Wikimania: Jimmy Wales’ Plenary
So, as you might imagine, I’m here at the first day of Wikimania.
The first event I attended was Jimbo Wales’ plenary session. Here are my rough notes.
He opened with a segment of a Comedy Central show about its entry in Wikipedia.
Review of last year
Foundation growth, including hiring a lawyer & interim CEO, Brad Patrick
Wikia — Jimmy’s company doing for-profit wiki communities
hiring several full-time engineers to work on MediaWiki
Campaigns Wikia — a project to improve political discourse
http://world.wikia.com/ — Jimmy’s travel schedule
Announcements:
One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) to include Wikipedia as their first element in their content repository
Board just approved Wikiversity
The Coming Year:
Wikiwyg coming to MediaWiki
Jimbo wants to lower the threshhold for people to edit articles. The risk of keeping out smart people is greater than the risk of keeping out the vandals and trolls. If someone really wants to damage the ‘pedia, they’re going to learn how to edit anyway. (Of course, someone can argue that smart people who really want to edit the encyclopedia will learn how to do it anyway. Getting intelligent contributors is more important than keeping out the trolls.)
It’s time to focus on quality over quantity. We’ve got content, let’s improve what we have.
WP:BIO
Policies on bios of living people have become more refined, focus on higher quality
Admins and editors want fewer unsourced claims, especially negative ones
Image tagging
Jimbo gave an update to Ten Things that Will be Free
A few other notes about the conference: the dress is very, very casual. I might even do my presentation this afternoon in shorts and a t-shirt, but perhaps not. Since I get the honor of sharing the stage with Gary Price, I think I might try to look a bit more presentable. That and the air conditioning is a bit cold.
There are many amazing folks here. The turnout is fabulous. I’m doing some terrific networking within the Wikimedia community.
The planners closed registration a few days ago because they sold out of spaces. I can’t really tell you, “Come on down! There’s plenty of space!”
