Ting's Wikimedia Blog

The Five Pillars

2011-04-14T01:44:00.000-07:00

Deutsche Version
中文版

Since about two years I am talking about the Five Pillars, it's a little like "back to the roots".

I wanted to write down my thoughts about the Five Pillars for quite some time, but never felt to be calm enough to do so. The reason for this is mainly outside of Wikimedia, mostly because of very intensive work days and the wish to spend more time with my man at the weekends.

Now I simply decided that this is an important issue and I will simply have time for these essays.

In this first post I would like to sketch the overall relations between the Five Pillars before I break down into every of the Five.

When Wikipedia was started there were no rules, no processes. There were only the Five Pillars. These are the principles upon which Wikipedia was based. But I think with some adoptation they are also principles for all Wikimedia Projects. So I will handle the Five Pillars as if they are not only the Five Pillars of Wikipedia, but the Five Pillars of all Wikimedia projects.

From a general view, every of these Five Pillars are equally important. There is not one which is most important, without any one of them our project would get a totally different character. All these Pillars are also not independant. They are tightly interrelated. If we change one, we will change them all, because we will change their internal relations, and we will change our projects as a whole, in a fundamental way.

The first Pillar frames the scope, purpose and content of every of our projects. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, Wikimedia Commons is a repository of free media content, Wikibooks is a collection for text books, and so on and so on. Every project have such a scope statement or should have one. It gives every project its identity, its meaning of existence.

The second Pillar defines our position in the world. The humanity is a trimendous diverse and complicated entity. It is full of friendship but also full of conflicts. It is full of similarities and full of differences. The statement of neutrality, or in the case of Wikiversity, the disclosure of the point of view, put our projects outside of every of the conflicting parties and ideologies, but it is also a statement of openness. It states that everyone, every party, every ideology, has its place inside of our projects, every of them can be presented inside of our projects.

The third Pillar declares the purpose of our projects. Why are we doing all these works what we are doing. Although there were, are and would perhaps always be conspiration theories about sell out of Wikipedia or other Wikimedia projects, this will never happen, because it is in one of the fundamentals of our projects, exactly in this pillar: We do all this for free, and it should remain free.

The fourth Pillar is about our internal organization. A wiki is an interactive tool. By interactive it does not mean interactive between the server (machine) and human, but interactivity between human beings. This pillar tells us how we should interact within our projects. It emphasizes the collaborative nature of our projects. This collaborative nature is at the end what made our projects great, not the combative behavior that sometimes we see, sorrowfully.

The last Pillar reminds us not to forget any of the other four pillars. If any of the other four pillars got overwhelming, began to supress the rest, it calls us for action, to change our rules so that a balance is resetted again. It reminds us on the changing nature of our projects, it appalls on one of our human nature: the nature of exploration, never to stay at one place and think that one had already arrived the end of the world. It calls for the vitality of our projects and everyone of us, to invent, to try new things, to welcome new people, to make new friends.

Die Fünf Säulen
Seit etwa zwei Jahren redete ich verstärkt über Die Fünf Säulen. Es ist schon ein wenig wie "Zurück zum Wurzeln".

Ich wollte meinen Gedanken über diesen Fünf Säulen schon seit einiger Zeit niederschreiben, hatte aber bislang immer nich die Ruhe dafür gefunden. Der Grund dafür lag meistens außerhalb von Wikimedia, meistens wegen sehr intensiven Arbeitstagen, und an den Wochenenden wollte ich mehr Zeit mit meinem Mann verbringen.

Nun habe ich einfach beschlossen, dass dies wichtig ist, und dass ich einfach mir die Zeit dazu nehmen werde, um diesen Essay zu schreiben.

In diesem ersten Beitrag möchte ich mit einer Übersicht über die Beziehungen dieser Fünf Säulen zu einander beginnen, bevor ich dann in den späteren Beiträgen einzeln mit den Säulen beschäftige.

Als Wikipedia gestartet wurde, gab es erst einmal keinen Regeln, keinen Prozessen. Es gab nur diesen fünf Säulen. Wikipedia basierte auf diesen Prinzipien. Aber ich denke, dass mit einigen Anpassungen diese Prinzipien ebenfalls für allen anderen Wikimedia Projekten gelten. Deswegen werde ich hier diesen Fünf Säulen so behandeln, als ob sie nicht nur die Fünf Säulen der Wikipedia sind, sondern dass sie die Fünf Säulen aller Wikimedia Projekte sind.

Grundsätzlich gilt, dass jede dieser Fünf Säulen gleichwertig sind, keine ist die wichtigste. Fehlt eine von ihnen, unsere Projekte würden ganz anders aussehen. Alle dieser Säulen sind auch von einander abhängig. Sie sind sehr eng mit einander verbunden. Wenn wir eine davon ändern, dann ändern wir gleichzeitig auch alle andere, weil wir ihre innige Beziehung ändern werden. Damit werden wir auch unsere Projekte als Ganzes ändern, auf eine fundamentale Art und Weise.

Die Erste Säule reißt den Umfang, Zweck und Inhalt jedes unserer Projekte um. Wikipedia ist eine Enzyklopädie, Wikimedia Commons ist eine Datenbank für freie Medieninhalte, Wikibooks ist eine Sammlung von Lehrbücher, und so weiter und so fort. Jedes Projekt hat eine solche Umfangsdefinition, oder soll eine haben. Sie gibt jedes Projekt ihre Identität, Ihr Sinn fürs Leben.

Die Zweite Säule definiert unseren Platz in der Welt. Die Menschheit ist eine ungeheuer vielfältige und komplizierte Entität. Sie ist volle Freundschaft und auch volle Konflikte. Sie ist volle Ähnlichkeit und volle differenzen. Die Bekräftigung der Neutralität, oder im Fall der Wikiversity, der Aufklärung des Standpunktes, setzt unsere Projekte außerhalb diese Konfliktparteien und Ideologien. Zugleich ist es eine Bekräftigung der Offenheit. Sie besagt, dass jeder, jede Partei, jede Ideologie, hat ihren Platz innerhalb unserer Projekte, jedes von ihnen können in unsere Projekten dargestellt werden.

Die Dritte Säule klärt den Zweck unserer Projekten. Warum machen wir das was wir machen. Auch wenn es immer wieder Verschwörungstheorie gab, gibt und auch geben wird über Verkauf von Wikipedia oder anderen Wikimedia Projekten, dies wird nie passieren, weil es in einem unserer Fundamenten unserer Projekte verankert ist, um genau zu sein, in diese Säule: Wir tut dies alles als freie Inhalte und sie sollen frei bleiben.

Die Vierte Säule ist über unsere innere Organisation. Ein Wiki ist ein interaktives Werkzeug. Interaktiv ist hier nicht Interaktivität zwischen Server (Maschine) und Mensch gemeint, sondern Interaktivität zwischen Menschen gemeint. Die Säule sagt uns wie wir in unseren Projekten mit anderen Menschen umgehen sollen. Sie betont die kollaborative Natur unserer Projekte. Diese kollaborative Natur war es letztendlich auch, die unsere Projekte so groß gemacht hat, nicht die leider manchmal zum Vorschein tretenden kombative Verhalten.

Die letzte Säule erinnert uns, keine der anderen vier Säulen zu vergessen. Wenn eine der vier Säulen an Übergewicht gewinnt und den Rest zu erdrücken droht, ruft sie uns zur Aktion, um unsere Regeln so zu ändern dass das Gleichgewicht wieder hergestellt wird. Sie erinnert uns an den immerwährenden Änderungen unserer Projekte. Sie appelliert an unsere menschliche Natur: die Natur der Erdeckung, nie auf der Stelle treten und denken, wir wären am Ende der Welt angekommen. Sie hält unsere Projekte vital und ermutigt jeden von uns zur Erfindung, neue Sachen auszuprobieren, neue Leute zu wilkommen und neue Freunde zu begegnen.

五大支柱

两年来我在一些演讲（比如在第二届中文维基百科年会上）中经常提到五大支柱。讲它们使我觉得有点像归根结底的感觉。

我想写下我的思路来已经有些时候了，但是我总是没有找到闲心坐下来写。其中的原因主要不在于维基媒体，而在于很繁忙的工作，而在周末我总希望能够多花点时间和男友在一起。

今天我决定这是一件重要的事情，我决定花这个时间来写这篇日记。

在这第一篇日记里我将综述五大支柱之间的关系，在此后的日记中我将仔细描写每一个支柱的意义。

维基百科刚刚开始的时候我们没有任何规则，没有任何程序，当时我们只有这五大支柱。维基百科是在它们的基础上建立的。但是我觉得实际上这些原则经过相应的更改后也适应于所有其它维基媒体项目。因此在这里我不把这五大支柱当作维基百科的五大支柱对待，而是把它们当作所有维基媒体项目的五大支柱。

总的来说这五大支柱是同等的。它们之间没有重要次要之分。缺少它们中的任何一个我们的项目都会面目全非。所有这五大支柱也都是相互关联的，甚至于是紧密关联的。假如我们更改其中之一，我们也就更改了其它四个，因为我们更改了它们之间的关系，从而完全更改了整个项目。

第一根支柱概括了每个项目的范围，目的和内容。维基百科是一部百科全书，维基媒体共享是一个自由媒体内容的数据库，维基教科书收集教科书等等。每个项目应该有这样一个范围概括。它给予每个项目其个性和其生存的意义。

第二根支柱定义我们在世界里的位置。人类是一个非常多样化，非常复杂的事物。它充满了友善，但也充满了敌对。它充满了类似，但也充满了差异。中立性，或者在维基大学中的“揭露立场”置我们的项目于所有这些不同的冲突和主义之外。同时它也是一个开放的表示：它说明任何人、任何党派、任何意识形态在我们的项目中有它们的地方，它们所有都可以在我们的项目中体现自己。

第三根支柱说明我们的项目的用意。想来有各种各样的阴谋论，说维基百科或者其它维基媒体项目会被卖掉，这些阴谋论也许永远也不会相识，但是这样的理论永远也不会变成真的，因为我们的项目中的基础之一，就是这个支柱，说明了：我们创造的是自由的内容，而且这些内容将永远保持自由。

第四个支柱是关于我们内部的组织。维基是一个互动工具。这里说的互动不是人与服务器（机器）之间的互动，而是人与人之间的互动。这个支柱告诉我们我们应该怎样在我们的项目里和其他人互动。它强调了我们的项目的合作本质。这样的合作是使得我们的项目成长的原因，而不是有时我们看到的敌对的行为。

最后一个支柱提醒我们不要忘记另外四个支柱中的任何一个。假如另外四个支柱中有任何一个开始起支配作用了，它呼吁我们行动，更改我们的规则，使得五个支柱中的平衡被重建。它提醒我们我们的项目是在不断变化的，它呼吁我们的人类本性：探索的本性，永远不停在一个地方，以为我们已经走遍天涯了。它呼吁我们项目的活力，它呼吁我们不断更新，不断试验，不断欢迎新的人参加，不断结识新的朋友。

Board Resolution: Openness

2011-04-08T12:37:00.000-07:00

Dear community,

on the IRC board meeting at April 8th 2011 the board approved unanimously the following resolution:

We, the Wikimedia Foundation Board, believe that the continued health of our project communities is crucial to fulfilling our mission. The Wikimedia projects are founded in the culture of openness, participation, and quality that has created one of the world's great repositories of human knowledge. But while Wikimedia's readers and supporters are growing around the world, recent studies of editor trends show a steady decline in the participation and retention of new editors.

As laid out in our five-year Strategic Plan, and emphasized by these findings, Wikimedia needs to attract and retain more new and diverse editors, and to retain our experienced editors. A stable editing community is critical to the long-term sustainability and quality of both our current Projects and our movement.

We consider meeting this challenge our top priority. We ask all contributors to think about these issues in your daily work on the Projects.
We support the Executive Director in making this the top staff priority, and recommend she increase the allocation of Foundation resources towards addressing this problem, through community outreach, amplification of community efforts, and technical improvements.
And we support the developers, editors, wikiprojects and Chapters that are working to make the projects more accessible, welcoming, and supportive.

The Board resolves to help move these efforts forward, and invites specific requests for Foundation assistance to do so. We welcome and encourage new ideas to help reach our goals of openness and broader participation.

We urge the Wikimedia community to promote openness and collaboration, by:
* Treating new editors with patience, kindness, and respect; being aware of the challenges facing new editors, and reaching out to them; and encouraging others to do the same;
* Improving communication on the projects; simplifying policy and instructions; and working with colleagues to improve and make friendlier policies and practices regarding templates, warnings, and deletion;
* Supporting the development and rollout of features and tools that improve usability and accessibility;
* Increasing community awareness of these issues and supporting outreach efforts of individuals, groups and Chapters;
* Working with colleagues to reduce contention and promote a friendlier, more collaborative culture, including more thanking and affirmation; and encouraging best practices and community leaders; and
* Working with colleagues to develop practices to discourage disruptive and hostile behavior, and repel trolls and stalkers.

Resources
Wikimedia Movement Strategic Plan Summary
2011 Editor Trends Study (Executive Director's summary, ideas)

message to community about community decline

2011-03-27T23:57:00.000-07:00

Deutsche Version
中文版本

Dear all:

The Wikimedia Board of Trustees just completed its two-day meeting this weekend in Berlin. We devoted the longest time to discussing declining trends in editing activity and our collective response to it. I encourage everyone to review Sue’s March update, and the editor trends study itself. It is a deeply important topic, and each report is only a few pages long.

The Board thinks this is the most significant challenge currently facing our movement. We would encourage the whole movement - the communities, wikiprojects, Chapters, Board, Foundation staff - to think about ways to meet this challenge. We know many contributors care about this and have worked on outreach and hospitality in past years. We are considering how we can help make such work more effective, and ask for suggestions from the community to this problem now and to invite discussion and suggestions.

Greetings, Ting

Botschaft an die Community über Benutzerschwund
das Kuratorium der Wikimedia Foundation hatte gerade ihr zweitägiges Treffen in Berlin hinter sich. Das Thema, an dem wir die meiste Zeit verwendet haben, war der Trend der schwindenden Editaktivität sowie unseren kollektiven Reaktion darauf. Ich möchte an diese Stelle jeden dazu ermuntern, Sues März Update und die Untersuchung zu reviewen. Es ist ein sehr sehr wichtiges Thema, und diesen Reports sind nur einigen Seiten lang.

Das Kuratorium denkt dass dies ist eine signifikante Herausforderung, die unsere Bewegung entgegentritt. Wir möchten die gesamte Bewegung - die Communities, die Projekten, die Chapters, das Kuratorium selbst, die Angestellten der Foundation - über Wege nachdenken, wie wir diese Herausforderung entgegentreten können. Wir wissen dass für vielen unserer Freiwilligen das ein wichtige Thema ist und dass sie in den vergangenen Jahren konstant an Freundlichkeit und Erweiterung unserer Community gearbeitet haben. Wir überlegen gerade wie wir dazu beitragen können, damit diese Arbeit effektiver werden, und wir möchten die Community um Vorschlägen und Hilfe bitten, um dieses Problem zu lösen, und Euch allen einladen, daüber zu diskutieren und Vorschlägen einzureichen.

维基媒体基金会理事会就社群缩小问题致社群的信

大家好：

这个周末维基媒体基金会理事会在柏林开会。我们讨论最长的问题是社群编辑缩小的趋势以及我们应该怎样一起对待这个问题。我想在这里邀请所有朋友阅读一下苏·加德纳的三月报告以及基金会的研究数据。这些内容和数据都是极其重要的，而且每个报告都只有数页的长度。

理事会认为这是维基媒体运动目前面临的最重要的挑战。我们想勉励整个运动——社群、项目、分会、理事会和基金会的职员——考虑我们怎样面临这个挑战。我们知道在过去我们始终有许多志愿者对这个问题非常关心，他们始终在努力工作，来使得我们的项目和社群更加友好，更加富有吸引力。我们在考虑我们怎样能够为他们提供帮助，使得他们的努力更加有效。因此我们向社群征求建议。请参加讨论和向我们提供你们的主意（您也可以用中文参加讨论和提供建议）。

谢谢大家

霆

Why is Editing Wikipedia Cool

2011-01-17T09:29:00.001-08:00

This is the draft of my speech in Nairobi to the students at the Strathmore University on the Wikipedia Ten Anniversary and one day later at the Inoorera University. At Innorera University I didn't had a projector, but I used the white board to illustrate the key points.

[Slide One]
Thank you very much [who ever makes the introduction]

Thank you very much ladies and gentlemen for give me the chance to speak here. It is for me a tremendous honor to be here, in Kenya, not only because it is since a very long time a dream for me to visit the continent and the country where the ancestors of all mankind once lived, but also because in my deepest believe, Africa, and with it Kenya, bears not only the past of humanity, but also the future of it. A lot of people talk now a day about China or the pacific rim area. But what is China in comparison with a continent so full of richness. And the most important richness on this continent is its people. Its people full of mind, ideas, intelligence, wit and knowledge.

So this is the reason why I am here to make this presentation. I would like to talk about knowledge, the most powerful resource you have.

[Slide Two]
At first let me introduce myself briefly. I was born in China, actually in Shanghai. I grew up in Northern China, in a City with the name Harbin. In 1988 in age of 20 I went to Germany to visit university. After my graduation I remained there. In my professional life I am an IT Specialist by IBM. Since 2008 I am elected by the editing community as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation. Since 2010 I am the chair's person of the board. Although the Foundation has meanwhile about 50 employees, its board is a totally volunteer's board. So the board work and Wikipedia work is my main hobby and I certainly spend most of my time on it.

Where ever I meet other people and say this people tend to ask: What is the Wikimedia Foundation and what relation does it have with Wikipedia? The most strait forward answer of this question is we operate Wikipedia. We are not Wikipedia, although much of our employees are Wikipedians, we give Wikipedia its institutional and technical support.

[Slide Three]
Wikipedia went online at January 15th 2001. So in a few days we will celebrate its 10th birthday. I became Wikipedia two years later, in January 2003. During the past ten years Wikipedia had grown from a curiosity into one of the most important information resource of the world. So at the moment we have in total more than 17 million articles in more than 270 languages. For many languages it is the first encyclopedia in that language at all. The data of last October says that we have had 400 million individual users globally using Wikipedia and its sister projects. And most important of all Wikipedia is free. You can use it for free, you don't need to pay it. You can reuse it for free, as long as you keep the content with the Creative Commons license agreement. Under the same condition you can even use it for business. And exactly this is mission of the Wikimedia Foundation: To encourage and empower people all around the world to share educational knowledge, freely, in their own language.

Ten years is a very long time for Internet. There were famous websites like Geocities ten years ago that doesn't exist now, and a lot of websites that are now famous like Facebook were not there ten years ago. So, how did we do in the last ten years? Did we arrived our mission?

No, in my opinion we are still far far away from our goal. And we are so far far away, among others, because we need you to help us. Without your help we will never fulfill our mission. And this is the reason why I am here. I am here to ask you to help us.

[Slide Four]
So what I really want to ask you and to invite you to do is join us in the editing community of Wikipedia and its sister projects. Why should you do it? Why should anyone do such a thing? Spend many many hours to work on something completely free?

Let's see what the folks say about it
[Nice People video]

There are a lot of reasons, and there are four reasons that I think are most important:
Edit Wikipedia is good for you
Edit Wikipedia is good for Kenya
Edit Wikipedia is good for Africa and
Edit Wikipedia is good for the World.

[Slide Five]
Why is editing Wikipedia good for you?

First of all, because you can learn a lot from this experience. It is not easy to write a new article. You must learn a lot of things. For example we want to write an article about this school / university / whatever, how would you start? Let's see how we start: School soandso is a middle school at the center of Nairobi. And then? What is its history? When is it founded, who founded it? Why was it founded? How many students did it have when it was founded? How many teachers? How was the condition at that time? Who was the first director? Which major events happened in its history? Now what is the situation today? How many students has it now? How many teachers? Who is its director now? What can the students learn here? Is there anything from it that distinguishes it from other colleges? Is there any plans of the school for the future? Are there any notable alumni from the school? Are there any remarkable achievements from its students? You see, to write an article is surely not very easy. Even if you are a student or a teacher in this school, you may find more interesting things about it you didn't know until now. To write a good article you need to do more. Maybe you want to research in archives, or other sources, and you may find other interesting things about which you want to do further researches. You can become an expert of the history of this school if you want to spend the time and energy on it.

Maybe you would say, well, I am not that good in write articles, and I don't have so much nerve to research all these details. But you can also do small edits and learn a lot of new things. You can simply start with a topic you are interested in, maybe a movie. And click on a link about an actor who played in that movie and maybe another interesting movie with him, and something that was mentioned in that movie. And thereby you may notice small errors in the articles, a word is spelled wrong, a sentence more sound terrible. Correct them. The next reader will be very thankful for that and you can learn a lot of new things you are interested in.

Maybe you are interested in translating articles, from another language in yours. Translating is a very useful skill, and it is a skill need to be trained. I myself translate a lot. Most of my own work is translating. And one of the most proud article I ever wrote is a translation of the article about the Bantu language group into Chinese. Here it is, how it looks like a description about the the Bantu languages in Chinese. And I must say I enjoyed a lot in this work, and learned a lot about these wonderful languages during this work, about which I had no clue at all earlier. And read this, wow, it is already a poem although it is something so normal.

So, you see, by sharing your knowledge you can learn a lot about other people's knowledge. It is a giving and taking. And beyond that you can learn a lot of other things. Like virtually work with other people, cooperate with other people online. Discuss with them about differences and issues.

Another thing which you will learn very fast is the work of the media. Do you trust Wikipedia? Do you trust newspaper, or television? You will find it out when you begin to work with them while you are searching for references and sources. And you will find it out while you are yourself publishing in Wikipedia.

All these skills are very valuable, not only for now, to be fun, but also for your future. If one day you are working in a company, maybe an international company, these are all skills that will do you a lot favor.

[Slide Six]
Why is Editing Wikipedia good for Kenya? Because you will tell the world how Kenya is, how is this land, its people, its culture. Who can do this better than you, who live here everyday? Don't let other people, who only know this land though Internet, newspaper or television to write about this land, write about this land yourself, and tell the world how it is here.

As I said above, by editing Wikipedia it is a taking and giving. It is not a one-way-street. You tell the world about Kenya, and you can learn about the world at the same time. Maybe you want to translate interesting things into your mother tongue, so that also people who don't speak English can learn about that thing.

And maybe you want are working on a language version of Wikipedia in your mother tongue. And by doing so, maybe you are helping to create the first encyclopedia in that language. Maybe you can write down traditions, places, peoples in that language and you or someone else can later translate it into other languages. You can help keep these knowledges not lost someday.

And the final point is you can improve the view point of Kenya. So we have five pillars on Wikipedia, these are the five most fundamental rules with which we work. And one of these five pillars is the Neutral Point of View, which doesn't mean we don't present view point at all, but that we present all view points. But as you know Wikipedia is written by people like you and me. So if there are only Europeans or Americans write about a topic, there will only European and American view points presented on that article. Let's take an example. Let's look at the article “Global Warming” on the English Wikipedia.

[Global Warming Example]
So here you are, and here you see a section with the name “View on Global Warming”. So let's see, there we are. You see we have different views about this topic presented. And here are the sources where these views come from. And you see UK, you see New York Times, you see Deutsche Bank etc. But you don't see Africa, you don't see Kenya. So what is Kenya's view about Global Warming? What do your political, financial, scientific, media leader say about Global Warming? That is something we need on Wikipedia. We need a more neutral point of view, so we need also Kenya's view about a lot of things.

[Slide Seven]
Why is Editing Wikipedia good for Africa?

First of all, it is knowledge that matters. Maybe you had already heard a lot of people talking about this century would be the century of Pacific rim. Do you think so? I will show you an image I saw two days before I came here.

See the proportions.

And think what do you need, for this continent?

You need knowledge, you need to write down your own knowledge, and you need the knowledge of the world, and you need knowledge from each other, from all the people who live on this continent.

Knowledge is the most valuable resource, and a resource no one can take or buy away from you.

You know, I mainly work on Chinese Wikipedia. The Chinese Wikipedian community is very diverse. We have folks from mainland China, we have people from Hong Kong and Macao, we have people from Taiwan and we have oversea Chinese like me, who had lived a very long time outside of China. And we have very different opinions to some of the topics. For example is Taiwan an independent country?

Maybe you can imagine how politicians work on such differences. They will threat each other with wars.

We Wikipedians work differently. We will discuss to each other and work out a way where every view point is presented in a neutral and not agitating language. A lot of problems in the world is not easy to solve. The worst solution is to use simple and agitating answers so that people get emotional and get aggressive. The best solutions is when people can understand the problem thoroughly and can understand each other. And this is how Wikipedia want to work, this is how Wikipedia want to present to the world.

Knowledge is peace, because if you know what other people think, what is their problem, and they know what you think and what is your problem, this is the basis upon which you can solve your problems together. Without those knowledge the others behave strange and looks evil. With those knowledge, they are also human like you and me.

So, work together, for a strong and peaceful Africa.

[Slide Eight]
Why is you editing Wikipedia good for the world?

Because the world need to know more about Africa, about Kenya, about you. I believe two years ago I read somewhere that there are more Wikipedia articles on English Wikipedia about New York City than about the whole continent Africa. I don't know if that was true and if that is still true. But the proportion that Africa is represented on Wikipedia is definitively too small.

Kenya is the cradle of the mankind. People lived here for hundred thousands of years. You have a deep, deep, deep profound resource, and that is buried in your culture, in all the knowledge and heritage you carry with you. And no one on the world can do better by sharing this knowledge with the world.

And you can work together with not only people from your neighborhoods, from your neighbor countries, but from the whole world. And nothing brings people together more than work together, build together and share together. There's no way for you, for me, for other people, to learn each other better than to cooperate and work together.

This is why we need you to help us, and that is why it is good for you, for Kenya, for Africa and for the world.

[Slide Nine]
Wikipedia is only one of several project the Wikimedia Foundation is running. As I had said before. The mission of the Foundation is to encourage and empower people to collect and share educational content. Encyclopedia is only one form of educational content. So, if you don't want to work on an encyclopedia, you can work on a dictionary, or work on textbooks, I would for example like to see a good textbook about learn Swahili, or another Bantu language. I think they are so beautiful. Other examples are working on news. We need more news from Kenya and from Africa generally. If you are very interested in photography, you can work on Wikimedia Commons. I know quite some Wikimedians who started to take photos for Wikipedia, improved their skills constantly and become semi-professional photographers.

So, there are lots of possibilities.

I will now show you another small video

[Edit Button video]

So, I hope you will also find the fascination of the Edit-Button and we can meet soon on the projects.

Thank you very much

[Thank you slide]

Scale up

2010-11-11T01:53:00.000-08:00

At the last day of the HBS course there are two cases about organizational scale ups. The first case was about an international nonprofit organization, which has the strongest similarity to WMF from all the cases. Organizational changes often mean a lot of stress inside of the organization.

Shortly after the Foundation was established the first chapters were created. In the following time both the Foundation, the chapters and other formal and informal groups grew up in a more or less organic way. In the past time we are more and more confronted with questions like: Who has which roles? Whom can we expect for what? Who has which duty?

Because our structures are so grassroot and so organical created, it poses some difficulty now to sort all these questions out. This is the reason why the board initiated the Movement Roles workgroup. It is a very important workgroup and its work will have influence on the organisation of the Foundation, the chapters and other friendly or informal groups. Because of this it is very very important, both for the Foundation, as well as the groups that would be potentially affected, to take part in this process, make their suggestions and work together.

At the end of the four days I would say that the course was a good investment for the Foundation. Even though the cases seem to be far distant from our own situation at the first glance, I inevitably discovers again and again similar situations and principles. We got some framework on how to analyse situations systematically, but more of that is that we got excercises in a lot of situations which can face a nonprofit organization in how to concentrate on the most important part of the board work: remain calm, always keep the mission in mind, and communicate.

The course was very intensive. Everyday we studied three to four cases. Every case had a discription of about in average 30 pages. The day started at 7:30 with groupwork on the cases of the day and ends at about 17:00. But that doesn't mean the end of day. On the receptions afterward and on dinner table discussion would go on and on. After I closed my door in the dorm and started my recapitulation about the next days course.

Although the days were very tough, I never felt sleepy in the classrooms because it was so interesting, so challenging and so engaging. I only noticed how tired I got went at the end of the day I shut off the light and fall almost instantly into sleep.

Preparation is important for the course. Who go to the course without studied the cases beforehand would find himself lost quite soon. Because the cases are all quite complicated and long, one need to cross read them one day before again so that the details can come back into the memory.

Theory of Change

2010-11-10T06:40:00.000-08:00

One of the most discussed problem on the 4-day HBS course "Governing for Nonprofit Excellence", both on the course as well as off the course, is how to measure the impact of a strategy, an organization and how to measure the performance of an organization as well as its parts.

It is one of the most interested questions by almost all attendees. And it is also important for the WikiMedia Foundation.

Unfortunately, there is no easy answer to this question, not even from HBS.

The researchers at HBS consider the question in a very systematic way: At first, every organization has outputs. Outputs are things an organization can influence directly with its strategy and action. And they can be measured directly. In comparison to the outputs are outcomes. In HBS jargon outcomes are effects of an organization with their output. It is less in control of the organization, it is more a public effect. The sum of all outcomes are called impact by the HBS researchers.

For the WikiMedia Foundation, the number of articles is an obvious output. In issuing different policies we can (or can try to) influence this output. It is easy to measure. WikiMedia has a lot of such measurable values, like length of articles, article depth, visitor counts, etc. These are all what we often call metrics when we are discussing on our mailing-list or in the projects.

As everyone of us know, who had took part in these discussions, these metrics are no good measurements. The reason from them to be not good is that one can interpret them in a lot of ways. And they do not necessarily correlate with the outcome we wish.

The outcome we want to achieve is higher quality of our articles, more penetration of our projects, more participation of our users, more diversity of our projects, etc. And these are not so easy to measure.

Let's take the example of article quality. I know discussion about article quality since I joined our editing community. How can you design a measurement for so much articles in more than 270 languages in topics as different as top quark and Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva? The most obvious suggestion is article length. But the sole length of an article doesn't really reflect the quality of an article. An article could be very long, but still badly structured, poorly referenced and contains strong point of view. The article depth is a more sophisticated approach which treats a language version as a whole and tries to calculate how often the articles are updated. Beside technical and methodological problems there are also other difficulties in measuring quality. The perception for a good article and a bad article can differ between the editing community, the general public and experts of their fields. Each of these groups can have different criteria for quality of articles. For example the general public may value an article as higher quality because it is more comprehensible, but comprehensible may mean for an expert explanations that contain more ambivalent and misleading analogues.

Because of the difficulty of measurement of outcomes there is often a big gap between the measurable output of an organization and its impact. This problem is annoying for most of nonprofit organizations and highly uncomfortable for their boards. Nevertheless most of the organizations believe that they achieve impact with their work. The HBS researchers call this believe Theory of Change. It is a hypothetical and in many cases unproved theory about if we do this, than we will change the society in that way, and that would lead to the fulfillment of our mission. Most strategies of nonprofit organizations are based on theories of change.

So the theory of change of article length is that longer articles tend to contain more information, tend to be more thorough and thus of higher quality. The theory of change of article depth is that if more updates are done on a language version, then we can assume that the articles are more up-to-date, and more failures are corrected by the editing community, and thus better articles.

But as the many discussions in the past and current suggest these are all hypothetical theories and we don't really know.

The best way to proof the theory of change is to measure the outcome. As I had already written before, this is not easy. In many cases the organization also has no resource in know-how, man power and money to conduct a measurement or survey. The WikiMedia Foundation and our communities had in the past conducted a score of experiments and methods to measure the quality:

The featured article is doubtless the most successful of these. It is a measurement from the view of our editing community for high quality articles. Across all projects the threshold for featured articles are very high. With the public policy project WikiMedia Foundation began in the last months a test on user feed backs about quality from the reader perception. Although there were some outside evaluations with experts like those conducted by Nature or c't, these evaluations are often of too small a scale and not consistent enough to give us an overall trend over the years and across the language versions, or in more general fields.

So one of our major tasks in the coming years is still to find a way to bridge some gaps of theory of change. And one of the tasks of the board would be to engage our community and outside experts to free their resources and expertise to help us in this endeavor.

Vision, Mission, Strategy

2010-11-07T04:12:00.000-08:00

In the four days while my stay in the Harvard Business School I often looked back at our vision, mission and strategy. The second day of the course concentrates on how vision and mission decide strategy. As Professor Leonhard put it, the question 0: What is we supposed to do.

Our vision is: Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment.

Our mission is: The mission of the WikiMedia Foundation is to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally.

And our overall strategy to fulfill that mission is: In coordination with a network of chapters and individual volunteers, the Foundation provides the essential infrastructure and an organizational framework for the support and development of multilingual wiki projects and other endeavors which serve this mission. The Foundation will make and keep useful information from its projects available on the Internet free of charge, in perpetuity.

One of the most appalling think that we experienced in study the cases by HBS is that it shows how easily one lose his mission out of the sight and how difficult it often is to judge if a decision supports the mission. This seems especially easy in time of crisis. And that brings me back again and again to the most difficult discussions at the moment in our movement. The most difficult inside the board, between the board and the community, and inside the community: The controversial content discussion.

We have here two radical position that in my opinion reflects two aspects of our mission:

*The freedom of speech, the not censoring of project content according to whatever criteria as long as we move inside the frame of law reflects the aspect in our mission and vision, that we want to share the sum of ALL educational knowledge. And the sum of all knowledge certainly includes also those that are controversial.

*On the other hand, if part of the knowledge we are providing is so upset for part of the people around the world, so that they feel our projects as insulting and refuses to share their knowledge on our projects or share the knowledge that is collected on our projects, than we certainly failed to fulfill this aspect of our mission.

The call of boycott on the Aceh Wikipedia against the rest of our projects shows in a radical and confusing way how emotional and sometimes irrational this conflict even can evolve inside of our own community.

To me the duty of the board is to find out a way so that all aspects of our mission can be fulfilled, in engaged discussion with the community. Because it is a mission matter, it is a board issue, and because it is a mission matter, it is important. The lessons I learned by studying the cases is, it is all too easy to lost our mission, because of our personal view, because of the emotion that is involved in the discussion, because it relates to value and is a complicated topic. All this is for me even more reason to keep our mission in our mind when we are working through this topic. And again

Our vision is: Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment.

Our mission is: The mission of the WikiMedia Foundation is to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally.

"Leadership is ...

2010-11-05T02:35:00.000-07:00

German version
Chinese version

... the process of bringing a new, and generally unwelcome reality to an organization, group or society and helping her/him/it/them successfully adapt to it."

Thus was it written on the blackboard in the classroom. I was attending a 4-day-course at the Harvard Business School with the name "Governing for Nonprofit Excellence".

While I was preparing for the course and reading through the cases my doubt and unease increased slowly. Would this be the right investment the Wikimedia Foundation is making? Would we and I as the current board chair really get any benefit from this course?

The cases are all very interesting, but they seem all so far away from us, I agree, a very unique organization. So what can I learn from a hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts, searching for a merge partner?

A lot.

The story is about a non-profit organization, that had until now lived in a very comfortable zone, and that means,
- serving the value it is supposed to provide,
- has support from its community
- has resources for its operation,
and is now facing a changing environment which moves it out of this comfortable zone, erupting its support base. The story is about a board that recognized this danger and must make an uncomfortable decision and lead its organization to move on.

It strikes me how similar this sounds to us.

As a high-tech based organization, we are living in a fast changing world. A lot of things change around and inside of us:
- almost all governments, western free ones as more restrictive ones, are changing their laissez faire politic to the Internet and imposing more rigid policies for the web.
- the perception of the public on our projects, especially Wikipedia, is changing. We are no more that freaky Internet site five years ago, but one of the most important information source of the world. And that changes our responsibility to the public.
- our content changed, comparing the most early version of the article Boston with its state of the art there is a tremendous difference. And that means we raised our bar for new participants tremendously. And that changes slowly the composition of our very own community. It changes how we work and how we debate.
- the web technique changed in the past ten years since Wikipedia started. Its landscape changed dramatically during the ten years. Who is a veteran and had his own (first?) website on Geocities?

A lot of things that the Foundation and its board did in the last years has to do with these changes. The BLP resolution is a direct response to our changing responsibility to the general public as well as to the affected person. The usability project is a direct response to the changing technology. The change of our licensing model is also related to public perception and demand, because the pure GFDL is awesome for the use for printings. The strategic planning engages all the challenges we are facing. And the ongoing controversial content discussion is a result of our strategic planning (development and adaption in the nonwestern cultures) and the response of the changes in public policy and in our responsibility.

Non of these changes are uncontroversial and non of the discussions is unpainful. But if we want to fulfill our mission there is no other way as to move on.

What is interesting about the HBS course for me, is that by analyzing the cases I unavoidably come back again and again to our own situation. By looking at the others as an uninvolved observer it makes me more clearer to our own cases. And it provides me some guidance by providing frameworks or algorithms to analyze the situation more calmly and systematically.

Führung ist ...
... das Prozess, eine neue, allgemein unwillkommene Realität einer Organisation, Gruppe oder Gesellschaft kundzutun und sie/ihn/es/ihnen helfen, sich erfolgreich daran anzupassen."

So stand es auf dem Schwarzen Brett im Klassenraum. Ich nahm gerade an einem viertägigen Kurs an der Harvard Business School mit dem Namen "Governing for Nonprofit Excellence" teil.

Als ich das Kurs vorbereitete und die Fallstudien las, wuchs in mir den Zweifel, ob die Investition der WikiMedia Foundation diesmal wirklich so sinnvoll ist. Wird die Organisation und ich als der momentane Boardvorsitzender wirklich von diesem Kurs profitieren?

Die Fallstudien sind alle sehr interessant, aber sie scheinen alle so weit von uns weg zu sein. Ich gebe zu, wir sind eine sehr ungewöhnliche Organisation. Was kann ich also von einem Krankenhaus in Cambridge, Massachusetts lernen, der gerade eine Fusionspartner sucht?

Viel.

Es ist die Geschichte einer Nonprofitorganisation, die bis dahin in eine sehr komfortable Zone gelebt hatte. Das bedeutet,
- dass es die Werte seiner Community bringt, für die sie gedacht wurde
- Unterstützung von seiner Community erhält
- Resourcen für seine Operation besitzt.
Angesichts der sich ändernden Umwelt droht sie aus ihre Komfortzone herauszurutschen. Die Basis seiner Unterstützung eruptiert. Die Geschichte ist über einem Board, das diesen Gefahr erkennt und unangenehme Entscheidung machen musste und seine Organisation weiterführt.

Es ist erstaunlich wie ähnlich dies zu unsere Situation klingt.

Als eine High-Tech basierende Organisation leben wir in eine sich schnell ändernden Umwelt. Viele Sachen ändern sich um uns herum und in uns hinein:
- fast alle Regierungen, die westlich freiheitliche wie die restriktiven, ändern ihren Laissez-faire-Politik gegenüber dem Internet und führen immer restriktiveren Regeln für das Netz ein.
- die Sicht der Nutzer zu unseren Projekten, besonders zu Wikipedia, ändern sich. Wir sind nicht mehr das Kuriosum im Internet von vor fünf Jahren, sondern ein der wichtigsten Informationsquelle der Welt. Und das ändert unsere Verantwortung zu unseren User.
- Unsere Inhalten ändern sich. Vergleicht man den Inhalt der ersten Version zu Boston mit seinem aktuellen Inhalt sieht man den riesigen Unterschied. Das bedeutet, dass wir die Anfangshürde für Anfänger erheblich angehoben haben. Diese Änderung ändert langsam die Zusammensetzung unserer eigenen Community, sie ändert auch wie wir arbeiten und wie Diskussionen geführt werden.
- Die Webtechnologie hat sich in den letzten zehn Jahren seit dem Start der Wikipedia geändert. Ihre Landschaft hat sich in den zehn Jahren dramatisch verändert. Gibt es hier Veteranen, die ihren (ersten?) Webseiten auf Geocities gebastelt haben?

Viele Sachen, die die Foundation und ihr Board in den letzten Jahren getan haben, haben mit diesen Änderungen zu tun. Die BLP-Resolution ist eine direkte Antwort auf die Änderung unserer Verantwortung zum allgemeinen Publikum wie auch zu den betroffenen Personen. Die Änderung unseres Lizenzmodells ist ebenfalls in Zusammenhang zur Publikumssicht und -anforderung zu sein, weil die reine GFDL für gedruckten Büchern einfach zu unpraktikabel ist. Mit der Strategischen Planung versuchen wir, eine Strategie gegen alle Herausforderungen zu entwickeln, die uns begegnen. Und das andauernde Diskussion zu umstrittenen Inhalten ist ein Ergebnis unserer Strategischen Planung (Entwicklung und Adaption in den nichtwestlichen Kulturen) und eine Antwort auf sich ändernden Politik und unserer Verantwortung.

Keine diese Änderungen sind nicht unumstritten und keine der Diskussionen schmerzlos. Aber um unsere Mission zu erfüllen gibt es keinen Weg vorbei.

Was für mich besonders interessant zum HBS Kurs ist, dass beim Analysieren der Fällen ich unvermeidbar immer wieder und wieder zu unsere Situation zurückkehre. Beim Studieren der anderen als ein unbeteiligter Beobachter wird es mir klarer zu unserem eigenen Fall. Und das Kurs liefert mir einigen Frameworks oder Algorithmen, um Situationen systematischer und mit einem kühleren Kopf zu analysieren.

领导是……

……把一个新的、一般来说不令人欢心的事实展现给一个组织、一群人或者一个社会，并帮助他们成功地适应这个新情况的过程。”

这句话写在教室的黑板上。我当时正在参加哈佛商学院提供的四天课程。课程的名称是《非营利精秀的管理》。

在我预习这个课程，阅读课程案例的时候我越来越怀疑这个课程对于维基媒体基金会来说是一个有效的投资吗？基金会和作为理事会主席的我能够从中获益什么呢？

所有的案例都很有意思，但是它们看上去离我们都很遥远。的确，我承认，维基媒体基金会是一个很不寻常的组织。那么我们可以从一个正在寻找合并伙伴的麻省医院里学到什么呢？

很多。

这个故事讲的是一个至此为止状况良好的一个非营利组织，这也就是说
-它提供它应该提供的服务
-获得社群的支持
-拥有足够的资源来运行。
但是它面临着一个正在变化的环境。这使得它的处境越来越不舒适了。它的基础被逐渐销毁。这个故事讲的是一个认识到这个危险的理事会，它必须做出不舒适的决定，来把它的组织领出险境。

这一切让我觉得它与维基媒体基金会有许多相似处。

作为一个以高技术为背景的组织我们生活在一个变化迅速的世界里。在我们的周围，在我们的内部，许多事情在变化：
-几乎所有的政府，不论是西方自由主义的还是比较封闭的政府，都在逐渐改变它们对互联网的随便政策，对网络施行更严格的政策
-公众对我们的项目，尤其是对维基百科，的看法在改变。我们已经不是五年前网络上的一个奇怪网站，而是世界上最重要的信息资源之一。这改变我们对公众的责任。
-我们的内容在变化。比较“波士顿”条目最早的版本和目前的版本我们可以看到变化有多么大。这个变化意味着我们对新手入门的门槛提高了许多。这慢慢地在改变我们社群的组成，以及改变我们的工作和讨论方法。
-网络技术在维基百科建立的十年来变化了。网络的组成在这十年中变化剧烈。我们这里有在Geocities上建立了他的（第一座）网站的老战友吗？

基金会和它的理事会在过去几年里做的许多事情与这些变化有关。在世人物传记决议是对我们对公众和被涉及人物的义务的直接反应。易用性项目是对技术变化的直接反应。对版权协议的更改也与对公众责任和需要有关，因为GFDL无法满足打印出版物的需要。我们的战略计划面对所有我们面临的变化。目前正在进行的有争议内容的讨论是战略计划（向非西方文化的发展）以及对政策变化和公众责任的反应

所有这些变化都是有争议的。没有任何这些讨论是不疼痛的。但是我们必须完成我们的使命，我们只能继续前进。

对我来说哈佛商学院的课程很有意思的地方在于在我分析案例的时候我会不断地回到我们自己的情况尚。通过作为第三者来分析别人的情况我能够更清晰地看到我们自己的案例。此外它为我提供了系统性地和理性地分析情况的构架和算法。

Wer in Wikipedia hat die Wahrheit gepachtet

2010-04-22T23:34:00.000-07:00

English version
中文版本

(Wie immer äußere ich meine persönliche Meinung auf meinem Blog)

In der neuesten Ausgabe der Zeitschrift Der Spiegel wird ein Artikel über das „Hinterzimmer“ der Wikipedia veröffentlicht. Der Artikel beschreibt anhand des Beispiels des Streits, ob der Wiener Donauturm ein Fernsehturm ist, den oft erbitterten und unzivilisierten Kampf innerhalb der Wikipedia Community. Folgenden Aussagen sind in dem Artikel gefallen: „Wikipedia ist kein Projekt vieler, sondern ein Projekt weniger“, „Wer in Wikipedia die Wahrheit gepachtet hat, ist eine wichtige Frage“, „Der Soziologe Stegbauer kommt in seiner Studie zum Ergebnis, dass sich die Führungsschicht der Wikipedia immer stärker abschotte und neuen Teilnehmer den Zugang erschwere“, „Es gibt viele Grundsatzdebatte heute, zum Beispiel über die Frage nach der Relevanz“. Der Artikel zitiert Henriette: „Heute brauchst Du drei Tage, um alle Regeln zu lesen. Die Ansprüche an Artikel sind gestiegen, es herrscht Fußnotenpflicht. Viele Themen sind bereits weg. Es gibt Relevanzkriterien, die bestimmen, worüber man überhaupt noch schreiben darf“ und Elian: „Es ist der Umgangston in Wikipedia, der ihr nicht gefällt“ und „für Leser, die Informationen suchten, funktioniere Wikipedia noch sehr gut, menschlich aber nicht mehr so“. In Bezug auf NPOV schrieb der Autor „In der Realität haben die meisten Artikel nur wenige Hauptautoren, die ihre Werke oft adoptieren und gegen Änderungen anderer Nutzer verteidigen“.

Letztes Jahr im Zusammenhang mit der Strategischen Planung leitete die Wikimedia Foundation inc. eine „Former Contributors Survey“ unter den ehemaligen englischen Wikipedianer ein, die mittlerweile aufgehört haben, an dem Projekt mitzuarbeiten. Von den 10.000 ehemaligen Benutzer, an denen die Umfrageformular verschickt wurde, meldeten 1428 zurück und schilderten ihren Beweggründen, warum sie Wikipedia den Rücken zugekehrt haben. Außer technischen Schwierigkeiten wird Löschung oder Rückgängigmachen der Edits als der zweithäufigste Grund genannt.

Das Problem ist also kein deutsches, wie man oft denkt. Es ist ein globales, es ist ebenfalls ein Problem in der englischen Wikipedia genau so wie in der Spanischen oder Chinesischen. Nicht nur sind die Bereichen besetzt, wie Henriette sagt, sondern auch die Positionen und Ideologien. Die momentane Wikipedia Community ist erheblich konservativ geworden.

Dabei hatte Wikipedia als eine Innovation angefangen, und ein seiner fünf Grundprinzipien ist „Be Bold / Ignore all Rules“. Aus mir unverständlichem Grund ist gerade dieses Grundprinzip, ein der fünf Gleichwertigen, aus den Grundprinzipien bei der deutschen Wikipedia rausgefallen und nur noch als Referenz unter dem Abschnitt „Siehe auch“ aufgeführt.

Seid Mutig ist nicht ohne Grund ein Grundprinzip der Wikipedia. Er ist der Startpunkt von Wikipedia. Nupedia wurde zu Wikipedia, weil Jimmy Wales Mutig war, das Privileg, eine Enzyklopädie zu schreiben, allen Menschen zu öffnen. Wikipedia wurde so groß, weil ein Benuter Mutig war zu schreiben „Die Nordsee ist ein Mehr, ein teil der Atlant, zwischen Grossbritannien, Skandinavien und Friesland“, ohne Referenz, Fußnote und ohne Berücksichtigung auf Relevanzkriterien, mit vielen Schreibfehler, und weil viele Benutzer diesen mutigen Schritt folgten.

Ist dieses Grundprinzip, Seid Mutig/Ignoriere allen Regeln, heute noch aktuell? Ja, es ist, und angesichts des versiegenden Neuzugangs um so dringlicher und wichtiger. Es verpflichtet allen Wikipedianer, den Mut jedes neuen Benutzers anzuerkennen und ihn bei seinen mutigen ersten Schritten zu unterstützen und Hilfe anzubieten. Es missbilligt jeden Tat, der einen Neuling in seinen unsicheren Anfangsversuche aus dem Projekt zu drängen. Es verpflichtet jeden Wikipedianer, allen Regeln immer wieder auf ihre Nützlichkeit zu überprüfen und eventuell zu korrigieren. Es missbilligt allen Versuchen, den Regeln als Heiligen Schriften zu behandeln und gegen jede Neuerung zu wehren. Es ist der Anfang unseres Projektes und ist, wie allen anderen vier Grundprinzipien, ein Garant dafür, dass unser Projekt ein gesundes Projekt bleibt und dass seine Community frisch bleibt und gedeiht.

Elian hat vollkommen recht, wer Neulinge, aber auch jeden anderen Community Mitglieder konstant unfreundlich und abweisend behandelt, ist ein Vandale. Er randaliert nicht gegen den Inhalt unseres Projektes, aber er randaliert gegen die Community. Er ist genau so zerstörerisch gegen unserem Projekt und gehört genau so wenig in unserem Community wie jemand, der die Inhalte mutwillig zerstört. Eigentlich viel schlimmer. Vandalismus gegen Inhalte können relativ schnell rückgängig gemacht werden. Zerstörte kollegiale Atmosphäre oder vergrätzte Gefühle sind, wenn überhaupt, nur sehr schwer zu reparieren.

Vor ziemlich genau fünf Jahren, auf dem ersten Wikimania Konferenz, hier in Deutschland im Haus der Jugend in Frankfurt am Main, rief Jimmy Wales die Community auf, Anstrengungen zu leisen, Qualität und Zuverlässigkeit von Wikipedia zu heben. Das war der Anfang einer Entwicklung, die dazu führte, dass heute Referenzen und Fußnoten in Artikel Pflicht wurde. Damals stand die Frage im Raum: Wie zuverlässig ist Wikipedia? Zu Wikimania brachte ZDF eine Sendung über Wikipedia, in der auch der Chefredakteur von Brockhaus zu Wort kam, der genau diese Frage stellte. Die Frage ist heute wie damals aktuell. Und sie steht mit der Offenheit des Projektes gewiss in Konflikt.

Dieser Konflikt zu lösen ist die Beständige Aufgabe unserer Community: Die Qualität von Wikipedia zu halten und zu verbessern, gleichzeitig offen für neue Community Mitglieder und für Erneuerung zu sein.

Bei vielen Regeln, die mit der Qualität der Wikipedia zu tun hat, wird auf einem anderen Grundprinzip hingewiesen: Wikipedia ist eine Enzyklopädie. Zum Beispiel die stark umstrittene Relevanzkriterien verweist auf den folgenden Satz: „Nur für Personen und Institutionen von enzyklopädischer Bedeutung sollten Artikel angelegt werden.“ Bei den Relevanzkriterien geht es also darum, was von enzyklopädischer Bedeutung ist. Laut Wikipedia ist eine Enzyklopädie eine durch Allgemeinwissenschaft nach Definition von Diderot und d'Alambert erfolgte Darstellung der Gesamtheit des Wissens. Was bedeutend genug ist, um zur Gesamtheit des Wissens zu gehören, gibt es gewiss nur subjektive Meinungen, und keine Definitionen. Für mich als IT Specialist gehört Entwurfsmuster gewiss zum alltäglichen Arbeitswerkzeug und deswegen sehr bedeutend, während sie für meinen Freund Kien, der ein Gärtner ist, gar nichts bedeutet, dafür kennt er mehreren zehn Kameliensorten und kann sie oft allein anhand ihres Blattwerks unterscheiden. In der deutschen Wikipedia wird oft an Brockhaus orientiert, wenn es um enzyklopädische Bedeutung geht. Dabei hat Wikipedia Brockhaus in Anzahl der Artikeln, der Wörtern, der Leser und der Nutzung längst hinter sich gelassen. Allein die Tatsache, dass Wikipedia täglich wahrscheinlich öfter benutzt wird als Brockhaus in seine gesamte Geschichte, ja, sogar von meinem Gärtnerfreund, zeigt, dass für Wikipedia die Bedeutung der Gesamtheit des Wissens anders definiert werden muss, als ein Werk, das sich hauptsächlich an Akademiker, Bibliotheken und wohlhabenden Liebhaber orientiert. Die Orientierung an Brockhaus ist also eindeutig rückwärtsorientiert und der Zeit und der Bedeutung von Wikipedia nicht mehr angemessen. Es ist eine selbst auferlegte Einschränkung, die das Projekt sich selbst eine Grenze setzt und eine Community Online-Enzyklopädie nicht gerecht wird.

Anhand der Definition von Enzyklopädie sieht man auch, dass es so etwas wie DIE Wahrheit nicht gibt, wie Henriette in ihrem Interview gesagt hat. Es gibt höchstens unterschiedlichen Wahrnehmungen und Meinungen. Das ist es, warum NPOV so wichtig in Wikipedia ist. In Wikipedia geht es nicht darum, was wahr ist. Was wahr ist, liegt oft außerhalb des Erkenntnishorizonts der einzelnen, oft auch außerhalb des Erkenntnishorizonts der Community. In Wikipedia geht es darum das Sein zu beschreiben. Wenn es zu eine Sache unterschiedlichen Meinungen gibt, dann ist nicht die eine wahr und die andere unwahr, sondern der Istzustand ist, dass es unterschiedlichen Meinungen gibt. Jemand, der glaubt, die Wahrheit zu vertreten und diese mit Inbrunst oder sogar mit unerlaubten Mitteln (Sockenpuppen) oder Unfreundlichkeit und Beleidigungen anderen Community Mitglieder gegenübertritt, ist kein Wikipedianer, sondern ein Fanatiker und Fundamentalist. Er gehört nicht zur Community, hat das Prinzip der NPOV nicht verstanden, und hat in Wikipedia nichts zu suchen.

Da es keine Die Wahrheit gibt, kann keiner sie pachten, besonders nicht in Wikipedia. Was bleibt, ist Respekt: Respekt für anderen Personen und Respekt vor unterschiedlichen Ansichten. Das soll In Wikipedia sein, besonders in seinem Hinterzimmer.

Who owns the truth in Wikipedia

(As always in my blog I express my personal opinion)

In the recent issue of the magazine “Der Spiegel” is an article about the “backrooms” of Wikipedia. The article describes with the example of the debate about if the Donauturm in Vienna is a TV tower how uncivilized and desperate such battles are fought inside of Wikipedia community. The article used following phrases: “Wikipedia is not a project of many, but a project of few”, “Who hold the truth in Wikipedia is an important question”, “The sociologist Stegbauer came to the result in his study that the leadership of Wikipedia more and more closes the door and makes new comers more and more difficult to get in”, “There are a lot of debates on principles, for example about the question of notability”. It cites Henriette from WMDE: “Today you need three days to read all the rules. The bar for quality had raised, references are a must. A lot of topics are already occupied. There are notability criteria that decides about what one can write at all”, and it cites Elian, a de-wiki editor: “She don't like how people treat each other on Wikipedia” and “for users who search for information Wikipedia still works very well, but between the humans no more.” In respect of NPOV the author wrote: “In the reality most articles are written by a few main contributors who keep the articles as their own and defend any changes by other users.”

Last year within the Strategic Plan the Wikimedia Foundation conducted a “Former Contributors Survey”. Questionnaires are sent to 10,000 editors who had stopped their engagement on Wikipedia. 1428 sent their answer back and told us the reason of their depart. Beside difficulties with the technique of the software the second largest reason was deletion or revert of their edits.

The problem is not a German one, as one often thinks. It is a global problem, it is also a problem in the English Wikipedia or in Spanish or Chinese one. Not only are many topics occupied like Henriette said, but also positions and ideologies. The actual Wikipedia community is getting quite conservative.

It is sad because Wikipedia started as an innovation. One of its five pillars is “Be bold / Ignore all Rules”. I don't know why exactly this pillar was removed from the German Wikipedia and only listed in the “See also” section of the pillars.

Be Bold is not without reason one of the pillars of Wikipedia. It is the begin of Wikipedia. Nupedia became Wikipedia because Jimmy Wales was Bold to open the privilege of writing an encyclopedia to all people. Wikipedia is today so big because a user was Bold to write “Die Nordsee ist ein Mehr, ein teil der Atlant, zwischen Grossbritannien, Skandinavien und Friesland” (The North See is a see, part of the Atlant, between Greatbrittian, Scandinavia and Frisia), without references, footnote and check against notability criteria, with quite some spell errors for a single sentence, and because a lot of editors are Bold enough to follow him.

Is this pillar still up to date now? Yes it is. Especially in the light of declining number of new comers is it even more important. It urges every Wikipedian to respect the Boldness of the new comers and to give them helps and guides during their first bold steps in Wikipedia. It condemns every deed that pushs a new comer out of the project in their testing beginning. It urges every Wikipedian to check again and again if a rule is still up to date and apt correctly for the situation. It condemns every try to handle the rules as a holy book and to oppose every renewal. It is the begin of our project and is, like the other four pillars, the guarantee that our project remains healthy, that our community keeps its dynamic and growth.

Elian is totally right. Someone who is constantly aggressive against new comers or other community members is a vandal. He doesn't vandalize against the content of our projects, but he is vandalizing against the community. He is as devastating as someone who deteriorates the content of articles. Actually he is even worse. Vandalism against content can be reversed easily, but destroyed collaboration or injured feeling can only be repaired, if at all, slowly.

Quite exactly five years ago on the first Wikimania conference in the Haus der Jugend in Frankfurt am Main, Germany Jimmy Wales calls the community to strengthen its endeavor to improve the quality and reliability of Wikipedia. This was the begin of the development which leads to the rules that today an article must have references and footnotes. At that time we are often asked: How reliable is Wikipedia? During Wikimania ZDF broadcasted a report about Wikipedia, in which the chief editor of Brockhaus exactly raised this question. The question is up to date today like back at that time. And it does pose some conflict with the openness of the project.

This is a constant challenge for our community: To keep and improve the quality of Wikipedia and at the same time to open it for new members and for renewals.

A lot of rules related to quality in Wikipedia refers to one of the other pillars: Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. In German Wikipedia for example the strongly battled notability criteria refers to the following sentence: “Only person and institutions that is important for an encyclopedia can have an article.” So the notability criteria results in the question, what is important enough for an encyclopedia. According to Wikipedia an encyclopedia is a type of reference work, a compendium holding information from either all branches of knowledge or a particular branch of knowledge. But what is important enough to be counted as knowledge is quite subjective, there is no definition for it. For me as an IT specialist design patterns are surely very important, it is my daily tool. But for my boyfriend Kien, a gardener, it has no meaning at all. But he knows a few dozen of camellia and can often distinct them alone by their leaves. In German Wikipedia Brockhaus is often used as a reference when trying to answer the question if something is of value of human knowledge. Meanwhile Wikipedia exceeded Brockhaus in the count of articles, words, readers and editors by far. The fact, that the number of users on Wikipedia everyday is maybe more than Brockhaus in its entire history, that even my gardener boyfriend uses Wikipedia, is evident enough that the definition of knowledge for Wikipedia cannot be the same as for an encyclopedia which is mostly targeted to academics, libraries and rich buyers. Take Brockhaus as standard for definition of knowledge is definitively backward oriented. It is out dated and doesn't fit the scale of Wikipedia. It is an unnecessary limit set to the project that constraints the possibility of a community created online encyclopedia.

By the definition of encyclopedia one can also see that there is no THE truth, like Henriette said in her interview. There are different views and opinions. This is why NPOV is so important for Wikipedia. The purpose of Wikipedia is not to decide what is the truth. What is the truth is often beyond the horizon of a person, or even of the community. In Wikipedia we describe the being. If there are different opinions, then there is no one true and the others false. The is-status in this case is there are different opinions. A person who thinks he knows what the truth is and defends his self declared truth with vigor or even illegal methods like sock puppet or aggression or even insult against other community members is not a Wikipedian, but a fanatic and fundamentalist. He doesn't belong to the community, he has no understanding for NPOV and has nothing to do in Wikipedia.

Since there is no THE truth no one can own the truth, especially not in Wikipedia. What remains is respect: Respect for other person and respect for other opinions. This should be In Wikipedia, especially in its backrooms.

谁拥有维基百科里的真理

（在我的部落格上我仅表达我的个人意见）

《明镜周报》在本周刊登了一篇关于维基百科的“后屋”的文章。文章就德语维基中关于维也纳的多瑙塔是否是电视塔为例描述了维基百科社群里往往极端激烈和不文明的争执。文章里出现了下面这样的描写：“维基百科全书不是一个许多人的项目，而是一个少数人的项目”、“谁在维基百科里拥有真理，是一个重要的问题”、“社会学家施戴格鲍尔的研究结果是维基百科的领导阶层越来越封闭，新人进入的难度越来越大”、“（项目内）有许多斗争，比如关于知名度的问题”。文章引用德国维基协会职员Henriette说：“今天你需要三天的时间来读所有的规则。对文章的要求大大地提高了，文章里必须有参考资料。许多内容已经被占据了。知名度规则决定什么文章可以写，什么不可以写”。它还引用长年用户Elian：“我不喜欢维基百科内的语气”和“对于搜索信息的用户来说维基百科还运行得很好，但是人际关系不怎么样了”。就中立立场作者说：“实际上大多数文章是有少数主作者写的，他们往往把这些文章视为己有，防止其他作者进行改动”。

去年在进行战略计划的时候维基媒体基金会进行了一次《前贡献者调查》，来询问不再参与维基百科项目的前贡献者离开项目的原因。基金会共向近万前贡献者传送了问卷，并获得了1428回答。除技术问题外自己的贡献被删除或者回退是离开维基百科第二多的原因。

不像许多人想象的那样这不是一个德语维基百科的问题。这同样也是英语维基百科、西班牙语维基百科、中文维基百科或者许多其它语言版本的问题。不但像Henriette所说的那样许多领域被占据了，许多职位和理念也已经被占据了。今天的维基百科社群变得非常保守了。

但是实际上维基百科是个创新。它的五个支柱之一是“勇于参与/不墨守成规”。我不知道为什么德语维基百科偏偏把这个支柱删除掉了，把它放到支柱的“参见”节中去了。

勇于参与是维基百科的支柱之一不是没有原因的。它是维基百科的开始。吉米·威尔士勇于让所有的人都享受写百科全书的权利，这是维基百科的开始。维基百科成为今天的样子，因为九年多前有用户勇于写上“Die Nordsee ist ein Mehr, ein teil der Atlant, zwischen Grossbritannien, Skandinavien und Friesland”（北海是一座还，是大西的一部分，位于大不列殿、斯堪的纳维亚和弗里士兰之间），没有任何注释，没有任何参考资料，没有考虑文章是否符合知名度，带着许多笔误，以及因为后来有许多其他用户勇于追随他的榜样。

勇于参与/不墨守成规这个规则今天还有效吗？有，尤其鉴于在一些项目中新参与者减少它的重要性有增无减。它要求所有维基人认同每个新人的勇气，在他们勇敢的实验阶段提供帮助和指引，它反对任何把还处于探索阶段的新人逼出项目的行为；它鼓励所有维基人不断审查所有的规则是否还符合当前的情况，并在必要的情况下对它们进行修改，它反对把规则当作圣经，排斥所有创新的做法。它是我们项目的开始，和其它四个支柱一样是保持我们项目健康和保证社群发展和年轻的保障。

Elian说得对，始终不友好地对待新人或其他社群成员的人是破坏者。他虽然没有破坏文章的内容，但是他破坏社群。他对我们的项目造成的破坏同样大，他不是我们社群的成员。实际上他造成的破坏还要大，因为对内容的破坏很容易就可以回退了，但是要修复合作的气氛或者被伤害的感情（假如可能的话）需要很长的时间。

五年前在在法兰克福的青年旅社举行的首次维基年会上吉米·威尔士呼吁社群努力提高维基百科的质量和可靠性。这是今天文章必须有参考资料等要求的开始。当时有许多人对维基百科的质量提出质疑。在维基年会召开的同时德国第二电视台播放了一个关于维基百科的节目，其中布罗克豪斯百科全书的总编辑就提出了这个问题。这个问题今天依然存在，而且它与项目的开放性有一定的冲突。

不断保持和提高维基百科的质量，同时保持社群的开放性和创新精神，是我们的社群不断面临的挑战。

许多与维基百科的质量有关的规则来于另一个支柱：维基百科是一部百科全书。比如争议最激烈的知名度规则在德语百科中直接引述以下这句话：“只有符合百科全书重要性的人物和机构才能有自己的文章。”按照维基百科百科全书是对人类过去积累的全部知识或某一类知识的书面摘要。哪些知识重要到值得收录入人类积累的全部知识只有主观的意见，没有定论。比如作为一名IT Specialist对于我来说设计模式是我每天都要使用的工具，是非常重要的，但是对于我的花匠男朋友志坚来说它一点意义也没有。但是他认识几十种茶花，而且往往能够仅仅通过它们的叶子区别它们。在德语维基百科中布罗克豪斯往往被用来作为区别一篇文章的内容是否值得收录的参照。但是在此期间德语维基百科的条目数目、字数、编辑者数目、使用者数目均远远超过了布罗克豪斯。每天使用德语维基百科的人数可能超过布罗克豪斯在其整个历史上的使用人数，即使我的花匠朋友也会查询维基百科。这一切说明一部主要写给学者、图书馆和富有市民阶层的百科全书对于知识的定义远远无法满足维基百科的需要了。用布罗克豪斯作为百科全书应该收纳的内容的参照是一种过时的做法。它无义地限制了一部社群创造的、网上百科全书的范围。

从百科全书的定义我们就可以看出，如同Henriette在她的采访中说的，世界上没有真理，顶多有不同的观点和意见。这是NPOV对维基百科来说这么重要的原因。维基百科写的不是真理，什么是真理往往超出一个人的知识范围，往往超出整个社群的知识范围。维基百科只描述现状。假如对于一个事物有不同的见解的话那么不是这个见解是正确的，别的是错误的，而是这个见解不一就是现状。假如有人认为他的见解是真理，并不容其它见解，甚至使用违规的手段（比如马甲）或者不友好的和侮辱他人的语气来一意固执自己的见解的话，那么他不是社群的一部分，没有理解NPOV的意义，在维基百科没有立足之地。

既然没有真理，那么也没有人拥有真理，尤其在维基百科里没有人拥有真理。剩下的只有尊重，对其他人和他们不同的意见的尊重。这应该在维基百科里，尤其是在它的后屋里。

My speech on the opening ceremony of the 2. Chinese Wikipedia Conference

2010-01-18T02:10:00.000-08:00

女士们先生们，各位贵宾们，朋友们，你们好

我首先想感谢澳门和香港维基协会的朋友们和义工们为组织这次会议付出的心血和劳动。我知道组织这样的聚会不容易，许多一开始意想不到的问题会半途出现，许多烦心的事情需要有人管理和做，虽然如此还是会有许多人不满意，批评，怀疑。要坚持下来，真的使得年会举办，使得它举办得好是一件非常不容易的事情。因此我想在这个时刻，在会议开始的时候，向各位表示我的万分感谢。谢谢你们的心血和劳动。

维基百科有五个支柱。我们所有的规则和工作都是在这五个支柱的基础上发展出来的。我们所有其它的规则都可以改变或者被放弃，但是这五个支柱，我们可以说是维基百科的基本法是不可改变的。请问各位贵宾朋友中有谁能够立刻说出这是哪五个支柱？

维基百科的五个支柱是维基百科是百科全书，中立，开放，互重和勇于创新。

维基百科是一部百科全书。这是我们的第一个支柱，是我们基础的基础，因为它定义了我们工作的范围和目标。但是什么是百科全书？哪些内容是百科全书的内容，哪些内容不是百科全书的内容？当维基百科刚刚开始的时候，我们没有想到过它会发展成今天的样子。我们当中有许多人把经典的百科全书如大英百科全书当作榜样。那个时候我们觉得不论从数量上还是质量上能够发展到大英百科全书的地步都会是一个非常艰巨的任务。当时还有人列了表，大英百科全书有哪些词条，我们还缺乏哪些词条。今天我们在词条的数量上已经远远超过了大英百科全书。我们的使用者远远超过了大英百科全书在其整个历史上的用户人数。我们的条目中有这些词条，它们是大英百科全书里没有，也永远不会有的。这些词条是百科全书的内容吗？按照经典百科全书的定义它们显然不是，但是我们的社群，你们，决定这些词条是百科全书内容。这说明什么？这说明我们的社群扩展了百科全书的含义。我们创造了一个新的百科全书的定义，它超越了经典百科全书的内容。

维基百科的第二个支柱是中立的观点。智慧是人的本性。人类没有锋利的爪牙，没有出色的嗅觉，没有翅膀飞翔，没有厚厚的皮毛，但是人类有探求万物的本性，有把知识有效地收集和传播给他们的后代和其他人的特殊本领。我们生活在一个复杂的，多元化的，全球化的世界里。不论在工作、学习、日常生活中，我们每天都要做出决定和选择。要做出理智的决定，我们需要尽量全面地领会这个决定的前提和环境。我们需要全面的和中立的知识。40年前，红卫兵为中国带来了巨大的灾害。不是因为他们邪恶，而是因为他们无知，而且他们所拥有的那些知识也只是片面的，是别人经过过滤后告诉他们的，因此他们无法正确地估价他们破坏的文物，无法正确地认识他们摧残的生命的价值，无法分别哪些决定和言语是正确的，哪些是错误的。我们的任务不是告诉别人什么是对的什么是错的，我们没有为别人判断对错的能力和权利。假如我们开始为别人决定什么是对的什么是错的的话我们很快就自己会成为把这些人错导到造成巨大破坏的道路上去的人。我们的任务是提供全面的、中立的知识，来让我们的用户自己做出决定，什么是对的，什么是错的。从山海经到河南血祸，从毕达哥拉斯到哈利·波特，在传说中、文学中，还是历史中或者现实中，我们总是会碰到一些人觉得某些知识特别危险而企图把这些知识封锁起来的故事或者事情，但是事实最后总是证明无知比有知危险，片面的知识导致的危害远远比全面的知识导致的危害大。

只有一个开放的社群才能保证我们收集的知识的中立性。我们每个人有自己的信仰、自己的偏见，有我们自己知识上的不足，因此一个封闭的社群的知识也只是有限的。开放对于我们来说有两重意义。我们的社群是开放的，我们收集的知识是开放的，但是这也意味着我们必须对我们的用户负责。许多人不理解我们为什么这样注重他人的著作权。我们经常听到别人职责说：网上就是大家互相抄，为什么维基百科偏偏不允许。我们注重著作权有许多原因，但是其中最重要的是因为我们需要保证我们收集的知识可以为全人类自由使用。假如我们不注重他人的著作权，其他用户在使用我们的知识的时候就会冒风险。其他的人可以来说，你们收集的知识实际上是不自由的，这威胁我们的使命，威胁我们的声誉，威胁我们收集的知识的价值。不开放的知识很可能是不中立的，因为它的主人可以决定谁可以利用这些知识，他可以过滤这些知识。

维基是一个社群合作的工具。我们在编辑维基百科的时候不能忘记这一点。社会合作也是人类的本性。和朋友们一起玩比一个人玩开心，这个经验我们都有过。合作的基础是互重。我们社群设计了许多不同的方法来促进社群内的合作：我们有维基星章、欢迎模板、有小天使、有动员令。我们的许多规则，比如不要伤害新手，比如不要人身攻击，比如讨论的时候针对事，而不要针对人，都是从这个支柱中引导出来的。互重是我们社群结合的胶水。自从维基百科出现以来网上出现了许多以社群提供内容和互动为主题的网站。但是维基百科是唯一由一个开放的社群有一个明确的目标共同建设的项目。对于一个开放的社群，对于一个依靠合作建设的项目来说，社群各个成员之间的互重是项目发展的基础。朋友们，在讨论非常激烈的时候，在年复一年、一次又一次不断地讨论和解释同一规则之后，一个人往往会觉得非常不耐烦。互重是我们最容易忘记的支柱，因此也是我们最应该铭记的支柱。

维基百科快要九岁了，九年在网上是一个漫长的时间。许多今天在网上名列前茅的网站在九年前还不存在。一些九年前在网上名列前茅的网站今天已经鲜为人知，甚至已经消失。九年前维基百科是一个创新。在九年的时间里我们从一无所有建立了一个非常受欢迎的、有相当权威的百科全书。我们为网上百科全书做了一个新的定义。我们为中立性开创了一个新的定义，我们开放性的合作至今是其它网站无法达到的，为了保证我们的开放性和合作我们设立了许多规则。但是我们不能因此停留下来，不能因为我们达到的就却步不前了。我们现有的规则不是天经地义，假如有新的方法和规则能够更好地促进社群之间的合作，能够更好地促进维基百科的发展，我们需要像在维基百科依然处于婴儿时期一样勇于讨论和采纳它们。

女士们、先生们、各位贵宾们、朋友们，今天能够与各位在澳门相会我感到非常荣幸，我祝愿我们的年会能够促进大家之间的友情，消除过去的误会，探讨未来的发展，开发新的主意，为维基百科带来新的动力。

谢谢大家。

Ladies and Gentlemen, dear guests, friends, hello

At first I want to thank the volunteers and friends from Wikimedia Macau and Wikimedia Hongkong for their organization, for their hard work. I know organizing such a meeting is not easy. A lot of unexpected things can happen, a lot of details and things must be done. Despite all these works a lot of people would be unhappy, would criticize the organizers or even suspect them. To keep on and make the meeting happen, make it a good meeting, is a very hard work. Because of this I want to express my very much thanks. Thank you very much for your work.

Wikipedia has five pillars. All our rules, all our work, should be based on these five pillars. All other rules can be changed or outdated, but these five pillars, we can say the constitution of Wikipedia, cannot be changed. I would like to ask if any of the friends here can tell me which five pillars they are?

The five pillars are: Encyclopedia, Neutral Point of View, Free Content, Respect To Each Other and Be Bold.

Wikipedia is an Encyclopedia, this is our first pillar, is the basis of our basis. This pillar defines the scope and goal of our work. But what is an encyclopedia? Which content belong to an encyclopedia, which not? When Wikipedia started no one of us could imaging that it would develop to what it is today. At that time we took the classic encyclopedia, like Britanica, as our example. Back at that time we thought that it would take eons to match the quality and quantity of Britanica. Back then people even listed out which articles Britanica has and we still not have. Today the number of our articles had exceeded by far Britanica. And the number of our users also exceeds by far of all users that had ever used Britanica. We have articles that Britanica doesn't have and would never have, like stations of the Hongkong Underground, or bus lines in Hongkong. Are these content of encyclopedia? According to the definition of classic encyclopedia obviously not. But our community, you, decided that they are. What does that mean? It means that we had expanded the definition of encyclopedia. We created a new definition of encyclopedia, which exceeds the content of the classic encyclopedia.

The second pillar of Wikipedia ist the Neutral Point of View. Wisdom is a human nature. The human being has no sharp claws, no sensitive nose, no wings to fly, no thick hide. But the to explore the world is the nature of the human being. The mankind can very effectively collect knowledge and pass it to their peer. We live in a complicated, multicultural and global world. When we learn, work or in our daily life we must make decisions and choices everyday. We can only make wise decisions if we can have the most thorough information. We need neutral knowledges to make decisions. 40 years ago the Red Guard brought China tremendous destruction. They did it not because they are evil, but because they don't have the knowledge, and the few knowledge that they have are filtered by other people. Because of this they are not able to evaluate the things they destroyed and they cannot evaluate the lives they destroyed. They are not able to select between right and wrong. Our goal is not to tell other people what is right and what is wrong. We don't have the ability and the right for that. If we begin to filter informations as good or bad, we are doing the same wrong thing like those people, who disguised the young people to do the destructions. Our goal is to provide thorough, neutral knowledge, so that our user can decide by themselves what is right and what is wrong. From Shan Hai Jing to the AIDS catastrophe in Henan, from Pythagoras to Harry Potter, in stories, history, literacy or now a day we can always meet people, who feels that some knowledge is too dangerous to be known by all the mankind, so that they must try to seal these knowledge to protect the society. But indeed the history had showed that no knowledge is always more peril than have knowledge, that filtered knowledge always do more harm than thorough transparent knowledge.

Only an open community can ensure that the knowledges we collected is neutral. Everyone of us has his own belief and his partial knowledge, no one knows everything. So the knowledge of a closed society is limited. Open has two meanings for us. Our community is open, and the knowledge we collected is also open. And that means that we have responsibility to our users. A lot of people don't understand why we take so many effort to respect the copyright of other people. We often hear people criticize us: In the Internet everyone copies everyone, why only Wikipedia don't allow this. There are a lot of good reasons why we respect copyright. The most important one is that we want to ensure that everyone can freely use the knowledge we collected. If we don't take care about copyright, our user would take risk if they use the content we collected. Other people can say: the content you collected is indeed not free. This would threat our mission, threat our reputation and threat the value of the knowledge we collected. Beside of this. Unfree knowledge is lightly not neutral, because its owner can decide who may use these knowledges and he can filter the knowledge.

Wiki is a social collaboration tool. When we are editing Wikipedia, we should never forget this. Social collaboration is another human nature. We have all the experience that gaming with friends makes more fun than gaming alone. The very basics of collaboration is mutual respect. Our community had devised deferent rules to encourage the collaboration inside of the community: We have barn stars, welcome template, Welcoming Committee, Contests. We have a lot of rules that are based on this pillar, like don't bite newbies, don't make personal insults, when discussing talk about fact, don't about person. Mutual respect is the glue of our community. Since the advent of Wikipedia a lot of new social content building and collaboration sites emerged, but none of them has such an open community, which is dedicated to a common goal like by Wikipedia. For an open community, which is collaborating to build up a project, the mutual respect of the community member between each other is the most important thing at all. Dear friends, if the discussion is tough, if we have to explain the same rules year after years, we get tired. But please let us never never never forget this most easily forgotten pillar.

Soon Wikipedia would be nine years old. Nine years is a long time on the net. Nine years ago most of the most visited sites didn't exist yet. Some of the sites that were very popular nine years ago are scarcely known today, or vanished. Nine years ago Wikipedia was an innovation. In these nine years we started with nothing and built up an extremely popular encyclopedia with increasing reputation. We defined encyclopedia new on the net, we introduced a new meaning of neutrality, our open collaboration is unchallenged by other sites. We have established a lot of rules to ensure the openness and collaboration on Wikipedia. But we cannot be content with this. We cannot stop with what was achieved. Our rules now are not unchangeable. If there are better means to encourage the collaboration inside of the community, to improve the growth of Wikipedia, we should be bold to discuss and adopt them, just as if Wikipedia is still in the time of its enfancy.

Ladies and Gentlemen, dear guests, friends. I am very happy and honored to meet you all today in Macau. I hope we can increase our friendship during the conference, can resolve our conflicts in the past, can discuss the future, develop new ideas and give new impulses to Wikipedia.

Thank you very much.

A huge thank you for our staff

2009-11-14T04:30:00.000-08:00

Yesterday we started our November board meeting in the new location in San Francisco. Michael had posted the agenda of the meeting on foundation-l. After the meeting he would surely post a summary of the meeting and Kat would post the meeting minutes a little later.

For me the meeting in San Francisco is also a very welcome opportunity to meet the staff.

One thing about our staff is that they are so often criticized, in most cases unjustified, and often very personal and in a hurting manner. And they are so few thanked, although there are so many reasons to say thank you to them.

For example thank you that you are keeping the project sites running, thank you that you are improving our software, thank you that you are fending off every threat against us, thank you that you are keeping the public informed about us, thank you that you are coordinating our volunteers works like OTRS and translation, thank you that you are organizing Wikipedia Academy to invite and encourage more people join our movement, thank you that you get all the money so that we can do all these wonderful things.

Thank you that you are even working off works and if necessary even at the weekend or during vacation.

If we consider our movement as an organism, for me our staff is the heart, the very heart that keeps the organism nourished so that it can grow, move and change the world.

It is a tiny heart, only 30 people, for a HUGE organism, with hundreds of thousands of editors and even more users. It is a very strong heart, because even despite of this disproportion it is keeping our movement going, and even improving itself during all this time.

Everyone know how important our heart is. But in the most time we don't think about it. Mostly we only think about it if we feel it begins to fail to meet our demand. So be thankful that we have this strong heart. And keep in mind it is OUR heart, it is a very vital part of US.

Gestern war der erste Tag unseres November Boardmeetings, diesmal in der neuen Lokation in San Francisco. Michael hat das Agenda des Meetings auf foundation-l gepostet. Nach dem Meeting wird er wie gewohnt eine kurze Zusammenfassung dort veröffentlichen. Wenig später wird dann Kat das Meetingprotokol veröffentlichen.

Für mich ist ein Meeting in San Francisco immer auch eine sehr willkommene Gelegenheit um die Mitarbeiter zu treffen.

Unsere Mitarbeiter werden sehr oft kritisiert, in den meisten Fällen ungerechtfertigt, oft sogar sehr persönlich angefeindet. Und sie werden so selten bedankt, obwohl es sehr viele Gründe gibt, sich bei ihnen zu bedanken.

Zum Beispiel Danke dass Ihr die Projektseiten am Laufenden haltet, danke dass Ihr unsere Software verbessert, danke dass Ihr jede Bedrohung gegen uns abwehrt, danke dass Ihr die Öffentlichkeit über uns informiert, danke dass Ihr Arbeit der Freiwilligen wie zum Beispiel bei der OTRS und der Übersetzung koordiniert, danke dass Ihr Veranstaltungen wie Wikipedia Academy organisiert, um mehr Leute einzuladen, und anzuschließen, danke dass Ihr das Geld sammelt, damit wir all diesen wunderbaren Sachen tun können.

Danke dass Ihr selbst nach der Arbeit, wenn notwendig selbst an Wochenenden und in Urlaub arbeitet.

Wenn ich mir unsere Bewegung als ein Organismus vorstelle, dann ist für mich unsere Mitarbeiter das Herz, DAS Herz, das das Organismus mit allem versorgt, was er braucht, um zu wachsen, zu bewegen und die Welt zu ändern.

Es ist ein winziges Herz, bestehend nur als 30 Leute, für ein RIESIGES Organismus, mit hunderttausenden Autoren und noch mehr Benutzer. Es ist ein sehr starkes Herz, weil ungeachtet diese Disproportion es unsere Bewegung nach Vorne hält und sich selbst immer weiter verbessert.

Jeder weißt wie wichtig das Herz für uns ist. Aber in den meisten Zeiten denken wir nicht darüber. Meistens wird unser Herz uns erst bewusst, wenn es unsere Anforderungen nicht gerecht werden. Um so wichtig ist es, um dankbar zu sein, dass wir ein so starkes Herz haben. Und denkt immer daran, es ist UNSER Herz, es ist ein lebenswichtiges Teil von UNS.

昨天是基金会理事会11月会议的第一天，这次在旧金山的新办公室里。迈克尔在foundation-l上发表了会议的议程。会后他会一如往常发表一个短暂的总结。凯特会在短时间后发表会议的正式纪录。

在旧金山开会也总是一个和基金会工作人员碰头的好机会。

我们的工作人员经常被批评，在大多数情况下不公正地被批评，往往非常人身攻击地被批评。而他们却很少听到别人对他们说：谢谢你们。尽管我们有许多理由谢谢他们：

比如谢谢你们保证项目网页的运行，谢谢你们不断改善我们的软件，谢谢你们排除一切外来的威胁，谢谢你们向公众介绍我们的工作，谢谢你们协调志愿者在OTRS和翻译方面的工作，谢谢你们组织Wikipedia Academy之类的活动来鼓舞更多的人参加我们的运动，谢谢你们募捐所有需要的钱来使得我们可以做所有这些美妙的工作。

谢谢你们即使在下班后，必要的时候甚至在周末和假期中工作。

假如把维基运动看做一个生物体的话那么我们的工作人员是这个生物体的心脏，那颗保障我们的运动能够发展、行动、改变世界的心脏。

它是一颗微小的心脏，只有30个人，但是却为一个巨大的生物体服务：上十万的作者和更多的用户。因此它是一颗非常强壮的心脏，因为尽管它相比整个生物体这么小它依然保证我们的运动发展，与此同时还不断地完善它自己。

我们每个人都知道心脏有多么重要。但是在大多数情况下我们不会想到自己的心脏。在多数情况下我们感觉到我们的心脏因为它无法满足我们的要求。因此我们必须感谢这颗强壮的心脏，必须随时想到它是我们的心脏，是我们不可缺少的一部分。

Party, and finally, Buenos Aires!

2009-09-02T04:12:00.000-07:00

After the closing ceremony, the Wikimania party started at 10:00 pm. This was my favorite party until now: No shows, no announcements, no presentations, simply party, dancing, laughing, chatting. I enjoyed it a lot. I think to put the party on the last day of the conference is really a very good idea.

The next day I had finally time to do some sight seeing in the city. Because I must leave at 6:00 pm for airport, I decided to make a bus tour with three other Wikimedians. I am really happy that we did this, because otherwise I would only have the picture of a street valley in my memory about this beautiful city. The old wharf scatter La Boca, which is now a day a hip. But behind the main street facade or on the less visited street you can still see the remains of the scatter. The Ecological Reserve that is build upon landfill wasts. While in the downtown city it seems only sparrow and pigeon had servived here are plenty of wild birds, most easily to see are the parrots. The port area is a modern area with skyscrapers, but also broad streets where people jogging, inline-scating and bycicling. The northern part of the city has some big parks, squares and are pretty green.

We made two stops, and at the end of the tour I have also had to pick up my luggage for airport.

Later on the plane I had the chance to get a glimps at the Southern Cross. I would have liked to see Eta Carinae, or the Magellanic Clouds, or the Galactic Center. But they are saved for the next time.

So exhausted and excited at the same time, I say good bye and thank you very much to you all in Buenos Aires, and see you next year in Gdansk!
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Nach der Abschlusszeremonie startete abends um zehn die Wikimania Party. Nach meinem Geschmack war sie die beste Wikimaniaparty, die ich je erlebt habe: Es gab keine Rede, kein Shows, nur einfach Party. Tanzen, Lachen, Reden. Ich habe sie sehr genossen. Ich glaube, die Party am letzten Tag zu verlegen ist eine gute Idee.

Am nächsten Tag hatte ich endlich die Gelegenheit, mir die Stadt anzuschauen. Da ich bereits um sechs Uhr abends zum Flughafen muss, habe ich beschlossen, mit drei anderen Wikimedianer ein Bustour zu machen. Ich bin wirklich froh darüber, dass ich dies getan habe, sonst hätte ich nur das Bild eines Straßenschluchtens von dieser schönen Stadt in meine Erinnerung gehabt. Das alte Werftslam La Boca ist heute ein Hipstadtteil. Aber hinter den Hauptstraßenfassaden oder in den weniger besuchten Nebenstraßen luken immer noch der alte Slam hervor. Das Naturschutzgebiet wird mit Bauschutt aufgeschüttert. Während in der Stadtmitte anscheinend nur Spatzen und Tauben überlebt haben, kann man hier viele Wildvogel sehen. Vor allem die Papageien sind besonders leicht zu sehen. Das Hafengebiet ist heute ein Büro- und Wolkenkratzerstadtteil, aber auch mit vielen breiten Straßen, wo Menschen joggen, Inlinescaten und Fahrrad fahren. Im Norden der Stadt gibt es viele große und größe Plätze und Parks. Wir machten während des Tours zwei Stops, und als sie Zuende war, muss ich auch schon meine Sachen holen und abreisen.

Später im Flugzeug hatte ich noch die Chance, einen Blick auf den Kreuz des Südens zu erhaschen. Ich hätte noch gern andere Himmelswundern des Südhalbkugels gesehen, aber sie müssen auf das nächste Mal warten.

Erschöpft und glücklich zu gleich sage ich Aufwiedersehen und vielen Dank an allen in Buenos Aires, und hoffentlich sehen wir uns im nächsten Jahr in Danzig wieder!
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结束仪式后晚上十点钟年会的派对开始了。我觉得这是最好的一个派对，没有演讲，没有表演，就是派对：跳舞，欢笑，攀谈。我很喜欢。我觉得把派对移到年会的最后一天是个好主意。

次日我终于有机会在市内观光。因为我当天下午六点钟就要去机场，因此我决定和其他三个维基人一起坐车观光。还好我利用了这个机会，否则的话这座美丽的城市在我的记忆中将永远只是一个街道峡谷的映像。原来的船坞贫民窟今天是一个时髦的市区，但是在主要街道的背后和在人少的街道上依然可以看到贫民窟的遗迹。自然保护区是在原来的建筑废物上形成的。在市中心好像只有麻雀和鸽子幸存，但是在这里可以看到许多野鸟，尤其鹦鹉很常见。旧日的港区今天是现代的高楼区。但是这里也有许多宽阔的街道，许多人在这里跑步、溜冰、骑车。在城市的北部有许多优美绿色的广场和公园。

后来在飞机上我还看到了南十字星座。本来我还想看到其它南天的景象，但是只好等下回了。

精疲力尽但是兴高采烈，再见了布宜诺斯艾利斯，谢谢你们大家，但愿我们明年在格但斯克再见！

Day Five in Buenos Aires

2009-08-28T15:04:00.000-07:00

Today is the last day of Wikimania 2009.

I spent a lot of time to talk with other people. For example with Heiko Hees who is one of the developers for the "Create a book" feature that is implemented on the english Wikibooks. They had made an educational video for this feature which is actually in German and are searching for someone native english speaker who can read the text for the english version.

I had also talked quite long with Jerry, the president of Wikimedia Hongkong, about the community there, the work of Wikimedia Hongkong, the planned Wikimedia Macao and the possibility of creating a Wikimedia China, about the preparation of the chinese Wikipedia conference end december.

At lunch time there was a very long talk with the strategic planning team about all kind of things arround the strategic planning. I am really happy that we have this strong team who had worked out the process so good (although they themselves always say it is not perfect). Half a year back on our January board meeting when we first talked about initiating such a process I found it difficult to imaging how we can really get the community and the chapters involved. And now it is there, the impossible that becomes reality.

The keynote of Sue is a hymn for the community. It was really charming.

The Board Q&A session was in my opinion too short. I am sure there are more people who want to ask questions and didn't got the chance.

The closing ceremeny is moving. The Buenos Aires team had made miracles. It is really great.

And yes, I am looking forward for Wikimania 2010!

Day Four in Buenos Aires

2009-08-27T14:18:00.000-07:00

Second Wikimania day.

The keynote by Jimmy Wales today morning was simply great. The best call for participation for the strategic planning process I had ever anticipated.

I missed the panel led by Andrew Lih because I had at the same time a talk by myself.

The sessions after the lunch break got really really good.

I visited the talks from Chitu Okoli and Mako about researches on Wikipedia. We need such researches, I am surprised that there are indeed some of them out there. Their results are very fascinating and helpful.

After that two tech talks about usability from Naoko and Angela. Really great. There was after the talk a very lively discussion about all aspects of usability. The developers made life sneak previews about features they are working on. There are inputs from other projects that use MediaWiki, comparisons with different solutions. What I found really good is the improvement on talk pages that should be released soon on the trial version. Really cool. A very very huge thank you very much to all developers that are involved and the whole usability team.

Day Three in Buenos Aires

2009-08-26T14:51:00.000-07:00

It is always the same by Wikimania: You have four tracks running paralell and you would at least devide yourself into three so that you won't miss anything really interesting.

The opening keynote by Richard Stallman was very entertaining. That show with how he entered the stage, how he auctioned the gnu was really funny. The first part of his keynote was about free software and was quite identical with the talk he made five year ago in Frankfurt. In the second part he took the chance to express his opinion about some of the articles on Wikipedia. I don't think that he is right, but I am ok in he distribute this, after all we invited him.

I had heard three very interesting talks today and I surely missed two or three equally interesting talks because of conflict of time. Two of the talks was technical talks, one made by Rob Halsell about the infrastructure of the Wikimedia servers, the other was given by Daniel Kinzler about the Toolserver. Both were very good visited and both were very interesting, with a lot of details that I didn't know earlier. I can scarcely wait them put the presentation on the TechBlog.

The third talk was given by two teachers from the Old Dominion University. They started three years ago a project by teaching the students in let the students to write their textbooks on WikiBooks. It is a really fascinating project. The two presenters are both teachers at the Darden College of Education. They teach people who would become teachers. They said when they ask their students if they would use this methode for their students, most of the students said yes. I think this is really one of the best measure for success.

Day Two in Buenos Aires

2009-08-26T02:58:00.000-07:00

At first I want to appology that in contrary to my normal custom I didn't write my blog in three languages at the moment. As usual Wikimania and Board Meeting are tough and a lot of things are happening so that the time is sorrowfully limited to work on the computer. I hope that later I can add the translations.

Day two was fully for board meeting. Today the topic is strategic planning process. The team introduced procedures, measurements of success and plans. There were a lot of discussions. Because of the scheduled press conference we must break up at 15:00, so the session was really too short. There are a lot of ideas that were discussed but the discussion must be break off at some point simply because of the schedule. In total the workshop was very concentrated. I asked Arne later how was his impression of the board meeting and it was very positive.

The venue of this year's conference is in the middle of down town, in one of the most crowded place. It is at the basement and the lower floors of an office tower, quite different to the venues we had in the last years. The tech folks who are attending Hacking Days are already productive.

As every Wikimania it is a meeting between friends that one had only had online-contact for a year. A lot of hugs, hand shakings, greetings, how are yous, a lot of discussions about the past year and the year before us. Talking about ideas, projects, works, experiences.

For example I met Achal Prabhala at dinner. Achal was the one who had moderated my first Wikimania talk back in Frankfurt. We talked about the forming indian chapter and about all the difficulties, about culture and language, about the differences between the different language versions. That was really a nice evening.

So, I am now really looking forward of the coming days. It would be good, as every year.

First day in Buenos Aires

2009-08-25T03:54:00.000-07:00

I arrived Buenos Aires at 19:00 local time at Saturnday evening. While the plane is landing, the city is already emerged into darkness. From the air the city doesn't look so bright as many other cities, especially the outskirt are quite dark.

Yesterday morning I had the chance to go arround a little near the hotel and take a first impression of the city. The buildings here in the downtown are all very tall, mostly over ten floors. They are either in a style of neo-classic or are totally undecorated and looks like buildings out of the 1950s or 1960s in Germany, but far more taller. Most of the streets are very narrow. At least in the part of the city where I was there are very very few modern architects. No business towers with steel and glass. There are one or two that are really broad.

I made the classic failure of a northerner and went in the direction of sun in the assumption that this is south. Naturally, in the southern hemisphere this is north.

We had our first board meeting day today. New board members are introduced. New members also mean new ideas and frish wind. Lively discussions about diverse topics, mostly organizational (protocal would be published on the Foundation-wiki, so I don't want to be too detailed here).

In the evening we went for dinner, and met other Wikimedians in the Restaurante. A lot of handshakes and discussions and hugs.

I am disappointed that from the downtown the city light is so strong that one cannot see any stars, one can only see the moon and one or two of the most bright stars.

The Election is over

2009-08-15T03:08:00.000-07:00

Because of job it took me a few days to write down my thoughts about the election and its result. A few days that are needed to sort my thoughts.

At first I want to thank all the voters and volunteers and other participants who had took part in the election process. I want to thank those who had put their trust in me, as in the last year I would work hard to prove myself trustworthy. To be a community elected trustee is a tremendous honor for me.

The number of participants are almost at the same level as last year. This is far more lower than the license update vote. For me this indicates that the majority of our editor community is not very interested in what the board in special and the Foundation in wide sense is doing. The nice interpretation of this is that the board and the Foundation is just doing that what the community expects it doing, nothing spectacular and nothing utterly wrong. The WMF is traditionally a very quiet organization. Despite its power it doesn't make a lot of public recommendations or comments. Actually I am comfortable with this, because the Foundation and the board is not the star or the center of our community. The Foundation and the board is supporting the community. On the other side, the Foundation is also doing more than just support the community. It is making meaningful things with the knowledge that is accumulated by the community. This is expressed in our mission. An encyclopedia or a text book or a research project are only meaningful if they are indeed used. The Foundation had put it on its agenda to promote this. And the Foundation and the board are the place where it would be decided on how and where to promote. This is the reason why I hope we will have a broader participation of the community by the strategic planning.

I am sad that Domas dropped out of the board, on the other side I am also very happy that Samuel joined us now. The first time I met both of them on Wikimania 2005 in Frankfurt. I joined a presentation made by Domas and Tim about MediaWiki programming there and Samuel recorded a session about four different wikipedia language versions on which I presented the chinese Wikipedia. Both of them are very witful and resourceful. I am really happy in looking forward to work with Samual. And I know that Domas is simple not to be overlooked, in or outside of the board.

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Wegen Arbeit hatte es einige Tage gedauert, bis ich Zeit finde, um meine Gedanken über den Wahl aufzuschreiben. Ich brauchte auch tatsächlich diese Zeit, um meine Gedanken zu sortieren.

Zuerst möchte ich mich bei allen Teilnehmer und Helfer bedanken, die ihre Stimmen abgegeben haben, die dabei geholfen haben, den Wahl zu organisieren. Ich möchte mich auch bei jenen Wähler bedanken, die ihr Vertrauen in mich gesetzt haben. Wie im letzten Jahr werde ich hart daran arbeiten, um dieses Vertrauen gerecht zu werden. Für mich ist ein von der Community gewählten Sitz am Board eine unglaubliche Ehre.

Die Zahl der Teilnehmer entspricht in etwa die vom letzten Jahr, also viel weniger als bei der Abstimmung zur Lizenzänderung. Für mich bedeutet dies, dass ein Großteil unserer Authorencommunity nicht besonders daran interessiert sind, was das Board im Speziell und die Foundation im Allgemein macht. Die nette Interpretation ist dass das Board und die Foundation genau das macht, was die Community erwartet, nichts spektakuläres und nichts besonders falsch. WMF ist traditionell eine sehr leise Organization, die trotz ihrer Macht selten Kommentare oder Empfehlungen abgibt. In der Tat bin ich zufrieden damit. Der Star ist nicht das Board oder die Foundation, sondern die Community. Das Board und die Foundation soll nur die Community unterstützen. Auf der anderen Seite macht die Foundation natürlich mehr als das. Sie tut sinnvolle Sachen mit dem Wissen, das von den Freiwilligen zusammengetragen werden. Das drückt unsere Mission aus. Eine Enzyklopedie, ein Schulbuch oder ein Forschungsprojekt hat keinen Sinn, wenn sie nicht benutzt werden. Die Foundation hat sich als Ziel gesetzt, genau das Nutzen zu fördern. Das Board, und die Foundation entscheidet, wo und wie diese Förderung passiert. Deswegen hoffe ich, dass bei der Strategischen Planung die Community viel breiter sich beteiligt.

Ich bin traurig dass Domas aus dem Board sich verabschiedet, bin aber auch sehr froh, dass Samuel dazugekommen ist. Ich lernten beiden bei Wikimania 2005 in Frankfurt am Main kennen. Damals nahm ich teil an eine Presentation von Domas und Tim über Programmierung von MediaWiki, und Samuel hatte eine Session aufgezeichnet, wo mehreren Wikipediasprachversionen vorgestellt wurden, dabei habe ich die Chinesische Wikipedia presentiert. Beide sind sehr kluge und einfallsreichen Menschen. Ich freue mich schon auf die Zusammenarbeit mit Samuel und ich weiß, dass Domas einfach nicht zu übersehen ist, innerhalb oder außerhalb des Boards.

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出于工作原因我今天才开始写我对这次选举的想法。不过我也的确需要了这几天的时间来整理自己的思绪。

首先我想感谢所有参与者和组织者。我也想感谢所有对我表达出他们的信任的人。如同去年我将努力不辜负大家的信任。对我来说作为一个由社群选出的理事是一个无比的荣誉。

今年参加选举的人数和去年差不多一样多，比更新版权调查参加的人少得多。我觉得这说明大多数作者社群的人对理事会和基金会的工作不很感兴趣。比较好的理解方法是理事会和基金会的工作满足社群的想法，他们的工作没有什么特别瞩目的地方，也没有犯大错。维基媒体基金会向来是一个不很喧闹的组织，虽然它非常有力，但是它很少提出建议或者评论。事实上我觉得这样很好。我们的明星不是理事会或者基金会，而是我们的社群。理事会和基金会的任务是支持社群。另一方面基金会的工作当然不只是支持社群。它使用志愿者贡献的知识来做有益的事情，这是我们的任务。一部百科全书、或者教科书或者研究项目，没有人使用就没有意义。基金会的目标之一是促进其使用。但是怎样促进，在哪里促进，这由理事会和基金会决定。因此我希望在战略计划过程中有更多的社群参与。

Domas没有能够进入理事会使我很悲伤，但是Samuel进入了理事会使我很高兴。我是在2005年法兰克福的维基年会上认识他们的。当时我参加了一个由Domas和Tim做的关于软件开发的报告。在介绍不同维基百科语言项目的报告中（我介绍了汉语维基百科）Samuel做的录像。他们两人都是非常聪明，非常有主意的人。我非常高兴能够与Samuel合作，同时也知道Domas不论是在理事会内部还是外部都是不会被忽视的人物。

Voting for the Board of Trustees has started

2009-07-28T13:23:00.001-07:00

The voting for the Board of Trustees of the WikiMedia Foundation Inc. had started. The Board is the highest control and steering organ of the Foundation. In this year, three seats would be reelected for a two years term. Questions to the candidates can be submitted here. I submitted for re-election this year.

I would also advocate for voting for Domas. Domas is an active member out of the developer and system admin community. Though the Foundation has tech staff now a very big part of the development of our software is done by this small, quiet but vitally important community. So in my opinion a member out of this community on the Board is important.

Die Abstimmung zum Kuratorium der WikiMedia Foundation Inc. hat begonnen. Das Kuratorium ist das höchste Kontrol- und Steuerungsgremium der Stiftung. In diesem Jahr werden drei Sitze mit einer Amtszeit von zwei Jahren neu gewählt. Fragen an den Kandidaten können hier gestellt werden. I kandidiere dieses Jahr für den Wiederwahl.

Ich möchte an diese Stelle auch eine Wahlempfehlung für Domas aussprechen. Domas ist ein aktiver Mitglied der Entwickler und Systemadmin Community. Obwohl heute die Stiftung eigene bezahlte Tech-Personal hat, wird ein Großteil der Entwicklung immer noch von den freiwilligen Entwickler aus dieser kleinen, leisen aber extrem wichtigen Community geleistet. Deswegen ist meiner Meinung nach sehr wichtig, dass jemand aus dieser Community im Kuratorium sitzt.

维基媒体基金会理事会选举投票开始。理事会是基金会最高的指导和监督机关。今年理事会三名理事重新选举，任期为两年。这里可以向候选人提问。我今年报名重选。

在这里我也想推荐大家选举Domas。Domas是程序开发和系统管理社群的活跃成员。虽然现在基金会有自己的程序员，但是许多程序开发工作依然是由这个人数不多、很少发言、胆识及其重要的社群做的。因此我认为有这个社群的成员参与理事会是非常重要的。

Submitted my candidacy for the next turn board membership

2009-07-07T10:58:00.000-07:00

I had just submitted my candidacy for this year's board election. In this year three seats would be elected for a two year turn.

Ich habe gerade meine Kandidatur für diesjährigen Board of Trustees Wahl bekanntgegeben. In diesem Jahr werden drei Mitglieder mit einer Amtszeit von zwei Jahren gewählt.

我刚刚在今年的理事会选举报名。今年理事会将选出三名新成员，任期两年。

Some reflections on Commons governance

2009-06-13T02:48:00.000-07:00

Some reflections on Commons governance

Einige Gedanken über Commons

对维基共享的一些想法

Is Commons affected by the Board resolution about BPL?

2009-06-07T12:04:00.001-07:00

Are images like this in scope of the board resolution about BPL or are they not? Can a image take along without context be considered as violating dignity of living person? If yes can they be kept on one of the Wikimedia projects in accordance with the board resolution?

Sind bilder wie dieses von der Board Resolution über Biographie Lebenden Personen betroffen? Kann ein Bild ohne Kontext als Ehrenverletzend gegenüber eines lebenden Persons betrachtet werden? Wenn ja kann ein solches Bild in Einklang mit der Boardresolution auf einem Wikimedia Projekt gehostet werden?

理事会的生人传记决议对这样的图片也起作用吗？一张图片可以不看其上下文侵犯一个生人的尊严吗？假如可以的话这样的图片按照理事会的决议能够被存在维基媒体的项目中吗？

Arne Klempert joined the Board of Trustees

2009-05-26T01:38:00.000-07:00

Now also this is official: Arne Klempert joined the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation as a chapters nominated member. Welcome Arne.

Nun ist auch das offiziell: Arne Klempert wird als Chapters nominierten Mitglied zum Board of Trustees der Wikimedia Foundation hinzukommen. Willkommen Arne.

阿尔纳·克莱姆帕特作为分会推举的维基媒体理事会成员进入理事会。欢迎。

Licensing Update Poll Result is Published

2009-05-21T00:25:00.000-07:00

The result of the Licensing Update Poll is now published. I am very happy about this result. This is more than three fourth of the attendents agree with the license change. Given the lots of critical debates and remarks in the prior discussion the number of positive votes surprised me. It is surely very good work done especially by Eric Möller and Mike Godwin to communicate with the community and to take as much points of critical remarks as possible and integrate them in the new license change document.

Das Ergebnis der Licensing Update Umfrage ist nun publiziert. Ich bin sehr über das Ergebnis erfreut. Mehr als drei Viertel der abgegebenen Stimmen favorisieren eine Änderung zum Doppellizenzierung. Angesichts der vor der Umfrage in den Diskussionen geäußerten kritischen Anmerkungen und Diskussionen hat mir die Eindeutigkeit des Ergebnisses überrascht. Dies ist sicherlich besonders die Arbeit von Eric Möller und Mike Godwin zu verdanken, die unermüdlich mit der Community kommuniziert haben und so viele wie möglich Änderungen und Vorschlägen in dem Änderungsdokument aufgenommen haben.

更改版权协议的投票结果发表了。我对这个结果非常满意。四分之三以上的票同意更改为双重版权协议。由于在投票前非常激烈和批评性的讨论和评论这个这样明确的结果出乎我的意料。在这里尤其是埃里克·穆勒和麦克·戈德温在与社群讨论和参考社群意见修改更改版权协议的文献中做出了非常大的贡献。

IBM Corporate Service Corps

2009-05-18T11:02:00.000-07:00

At friday morning I got a mail from the IBM Corporate Service Corps that I was selected as one of the corp members. Two months ago there was a call for partifipation. I was immediately electrified as I read the mail. It was the chance I was waiting for. I called my boss to ask him for the allowance to applicate on the program. He said yes he would support me for that. I wrote the application down in the same evening. I didn't thought a lot as I wrote the application. It was as if the program is maid for me. The reasons why I want to take part on it were all so natural that I don't need to really think about them. The only challenge was to confine my thoughts in 5000 letters. And now, it is there. I am still electrified thinking of it. Mr. Kusterer, who is responsible for Corporate Citizenship in IBM in Germany told us on the CSC Roadshow that the chance to get selected is like an application by the Stanford University. So, it's an honor, a responsibility, and an adventure into an unknown universe.

Am Freitag Morgen erhielt ich die Mail von der IBM Corporate Service Corps dass ich für das Programm gewählt wurde. Vor zwei Monaten als ich den Aufruf zur Beteiligung las wirkte sie für mich elektrisierend. Das war die Chance auf die ich gewartet habe. Ich rief meine Führungskraft sofort an und fragte nach dem Erlaubnis, mich für das Programm zu bewerben. Er sagte sofort seine Unterstützung zu. Am gleichen Abend füllte ich die Bewerbungsformular. Ich musste nicht viel darüber nachzudenken. Die Gründe, warum ich daran teilnehmen will, waren so natürlich dass sie wie von selbst heraussprudelten. Die einzige Herausforderung war sie alle auf 5000 Zeichen zu begrenzen. Und nun ist es da. Ist bin immer noch aufgeregt wenn ich daran denke. Der für IBM Corporate Citizenship in Deutschland zuständiger Manager Herr Kusterer hatte in seinem in Köln gegebenen CSC Roadshow gesagt, dass die Chance, genommen zu werden, entspricht in etwa eine Bewerbung bei der Stanford University. Es ist eine Ehre, eine Verantwortung und ein Abenteuer in einem unbekannten Universum.

星期五早上我收到了被IBM企业全球服务志愿队收录的信。两个月前我在公司内部的信件中看到了呼吁参加的信件。当时我就非常兴奋。这正是我在等待的机会。我立刻给头打电话问是否可以参加。他马上说他支持我。当晚我就填好了申请表格。当时我根本不用多想，为什么我要参加的原因就像自然而然地就浮现了，最难的是把它们压缩到5000个字母。现在我真的被收录了。想到这点我依然非常兴奋。在德国负责企业公民责任的库斯特勒先生在科隆介绍这个项目的时候说，从数值上来说，被这个项目收录的机会和被斯坦福大学收录的机会差不多。这是一个荣誉、一个责任和一个进入未知宇宙的探险。

Hu Feng Conterrevolutionary Clique

2009-05-18T10:27:00.000-07:00

The featured article on the Chinese Wikipedia this week is 胡风反革命集团案, which means "Hu Feng conterrevolutionary Clique". It is an episode shortly after the begin of the People's Republic of China and is the first of all big political campagne, which would one day summit in the Culture Revolution. This is after a long time I again start a translation from the Chinese Wikipedia out into the German Wikipedia. The last one is about Pagoda, also a featured article in zh-wp.

Der Artikel der Woche auf der Chinesischen Wikipedia ist Hu Feng konterrevolutionäre Clique, eine Episode, die kurz nach der Ausrufung der Volksrepublik China passierte, die erste große politische Kampagne, die irgendwann in die Kulturrevolution gipfelte. Dies ist nach lange Zeit zum ersten Mal dass ich wieder einen Artikel aus der Chinesischen Wikipedia in die Deutsche übersetze. Der letzte war Pagode, ebenfalls ein Artikel der Woche.

中文维基百科上这个星期的特色文章是胡风反革命集团案，中华人民共和国建国后的第一次大规模的政治运动，文化大革命的先驱。自从12月份我把塔翻译到德文维基百科后这是我长时间后第一次把一篇中文维基百科的文章翻译到一个外语版本中去。

Wikimania 2010 Gdansk

2009-05-09T03:46:00.000-07:00

Ok, now it is official. Gdansk won the bidding for Wikimania 2010. This was a really hard work to go through all the biddings. I never imagined it would be so hard. But at the end I am happy that we have so many good bids.

Ok, nun ist es offiziel. Danzig wird Wikimania 2010 austragen. Es war eine harte Arbeit um diese Entscheidung zu treffen. Ich habe nie gedacht dass es so hart wird. Aber am Ende bin ich doch sehr froh, dass wir so viele gute Bewerbungen haben.

格但斯克赢得2010年举办维基媒体年会的权利。做出这个决定的过程很艰苦。我没有想到这个过程会这么艰苦。但是最终我很高兴我们有这么多好竞争。

Something very old

2009-05-03T02:30:00.000-07:00

I just read the following text out of the March 1931 issue of Scientific American:

We are faced with a stagnation of industry such as we thought would never occur again. The country is full of remedies, but in trying to think our way through the difficulty we must remember that we are living in a 20th-century industrial world and not an 18th-century one. Our new world is a world of interdependence and solidarity. It is a world with thousands of criss-crossing threads. It is a world in which the relations between cause and effect have been so lengthened that on any given day the Egyptian planter cannot know what his cotton or sugar is worth until he receives the quotation from Galveston or Cuba. A heavy frost in the Mississipi valley will affect prices on the Liverpool exchange, and the disturbance will reverberate in Australia and India. French savings, through the channel of a loan to Argentina or Chile, contribute to the development of Belgian or German industry. Prosperity in Czechoslovakia by increasing the consumption of chocolate, results in the stimulation of the plantations of Venezuela. ...

That was 1931. So looking did the world changed a lot?

Logo for Remembrance of 512

2009-05-02T00:03:00.000-07:00

On the Chinese Wikipedia a very heavy debate broke out about whether to change the logo for the remembrance of the 512 earthquake last year.

Auf der Chinesischen Wikipedia ist ein sehr heftiger Streit ausgebrochen, ob man zur Erinnerung des Erdbebens im letzten Jahr das Logo am 12. Mai ändern soll.

在中文维基百科上关于是否因为纪念512汶川大地震而更改标志的问题发生了非常激烈的争执。

Wikipedia on Spektrum der Wissenschaft

2009-04-29T23:50:00.000-07:00

Today I got the neuest issue of my subscription of Spektrum der Wissenschaft, the german sister scientific magazine of Scientific American. While I turned the pages over one of a whole page announcement caught my eyes immediately. It is an announcement of the Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. for articles of the this year's Zedler Medal contest (on page 23). It is a really very nice designed announcement with the title "Donate your knowledge for Wikipedia". Well done again WMDE!

Als ich heute die neueste Ausgabe der Spektrum der Wissenschaft in der Hand hielt und sie durchblätterte sprang mir sofort eine ganzseitige Anzeige der Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. (auf Seite 23) entgegen: Spenden Sie Ihr Wissen für Wikipedia. Es ist eine Anzeige an Experten für den diesjährigen Zedler-Medaille. Der Design der Anzeige ist schlicht und schön. Gut gemacht WMDE!

今天我拿到了我订阅的《Spektrum der Wissenschaft》的最新一期，这本杂志是德语的《科学美国人》姐妹杂志。在我翻阅它的时候我突然看到了第23页上的一篇全页广告：向维基百科捐献您的知识。这个广告是呼吁专家人员参加德国维基媒体协会建立的蔡德勒奖供稿的广告。广告很简明，很清晰漂亮。加油德国维基媒体协会！

Mercury

2009-04-21T23:12:00.000-07:00

I saw Mercury at Monday morning. This is the second time in my life that I saw this smallest planet of our solar system. Mercury is notorious for its difficulty to observe because of its vincinity to the Sun. It is said that Copernicus never saw this planet in his life.

Some news

2009-04-19T10:52:00.000-07:00

Chinese Wikipedia arrived the landmark of 250,000 articles
In German Wikipedia a controvers breaked out because of the license migration. A lot of authors felt themselve bad informed and are discussion about the possibility of author naming inside the articles. A poll is planned for between April 20th and Mai 4th.

Wikipedians voting for the change of license agreement

2009-04-13T12:09:00.000-07:00

All Wikipedians are called to a vote for changing of the license agreement from GFDL to double licensing under GFDL and CC-BY-SA.

The voting was made necessary mostly because GFDL doesn't scale well when it comes to publishing Wikipedia content in other forms like paper or DVD, which caused to legal uncertainties. The double licensing is negociated between the Wikimedia Foundation and FSF who holds the GFDL licensing right. It was a very difficult negociation that went two years. There were also a very long during discussion on mailing list and on the meta page about this license change, where different issues and positions were discussed in every detail.

Now we endly are moving on. I think this license change is very important because the current situation is hindering our effort of outreach.

Letter of Support

2009-04-09T04:57:00.000-07:00

Sue announced the Letter of Support yesterday. Volunteers of the Wikimedia movement can request Letter of Support from the Foundation if they need such support letters for their work in the community and public. This is a further step that the foundation is going to do, to actively support community members in their work.

This would not be the last step, and it is only a small step, but it shows the direction where we want to move to. And in my opinion it is absolutely the right thing to do and right direction to go.

Naturally there are a lot of things we can do. And we would not be able to do all these things and distribute the resources of the foundation in all directions equally. This is also the reason why the foundation would work on its strategy in the next time. To work out where we want to concentrate our energy in all those things what we want to do.

The work on this strategy would cost us resources and energy, but it is a thing that worth to do. It would give us a clear direction for the future years and we would be able to distribute our resources not aimlessly.

Back at work

2009-04-06T11:42:00.000-07:00

Started at 7:30 today morning. The underground of Cologn had an incident and so I had to wait for the train for about a quarter of an hour.

Third Day of the WMF Board Meeting

2009-04-05T08:21:00.000-07:00

Today is the third and last day of the WMF Boardmeeting. The party in the evening before had the result that the people gathered later than planned. Quite some people left the location long after the midnight. I planned to leave at 22:00 but left far later.

The topic of today is mainly more elaborations about the strategic planning, develop a time plan, work out who would take part in which workgroup, etc.

At 11:00 we went up to join the chapters for the wrap up part. The developers presented their results. You see by the questions that the usability project get the most attention, followed by OpenMap collaboration. The end was so touching.

After lunch the board meeting went on. We had discussions about various topics and finished some of the loose ends of the meeting. At about 14:30 we were endly done.

I went to the WMDE office. It is in a beautiful restalled old building from the begin of the 20th century. There are more talks. Most of the people went after that to C-Base for party again. Elya, Raimond, Dror and I sat at a street corner near the WMDE office and talked about fund raising, tax deduction, history and people. It was really fun.

At 16:00 Dror started for C-Base, Elya and Raimond for the rail station. I went by foot to the rail station because I still have so much time. It took me a good hour of time to go. But it is good weather and most part of the way was Tiergarten and Spreeufer, so it was a beautiful walk.

Second Day of WMF April Board Meeting

2009-04-04T22:48:00.000-07:00

Today was mostly dedicated to the issue of Biography of Living People (BLP): What's the problem, why the problem and what we as board and the foundation should do with this problem. This topic was discussed for quite long time because of its importancy, but also because it is not so easy as it may be seemed to be.

After that we built up different workshops to check different things. For example to work out a resolution about the BLP, or the trademark issue and some other topics.

At 17:00 we had a joint meeting with the attendees of the chapters meeting. That was a great meeting. Atop of Berlin we discussed about various topics such as strategic planning, relations between the foundation and the chapters, the relationship between the chapters, the diversity of culture and chapters and the respect of this diversity as a value of the Wikimedia movement, communication and transparency. It was such an exciting meeting. You can really feel the spirit in the air. I really love to see all those faces and eyes.

At the evening it was the party at C-Base, an amazing hacker bar in Kreuzberg, where we also meet the folks who took part to the developer meeting. It was a very nice party with lots of talks, games, hacking, photo sessions and nice food and drink. (Though I didn't try the CC-BY beer.) I planned to stay until 22:00 but stayed there far more later.

First day of WMF April 2009 Board meeting

2009-04-03T23:01:00.000-07:00

This year the board meeting is in Berlin, at the same place as the WMF Chapters meeting. At the same time there is also the developers meeting in Berlin in C-Base.

Unlike the earlier meetings we started at about 11:30, because before that we went up to the Chapters meeting to attend the opening event. I am so happy to meet so many old friends and to learn the new chapters. Many people I already knew from mailing lists or committees but met them for the first time.

After that it goes with the real board meetings. At Friday there are mostly short topics of administrative and procedural nature. So it went quite fast and we worked three or four topics inside of a few hours.

At the evening there was a reception of some of the board members of Quadriga Foundation. Last year Wikipedia won the Quadriga Prize. So they invited us for a reception. It was held in an appartment just above the Brandburg Gate, with the undergoing sun over Tiergarten. A sight that I didn't thought would have able to enjoy. There were a few members of the Quadriga. Most interesting talks are with the board member of Wikimedia Deutschland.

The day ends with the board dinner. Further informal talks about various things, for example problem of promotion in China.

Attend Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) Board Meeting

2009-04-02T15:32:00.000-07:00

Worked in Cologn in project from 7:00 until 16:00,
went to railway station,
traveled from Cologn to Berlin.
Arrived Berlin at 22:20.
Arrived hotel at about 22:30.
Met other board member.
Checked in,
put down my gabbage.
Went back to bar,
talked with other attendants of the meeting.
Now going to bed.
At least I don't have jet lag this time