Teylers Museum, the 'Gehoorzaal'

Wikimedia Nederland had its 2012 new year’s reception at the Teylers Museum in Haarlem. It calls itself the first and oldest museum of the Netherlands. Ca. 150 Wikimedians and Wikipedia fans came together and saw an amazing collection, including some of the rooms closed to the ‘ordinary’ audience.

In her welcoming speech Marjan Scharloo, general director, mentioned the political and philosophical implications of Teylers Museum’s mission in the 18th century: spreading knowledge to the people. As president of WMNL, I looked back at our activities of 2011 and presented some of 2012. Maarten Dammers explained about a ‘Challenge’ competition that will have prize winners in May.

A great beginning of the new year, with a lot of new people interested in a membership of WMNL.

But the two sessions were also very useful for me because I learned once more about what people already know about Wikipedia and what are the usual wrong conceptions. Explaining/understanding free knowledge is very challenging, and it really needs the large approach I provide at a slow pace, with examples and simplifications.

The sessions were part of the ‘International Winter University’ of the convention, organized by astronomy professor Amri Wandel of Tel Aviv. At the end of the second lecture, I examined those listeners who were eager to obtain study points. Most of the content did reach the audience, and it is obviously easy to follow on practical things and pure facts, like that Wikipedia was founded in 2001 by Jimmy Wales.

An abstract concept such as free knowledge is a different thing: for about half of the examinees had severe difficulties picking the right multiple choice answer. And as a matter of fact, doesn’t the expression ‘free knowledge’ sound like ‘free access for everybody’, ‘sharing knowledge freely in an open way’? I always emphasise – and maybe I should even more – that our ‘free knowledge/content/culture’ is a very specific concept, that the word ‘free’ should be in quotation marks with a clear, short definition.

Videos from a conference in Berlin were posted with a connection to Wikimedia Deutschland, ‘Ins Netz gegangen’. Among them was a report from Oliver Sander, Bundesarchiv. He mentioned the many great advantages from the Bundesarchiv – Wikimedia collaboration that started in 2008, with an import of ca. 90,000 pictures to Wikimedia Commons. But there was one big downside: many reusers of the pictures, outside the Wikimedia movement, did not meet the reusage requirements. This is bad because the Bundesarchiv has granted to many original rights holders that it will look after e.g. the name attribution.

On Thursday, the WMNL met in Utrecht. Among many other things we discussed (again) about the multitude of information channels we have. Twitter, Facebook, our WMNL website, our other websites, our WMNL wiki, newsletter, Wikipedia project pages, several mailing lists… maybe we should more concentrate on some of those channels instead creating only more.

Wikimedia organizations are going to cooperate with Europeana, a EU network for cultural heritage institutions. It’s tricky – uploading must become easy and effective so that really everyone can use the new tools.

Marek Blahus in Rotterdam

‘Libera Scio’ was the title of a seminar organized by Wikimedia Nederland together with the World Esperanto Association (UEA) in Rotterdam. Marek Blahus and I presented the Wikimedia movement, multilingual Wikipedia and above all the secret ingredient of Wikipedia: free knowledge.

The UEA holds an open day twice a year in its headquarters; it is usually on Saturday, and on Sunday some guests from abroad still stay in town. For about a dozen people (age 20 to 70) joint us for a tight schedule with lots of information and exercises. The participants were not only impressed by Wikipedia’s size (and the size of Wikimedia Commons) but also by the many ways you can go wrong when it comes to copyright.

Will Guttenberg use this kind of machines ever again? (2010 in Kunduz; US Gov. PD)

The prosecuting attorney of Hof (Bavaria) made public today that it will drop the charges against Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, the former German minister of defense. Guttenberg had to step down from his office in March 2011, after massive plagiarism had been discovered in his PhD thesis. GuttenplagWiki found out that more than 63% of all lines were taken from various sources.

From 199 complains that came in only one was issued by a person whose texts had been plagiarized by Guttenberg. The prosecuting attorney says now that

• ‘only’ 23 text passages can be considered plagiarism in the strict sence of the law
• taking over parts of texts provided by the scientific service of the parliament is no embezzlement or fraud to the detriment of the Federal Republic
• copyright is primarily protecting economic rights, and the economic damage to the plaintiff is minimal
• the title PhD did not provide essential benefits to Guttenberg

Guttenberg got the complaints cancelled by paying € 20,000 to a charity. Even a party comrade of Guttenberg calls this a second class cessation. After more than seven months we came to know that plagiarism is less than you think, that it causes no damage and that a PhD title isn’t worth anything anyway.

The ex-minister is already busy with his political comeback. Recently he appeared in Canada at a conference on security issues, where he offered abrasive criticism against European politicians. For November 29th he announced his new book ‘Failed for the moment’.

Sad clown (Melissa Wiese CC BY SA)

Today I read another complaint in German language Wikipedia about the Wikimedia Foundation. Someone said that he found many of the candidates to the WMF board incompetent, and that he had candidated himself if he was capable of that difficult commercial English they use at the Foundation.

One might put this on the pile of easy reproaches: leaning back, let the others work and take responsibility, and complain that ‘I was not informed sufficiently’. But this sorrow has a true and honest ground. For a non native speaker of English, or even a native, it is difficult to follow discussions on Meta Wiki or the Foundation mailing lists. The language there

• is full of colourful colloquialisms, nice for the natives, terrible for the rest
• delivers a lot of Wikimedia jargon which you have to learn separately for every language
• often contains an aggressive tone

When the Foundation asks volunteers to translate something, then the texts are not always as comprehensive and concise as they should and could be.

In theory, the Wikipedia language versions have ‘ambassadors’ who are supposed to link the national or ethnic level with the international level. In practice, this hardly happens because the ambassadorship is non-binding, it bears no obligation. People put their names on the list and then forget about it.

Such a position, a contact person for a single language version, should be assigned by the concerning community, maybe by vote. And it must be clear to the ambassador what people expect from him: translating the most important messages from the Wikimedia blog, giving feedback from the community to the international level.

It should be obvious by now that the pure wiki way does not work.

Although the filter is a purely individual choice and can be turned off immediately, the protesters cry out ‘censorship!’ and claim that the filter is intended to please religious extremists in the USA. The protest seems to rise high especially in Germany. A poll among the German Wikipedians showed a strong contra vote, and at the WikiCon in Nuremberg in September one head-hot yelled at Foundation president Ting Chen.

Today in Hannover the members of Wikimedia Deutschland gathered to elect a new board and decide on some propositions. One of the accepted propositions was: “Position concerning the image filter in Wikimedia projects” by Achim Raschka. WMDE should not support or defend the introduction of the image filter. The filter is in violation of the basic principles of encyclopedic enlightenment. Inappropiate content (pictorial or other) should be treated in the usual way of community discussions. The board of WMDE had supported the Raschka proposal in advance.

Symposium on cultural heritage and new media at the open air museum, Arnhem

On November 11th, 2011, Heemschut ended the festivities of its anniversary year. The one hundred years old Dutch association is occupied with cultural heritage. In 2011, it was our partner with regard to Wiki Loves Monuments.

At a panel discussion I thanked for the collaboration and mentioned some strange facts about Wikipedia and Wikimedia: being in the top ten of the most popular sites in the Netherlands, we have only one part-time employee; we have a youth problem meaning that we have a lack of senior citizens; and if you have ever read a Wikipedia article, maybe it was written by a 13-year-old.

People were astonished but not as much as they were pleased when I reminded them that Wikipedia is only 10 years old, that Facebook and Twitter are huge for less than 5 years, and that 100-year-old Heemschut is possibly going to outlive them.

We had a keynote from Jill Cousins, Europeana, and three tracks of the sessions: cultural heritage, wiki-world, incore Wikimedia. For about half of the 108 participants were non Wikimedians.

People were very happy with the conference, that was organized for the first time in 2006. We hope that next year will see another edition. And maybe it will have something to do with Wiki Loves Monuments again: at the conference the Dutch winners were announced.