[WikiEN-l] A Perhaps OT Post -- My Wikipedia Talk

Fri Jul 8 17:52:01 UTC 2005

I'm not sure if this is the right place to share this report,
seeing how it does not concern alleged misbehavior of admins,
or directly applies to any other topic recently covered here,
but I'd like to confess that I gave a presentation on Wikipedia
last night to the local Linux Users' Group here in Portland
(aka, PLUG) that was quite warmly received. The entire
audience, about 30-40 in number, who I feel are a reasonable
sampling of the technical elite of this town (with one very
obvious exception), were all very familiar with Wikipedia,
& quite interested to learn more.

I tried to cover the basics of Wikipedia: the software, the
hardware, how Wikipedia works, all of the projects associated
with it -- & the eternal problem of being sure that its content
was reliable. I also tried to cover the community angle of
Wikipedia, comparing it to the communities that have evolved
with various Open Source software projects, Linux in particular,
but at that point I felt I had been talking too long & forced
myself to be very brief.

Some feedback from the audience I thought people here might
be interested in:
* A lot of questions about copyright, & how we make sure people
do not slip copyright violations in.
* Everyone wanted to see the Klingon Wikipedia Front Page.
* The issue of sex-related content came up, which led to a
review of a number of existing Wikipedia articles, including
[[autofellatio]]. (I told an Intel employee who wanted me to
show that page, "I'll let you take a look at it tomorrow at
work.")
* People were impressed in the fact that the emphasis at Wikipedia
is not on regulating content, but in regulating the behavior
of its contributors.
* One person asked if the goals of Commons & Wikisource don't
overlap the goals of the Gutenberg Project. I'm not sure I
gave the right answer to his question.
* Another person afterwards buttonholed me, & proposed Yet
Another Method of stablizing Wikipedia content for the 1.0
release. I tried to assure him that David Gerard had the issue
well in hand, & was working towards a workable implementation that
would likely be released in 12 months' time.

I was also asked some in depth technical questions about how
the servers handle the load on Wikipedia, something I know
very little about -- but would be of immense interest to a lot
of people. I also know that SysAdmin & Linux Journal pay money
for articles they publish, so if someone who knows would make
the effort to write an account, it would help subsidize their
Wikiholicism. ;)

If anyone is interested in the slides to this presentation (I
created 9 html files with links to selected pages), I'd be happy
to share my work.

Geoff