The good folks at the Library of Alexandria and Kaltura have made available videos of a good number of presentations from Wikimania 2008. Luckily, mine was one of the ones up! So without further ado:
Tag Archives: wikimania
Wikimania 2008: New Paradigms for New Tomorrows with Ismail Serageldin
Director of the Library of Alexandria, Dr. Ismail Serageldin gave a keynote speech on the first day of Wikimania 2008 titled, New Paradigms for New Tomorrows. It was quite thoughtful and inspiring – the man is one of the most amazing individuals I have heard. He is learned in so many different areas of academic and cultural knowledge, as well as incredibly wise. I would recommend watching the video of his speech, but if you are pressed for time you can read my notes.
Wikimania 2008: Collaborative research on Wikiversity with Cormac Lawler
Collaborative research on Wikiversity by Cormac Lawler (user Cormaggio on Wikimedia projects) at the University of Manchester. Wikiversity is a relatively young project in the Wikimedia umbrella, but I think it is a natural development and a great space to realize the potential of all the educators currently on Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikibooks, and all the other projects.
Wikimania 2008: State of the Mediawiki
State of the Mediawiki, a presentation give at Wikimania by some developers of Mediawiki and maintainers of the Wikimedia installation of it
Wikimania 2008: Wikipedia as Real Utopia with Edo Navot
Wikipedia as Real Utopia: Governance, knowledge production, and the institutional structure of Wikipedia – Edo Navot, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Sociology. Here follows my rough transcription of his speech, followed by my comments. The fact that his is the only presentation I have so far commented on should be taken as a sign of respect, not of disparagement. I rather enjoyed his presentation, pledge to read his paper in depth as soon as possible (I have skimmed it), and admire him for being one of the few academics out there studying social and political thought on Wikipedia.
Wikimania 2008: Closing Ceremony
Here are my notes from the closing ceremony of Wikimania. It was really an amazing conference and I was very honored to be there.
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Wikimania 2008: Flagged Revisions with Philipp Birken
From “Flagged Revisions,” a presentation at Wikimania 2008 by Philip Birken. In my opinion, flagged revisions realize the concept of stable versions without making the article actually stable. It is not a system of voting to approve new revisions – a new revision is approved when only one autoconfirmed user says it is vandalism-free. Yes, it won’t solve everything, but it will make things much better. We can get rid of protecting articles that are experiencing heavy vandalism if we do this, because an edit only updates to the public when it is flagged as not-vandalism by a trusted user. However, vandals (or any other user) immediately sees the results of their edit for an hour, which is just ingenious. Also, you can choose whether the most recent revision is shown by default, or make it so that certain users (like anonymous users) only see the most recent reviewed revision. For those who feel that it threatens “the wiki way,” I suggest making the most recent version appear by default and giving people the option to see the latest reviewed version.
Anyways, enough of my cheerleading. Here follows my notes from his talk:
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Wikimania 2008: Wikipedia Administrators / Arbcom Panel
This panel was going to be something else, but something happened and it became a panel with James Forrester, Andrew Lih, Kat Walsh, and Charles Matthews. Everyone except for Lih is or has been on the Arbitration Committee, and this turned into a discussion about admins.
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Conceptions and Misconceptions Academics Hold About Wikipedia
This is a paper I presented at Wikimania 2008, the international conference of those involved with or interested in Wikipedia, Wiktonary, Wikibooks, or any other wiki under the Wikimedia Foundation umbrella. This presentation was about the relationship between Wikipedia and Academia.
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Wikimania 2008: Content and the Internet in the (Globalized) Middle East
Content and the Internet in the (Globalized) Middle East, Dr. Ahmed Tantawi, Technical Director, IBM Middle East and North Africa. Another copy of my notes from Wikimania 2008 – this was the keynote speech on the second day of the conference. He began by warning us that, “I’ve changed this presentation, and I’ll change it during. That is open content, yes?” Everyone laughed.