Submissions/The Wikimedia open source project and you
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This is an accepted submission for Wikimania 2014. |
- Submission no. 1088
- Title of the submission
The Wikimedia open source project and you
- Type of submission (discussion, hot seat, panel, presentation, tutorial, workshop)
Presentation
- Author of the submission
Quim Gil
- E-mail address
qgil
wikimedia.org
- Username
- Country of origin
Catalonia (Spain)
- Affiliation, if any (organisation, company etc.)
Wikimedia Foundation
- Personal homepage or blog
- Abstract (at least 300 words to describe your proposal)
A session to learn and discuss how tech and non-tech Wikimedia contributors can collaborate more effectively, fighting less, enjoying the ride together. We the Wikimedia movement can connect better in areas like beta features, Village Pumps, Tech News, translation, Tech Ambassadors, Bugzilla, mediawiki.org, editathons, contests, hackathons, Foundation, chapters, user groups, grants, donations, education programs, technical internships, and our external relations with the open knowledge and free software communities. Where are you in this map? How can you become a better technical contributor? This session explains how.
Wikimedians consider Wikimedia a free culture movement. When Wikimedians think of free culture, most of us tend to think in free texts, free media, and just recently, free data. Many of us understand that free software – open source software – is needed to pursue our movement goals. That understanding, though, suffers from the old and perverse dichotomy which opposes humanities against technology: problems with content belong to us editors; technical problems belong to someone else, who is paid to deliver the features and fixes we need. This is a replication of the old-school paradigm of the publisher owning a site and hiring a webmaster. As an Internet movement, we can do better than this.
Let's look at Wikimedia from a technical perspective, as a free software project. Did you know Wikimedia is one of the biggest and most diverse free software projects? Few editors know or even think of us as a software project.
Any word in Wikipedia is also a string of bits. Likewise, any Wikimedia editor is also a technical contributor, consciously or not. Open knowledge contributors and free software developers share many motivations. However, just like different factions within a party, they can disagree or misunderstand each other. The good news is that we have all the pieces needed to turn this tech / non-tech divide into an integrated tech-friendly community working together for everybody's benefit. We just need to connect these pieces in the right order.
- Track
- WikiCulture & Community
(Yes, this is not a "Technology, Interface & Infrastructure" session.)
- Length of session (if other than 30 minutes, specify how long)
30 minutes
- Will you attend Wikimania if your submission is not accepted?
Yes
- Slides or further information (optional)
- Special requests
Interested attendees
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