Sue Gardner, Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation, had a very difficult task to accomplish: in 25’ she had to report on the Foundation’s activities during the year 2010- 2011, but also to treat the attendees to a sneak preview of next year’s action plan.
She did not have to try hard, however, to electrify the audience.…
03/08/2011, 08:20 am - Schiphol airport. Holding a small handbag in one hand and a packet of cinnamon cookies in the other, I was waiting to check in for my flight to Tel Aviv, Israel. From Tel Aviv I would take a shuttle taxi to Haifa, where Wikimania 2011, the annual international…
This is an interview with Markellos Stevis, an administrator of the Greek-language Wikipedia and one of its most prolific editors. Markellos participates actively in the “I participate in Wikipedia” initiative, a campaign that aims at the development and enrichment of the Greek – language Wikipedia. Here, he shares some of his observations about the experiential workshops that were held as…
You can read part I of the interview here.
Usually, the users are the ones who approach Wikipedia. With this campaign, however, it is the Wikipedia community that approaches the public. What is the difference between the experience offered to the user by an organized effort and…
Yiannis Giannarakis is the general coordinator of the “I participate in Wikipedia” campaign, which aims at the development and enrichment of the Greek – language Wikipedia. The initiative, launched in January 2011, is supported by the Greek-language Wikipedia community, the Greek Ministry of Education, the Greek Free/Open-Source Software Society (GFoss) and the Greek Research and Technology Network (GrNet).
Here,…
This is part of the final paper I submitted for the course “Culture of Spectacle”
As shown in the previous post, the “anyone can edit” philosophy of Wikipedia is often viewed with great skepticism in academic circles, while its collective intelligence function model is occasionally treated as a threat to authority, individuality and creativity.
In…
This is part of the final paper I submitted for the course “Culture of Spectacle”
17.000.000 articles. 91.000 active contributors. 270 languages.
No matter what words one would choose to describe Wikipedia, numbers cannot speak but the truth: Wikipedia, which was set out as an “experiment” in 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, nowadays constitutes the largest free,…
The truth is that one needs all the support that can get when is called to present an online encyclopedia in front of the so – called Net Gen or Generation Y. I wouldn’t dare to count myself a member of this Generation. I grew up with the TV. They grew up with the Internet. I search in Google. They are Googling. I am learning the language of technology. For them, it’s their native.
So, here are the valuable lessons I was taught while “teaching”.
In the first 10 years of its existence, Wikipedia, this unusual “experiment” as it used to be called, has evolved into the world’s greatest reference source. Far more than that however, Wikipedia’s most surprising achievement is that it turned the creation of an encyclopedia, previously perceived as a boring, elite-only process, into an exciting experience;…