Revolution round-up - week three
Post categories: Blogs, Piracy, Programme one, Weekly round-up, Wikipedia
| 09:39 UK time, Friday, 31 July 2009
Each week the programme production teams run through the blog content and comments to see what is feeding into the programme's thinking, structure and content, and to review what questions the team are looking to ask our users. So far only programme one (power and the web) has a full production team; the following audio clip is a conversation between myself and director of programme one, Philip Smith, recorded after our briefing session, discussing the issues raised by recent blog activity and ideas he is looking to pursue.
Philip is looking for human and accessible stories coming out of the web and its tools and communities - particularly the different ways people edit Wikipedia:
Programme one (power and the web) - piracy
Aleks opened the debate on piracy and personal boundaries; asking, in the context of the web offering all manner of content - commercial and personal - for free, where each of us draws the line on 'sharing' and piracy.
Off the Digital Revolution blog, Blogger R4isstatic wrote an article on The Internet as Creative Tool during which they observe:
'one of the main objections to the trend of making things available online is that we lose the context of things, the author loses the power. I think that I disagree here - that's not a failing of the Web itself, it's a failing of our limited use of it. If we were to use the Web in the way I've talked about, then authorship would be another valid link to make - and one that should always be traversable - credit would actually be easier to give, and would also hopefully, importantly begin to encourage a true breaking down of the walls between 'producers' and 'consumers' - we would, and should be, enabling the audience to create entirely new things, using our things - that's still a valid thing to do, as long as the credit is given, and the links between what one person has originally made, and someone else has remixed, are made.'
In response I asked: Could piracy become a KPI in the semantic web? Certainly along the lines of Matt Mason's arguments regards piracy as being the sharp end of innovation and a sign to companies and content creators to adapt to their market call.
Which R4isstatic replied 'I like the idea of piracy being a KPI - because yes, that's (in some forms) exactly what it is - a measure of how interested people are in something, how 'desperate' they are to get their hands on it etc.'
Back on our blog, UK Music CEO Feargal Sharky offered a fair and measured view of the options facing content creators, ultimately defending copyright as remaining an effective and functional option for creative control / personal choice:
'Copyright allows this. It encourages creativity and offers the creator freedom of choice. (Want to sign to a music company? Strike a sponsorship deal with a brand? Give your music away for free? Copyright gives you the option...)'
Meanwhile, many commenting on the blog, including jayfurneaux, cite Creative Commons as being a solution in progress to issues of IP and copyright's failings in the context of the developing digital models.
In light of the owner-creator's plight ParkyDR wryly observes:
'I don't think creators should have absolute control over every single copy of their work, that's why Creative Commons Licenses are necessary. At the moment we've got the equivalent of a bunch of kids playing football and one saying it's my ball, so you've got to let me score all the goals or I'm taking my ball home.'
Programme three (privacy and economics)
While this week's blogging was ostensibly on the topic of piracy and Intellectual Property theft, but the debate swiftly moved away from that of piracy in the mainstream (online) sense (as Aleks' blog post was indeed more about misappropriation / reuse / altering of content (personal or commercial). This steered some people's thinking towards privacy and personal culpability for digital footprints and the stories they might tell about their owners - which reaches out to the themes of Programme Three (privacy and economics)
al_robertson notes in response
'...we still don't know what a fully mature (ie complete life spanning) web presence will look like, and we probably won't for another 50 or 60 years or so... Perhaps the lack of online privacy we're experiencing now will lead to development of more clearly defined lifelong open / friends only / family only areas of web presence for each of us?'
Englishfolkfan described concerns on this theme provided this example of a person's 'private' public online activities affecting their career : Facebook surfing while sick costs woman job - and also considered how this visibility online might provide unwitting windows to any agencies to follow your movements, habits and employment:
'A rather random thought about 'freelance' or 'self-employed' personages who lead more exotic lives online via, say, twitter - it would be quite easy for the Inland Revenue to track their work/play record if it were felt necessary.'
Elsewhere on the web:
On Twitter @greenblahblah offered an amusing 'the web is...' #thewebis where i meet others who also remember the exact number of calories in a Nutty bar
And of course, where would we be without another peerless picture of our production meetings?
Many thanks to all our visitors and those leaving comments, sharing wisdom and stories are particularly appreciated. As ever, if you have something to share with us, please leave a comment, a link.
Next week we begin discussions of programme two (the web and the nation state). Some fascinating ideas coming out of this topic, but we are very keen to take comment and direction from you on the subjects within.
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Philip is looking for human and accessible stories coming out of the web and its tools and communities - particularly the different ways people edit Wikipedia:- Are you a deletionist or an inclusionist? We would be interested in your experiences, your methods and motivation
- Do you have a visualisation of Wikipedia's hierarchy? Its structure and variety of users? We'd be interested to see it.
Programme one (power and the web) - piracy
Aleks opened the debate on piracy and personal boundaries; asking, in the context of the web offering all manner of content - commercial and personal - for free, where each of us draws the line on 'sharing' and piracy.
Off the Digital Revolution blog, Blogger R4isstatic wrote an article on The Internet as Creative Tool during which they observe:
'one of the main objections to the trend of making things available online is that we lose the context of things, the author loses the power. I think that I disagree here - that's not a failing of the Web itself, it's a failing of our limited use of it. If we were to use the Web in the way I've talked about, then authorship would be another valid link to make - and one that should always be traversable - credit would actually be easier to give, and would also hopefully, importantly begin to encourage a true breaking down of the walls between 'producers' and 'consumers' - we would, and should be, enabling the audience to create entirely new things, using our things - that's still a valid thing to do, as long as the credit is given, and the links between what one person has originally made, and someone else has remixed, are made.'
In response I asked: Could piracy become a KPI in the semantic web? Certainly along the lines of Matt Mason's arguments regards piracy as being the sharp end of innovation and a sign to companies and content creators to adapt to their market call.
Which R4isstatic replied 'I like the idea of piracy being a KPI - because yes, that's (in some forms) exactly what it is - a measure of how interested people are in something, how 'desperate' they are to get their hands on it etc.'
Back on our blog, UK Music CEO Feargal Sharky offered a fair and measured view of the options facing content creators, ultimately defending copyright as remaining an effective and functional option for creative control / personal choice:
'Copyright allows this. It encourages creativity and offers the creator freedom of choice. (Want to sign to a music company? Strike a sponsorship deal with a brand? Give your music away for free? Copyright gives you the option...)'
Meanwhile, many commenting on the blog, including jayfurneaux, cite Creative Commons as being a solution in progress to issues of IP and copyright's failings in the context of the developing digital models.
In light of the owner-creator's plight ParkyDR wryly observes:
'I don't think creators should have absolute control over every single copy of their work, that's why Creative Commons Licenses are necessary. At the moment we've got the equivalent of a bunch of kids playing football and one saying it's my ball, so you've got to let me score all the goals or I'm taking my ball home.'
Programme three (privacy and economics)
While this week's blogging was ostensibly on the topic of piracy and Intellectual Property theft, but the debate swiftly moved away from that of piracy in the mainstream (online) sense (as Aleks' blog post was indeed more about misappropriation / reuse / altering of content (personal or commercial). This steered some people's thinking towards privacy and personal culpability for digital footprints and the stories they might tell about their owners - which reaches out to the themes of Programme Three (privacy and economics)
al_robertson notes in response
'...we still don't know what a fully mature (ie complete life spanning) web presence will look like, and we probably won't for another 50 or 60 years or so... Perhaps the lack of online privacy we're experiencing now will lead to development of more clearly defined lifelong open / friends only / family only areas of web presence for each of us?'
Englishfolkfan described concerns on this theme provided this example of a person's 'private' public online activities affecting their career : Facebook surfing while sick costs woman job - and also considered how this visibility online might provide unwitting windows to any agencies to follow your movements, habits and employment:
'A rather random thought about 'freelance' or 'self-employed' personages who lead more exotic lives online via, say, twitter - it would be quite easy for the Inland Revenue to track their work/play record if it were felt necessary.'
Elsewhere on the web:
On Twitter @greenblahblah offered an amusing 'the web is...' #thewebis where i meet others who also remember the exact number of calories in a Nutty bar
And of course, where would we be without another peerless picture of our production meetings?
Many thanks to all our visitors and those leaving comments, sharing wisdom and stories are particularly appreciated. As ever, if you have something to share with us, please leave a comment, a link.
Next week we begin discussions of programme two (the web and the nation state). Some fascinating ideas coming out of this topic, but we are very keen to take comment and direction from you on the subjects within.
Comment number 1.
At 15:53 31st Jul 2009, cfp wrote:A few links of some relevance to your first programme which you may not have seen:
Stats/charts:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2009-July/053525.html
https://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/ChartsWikipediaEN.htm
Inclusionism/deletionism:
Reasonably well written position summary articles:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Inclusionism
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Deletionism
Notability:
Articles often end up being deleted on grounds of lack of notability and many inclusionists are opposed to this, considering instead that the existing official policies of verifiability, no original research and a neutral point of view are sufficient.
The consensus position now is captured here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:N
though it is not "official policy".
Back in the day I was vaguely involved in an ultimately fruitless campaign against this position:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability/Historical/Non-notability (see in particular its talk page)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability/Historical/Non-notability/Essay
but I haven't really thought about it for several years. (And I certainly have no desire to re-open old arguments.)
A final link on this subject may be of particular interest if you're tracing the history of these issues and the extent or otherwise of top-down control:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Fame_and_importance
(You will recognise the name of the top voter there - 2004 feels a long time ago...)
----
I've posted a request to the wikimediauk-l mailing list for people with more recent, less-abstract stories to tell, but your best bet may be contacting individual editors in the associations of inclusionist and deletionist wikipedians:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Inclusionist_Wikipedians
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Association_of_Deletionist_Wikipedians/members
Complain about this comment (Comment number 1)
Comment number 2.
At 18:07 31st Jul 2009, Dan Biddle wrote:@seaephpea - fantastic! Many thanks for these links. I think Philip will want to comment / reply to your links and notes further, so watch this space on Monday. Your posting that request to the Wikipedian community is very much appreciated as well.
Dan
Complain about this comment (Comment number 2)
Comment number 3.
At 11:24 2nd Aug 2009, WereSpielChequers wrote:I'm not sure that inclusionism/deletionism is really much of an issue on Wikipedia today.
I consider myself one of the more inclusionist admins currently active on the English Wikipedia, and yet I've deleted more than two thousand articles in the last five months.
Wikipedia has now grown to the point that every new band wants its own Wikipedia article, and it seems to me that the drafting of an article along the lines of "xxxxx is a [insert genre] band from [insert city] and the next big thing on the alternative music circuit/festival scene, their first gig will be at [name of highschool/live music pub or similar venue], and our first album will be released later this year. We are currently unsigned." Now often precedes the completion of a bands initial lineup. Many such articles get deleted daily, often within minutes of being posted. Deleting such articles along with "yyyy is the most gorgeous person in the whole wide world and our high school prom queen", is an uncontroversial chore in Wikipedia.
Rather than inclusionism/deletionism more important current debates within the community are between:
The uber speedy deleters and those who think that articles should have hours rather than seconds for the second or third edit that might expand them from a title and a bit about someone's childhood to add detail such as why that person grew up to be notable.
Some content writers who have a minority view as to how strictly the civility policy should be enforced and how much latitude should be given vested contributors - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Giano/On_civility_%26_Wikipedia_in_general for an alternate view. This particular dispute highlights an alternative hierarchy within Wikipedia based on the quality of a users contributions, especially https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fa the Featured articles; as opposed to the more outwardly obvious hierarchy of editors, admins & Arbcom.
The recent paid editing debate at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Paid_editing
And of course there are a whole series of Off Wiki disputes that are now mirrored in their debates and edit wars on Wikipedia - Israel/Palestine, Macedonia and a string of other nationalist disputes make a number of historical and geographical articles very contentious.
WereSpielChequers
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Comment number 4.
At 15:42 6th Aug 2009, Dan Biddle wrote:@seaephpea and @WereSpielChequers we are very interested in discussing this further. We're also wondering whether you or others you might know are attending Wikimania, as we have an interest in following the story there. We'd like to get some footage of the event, so anyone going please contact us asap.
Also - do you know any UK-based 'deletionists' who might be interested in making contact with our production? Did any come back to you @seaephpea? I looked at the list and there are some people I'd like to contact - how can I best do that within Wikipedia? I don't know the protocol.
Many thanks,
Dan
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Comment number 5.
At 23:04 6th Aug 2009, cfp wrote:I've forwarded your request for footage to the relevant lists, there'll almost certainly be plenty of video content generated anyway, so I doubt it'll be a problem.
Contacting Wikipedia users via their talk or page or by using the "e-mail user" function is perfectly acceptable. You might also consider posting a message on the "village pump" here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump or to the Wikipedia EN mailing list here: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l .
I've not heard back from anyone else.
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