Discussions
(Redirected from Program ideas)
Discussions on any related topic, whether or not it has a related abstract, can be carried out on the conference wiki. Please list your ideas for the conference here; use this page to note events or presentations you would like to see, to suggest open space topics, and to communicate with other possible presenters (to find co-organizers for a bof/workshop, &c). Feel free to start new pages on this wiki to discuss any of these ideas in detail, to link to them from this page, and to invite others to participate in a collaborative discussion here.
General ideas
These are broad discussion themes which have been proposed; many of them have been discussed on Meta and various projects to date. Each of these will eventually have its own discussion space on the conference wiki; which will inform and be updated by discussions during Wikimania. Discussions which have been formally accepted for a slot on the program are marked with a P.
|
|
Older ideas
- Meta-research (Statistics, Researching Wikimedia social networks)
- Research
- Researching to add content to articles and content
- Using articles and content for researching other works
- Content
- Disambiguation pages and authority files
- Classification and standardization
- Quality (review, trust networks)
- Trust - Who and what can be trusted? Measures, styles, community dynamics.
- Policy and organization - How democratic should Wikimedia and its projects be? What is best for the goals we are trying to reach? Dictatorship, Anarchy, Regulated democracy, something else? Some merge?
- Policies: the why and how of their creation, and how they should be applied.
- Conflict resolution - How should conflicts be solved? Should it work through an arbcom, by direct community decision? How should such an arbcom work, what demands should its members fulfill? What are the experiences of the arbcom-members? Some exchange of experience and advice should take place.
- How to give a good Wikipedia presentation -- how to give a great presentation on the projects to (any random group of people); resources to use.
- Wikimedia and open courseware -- How do we make wikimedia "academically respectable"? How do we get around issues of the non-commercial tag? What can we do to cooperate with MIT OCW?
Birds of a Feather Topics
List below topics that we might use for "birds of a feather" sessions at Wikimania. This time is an opportunity to catch new or abstract projects and connections and opportunities that noone is talking about yet. Many of these discussions will be organized, and topics chosen, organically after the conference begins. New topics will be suggested then as well; brainstorming on-wiki is simply another way to help develop ideas.
- Wikis and social structure -- moving towards a new type of community
- The transparent society
- Editing and versioning the physical world
- What is truth, how we can best approach it, how to recognize it.
- Moral obligation - Should Wikipedia only take care of its own existance, is Wikipedia there only to be Wikipedia, or is there a broader responsibility? Does Wikipedia have a social responsibility to the people using it and thinking it is true, has Wikipedia a responsibility to teach people, or to tell them stories by "dictatures" are not true, how should we see ourselves in this world? How big is our responsibility, how big do we want it to be?
- Gender and Wikimedia -- why the gender disparity on the projects? (is it true?) Does this hurt content? What can be done?
- Commons: Seperate project or media repository?
- Constructed languages in Wikipedia
- New wikiprojects -- Chinese law? Quantitative finance?
- Global digital divide -- Representation on wikipedia by less developed countries
- Wikipedia mainstreaming -- What happens when wikipedia becomes mainstream enough to attract representatives of companies, governments, etc. etc? What should Wikipedia do about PR firms?
- Who does wikipedia? Do we have statistical data on who is on wikipedia?
- Wikimedia & Google -- Is a partnership between the two popular internet organizations possible? How would it benefit both companies?
- SisterSites - the value of linking to same-name pages on other wikis, how to do it, and a coding sprint to implement it for MediaWiki and other wikis
Panels
- Criticism of Wiki[p]edia -- why it can't work, why it doesn't work, why it hasn't worked so far; preferably constructive criticism with examples of better systems and community structures.
Organizational use of wikis
There are already panels around this subject. What I miss there is use of a wiki in software engineering projects. SW engineers and designers currently work on individual documents that they are responsible for. Therefore nobody else feels the need to make improvements in these documents, which are of coure abundant during the project. How would this be different when a wiki was used for sw design and documentation during the sw product lifecycle?
Workshops
- Workshop making tools (like popup) and adapting other people's tools to your wishes.
- How to make a pretty page? How can I let an article or my userpage look great, what are the possibilities in wiki-makeup? should there be extensions in the software for this?
- How each project works (fill in a projectname like Wikimedia Commons, Wiktionary etc) - Explain how people can add their information best, how policy works somehow, and EDIT!
- Media - Workshop editing image-material and sound-material to improve quality or to merge pictures etc by a freesource (or at least fréé) program. The target of this workshop would be to have more people able to edit pictures when they are home and downloaded some edit-program.
- Research 101 - Workshop finding information, especially free and/or trusted! Where can I search information about certain topics, in certain languages.
- Search 101 - Combined Workshop and discussion - How to search in Wikipedia? First some ideas are stated, some tools are listed, and tried. Next people should discuss their pros and cons, how they could be improved, and if one or some of them should be implemented in the search-functionality of mediawiki.
Presentations
- For what kind of targets is a wiki usable? What are the experiences of others for using a Wiki? Are there any demands to start a wiki-like subject or community? etc. What works, and what won't?
- What are those people in that OFFICE doing all the time? How is their way of work? Who are they? etc.
- Fiduciary responsibility and authority
- Sockpuppets, trolls, takeovers by enemies, takedown of the servers by court. What are the disastrous ending-possibilities of the Wikimedia-success story, and how can we (try to) prevent it. (however, BEANS :-) --Ed.)