Wikipedia talk

The SUITS seminar series aims to provide a casual lunchtime chat about interesting topics and cutting-edge research, and I had the privilege of taking the first one… and I took the chance to talk about Wikipedia, everyone’s favourite wiki. The audience is intended to be undergraduate level, but there weren’t any undergraduates there…

I gave a brief insider’s look at Wikipedia, showing off some of the administrator tools that ordinary users cannot see. I went over some of the parts of the website (community portals, the Signpost, policy pages, special pages) that are important tools for regular contributors, especially in keeping track of vandalism. I also mentioned the efforts under way to form the local chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation.

Because if I talk for too long, people might die from boredom (!!) so I brought along some light entertainment. I played a bit of Eben Moglen’s lecture on GPLv3 - the part about the arithmetic shop. I was going to play video from Wikimania 2007, but the lazy buggers haven’t put up anything yet, so I had to be content with 2006 stuff - but it turned out to be a good choice. Lawrence Lessig is a fantastic speaker - he speaks with conviction and there’s no one who can match his slides. Finally, I played a bit of audio from the Wikipedia Weekly, broadcasting from Taiwan during the conference.

Some of the questions I hadn’t really prepared for - e.g. a question on patents. I should know more than what I managed to mumble out… and no, I still haven’t learnt that presenting without much sleep isn’t good.

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