Wikimania 2015 in Words, Images, and Tweets
How could I possibly summarize Wikimania—the annual conference for Wikipedians, Wikimedians, wiki-enthusiasts, and open knowledge advocates—in a single blog post? I've done a few times before, or at least I've written something about attending since I began in 2012.((My first Wikimania was 2012 in DC, and I filed a detailed itinerary of panels I wanted to (and mostly did) attend. I wrote a single short post about 2013 in Hong Kong, mostly because I played tourist that weekend instead of focusing on the conference. And last year in London was my first Wikimania as a speaker, which became the focus of my recap post.)) Arguably, the best roundup post of a wiki conference I've assembled was not for a Wikimania but the annual event for US-based editors, WikiConference USA, last year. That one I structured around tweets and Instagram posts from the weekend. This one will be, too. In the interests of keeping this manageable, however, I'm going to build this around tweets from just the opening event (OK, and maybe a little before and after). Let's see if we can use it as a window to discuss what worked—and what didn't—at Wikimania 2015. ♦ ♦ ♦ The latest Wikimania conference was held July 17–19 in Mexico City. Each year a different host city is chosen, spreading the travel burden around the project's global contributors. Mexico City is the largest metropolitan area in the western hemisphere (and in North America) but it's a little far from the probable center of gravity of wiki activities (northern Europe). Given Mexico's troubled reputation, the escape of notorious tunnel-favoring drug lord "El Chapo" barely a week before the conference hardly mattered. By then it was clear that turnout would land somewhere between Hong Kong 2013 (fairly small) and London 2014 (the record, I believe).
A photo posted by William Beutler (@williambeutler) on Jul 21, 2015 at 7:41pm PDT
The specific facilities originally named to hold the event was the Biblioteca Vasconcelos, a visually striking library with hanging walkways and a dinosaur skeleton, but apparently scarce meeting space. It was moved a few blocks away to the Hilton on Alameda Central, which was modern and purpose-built for conferences, and probably for the best. However, students of literature might recognize this as a kind of foreshadowing... Plenty had already occurred before I arrived, as it always does. Every Wikimania is precededed by two "hackathon" days, which I've never attended. Meanwhile, Wikimania volunteers—young people from the area, this time wearing yellow T-shirts with lucha libre masks—had already put everything in place:
You guys had fun, today? Hope so, see you tomorrow en #Wikimania Greetings from the volunteer team ???? pic.twitter.com/JReLb9K3bD — Adrianlote (@BeGaFedeer) July 17, 2015
I think it's also custom for Jimmy Wales to make the rounds of local media, in whatever city or country is hosting, in the days before a Wikimania event. Here he is on CNN en Español:
#Ahora @jimmy_wales por @aristeguicnn #Wikimanía pic.twitter.com/CCCZIoUKlO — Iván (@protoplasmakid) July 17, 2015
Myself, I got in late Thursday, time enough to meet up with friends for pizza and a few beers at a restaurant across the park from the Hilton:
At Cancino Alameda on Alameda Central, the night before #Wikimania2015. A photo posted by William Beutler (@williambeutler) on Jul 16, 2015 at 9:13pm PDT
On the Friday morning itself, Wikimania began as it always does: with a keynote speech (for some reason Wikimania prefers "plenary") by the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) executive director. This year was the second for Lila Tretikov, the current ED and the third major leader of Wikipedia((Omitting Larry Sanger, who left a million years ago, but yes, counting Jimmy Wales, who was never ED, and Sue Gardner, who held the post for years.)).
Wikimania opening keynote by WMF exec director Lila Tretikov in Mexico City. #Wikimania2015 A photo posted by William Beutler (@williambeutler) on Jul 17, 2015 at 10:12am PDT
This is the 11th annual Wikimania, and for at least the last few this one, Liam Wyatt and a few others made bingo cards celebrating (and gently ribbing) the event's clichés:
My buzzword #Bingo card @ #Wikimania, ready for the plenary! There's 400 randomly generated cards for the ceremony. pic.twitter.com/ZTD6GBe0BR
— Liam Wyatt (@Wittylama) July 17, 2015
In a prescient early tweet, Wikimedia stats guru Erik Zachte asked if there was video available of the proceedings. As it would emerge later: not only was there no live stream, but there would be no official recordings at all. What happened is not clear. Rumor had it that plans had initially been made, apparently lost amid a staffing change, and that was about all anyone knew for sure.((About staffing changes: the Wikimedia Foundation has seen quite a few of them in the year since Tretikov took charge. This is of course to be expected: when there's a change at the top, the incoming leadership wants to put their own team in place. However, more than twelve months since she took over, people are still leaving.))
Is there a live stream to #Wikimania? Probably, there always is, but I can't find it. Anyone? Thx
— Erik Zachte (@Infodisiac) July 17, 2015
As already covered by the Wikipedia Signpost, numerous community members were unhappy about this (particularly the Europeans who didn't make the trip). The only upside really was that Andrew Lih, longtime Wikipedian and an advocate for video on Wikipedia, brought his camera and tripod to as many sessions as possible. Along with a few others, these are beginning to appear on a video page on the Wikimania site. There is no small amount of irony here: it's the Wikimedia Foundation's job to provide support to the volunteer community. That is why it exists. Wikimania is obviously one of these things it has created to serve the community. Video recording for Wikipedians who cannot attend logically follows, and so it has been done before (albeit imperfectly). Instead, members of the community voluntarily filled in the gaps as best they could. Of course, the quality—especially sound quality—isn't what it could have been. For most people, these videos will be of very limited use. Even for dedicated Wikipedians, it will be a chore.((Another snafu I don't have anywhere else to explain: the Saturday night group event was a bus trip to the out-of-this-world Museo Soumaya (see photo near the end) for a party. However, upon arrival in the pouring rain, the only entrance was the one pictured, and the building's unusual structure created a waterfall effect a few feet from the entrance, where many Wikimedians were tragically soaked. Once inside, it didn't get much better: there was no indication of what we were supposed to do. Worse, there was no food. Worse still, no alcohol. A small group of friends and I—plus some very nice folks I'd just met from wikiHow—wandered over to the mall next door and found a decent-classy Mexican restaurant on the top level. We returned to the museum to find a VERY LOUD Beatles cover band, no more food, and there never was any alcohol. So we hopped an Uber back to the hotel, whereupon finding the hotel bar, we were greeted with cheers, like lost soldiers returning from the war. What we didn't know was that our cheering section had themselves taken an early bus back from the party, which then broke down, in the rain. (Later, this message was posted to the Wikimania-l email list.) )) But anyway, the presentation itself: always, always, Wikimania must begin by revisiting the core mission. It's a bit ritualistic, and maybe even a little trite, but for a significant number of attendees, it's exciting. After another year of putting up with all kinds of bullshit, it reconfirms why you got involved in the first place:
Our mission #wikimania pic.twitter.com/JYi6rlv29X — Frieda Brioschi (@ubifrieda) July 17, 2015
Here's an early panel from Lila Tretikov's talk, showing some of the top-line issues for the Wikimedia movement, as seen from 2015. You could probably knock a few items off your Wikimania bingo card with this:
The world is changing.. #wikimania pic.twitter.com/Xy9JYsTTtr
— Frieda Brioschi (@ubifrieda) July 17, 2015
Also bracing: real acknowledgment of problems faced by Wikipedia and the larger Wikimedia movement.((I said I was going to focus entirely on the opening keynote, but here (again) I am going to fail, because it's important to note that in the closing keynote—sorry, plenary—Jimmy Wales came the closest to acknowledging the Kazakhstan controversy, along with other problems Wikipedia has experienced trying to create partnerships in the Caucuses, where authoritarian governments often control all of the language's media. (See here for the tweet I can't embed in this footnote.) He also devoted a bit of his speech to explaining what he is doing with all that troublesome prize money from yet another repressive regime. He certainly avoided putting it in that particular context, but instead talked up the promise of his new Jimmy Wales Foundation, focused on defending "freedom of expression". I would link to the website, but it doesn't seem to have one.)) Far from the self-satisfied Wikimania 2013 in Hong Kong, there was plenty of discussion about what challenges the movement—some in Lila's talk, and much more in the days afterward. This one line, I think, serves as a fair justification for those who worry about even small issues:
"Our problems are huge because our scale is huge." #Wikipedia #Wikimania — Rohini Lakshané (@aldebaran14) July 17, 2015
Not that everything was addressed quite so plainly. At one point, Tretikov listed high voter turnout in the recent Board elections among the reasons for Wikipedia's health. What she did not say, but regular Wikipedians in attendance recognized immediately, is that turnout for the election was almost certainly driven by community uproar over a recent series of events where WMF had forced through a controversial software update over the objections of the community.((This is too deep a rabbit hole to follow for now but, as usual, Signpost covered it well.)) It was a "throw the bums out" election, and a few longtime board members were indeed thrown out, even though they were not directly (or, so far as we know, indirectly) responsible for the change.
@fuzheado yes, my first thought too: "this is what we can do when... people are upset about things that happen shortly before elections" — Kat Walsh (@mindspillage) July 17, 2015
But all the WMF software initiatives have not been so controversial. One that's had a good deal of success in the six months since it's been rolled out is the Content Translation tool, and the early results are promising:
Increasing content translation #Wikimania pic.twitter.com/pV40aiigr6
— Frieda Brioschi (@ubifrieda) July 17, 2015
One more thing I noticed, toward the end of Lila Tretikov's presentation:
Watchword from @lilatretikov keynote: "collegiality". Not far from @jimmy_wales emphasis on civility last year. #Wikimania2015
— The Wikipedian (@thewikipedian) July 17, 2015
But after the year Wikipedia just had—speaking of the bullshit((Not just the "superprotect" debate and subsequent Board election, but also the GamerGate controversy and recent decision in the so-called Lightbreather case.))—not everyone was buying it:
It's hard to be collegial on a moving train. No, really. Have you seen the fucking quiet car? #Wikimania
— Adam Hyland (@therealprotonk) July 17, 2015
Anyway, that's not remotely an adequate summary, but it will have to do. Here's one of the better photos of Lila addressing Wikimania:
“Estamos en esto juntos. Estamos en esto por el conocimiento: disponible, libre para todos.” @lilatretikov #Wikimania pic.twitter.com/KQzOi2Vs9h
— Wikimedia México (@Wikimedia_mx) July 17, 2015
♦ ♦ ♦ A few random thoughts, some of which I may expand upon in the near future:
Benjamin Mako Hill and Aaron Shaw delivered an interesting presentation on a recent experiment to block IP editing on Wikia, the for-profit, pop culture-focused collection of wiki sites owned by Jimmy Wales. The question: would it curb vandalism and disruptive edits? The result, if my notes are accurate: yes, it certainly did. In fact, all edits went down. In my initial tweeting, I focused on the decline in vandalism. Speaking with Hill later, he focused more on the latter. A bit of a Rorschach test, perhaps. It's not online yet, but I hope to study closely once it is.
Word has it that the loved-and-hated volunteer-run Wikipedia Article Traffic Statistics tool (available at stats.grok.se) will finally be replaced by a similar service from the Wikimedia Foundation, and it could happen as soon as the fall. However, it's unlikely to include any past traffic. Also, a major upgrade to Wikimedia Statistics has been greenlit, but that will be much further away.
WikiProjects suck, but WikiProject X aims to make them better. If nothing else, it shows how WMF has been making good use of flat design techniques and more whitespace in recent years. (Update: as noted in the comments, design credit for WikiProject X belongs to the grantees, James Hare and Isarra.)
The Visual Editor is really good now, you guys! I'd given it a premature thumbs up when it first arrived, then all of the bad things happened, and meanwhile WMF has continued to develop it. And it's really good. I mean it this time! Well, I missed James Forrester's presentation Beyond VisualEditor, about design changes on Wikipedia, but his slides still get some of it across.
I haven't even mentioned my own session! Like last year, it was about conflict-of-interest issues, co-organized with the above-mentioned Lih. Alas, we started late because the previous discussion group ran over, and then the volunteers told us our time was up 15 minutes early (we think). If I submit another Wikimania session next year, it won't be a discussion.
Wikidata has arrived. Among the site's grizzled veterans, many of whom burned out on creating new articles years ago, Wikidata is the new uncharted territory—in some ways, it's what I suggested in my previous post about the Apple Watch—where topics and categories have yet to be fully defined, and much satisfying work remains to be done. I wrote about Wikidata in 2012, just ahead of its launch, when I didn't really have any idea what it was or what it was good for. Well, this weekend I finally made my first edits, and I think it's starting to come together:
Just made my first edits to @wikidata! OK, so they were tutorial sandbox edits. But it's a start. /cc @generalising #Wikimania
— The Wikipedian (@thewikipedian) July 18, 2015
Yes, Wikidata is the new "cool" thing (relatively speaking, of course, this is still Wikipedia we're talking about) and here is proof:
The cutest Wikidata family! #wikimania pic.twitter.com/Wr0T8sbmyw — Wikidata (@wikidata) July 17, 2015
In case you don't get it, Q7565 is the entity ID for "father" on Wikidata. See what they did there?
♦ ♦ ♦ OK, that's it for Wikimania commentary. Let's close out with a bit of sightseeing. Here is maybe the most amazing building I've ever visited in my life, the Museo Soumaya, supported by Carlos "the Mexican Warren Buffet" Slim, named for his late wife:
Evening #Wikimania at amazing museum. Also amazingly poor organization. We went to the mall next door to find a restaurant. A photo posted by William Beutler (@williambeutler) on Jul 18, 2015 at 6:38pm PDT
At one point, I wandered into a peaceful (and apparently permit-holding) protest at Hemiciclo a Juarez on Alameda Central, and when I emerged from the crowd I was confronted with the intimidating scene below. The only way out was through, and technically not through but right up to the line and then a left through the park. Police officers with riot shields is just everyday Mexico City, and the officers themselves seemed more interested in whatever conversations they were carrying on than the stray gringo taking photos of them.
Uh oh. Think I'm on the wrong side of this police line.
A photo posted by William Beutler (@williambeutler) on Jul 18, 2015 at 11:37am PDT
And here is a shot of the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan, which I visited on a Wikimedian bus trip the day after the conference. I climbed all the way to the top of this sucker, and I still have the shin bruises to prove it.
Pyramid of the Sun, not the only Aztec skyscraper I climbed today. #latergram and more to come. A photo posted by William Beutler (@williambeutler) on Jul 20, 2015 at 7:37pm PDT