Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2017/Sources/Cycle 2/Wikimedia Chile - Strategy meetup in Santiago (June 6, 2017)
Information
What group or community is this source coming from?
| name of group | Wikimedia Chile |
| virtual location (page-link) or physical location (city/state/country) | Providencia, Santiago, Chile |
| Location type | in-person discussion |
| # of participants in this discussion (a rough count) | 14 |
Summary
- Theme key
- Healthy, inclusive communities
- The augmented age
- A truly global movement
- The most trusted source of knowledge
- Engaging in the knowledge ecosystem
- Questions key
- What impact would we have on the world if we follow this theme?
- How important is this theme relative to the other 4 themes? Why?
- Focus requires tradeoffs. If we increase our effort in this area in the next 15 years, is there anything we’re doing today that we would need to stop doing?
- What else is important to add to this theme to make it stronger?
- Who else will be working in this area and how might we partner with them?
The Most Important Theme
The participants were invited to choose the theme(s) they considered more important for the Wikimedia movement, pick sticky notes with different colors assigned to each theme and write why the theme was the most important to them.
| Line | Theme (refer to key) | Question (refer to key) | Summary Statement | Keywords |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | A | 2 | It is the way to ensure diversity of content approaches for all voices to be represented. Everyone needs a friendly environment to enter the ecosystem and maintain collaboration over time. (original note) | diversity, environment |
| 2 | A | 2 | The greatest potential given by Internet is the diversity possibility -- to confront knowledge, ideas and perspectives different from our own, and which we would hardly have otherwise accessed. (original note) | diversity |
| 3 | A | 2 | Without healthy and inclusive communities, content becomes irrelevant in the short term. (original note) | community, environment |
| 4 | A | 2 | [This theme] contains C, D and E themes. Tolerance, respect and diversity → link with theme D. (original note) | diversity, relevance |
| 5 | A | 2 | Because without healthy communities all other themes become impossible, especially B --because the data are compromised now-- and C -- because it doesn't have the voices of the majority. (original note) | community, environment, diversity |
| 6 | A | 2 | [It is important for] social inclusion, immigrants, special educational needs. (original note) | diversity |
| 7 | B | 2 | The content presentation in formats different than text seems fundamental to reach users other than traditional readers. (original note) | interface, readers |
| 8 | B | 2 | [The movement has to work in] technological upgrade, Wikipedia semantics, machine translation, local alphabets. (original note) | technology, automation, language |
| 9 | C | 2 | The production of a diverse knowledge is subject to the possibility that (almost) all participate, or at least have the possibility to participate. (original note) | knowledge |
| 10 | C | 2 | If Wikipedia is only based in the North, it is not open knowledge and much remains to be done. (original note) | geographic gap |
| 11 | C | 2 | Make room for contributions related to local contexts. Free and inclusive knowledge focused on accessibility in languages and support for disabled people. (original note) | language, accesibility |
| 12 | C | 2 | It is important that Wikipedia make room for cultural diversity of the world. This can only be achieved with a truly diverse group in the editing work. It is important in the movement legitimacy. (original note) | diversity |
| 13 | C | 2 | A truly global movement allows, but doesn't ensure, the generation of specific local content that even foreign experts may not know. (original note) | globalism |
| 14 | D | 2 | Relevant knowledge, educational use (training of people), gain respect (strategies). (original note) | knowledge, education |
| 15 | D | 2 | [Theme] E is a consequence of D, or [rather] D is a requirement for E. In certain communities it is linked to theme A. (original note) | relevance |
| 16 | D | 2 | Project sustainability depend on the quality positioning of it. (original note) | sustainability |
| 17 | E | 2 | Participate in the knowledge stystem, especially in school education, to sow the interest and value of collaboration, community, and find/motivate future volunteers. (original note) | education, community, collaboration |
| 18 | E | 2 | As an access-to-knowledge source its usefulness lies in its use and that the readers can later be integrated as publishers into the ecosystem. This is essential to make knowledge sustainable over time. (original note) | readers, sustainability |
| 19 | E | 2 | Provide educational projects attached to Wikipedia. Promote educational use. Conduct lectures, workshops, tutorials and create educational materials for use in the school system. (original note) | education, outreach |
Open discussion
| Line | Theme (refer to key) | Question (refer to key) | Summary Statement | Keywords |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20 | A | 2 | The theme is important, and it is similar in OpenStreetMap. How to grow the community? If there is no community behind, improving and curating, the content loses value because it is obsolete or replaced. (Julio Costa) | community |
| 21 | A | 2 | Wikipedia pretends to be a source of knowledge, which can only grow from different visions. If there is only one specific group, it doesn't meet the goal of being a broad-based source of knowledge and to report different world views and linguistic diversity. (María Paz Canales) | diversity |
| 22 | A | 1 | It has to be a friendly and motivating space, where people are motivated to enter and captivated to stay, not insecure, that peers reactions don't demotivate. How to include "different" people, perhaps before was not subject because they were less contributors, but as it grows becomes more sensitive. (María Paz Canales) | environment, diversity |
| 23 | A | 1 | One of the virtues of being an online and collaborative source is the real possibility that many can contribute to knowledge, which makes it different from other knowledge produced otherwise. That is one of the biggest values of Wikipedia as a project. (Vladimir Garay) | diversity |
| 24 | A-D | 2 | Any valid source of information has to include multiple points of view. I selected A and D because they are linked and include the others. (Daniela Schütte) | diversity |
| 25 | A | 2 | Without theme A all others are impossible. You can't fix the data without including communities. (Trish Hepworth) | community |
| 26 | A | 1 | Knowledge is a good, the best we have as human beings. The best of knowledge should be on Wikipedia, unlike other spaces that include the best and the worst. (Guillermo Toro) | knowledge |
| 27 | A | 3 | The problem with new users interfere with diversification. It is much easier to be included if you are a white man in a white-man environment, but if you are different it costs a lot. (María Paz Canales) | new users, diversity |
| 28 | A-D | 4 | Perhaps it would be good to think of digitization of sources, which would add content, for example, about Chilean women. It is necessary to look for ways to promote the access of new users with other institutions. (Daniela Schütte) | new users, content |
| 29 | A | 3 | Behavior with new users is common in this type of community. Certain "paternities" are generated about the work that some do. (Julio Costa) | new users |
| 30 | A | 3 | I don't know if this is heresy. There are content that are underrepresented in Wikipedia, but are under-represented in all. The challenge is, how to change this reality? Is the volunteer model the answer to this? There should be no level of centralized participation? If "we want these contents to be there," then could we think of doing it a job? (Vladimir Garay) | content, gaps |
| 31 | C | 1 | On the subject of global movement, if we have more global participants, it is easier to have a better understanding of notability and not to generate deletion problems. (Denisse Hernández) | content, diversity |
| 32 | C | 4 | It would be good to encourage the training of new users, leveraging with education activities. There should be more global work, not just on communities. You have to work on good tutorials that allow to form new users, facilitating the work for many interested parties. (Fernando Gualda) | new users |
| 33 | C | 4 | Accessibility issues for disabled people must be improved. Images should have a description which can be used for audio formats, and different font sizes, image formats, etc. (Denisse Hernández) | accesibility |
| 34 | D | 4 | Thinking outside the box: Differentiated rule statute to generate content that is more difficult to create. Don't apply the same levels of exigency for people who want to include and not demand the same level of sources for subjects that are not represented. (María Paz Canales) | content |
Detailed notes
Report
The meeting took place in the building of the National Tourism Service, in Santiago de Chile, on June 6, 2017 from 18:45 till 21:16 (UTC-4). The participants were experts and representatives of partner institutions in GLAM and education areas. We recived answers from 29 invites of which 15 confirmed arrival but finally 8 attended. Also 6 Wikipedians attended, playing the roles of facilitator (1), secretaries (2) and assistants on media recording and general organization (3).
The activity started at 18:45 (UTC-4) with a short lecture given by Marco Correa, Chair of WMCL and Strategy coordinator for the Spanish-speaking communities. The presentation was focused on the challenges of the Wikimedia movement towards 2030 and an explanation of the 2030 strategy process. The discussion was divided in two main blocks. In the first one, the participants discussed the future of free knowledge, trying to answer the questions:
- How do people access high quality information today, and how will they in 2030? How will access patterns in 2030 change the way your organization conducts its mission?
- How is your institution thinking about preparing for the future? Is your institution preparing for the future? If not, what would you like to see done?
One of the main issues in this discussion was about the meaning of the concept of "high quality information", and how Wikimedia projects will deal with different formats that are used in internet today (e.g. streaming, gifs, automation). Below are some opinions given in this block.
The complexity of the question is the focus on the "high quality" format, where the evolution is less clear than simple content. Nowadays, the intervention of artificial intelligence in development / knowledge management is taking more force. Challenge must be how to position yourself: human-mediated vs. AI. How the experience that has been catalyzed in Wikipedia feeds this artificial intelligence.
— María Paz Canales
We do not know if people will get used to these devices to consult information. There will be a change in access with digital assistants, but it will probably continue to "deliver" information in the same ways. There isn't a Wikipedia's Siri yet. There must be more progress towards the video and text... How does Wikipedia tackle that? If younger users are accustomed to audiovisuals, what is the use of having written information? How can audiovisual props be generated for Wikipedia articles?
— Julio Costa
One problem for the teacher is that when (s)he looks for support material, (s)he goes to Google and finds it difficult to find something (s)he can use in class: something of quality, good format, understandable information, etc. It makes sense to think that there is better quality content (bibliographic response, easy to understand). It's funny, we have this feeling that things will continue to evolve but in some cases there are these waves of things that appear and disappear. We have discussed much the subject of the programming; it appeared in the 80s in the subject of learning, returned in the 90s and now again with other objectives. Will it remain to stay? Is it more valid than before? Should we incorporate it?
— Fernando Gualda
Internet offers a lot of information, so the role of the teacher should be to teach how to navigate. There is a very interesting discussion about how knowledge is being mediated. Algorithmic answers are an interesting answer to this. Who decides how it is done? Who collects the information? There is a very interesting possibility of Internet as an archive. Things that once existed on the internet may disappear, so one thing that Wikipedia does is that it works as an archive.
— Vladimir Garay
After a coffee break, the second block about the future of the Wikimedia movement started. The guests were invited to choose the Cycle 2 theme(s) they considered most relevant, having to take the post-it with the color assigned to their theme, and write briefly why they considered it the most important theme. The results were:
- - Healthy, inclusive communities: 6 votes
- - The augmented age: 2 votes
- - A truly global movement: 5 votes
- - The most trusted source of knowledge: 3 votes
- - Engaging in the knowledge ecosystem: 3 votes
The messages written in the sticky notes are above. The following open debate was focused on the most voted theme, "Healthy and Inclusive Communities", which absorbed most of the time. "A truly global movement" and "The most respected source of knowledge" were also discussed.
-
Vladimir Garay, María Paz Canales & Julio Costa -
Fernando Gualda, Denisse Hernández -
Daniela Schütte
Finally, the activity closed with a message for Wikimedia from each guest, which was videotaped. They answered: What is the one message you’d like the Wikimedia movement to know for our future?. Some of the messages were:
- Fernando Gualda:
- I would stress on how to generate a strategic plan to work with the formal education system in all countries, how to motivate new generations, how to generate new content, how to participate in Wikipedia.
- Guillermo Toro:
- Wikipedia is part of the world, not outside it. It must reflect the best in the world. It is a powerful brand that helps educational incentives. It should be institutions that fight to use Wikipedia as a literacy tool.
- Vladimir Garay:
- There are two things that I think are important. Wikimedia as a brand and movement is super powerful, the work is laudable and hard, but there is a potential influence on the work of Wikipedia -- there should be a reflection to take a more active role in issues that are necessary to operate (copyright, censorship, access). With the brand value, it can be a contribution to many struggles. This means change in many aspects of WMF, a type of infrastructure that may not exist, but it is a discussion that they should have.
- María Paz Canales:
- I value the issue of inclusion and need for a diverse (gender, cultural, ethnic) community. The process that has led up to now Wikipedia as a movement is already valuable -- Although much remains to be done, it is valuable to share that experience in other fields. There are other cultural movements that are dealing with that and the Wikimedia experience is very valuable to them.
Participants
- Experts
- María Paz Canales, lawyer, CEO of Derechos Digitales NGO.
- Julio Costa, President of OpenStreetMap Chile.
- Vladimir Garay, Advocacy Director of Derechos Digitales NGO.
- Fernando Gualda, School Digital Agenda, Enlaces (Ministry of Education).
- Trish Hepworth, lawyer, Copyright expert.
- Denisse Hernández, Educational Innovation, Enlaces (Ministry of Education).
- Daniela Schütte, Coordinator of Memoria Chilena, National Library of Chile.
- Guillermo Toro, librarian and professor, Director of the Librarianship School, UTEM.
- Wikimedians
- Marco Correa, President of WMCL, and Spanish Strategy coordinator.
- Carlos Figueroa, Secretary of WMCL.
- Osmar Valdebenito, Treasurer of WMCL.
- Dennis Tobar, Board Member of WMCL.
- Claudio Loader, Board Member of WMCL.
- Sarah Chambers, volunteer.