia to remain sustainable better ways to use Wikipedia in education need to be carved.  Furthermore ways to improve the interphase and the reviewing proccesss are needed. Together these can be used for improving their user experience overal. Ortega argued that Wikipedia needs better community building and maintance tools. Furthermore that Wikipedia needs to exploit the power of academia. March 26-27, 2010. 2nd CPOV: Wikipedia Conference. Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam. [slides] More information about him:

• Short Bio
• Abstract

With a love for technoculture, a research past in Californian cyberculture, and a present in French critical intelectual new media thought, O' Neil presented a compelling talk on wikipedia user culture or rather "tribal culture".  O' Neil presented his stream of conciousness in tags (projected on a large screen) as he developed his arppoch to on-line triibes. Interested in the hacker habitus and how its production,  his talk opened with a brief discussion of the shortcomings of critical sociology. Despite O' Neil's  pessimism with regard to the conspiratorial and dis-empowering aspects of critical sociology, he went on to focus on the work of Boltanski and the field of justification, which Boltanski understands as "open". Before linking Boltanski with Wikipedia O' Neil was careful to frame his understanding of Wikipedia within the context of new media political economy mentioning that 13% of Wikipedia editors are female, and that this means that certain types of behaviors are more tolerable, that for example aggressive commentary and flaming are accepted as standard practice. Machismo, in other words, frames the wiki habitus. O' Neil proceeded to literally map the different orders of online justification, and how these can possibly come into existence in different tribal formulations in different network cultures. Central to understanding the map was the term "on-line tribal burocracy of social organisations" coined in his book Cyberchiefs Autonomy and Authority in Online Tribes. O' Neil understands charisma, hacking, sovergnity, and the archaic, as central to conceptualizing how on-line user tribes work. Situating Wikipedia in a map showing a sovergnity and charisma in each end of the vertical and horizontal axis,  O' Neil concluded that charisma and soveirgnity are in particular very important in understanding how Wikipedia as tribe works, and that charisma is actually more important. O Neil also discuss ethical issues arising when conducting research with wikipedia editors.

"Wikipedia art doesnt exist anymore". These heavy words elapsed provocatively out of Scott Killdall's mouth somewhere during the first part of his speech. Only later on in his talk, were we to learn why. Scott Killdall stood behind the speech table. A short man, peering into the audience determined to get his message across about the life, death and debatable resurrection of the phenomenon called Wikipedia Art. Wikipedia Art was a performative act originally intended to be art composed on Wikipedia. Though confined by the enforced standards of quality and verifiability of Wikipedia, the artwork could potentially be edited by anyone as long as changes were published on, and cited from, 'credible' sources. To catalyze the launch of Wikipedia Art, Killdall and Stern had urged others to write about the project as it came into existence to facillitate sources. These sources, being interviews, blogs, or articles in ‘trustworthy’ media institutions, were meant to give birth to and then slowly transform the work of Art. And so it happened. Simply through writing and talking about it, the debate around Wikipedia Art ignited. The tremendously heated discussion led to the expulsion of Wikipedia Art from the Wikipedia demain only 15 hours after it's birth. This seemingly premature death is paradoxical in retrospect according to Kildall when he responds to a comment from the audience. As Wikipedia Art was to be interpreted as a critique of the shortcomming of Wikipedia, it was essentially an intervention. It was in itself destructed by the exact 'wikiality' it was critiquing. As Kildall explains "The majority of Wikipedia readers rarely think of the internal strucutres and rules behind Wikipedia.'' Wikipedia Art surely unveiled these structures, as we see in the skelletons that are left. In the eyes of the wiki community, Wikipedia Art was seen as commercial vandalism, and was banned from the site. Now, you might ask. What exactly 'is' this piece of art. The answer is abstract. For one, to understand it, you have to step away from the traditional concept of classical art that is based around an image. For Wikipedia Art is about the construct of words itself. Kildall teaches us throughout his talk that it's form is in words, as that is what Wikipedia does best. "Through citations and debate it existed." Subsequently, because of this debate which turned against the artwork itself, it was also destroyed. Wikipedia Art lives on in the minds of peoples far from the Wikipedia domain. For us who have missed its birth, bloom and death, we have to made do with the words of Patrick Lichty; "Those fifteen hours were magic".

Introduction by Geert Lovink: Wormser is philosopher, being an expert in philosophy of Sartre. He is also the editor of sens public. Moreover, instigator of this event and this network. We talked then about independent thinking about Wikipedia. We have to emphasis the similarities and differences in comparison to the rich history of encyclopedias; we have to put Wikipedia into perspective. "I will try to make a transition of the first and second session: I will stress a point not yet mentioned and that is: Is Wikipedia becoming a media or an editorial project?" The problem is: if Wikipedia is the 7th most important website, it is a large part of the internet. It is altered by megalomania. Can you have unity in this project if everyone has to bind in? And what is still the goal of other editorial processes? It is multi- linguistic, but not international (separation of languages). Is Wikipedia a mirror of our society, or is it new in the society of knowledge? The concept of the knowledge bar is introduced: it is about maintaining ambiguity. The bar is place to meet and discuss, but is is also where we select information and links. We need both significations of the bar. The point is that every project needs physical meetings, otherwise it becomes a utility (just like water from the tap).  The sphere of knowledge is in a contra-dictionary movement. On the one hand, knowledge never has been so important for society. On the other side, the standards of knowledge are becoming blurred: it becomes hard to critique, because it is becoming decentralized. This is the risk facing Wikipedia publications. We have to rediscover that science is not in line with business economy.  This is also part of economic part of science. Websites like Wikipedia are lowering the costs of knowledge, not paying the actual workers. In a post industrial  economy, how can one be in charge of their own economy. If what is learned in university is of no use in society, what then? Or what is at stake when this knowledge is freely transportable via open access publishing? The problem is that this knowledge production is not translatable in a social positions. However, these issues are not new in history: encyclopedians during the french revolutions also faces these issues, with the difference that the condition in which Wikipedia is now evolving is much easier than the ways of working of the encyclopedians at that time. Also then, encyclopedians were codyfying knowledge of people, but without a methodological order in this knowledge. They were searching for links between knowledge; this was more important than actual loose facts. The same double face appears with  encyclopedians of the French 18th century. The goals of an encyclopedia is to link some words to facts. The way we can circulate into the pool knowledge and can make use of the knowledge bar, this is the most important. On a practical level, the navigation inside these websites becomes relevant. Wikipedia is challenged by other projects, but also by the fact that everyone of us can be the best journalist, having real debates with real persons over real time. We consider the entire reference sites as to be important in Wikipedia project; it is open. The encyclopedia of the 18th century were also not enclosed in the library in the 18th century. An important distinction is that the equivalent of our screens were not closed, private experiences, rather, they were public and open. The two meanings of the knowledge bar were at work at that time: collecting knowledge and discussing knowledge live, openly and public. Now we do not know the use of these Wikipedia pages. If it has to be discussed in public space, we should have more public discussion (like today). For our century, the question is to understand how our reflection can open as a new discipline. If we cannot find a new way to behave, then the inner goal of any encyclopedia will be lost. It is not a surprise that the 18th century encyclopedia and the Enlightenment lead to the revolution. This was a result of the way that society was regulated compared to how knowledge was regulated. The fact that emancipation was on the side of the Enlightenment-thinkers made people think that regulation was on the right side. This was en example of the links between the knowledge bar and the emancipation bar: It was no longer possible to stay with a monarchy with the new knowledge regime. A direct consequence of new knowledge. This was real context of which Foucault was writing in "words and things"  (les mots et les chausses). It was changing the mind order of how people were thinking, talking and educating. Wikipedia will be confronted with a choice: will it grow into a mere utility (such as a TV), or does it still have he potential to change people's minds (unregulated). Open access does not say anything about the user, the usage and the possible future. Some questions to end with: discussions is about where collaboration on encyclopedias begun (on the long term). Erasmus and Moore were very collaborative. 16th century, the beginning of open publication and collaborative encyclopedias was already begun. We have to maintain the idea that critical space is alive. This space is different from open space. Conclusions: We are open with our body, knowledge is not only prestige; it is sensitive and meaningful. We have to embody the knowledge; we do not only have to be dependent of a technological tool. We must involve more young researcher in the field of research into publishing.We (at sens public) are establishing a network of international research. We embody our own knowledge with our own behavior. This ethical point of view cannot be separated from a practical point of view in the production of new knowledge. Q&A: Q: Difference between 18th century and now: discursive confidence. In the eighteen century there was a normative science. We lost that. 18th century was dependent of a fact. A: I do not think Enlightenment thinkers were per se deterministic. Knowledge had to be conveyed in a sensible way. The literacy or  language style is therefor very important. This is lacking in Wikipedia. How deterministic and standardized Wikipedia is becoming (the style and quality of writing) This could be great progress if we want  multiplicity of culture in a single syntax. Q. I am appreciative of the historical perspective. But  think that you have missed  is the realization that the Internet has brought radical differences. My q is: what practices would accentuate that were also present in the 17th and 18th century? A: The collaborative side is one note. To be partner in such discussion in the 18t century, you had to member of a formal society that was organized to discuss these matter. It was a social network more than a scientific academy. What is different with the now: the student of the university now is also a good journalist in order to assess positions. The student is more empowered. Specifically new is that there is a real society that is not producing new knowledge, but receiving knowledge and work it via scientific journalism. I would maintain with John Dewey, the question of the public is still important. Q: In the beginning you posed the question: Is Wikipedia a media or a editorial. The people who are working with it,that I know  want to work away from normative stance (ending up with these networks becoming even more normative) A: We have to invent new collaborative institutions. I cannot be left to pure benevolent activists. The Wikimedia institute is a good example.

Wikipedia is fundamental in current shifts on how knowledge is produced and organised. This is the thesis outlined in R. Reichert's presentation.  According to Reichert  Wikipedia should be understood as representing a new mode of power. Attempting to offer (a short) archeology of Wikipedia, to a room of mostly non-Foucauldians,  Reichert argued that power, as a regime of mechanisms on Wikipedia, is controled and exercised through the network of users and editors. Wikipedia thus produces normative orders of knowledge via the micro-management of political engagement with so-called knowledge. So, for example, wikipedians can't change what they can do on Wikipedia, there are rigid roles and fuctions engineering the discipline of the self. Wikipedia represents a specific discourse of participation and produces particular technologies of the self. On Wikipedia subjectivity means engeenering  the impersonal view of the self. Reirchert also streesed that wikipedia represents a certain way of organising knowledge towards effectiveness, and control. Its objective is to disaminate a normative based archive of knowledge, and a new social clasification system of flexibility.Wikipedia  is also a space in which discursive practices of excluding and discipling reign. For example edit wars are about exclusion and also about  accepting, together with other practices they form disciplines. Reichert key argument also focused on outlining how Wikipedia constitutes a new paradigm for organising culture that is increasingly adopted by many business. Joining many outside the and inside the Foucauldian tradition Reichert sceptically explained how the wiki way of orgnaising and doing knowledge is alarmingly being exported outside the realms of profit making. Acocrding to this line of thinking Wikipedia technologies of the self produce flexible and efficient human labour in an organisation that can be assigned to any task. Finally Reichert talked about how Wikipedia visualises the discoursive process it generates. This means users can actually see these practices deisgned in the wikipedia interphase. Audience responce was typical of the cynicism often voiced in responce to Fouldian analysis: what does this all mean? does it mean subjects are actually subjugated and that we cant really escape the wikipedia mechanism?...As the morning progressed Reichert's pessimistic scepticism appeared less cynical, it grew on the audience ...and echoed more like  a refreshing european negative thought in comparison to the more alien american positive voices that had surfaced by late afternoon....

Dear CPOV participant,

The Digital Methods Initiative will host an informal wiki analytics workshop at the University of Amsterdam on Thursday, March 25. Participants of the CPOV Amsterdam conference are invited to present and discuss methods, tools and data among fellow Wikipedia researchers.

The workshop is in anticipation of the CPOV Amsterdam conference, in particular the session Wiki Analytics on Saturday March 27.

If you would like to attend, please indicate this by sending a brief description of your contribution to info@digitalmethods.net. Seats are limited so please register by Monday 15 March.

Date and time: Thursday March 25, 10:00-17:00
Location: UvA Turfdraagsterpad 9 in Amsterdam, room 0.13

The Digital Methods Initiative (DMI) is a collaboration of the New Media TEMLab at the University of Amsterdam and the Govcom.org Foundation, Amsterdam, developing methods and tools for Web research. The Digital Methods Initiative is directed by Prof. Dr. Richard Rogers. The project coordinators are Esther Weltevrede and Anne Helmond. Current affiliates include Anat Ben-David, Erik Borra, Marieke van Dijk, Andrea Fiore, Noortje Marres, Koen Martens, Sabine Niederer, Michael Stevenson and Marijn de Vries Hoogerwerff.

Best regards