At the end of project the INC needs to report to the funders of a project. Download the full report here with all the blogposts gathered. Full report of the CPOV, Wikipedia conference.

(Wikipedia Critical Point of View Conference March 26-27 2010)
by Karlijn Marchildon

"The interesting thing about Wikipedia is that it's irrelevant, and at the same time it's not." With this statement Amit Basole opens his talk on the global issues and outlooks of Wikipedia and the broader context in which it exists. Basole explains that although the majority of the world's population hasn't ever heard of Wikipedia (making it quite irrelevant), the collaborative knowledge platform at the same time does represent a new social order, and a new economy that very much impacts the lives of exactly those people who haven't ever heard of it. In that sense, Wikipedia could be understood as relevant indeed.

Amit Basole has come to Amsterdam to give a talk about the implications of this new social order. As many before him have claimed, there has been a shift from an industrial, to a knowledge based society. This shift has many far reaching implications for the world's population, it's cultures and knowledge hierarchies. In fact, Basole ultimately claims that in this new social order, new (knowledge) hierarchies have been born. Basole, together with the India-based Vidya Ashram collective on whose behalf he speaks, has taken it upon himself to "investigate these dynamics of knowledge in society, production and transmission, values, its relationship to the state, the market and so on".

Vidya Ashram is a collective that believes that a radical intervention in the world of knowledge is necessary for a radical transformation of society. As society is changing, so is knowledge. With the driving philosophy that a people's knowledge movement (as in Lokavidya) is part of mass movements of people on the less fortunate side of the digital divide, can lead to a new philosophy of knowledge required for a radical pro-people transformation of society. With this socialist background, Vidya Ashram aims at bringing people from all over together to share, debate and explore the new knowledge hierarchies.

In a way, Wikipedia as an embodiment of this virtual knowledge, reflects and flattens hierarchies of knowledge as it presents different approaches of content, as it is collaborative.

More concretely, Vidya Ashram makes an effort to open debate and interaction on knowledge hierarchies and flows, in order to give shape to this new pro-people society where all types and flows of knowledge are respected from Lokavidya knowledge (evolving tacit people's practical knowledge) to traditional (scientific) knowledge. As the Vidya Ashram web site states; it calls on all college and university educated people to deliberate on the following actions:

• Opposition to the building of elite institutions of higher education.
• Recognition of knowledge in society, knowledge with peasants and artisans, and reflection of this in our writings and public stands.
• Support for proper economic returns on Lokavidya; at a minimum buying Lokavidya products, and campaigning for it.
• Opposition of policies that restrict peasants and artisans from using their knowledge for economic activity. Opposition to the expropriation of lokavidya by the corporations.
• Campaign for public spending on research in the fields and work-sites by peasants and artisans.
• Work for the dignity of Lokavidya by building overlaps between formal education at all levels and Lokavidya.

This call is a clear action towards the exploration of the ruling knowledge paradigm. In that sense, Basole's talk on the concept of knowledge and society is radical and relevant in the same sense as he claims Wikipedia is. In his words: "Although the content is conservative, the form is radical."

Karatzogianni combines in her talk the theory of cyberconflicts and media. According to her you have to see the Internet as a dialogue. We are looking at a medium and we have to analyse the discourses at that medium. So what control of information do we have? We are using the open source as a choice, we try to keep it very open but it is a mistake to give the people this role. In this environment, Wikipedia and similar endeavors, provides a battleground for dominance in our global political consciousness. This battleground has internal conflicts, competitors within the open software movement and external others in the overall business of knowledge. The tread is not Wikipedia’s content, and even the battle of edit wars is futile. The real threat and promise of Wikipedia and open knowledge production is not an alternative knowledge production, but the alternative to knowledge production. Wikipedia content is producing a single neutral point of view, knowledge is constantly shifting but adhering to the universal neutral fact based encyclopedia. The process is radical the content is not. University scholars learn multiple points of view and Karatzogianni strongly advocated multiple points of view during teaching but Wikipedia only provides a single point of view. More information about her:

• Short Bio
• Abstract

Teemu Mikkonen challenges the Neutral Point of View policy haunting Wikipedia when it comes to controversial cases such as the Kosovo War article. In these cases, he argues, it is not possible to achieve complete neutrality. As a Masters student at the Univeristy of Tampere, Mikkonen has studied the Talk page of the Wikipedia article on the Kosovo War. Mikkonen fills his thirty minutes of fame by paying attention to the disputed neutrality of the Kosovo War article on Wikipedia. He attempts to trace the conflict and consensus on this Wikipedia Talk-page. By outlining four paradoxes, he lets us in on the juicy bits of his research. By finding out essentially 'how people talk' about the Kosovo War in the context of wikipedia, he unravels the Foucualdian power structures underlying the famous online encyclopedia. Starting with the title, Mikkonen notes the underlying and inavoidable 'biasses' included in the article. For example by naming it the 'Kosovo war', instead as an non-serbian alternative. On the Talk page, there is a lot of discussion going on about what actually happened during the conflict(s). As we see, more often than not are facts, numbers and words disputed on the talk page. Ever since November 2009, the top of the wiki is decorated by a warning message stating that "the neutrality of this article is disputed. Please see the discussion on the talk page. Please do not remove this message until the dispute is resolved." When looking critically at this Talk page, different discourses are noticeable revealing among others Serbian, Albanian, both pro- and anti-NATO points of view. As one may imagine, because of the many parties involved in any conflict, and in this Yugoslavian conflict in particular, it is factually impossible to achieve a genuine neutral point of view when recollecting the facts. Mikkonen reminds us that the less damaged 'winning' side of a conflict would always have a justification-driven view on matters, not to mention a better infrastructure and more survivors left to recollect. Subsequently the most inflicted party can be fueled by trauma and revenge influencing their memory of accounts. When analyzing the Talk page, Mikkonen abstacts the three most common positions. The edits are either to be grouped as 'extremist', where the contributors see only one real and one-sided truth -mostly that of their own. These individuals place unsigned edits more often than not. Moreover, they are characterized by extreme political (hard-right nationalist) viewspoints. An other common position is that of the gatekeepers. The admins and active wikipedians. They believe that there should be a consensus of truth which should be based on equal, neutral knowledge. Mikkonen lets us know this is a highly problematic virtue. As a third group, the situationists are identified. According to Mikkonen they believe that there is no real unbiased truth at all. Even the gatekeepers' democratic consensus is always biased. In fact, wikipedia is unneutral after all. These three positions brings us to four paradoxes that arise from the Talk page. At this point it is more than clear that Mikkonen is of the opinion that absolute neutrality isn't possible. Mikkonen essentially explains how it would be better to get the wikipedia policies working towards a non-neutral point of view. On a closing note I will include some interesting posts from the Talk page on the Kosovo War to illustrate Mikkonen's point. One edit gives a rare supposedly first-hand witness account of a downed helicopter during the conflict.

Before you get at each other's throats... I was a border scout in the Yugoslav Army at that time. I was there when the helicopter was shot down by a 12.7mm anti aircraft cannon. It presented an easy lateral target, as we were camouflaged. The gunner emptied the thirty round magazine at his target and it exploded. We were not in Albanian territory, although the helicopter was. The cannon was outdated and a permanent fixture at the border base and its use was intended for infantry. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Leeppa 21:19, 23 April 2007.

This raises the question concerning one of the beforementioned paradoxes: The paradox of verifiability. What makes a source reliable and true? Mikkonen puts it as follows: "There is a huge problem how to verify the context of these unique experiences." It is all meaningful information, but is is supposed to be true? verifiable? reliable? What makes this paradox (one of four, on which I dare not touch) is that it also makes us think about the reliability of other written, more static sources and enceclopedia's. Now we all agree that there is no such thing as a genuine Neutral point of view on controversial matters, at least the dialogue is made visible on Wikipedia. The fact is that traditional top-down sources be it news institutions and other encyclopedia's don't have a transparent view on the debate surrounding these issues. In that sense, Wikipedia offers something that does come darn close to a 'neutral' point of view' because she shows exactly the ins and outs of the controversy. Though this conference has given a critical point of view on the Wikipedia institution and thereby revealed the faults and shortcomings of Wikipedia. Mikkonens critique has actually shown an invaluable aspect of this product of collective intelligence in it's transparency. As other speakers in Designing Debate Andrew Famiglietti (UK), Andrew Famiglietti (UK), and Lawrence Liang (IN) have also shown; indeed it is problematic to seek a neutral point of view. Knowing many other visitors of this conference will agree with me, I would say that seeking a neutral point of view is downright pointless. There are simply too many truths to fit into one wiki. For more information about him:

• Short Bio
• Abstract

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

I would like to talk about my research which, I believe, could help us approach some of the questions related to Wikipedia. For this research, I was interested to know, how knowledge is translated/traveled; from people to things. I focused on community healers in rural India and observed the process by which their knowledge recorded, collected and disseminated through larger geographical areas. During its many transformations, the wisdom of the local healer goes through numerous phases and inevitably loses some of its essential characteristics. This observation has lead me to the question;

Can we define databases that makes these different ways of knowing things visible?

I believe this question relates to the equal treatment of different knowledges in technology design, ultimately aiming for a technology that contributes to knowledge diversity. So, with this talk, I am hoping to bring the issue of database design to the forefront concerning Wikipedia.
To illustrate her point on different database desing approaches to varying knowledges, Maja van der Velden then presents the following examples;

• Mukurtu archive (features collective tagging but also implementation of exclusionary login procedures)


• Tami (ontologically flat database - Minimizes Western assumptions on data collection by only categorizing by media type. No tagging, only a list of items listed by picture/sound/video etc. Each object can be connected to each other)


• Storyweaver (focus, again, is creating connectivities. Storytelling is a form of performative mapping. 3 protocols underlying; -Autonomous local knowledge mapping -Local ontology mapping -Merging mapping through making connections; Connections are made through context to context, not object to object in another context)

These databases have the underlying idea that Knowledge can be understood as performance. Implying that the design of a database is not preconfigured, but they emerge through usage over time.

Seen under this light of these examples, Jimmy Wales’s quote regarding the ultimate goal of Wikipedia (Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge.) emerge as a warning. Given this understanding, Wikipedia’s understanding of knowledge becomes hegemonic. Such a definition of knowledge is very singular, other ‘knowledges’ are ignored. Aboriginal knowledge links back to traditional knowledge in English language Wikipedia, which is not recognized as proper knowledge. In this sense, Wikipedia becomes a master narrative about knowledge.

I would propose the creation of a third space, a contact zone where different knowledges not clash, but interact and co-exist. As Donna Haraway calls them; “world-making entanglements”, which is the meaning I want to carry over to Wikipedia. If Wikipedia aims to provide sum of all knowledge to everyone, how can it provide dissenting knowledge claims?

I argue that Wikipedia’s decentralized production system can be taken further as a model for its ontological stance as well, rendering a database that is more respectful to differing knowledge claims.

More information about her:

• Short Bio
  
• Abstract

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

Mayo Fuster Morell's website

I will present results of my research concerning governance on digital commons, which was a research based on a comparative analysis of case studies, one of which was Wikipedia. It is noteworthy that most research focused on governance on online communities focus on the interaction between participants of the community, which is an important issue. But my focus on this research is on the providers of the infrastructures of these communities and the relationship between the community and these providers. In the case of Wikipedia, the provider is the Wikimedia foundation.

The goal of this research is to gain insight on whether different kind of providers effect the community that emerge. I analyzed the relationship between the type of provider and merging communities -In types of scale - Types of collaboration and -Level of self-governance within the community.

First, I would like to demonstrate my analysis of infrastructure providers and then provide the example of Wikipedia and the Wikimedia foundation.

I identified four elements that define the characteristics of an infrastructure provider;

I) Openness vs. Closeness with respect to community participation
II) Sustainability; Whether the provider is for-profit or non-profit
III) Level of freedom and autonomy the community is given. ‘netenabler’ vs. ‘blackbox’ infrastructures; Whther the platform is based on open-source software of proprietary protocols and data management. This determines the fork-ability and data mobility.
IV) Formal vs. Informal of the organization.
I analyzed 50 cases according to these parameters and identified 4 main categories (Illustrated by slide below)

Case Study of Wikipedia - Role of Wikimedia foutdation
CPOV blog has previously published Maya Fuster Morell’s analysis of the evolution of the Wikimedia foundation, which can be accessed here.

The involvement of the foundation seem to have evolved on a case-by-case basis and the power relation between the community and the foundation seems to be in flux and is actively discussed in the community. The opinion of the community regarding the involvement of the foundation into the activities of Wikipedia can be placed on a scale [See slide 2]

Based on this analysis, the Wikimedia foundation represents a very formal structure with a high degree of professionalization.These characteristics are against many features of the Wikipedia community. Why? Also, how do these radically different modes of organizations co-exist?

It is noteworthy that both the foundation and the community have adopted different governance styles and power structures depending the need and task at hand and have moved from one to another fluidly, even applied two concurrently to different parts. While consensus is central, sometimes the founder exercises his monarchical power for example.

It appears that the foundation has adopted this formal and professional outlook in order to provide technical infrastructure to the community but also to handle legal support and public relations on a professional level. The community, on the other hand, creates the content and the rules and regulations that relate to the creation of content. Ownership is also representative, the Wikipedia logo and other PR material are owned by the foundation while the community can claim ownership of the content they create.

This creates a mutual dependency between the foundation and the community. This does not necessarily mean the power and rights of ownership of the foundation and the community are symmetrical, but it means their contrasting systems co-exist and work for the benefit of the project together. This also creates a very interesting dialogue between the foundation and the community where there is a continuous negotiation of power between them, rendering the power distribution fluid. In understanding this relationship, the concepts of lateral source of authorship and parallel governing.

The hybrid model of Wikipedia can be a model for other institutions of rethinking global institutions of the public and political in the 21st cent. We have to remember that the issue is not how to criticize Wikipedia. They constitute a new form of providing public goods, we have to think about our responsibility to Wikipedia, to improve and learn from it, since it is so important in our lives.

More information about her:

• Short Bio
  
• Abstract

Jeannette Hofmann focuses on how to represent knowledge. It all starts with life cycles of self-regulations online. The first step is one of high expectations in establishing novelty, boundlessness, autonomy, uniqueness and a certain blindness which are all a part of Wikipedia’s self representation. What follows is the feeling of otherness, it is the experience of deadlocks, contention, concentration of power, frustration, disillusionment and crisis. But how do we interpret these life cycles and what can we learn from them? Hofmann is inspired by the work of Sousa Santos, especially his essay “Toward an Epistemology of Blindness”. Sousa’s main argument is that experience and expectations are not the same and that they are characterized by a certain discrepancy. In modern societies there is a difference between the experience of the past and the expectations of the future. We believe in change, progress and learning. Santos recognizes two pillars; a pillar of regulation and a pillar of emancipation. Regulation is about maintaining social order and stabilizing expectations. Emancipation establishes good order. It expands distance between experience and expectation. When this is achieved there is a new emancipator movement. Even Knowledge recognizes forms of regulation and emancipation but the forms of knowledge are not the same. Regulation is more about the transition from chaos to order, and Knowledge as emancipation is the struggle against the waste of experience for experimentation. But there is neither a general knowledge nor a general ignorance. This is important to Santos because there is always a certain blindness and this is what Hofmann finds important with regards to Wikipedia. Call for a plurality of knowledge and practices All Wikipedia articles must be written from a neutral point of view, representing objectively, proportionately and as far as possible without bias, all significant views that have been published by reliable sources. But what kind of knowledge is assembled in Wikipedia? Reading against the background of Santos, this is problematic. The tension between regulation and emancipation are unavoidable and so there are conflicts related to them. Hoffman argues that we have to change the conflict between “all knowledge” and the Neutral Point of View that allows only “small samples” that are represented at Wikipedia. There is a need to make the debate more constructed. It has to be about social order and change, about regulations and emancipation. However, the NPoV policy on Wikipedia is misleading and evil. It structures the debates around Wikipedia in a nonsensical way. It doesn’t exist. So, our ambition should be to represent knowledge despite the fact that there is no NPoV.