The Longest Now

A few updates from the African-language Wikipedias, courtesy of Ian Gilfillan’s blog. [HT to Don Osborn]

The last year has seen tremendous growth in Malagasy, Yoruba, Amharic. Malagasy is a popular language among linguists and historians, who make great Wikipedians; and both Yoruba and Amharic have extensive historical literary cultures.

Swahili and Afrikans projects are still quite solid, but their growth has slowed somewhat. And among the very small languages, Setswana grew from almost nothing to over 400 articles as well, thank to the Tswana Wikipedia challenge suppoted by Google. So if you have been looking for an afrophone wiki to get involved with, now is a great time to start.

Free access to Wikipedia on mobile devices.

That is Wikipedia Zero in a nutshell. With a current focus on making this possible through mobile partnerships in the developing world. It’s a bold and lovely project, a focus of Wikimedia outreach this year, and deserves wider visibility.

I am spending most of the day in literacy and library discussions, helping define the audience of the Digital Public Library [of America].  It is a fantastic project.  And I am warmed by the society-spanning groups that come together aound this vision for the evolution of libraries.

We should to bottle this type of shared sense-making, social diplomacy, and brainstorming.  “How do we solve the collective action problem for all of us who share these common goals?”  It must unfold from an institution-managed process to one that is low-cost, almost entirely online, and driven by the passion of its crowds.  That would revolutionize planning for many walks of modern life.

I will be posting discussion transcripts where I can; keep your eye on #dplawest for pointers.

Wikimedia and Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs are looking for a Wikipedia Fellow to work on-site in Cambridge, Massachusetts for a year, on topics related to international security.  From the full jobvite posting :

The Wikimedia Foundation and Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs are accepting applications to be a Wikipedia Fellow at the Belfer Center, for one year starting July 1, 2012.

This is a full-time position, tasked with

•  improving the quality of WP articles related to international security:
• liaising between the Wikimedia community and Belfer Center experts, facilitating resource sharing;
• coordinating projects and events, online and in-person, to support improving Wikimedia projects.
• working with faculty, staff, and fellows at the Center to increase understanding of and participation in Wikipedia and other free content;
• sharing this experience at Harvard with the global community of Wikipedians, and among academics, via articles, blog posts, and multimedia.

I had the great fortune of attending a workshop recently with a provocative MIT architect, Neri Oxman, whose artistic work I have seen showing up in museums across Europe and the US – it is truly awesome.

I was struck by the excellent practical end results produced from designs with varying textures/ colors/ qualities that are defined by artistic parametric equations. The group’s past prototypes include some armor and body sheaths – presented as art, not as fashion – that were very much what I was looking for years ago when I wanted better load-bearing clothes.

Future projects promise to include living structures and buildings… and, I hope, a line of designs suitable for the public. Work like this deserves to be shared, and should not be hidden in museums and universities.

From the Oxman files

Here is an edited/clarified version of a mailing list thread many weeks ago, in which Wikimedians were discussing starting a Q&A site, or setting up a hosted solution for same.

I drafted a post about this to reprise here, but am just now finishing it off.

It is a disappointment… that Stack Overflow uses proprietary software
(not least because it is so wonderful) because in all other respects, as
a community, they do a great job. I have had wonderful experiences with
them and would urge anyone to get behind them.

I like their spirit and community too. I would be happy to see a StackExchange site for Wikipedia/MediaWiki questions exist. [that was the context of this email thread.] But it won’t contribute to the global free toolchain for collaborative knowledge, which we are part of. So the templates and environments for discussion that we build by customizing those tools will have only limited long-term value.

} Sure, they do things slightly differently — but that doesn’t mean
} they do things wrong.

From the perspective of Wikimedia’s mission, they are indeed doing things wrong. [.From the perspective of running a small business, they may be doing just fine.]

Effective access to collaborative knowledge is important to a harmonious society. As a result, basic knowledge-sharing tools and toolchains should be free, for any sort of use, customization, and improvement. The universal value of a Q&A system is directly tied to the importance that good free tools should be available to set one up.

We want to support these free toolchains, which is why we release all of our own code. This is also why, when there are good free versions of proprietary tools, we should support them and help them grow. That support is one of the ways we contribute to long-term knowledge development, in everything we do.

Whether we host the result ourselves is a totally separate question. Both OSQA and Question2Answer offer hosted services. But any solution we use must be one that we could choose to host ourselves, if necessary.

Thomas wrote:
} the main advantage is that your putting it under a name and community
} who are already experienced at doing really good QA – so your seed of
} volunteers is going to be that much better! SE have nailed that vibe.

I agree that they have a good shared vibe. Quora have as well. It is a valuable thing, and also one deeply rooted in human nature, like wiki editing. 🙂

For precisely the reasons you mention, it is important for us to have a better in-house QA tool. We need a better channel for the people who are in that zone to shine on Wikipedia — beyond simply manning the Reference Desk and similar pages in various languages (which many hundreds of them already do), or removing themselves to other sites where inter-article linking to WM articles is difficult, answers are not directly editable, there is a new framework for logging in, messaging, &c.

We have some stellar community groups to seed such a site with ourselves — and this will offer a place for many more who like Q&A work but not other wiki editing to become involved in a rewarding way.

A few months ago, Colin Maclay got me thinking about how to make this year’s Hewlett Foundation OER grantees meeting different in good ways. Last week I spend three days at the event, and was honored to meet the many remarkable people and projects there. I have been to one of the past grantee meetings, and it is a warm family of practice — I knew many of the groups and people in the room through my own work in open education. Two newcomers worth special note:

The organization I was happiest to meet was the Saylor Foundation — I have been a fan of theirs since discovering them last year; their work addresses the heart of a core problem in the world of educational resources: a free comprehensive collection of texts drawn from all manner of sources — whatever is useful and to hand. Aside from the typical modern-charity peccadillo of feeling organizational ownership of what is a universal mission, and articulating a vision in which they accomplish it through sweat and brand, I find their approach humble and excellent.

My favorite invitee was CoolCatTeacher Vicki Davis, who shared some pointed advice and wit, contributed in most of the sessions I attended, and shared my penchant for live transcription. (We commiserated about how funny it was to be at an event highlighting collaborative creation, where most attendees had computers but were shy of using etherpads or shared docs.) She was not a grantee; Berkman, in their take on this rotating annual event, invited about a quarter of the total guests from a variety of backgrounds, for pursuing in their own way more universal access to education. Her prolific writing and multitasking online, has inspired me to spend much more time writing. But more on that in a future post.

I also met the pedagogy lead for Intel’s global education program – a teacher full of good ideas and strong support for making OER the norm in primary school – and part of the Metalab team working on narrative tools.

I spoke to the grantees about the needs of content Builders, along with Hal Abelson and Ahrash Bissell, and took part in a variety of brainstorming sessions. My favorite moment was a debate about whether free knowledge and educational resources are (as I maintain) civic infrastructure, worth investment by cities and locales the way roads and libraries and wiring are. An unresolved question there: how a local government would identify what part of that global problem is theirs to locally provide or fund.

On Friday I helped plan and run a Hack Day after the traditional meeting ended, something new for this sort of gathering. It was great fun, and refreshing after a few days of simply talking to move one or two ideas closer to realization. I wish most of every conference were like this, since we still managed to get in our share of discussion, presentation, show & tell, and otherwise sharing inspiration. Thanks to the Berkman team for their creativity in the organization, and to the organizers for inviting me to take part. Open education is an idea ready for global adoption, and one we should pursue mindfully, in norm and nuance, as a society.

Richly red, complementing the joys of tryruby and the like.

From Haldane‘s 1941 essay in Eureka #6 on “The Faking of Genetical Results“, reproduced here with appropriate corrections and hyperlinks.

Two closing comments by T. W. Körner, who found Haldane’s essay worth reprinting in his brilliant textbook on Fourier analysis:

“The reluctance of the scientific community to accept the possibility of fraud is illustrated by the fact that Moewus was still cited in the literature (and even spoken of as a possible Nobel prize winner) until 1953. However, no one else ever succeeded in repeating his experiments…

Unfortunately the statistical war against fraud is now over and the cheaters have won. The kind of tests proposed by Haldane depended on the fact that ‘higher order faking’ required a great deal of computational work. The invention and accessibility of the computer means that the computational work involved has ceased to be a problem for the dishonest scientist. In the physical and biological sciences the possibility that others will attempt to replicate experiments may act as a sufficient deterrent but in purely statistical subjects like sociology and experimental psychology the poblems raised by potential fraud have still to be faced.”

Update: see also Clay Shirky’s brilliant talk explaining SOPA and PIPA, and why they were drafted.

More comments on the Wikimedia community blog:

1. I didn’t even know about the proposed legislation by America until just now reading here about the blackout and I’m sure that most people, including most Americans have no idea about it…  I have been going to Wikipedia since I was little as a site that I could trust not to have an agenda. I have grown up with Wikipedia as a part of my life and I am grateful for your existence.  – Sigrid Anderson
2. The comments show that Wiki has generated a considerable amount of uninformed hysteria about proposed legislation that is not going to be adopted  – Bill Wood
3. You should blackout every language version. The whole world is against of this dumb law.  – Jesús Manuel O.
4. I’m an Australian man facing similar legislation.  I have been hoping that Wikipedia, Google, and similar organizations would make their position known in the form of a black out protest, to say what my little voice can’t get across  – Uriah
5. “It’s political, but it’s not partisan politics.  SOPA is not a left-right issue. It’s a new media, old media issue. New media has every right to get political about its future. Congress should not be in the business of protecting one business model at the expense of another, especially when the new model is the only true source of growth in the nation’s economy for the last 20 years.” – Factoid (via Reddit)
6. SOPA in it’s current form is scary, yet preventable, and I support Wikipedia for making a stand. – Brande Kramer
7. Oh…no…witnessing the gagging and chaining of our only remaining freedoms: healthy freedom of speech and self expression on the internet would surely break my heart!  – Alejandro Bina
8. A word of advice for everyone, like myself, who will suffer the inconvenience of this black out:
   Don’t Panic.  – Rowdy
9. THANK YOU FOR STANDING FOR INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM.  – Justin Felder
10. Working within an Indigenous community in Australia, it is clear to me that poverty begins and becomes generational, with lack of access to information.  – Ron West
11. Wikipedia… is a source for great knowledge.
    Wikipedia team is not an ordinary team.
    The protest must be supported in a resounding tone of echoes.   – Karthik Yerramilly
12. A G R E E !!!  – George MacNabb, M.D.
13. This message has brought me to tears, literally.  – Carol
14. These bills restrict not just freedom of expression, but considerably worse, will constrain an individual’s right to knowledge.  – Aisha
15. America isn’t the world. If members of the American parliament are planning on doing something in America, it’s YOUR problem.  – Thomas Marshall
16. WHAT AM I GOING TO DO WITH MY TIME!?  – Adam
17. I don’t really see how protesting a restriction on the free flow of information by restricting the free flow of information is at all helpful. Aren’t you just doing exactly what they want you to do?  – jjs
18. AWESOME! The internet is a tool for the evolution of our entire species, not just another control mechanis…  – Trevor Allen
19. about time someone takes action against SOPA and this nonsense!! YOU’RE AWESOME WIKI!  – brittany
20. Thumbs down to Wikipeida. What’s wrong with you guys? I read the SOPA and I don’t see in any way will harm free speech.  SOPA is about IP and business, different stuff alright.  – James
21. Wikipedia has created a permanent shift in human awareness, and has probably altered the very structure of our minds by abolishing “I don’t know” from out lives so many billions upon billions of times. Wikipedia going dark will hurt. It will be frightening, and I’m going to hate it. But if they chose to go dark for a month in protest of such terrifyingly dangerous laws, they’d still have my absolute support.  – Ehren Turner
22. The balls (or ovaries) of the administrators are commendable. As much as it will hurt me if it does happen- I am aware it’d hurt me more if it didn’t  – jUrk
23. como en mexico como en america latina y no me reservo al todo el mundo, nos sentimos indignados y ultrajados por esta tonta accion, que conlleba a lo que por muchos años idealistas han peleado y han muerto por ello. la libertad, la idea de controlarla de esta manera me parece arrogante y de mal gusto. – gerardo perez
24. I love Wikipedia, but I think you’re making a big mistake in opposing laws that restrain intellectual theft.  – Hal Barwood
25. If some industries must rethink their economic models in the face of the fundamental changes the internet has afforded the larger world, then so be it. That is by far the lesser evil  – Steven Burg
26. Yeah, I get it, but 24 hours, really. How is that a protest. The library closed for 2 days over the weekend every week…big deal. I know your head is in the right place but really, man-up and do something that makes noise.  – Mehnert
27. From Iran.
    It is very disappointing to see what my people are trying to fight here is emerging in the U.S.
    …we can live one day without Wikipedia to make sure it remains there forever.  – AgentTheGreat
28. I definitely concur Team Wikipedia. Do what you have to do. ‘Nuff respect!  – Kush Barnes
29. <quotes Spiro Agnew>
30. Here in South Africa the government is in the process of passing a secrecy bill, which will, in effect muzsle the media as well as free speech. I definately support the blackout.  – Walter Hutchison
31. I would also like to offer my country – South Africa – as the potential host if you need to move.  – Adam Brink
32. Do not disrupt Wikipedia to make a point. Shame on you.  – Kyaa
33.  dear wiki-world, i experience ms. gardner’s statement and wiki community’s mandate to be nuanced and reasoned—neither overly interventionist/hysterical nor frightened into inaction—not making wiki (this gynormously birthed baby) an overly precious object, nor being so lax as to be w/out any integrity.  – mazal
34. This is actually a very serious decision. In all its years of existance, i have never seen Wiki go down. Just yesterday, a national stock exchange was DDOSed and hence out of service. I have seen the PSN go down. I have seen gaming clients’ networks go down. I have seen news clippings of “such and such site attacked and compromised”. But never Wiki was attacked or down, because everyone accepts it to be a neutral ground, a safe no-nonsense ground, where everyone turned to for information, regardless of language.This is one of the unwritten rules of the internet.
    This blackout just shows how serious this SOPA and PIPA problem is.
    I completely and unconditionally support Wikimedia in this.   –jmd.akbar
35. Not only Wikipedia, but also the structure of Wikipedia is quite dependant on the freedom of expression on the [W]eb. Even if wikipedia itself is not blocked in any way, we would still feel the backlash if other websites with legitimate information are blocked… badly defined laws with a broad spectrum such as these tend to be abused for purposes they were not (or perhaps were) intended for.  – Excirial
36. “We want people to trust Wikipedia, not worry that it is trying to propagandize them.” But then just a few lines down in the same letter it says… “I have increasingly begun to think of Wikipedia’s public voice, and the goodwill people have for Wikipedia, as a resource that wants to be used for the benefit of the public.” So they don’t want people to think they are engaging propaganda, but… want to use the “voice” of Wikipedia to influence public policy? …I imagine I will support many/all of the positions they would support, but I dislike the idea of eroding Wikipedia’s neutrality.  – Dan
37. If I start replicating Wikipedia pages on a gigantic website of my own, for my own purposes such as to put ads on them generating revenue for myself, you wouldn’t like that would you? Oh, but by your standard, wouldn’t that be “freedom of expression”? I think you need to explain your position a lot better than you have done.  – jrbt2647
38. I think we can cope without Wikipedia for 24 hours if it is for something like this. We should not be bullied.
39. Today on MLK day! I’m reminded it’s my duty to continuously keep watch over and non-violently fight for our civil rights. Thank you, Wikipedia!  – Maggie Evan
40. piracy… is a very real economic threat to the creative community. However, the methods by which these acts combat it are heavy-handed and overreaching; like fighting cancer with grenades. I am an artist who is opposed to piracy, and I applaud Wikipedia for this stand.
41. “Although Wikipedia’s articles are neutral, its existence is not”, the statement is what strongly influenced on me. Thank you, all Wikipedians, for letting them know what is the right thing to do!  – Jerryz Tschin
42. Doing a blackout to protest against censorship is like shooting random people in the street to protest against the death penalty.  – Björn
43. Here in New Zealand we have a similar law. The legislation here means that anyone even suspected of disobeying the current piracy laws can have their internet access withdrawn at the ISP level. No burden of proof is required, just a certain number of unsubstantiated complaints from a copywrite holder. I understand and support the protest and hope that everyone can see the requirement to speak out now before things get any worse.  – Matt
44. No argument is available why it helps or is good for media companies to not have protection. Who cares anyway, it won’t hurt Wikipedia. Or does Wikipedia now plan to host copyright content.
45. I agree that the blackout is a good idea, but it is a shame that in its statement, Wikipedia/Wikimedia did not also make a strong statement to distance themselves from online piracy. This would have clearly confirmed that, while we do not condone online piracy, that we do want preservation of online freedom.  – Daeld
46. I fear a world in which someone might be sued for humming a tune or quoting a line from a movie!
47. The internet… from the very beginning has always seemed to me like a world mind. From my first log on so many years ago I was amazed at the open sharing on so many levels that was available. Year by year it has matured, with more reliable sources of information becoming available… a rich depth of knowledge, experience, and opinions: brilliant and beautiful bits… The entire festival of words, pictures, history, music, and vidography is like one enormous love poem to ourselves… The idea that we would allow anyone to tamper with this or take it from us without a fight is unconscionable.I find the current trend in this legislation to be highly suspect. I think it has much more to do with inserting fingers of control which can then be tightened into an iron grip than it does with the putative problem of piracy. As someone who is trying to make her living as a writer I rely on Wikipedia among other things as resources but I think I can suck it up for one day.  – Marilyn Melnicoe
48. It is not advocacy to fight for your survival. Everyone is affected by this legislation, within and outside the US… The WWW is at risk of being ‘enclosed’ (removed from shared public ownership)… vested interests assert ownership of large parts [and] remove them from shared possession. We’ve seen this with land, with music, with software (leading to the need for CopyLeft) and now the right to index knowledge… It is certainly about piracy – the theft of public property for personal gain. – Loftwork
49. I fully support this shutdown. SOPA, PIPA and NDAA… inflict unjust impediments on freedom of the common person, two online and one in “real” life… justified by exaggerated causes that can’t be fought by that legislation
50. This is an act NOT of politics, but of self-preservation. Please make sure that, when the site comes back up, there is another banner explaining why it was down, for those who missed this message. – LTL

The Wikimedia Blog has 1013,000 comments on Sue’s  SOPA/PIPA blackout post – roughly 3x the total volume of posts in the entire previous history of the blog.   By my casual estimate, 90% of comments are opsitive, 5% neutral, and 5% opposed (generally on the grounds that WP itself should be neutral).

They are a goldmine of interesting quotes.  A selection, for your entertainment:

1. I was at first very irritated when I saw that Wikipedia was taking a political stand on any issue, I actually had no knowledge of these bills and after reading these bills, not only am I too very opposed to them but I also understand the threat these bills pose to Wikipedia itself. – Donald Langhorne
2. The issues go far beyond the US. -FT2
3. dis is retarded -____- im 13 and i NEED wikipedia!!!!!How else do u think i get good grades on my essays?!?   -LLAMAZRULE
4. Good. Great. Fantastic. Amazing. I love it. Public figures, be they people or webpages, never take a bold stance on anything important. Thank you for doing so. – Quarex
5. Not only is Wikipedia the easiest, quickest and most hassle-free place to check up on facts, but now it also has the courage to take a stand against restrictions of our freedom online as well! – Jennifer Fricker
6. Black it out for a week if you have to. GO WIKIPEDIA!
7. i don’t really know about this man. I know it’s got to be a hard decision but i don’t think it’s a good thing. what if somethin’ happens because someone hacked the government lately so please don’t do this.  -rhedeosi
8. blindness seems so easy..while vision is so hard to bear…
9. Just learned of your blackout in support of intellectual property thievery. I disagree with your position.  I have for several years sent a year-end contribution to Wikipedia. Since you have thrown your support to brigands, thieves, miscreants and malefactors, I will send no further contributions. This is NOT a free speech issue as you claim. This is about appropriating work of others without compensation. We call this theft. It is a crime. You can look it up in Britannica.   -tcement
10. It is the movie companies etc who are the pirates. The films they produce are mainly rubbish these days and actors are paid way too much.
11. I kinda hate you for shutting down my favorite recreational website for 24 hours, but not only do I agree with why and what you’re doing, I’m also glad such a large user website is taking their time to shut down and bring awareness to this nasty piece of legislation. -Joey
12. I am extremely disappointed that the issues raised by those opposed to this action have not been addressed. The English Wikipedia community is not 100% behind this action… this is a sad day in the history of Wikipedia.  seem[s] like a rash action to me and one pushed forward by the tyranny of the majority – RobertHorning
13. Didn’t have any idea about this so thanks for not only informing me but taking steps to protect us from this legislation. – Alice Miller
14. Yo apoyo su postura y desearía conocer de que otra forma puedo apoyar la causa de una libertad que es inherente absolutamente a todos los seres humanos. –  Jorge, Mexico
15. I support this plan, but I hope that WP still open and not close forever.
16. As an artist and so-called “content provider,” I totally support this blackout. – Gary Lee
17. I was not aware of the choices being made. I am therefor very proud to have found this blackout ideal going on. I do not think the men and ladies of our government offices will care to much about the black out… ON the Common man in central Illinois. I would say I do so enjoy your web help on so many levels. I thank you all so very much for many years of dedication.  – Micheal Raleigh
18. I am thirteen years old and i love wikipedia. Have gotten good marks on most of my essays thanks to Wikipedia. You have my support.  – Tristan Wong
19. I remember when television was free, and the first cable companies came to our smallish U.S. town with promises and packages for the city commissioners (the governors of our city) to admire. They courted us, then they took over so there weren’t any alternatives any more…  – Judy Allensworth
20. A great decision, people need to be made aware of SOPA/PIPA. You have my support in future fundraisers because of this.  – jam12
21. We, as a global people, need access to an Internet that crosses borders without restraint. I say this as an American, living behind China’s Digital Great Wall. Yes, I can go around it, but why should I have to?  – Eva Richardson
22. As a financial contributer to Wikipedia I must say that I am dissapointed that this protest is planned. My so far unsubstantiated fear is that opponents of this law… want no legal interference with the internet… so that they can file share stolen intellectual property… I wish Wikipedia would stick to its primary purpose. I am unlikely to continue my perpetual support of the Wikipedia community if I feel I am likely to support political causes too–even if they are at times causes I support.  – C. Becker
23. I’ve been something of a Wikipedia fanatic since its debut, when I could barely reach the keyboard. Sure, a six year old kid can’t really learn that much about applied physics—but the thought that I was reading “smart stuff” worked wonders on my little noggin. Now the thought that any number of bills could take away… one of my best sources of information enrages me. And this isn’t even taking into consideration the damage SOPA and PIPA could cause in other sites which can only subsist with the free transfer of media and information (Youtube, Reddit…)  – sebastian
24. How do I, as a High School Senior, talk to my political leaders to stop these acts from being signed.regards, Dixon Romeo
25. ..en el nombre de un internet libre apoyamos esta movida.   – edwin
26. Not only english Wikipedia must blackout this next Wednesday, the other languages too… we have a saying here in South America: “When the USA sneezes, the rest of the world catch a cold”. Those bills are very dangerous for freedom of expression, and if that happens in the so called “land of the free”, what can other countries expect? My full support for you, Wikipedia, we will win!  – David
27. Great news… This is a milestone in the decades-long reformulation of intellectual property rights during the age of computers. The solution still eludes us. Creative people must have rights to their creations, but tyranny must be avoided.  – Jeff Laird
28. I’m so confused with the SOPA…  USA is very honor the freedom, but why you do this?
29. While I oppose SOPA as well, so much for wiki’s NPOV.  – Glenn
30. This is finals week at my school so it will be difficult to not have Wikipedia for a day, but I support what y’all are doing and I am glad such a large website like wiki is standing up for our rights, maybe our congress people will listen. – Morgan
31. As a longtime fan of Wikipedia, this decision saddens me… Wikipedia’s voluntary blackout doesn’t affect my feelings on SOPA. I still support it, and I suspect that the only people whose opinions change are those who know little about the subject  – Mark
32. this sucks I will lose my brain for 24 hours – gelly909
33. the blackout is already being run on the local news networks. So the protest is already making headlines. No pain no gain.  – Neale Family
34. Though I wholeheartedly support the blackout (and think a 24 hour blackout is too short)… this form of protest is a one-time deal… Any protest afterwards may make Wikipedia appear politically skewed; consequently, this is a temporary solution to stopping internet censorship. Real solutions must be made by limiting corporations, redefining outdated laws… – Kevin
35. DEAR WIKY–WIKI TEAM
    NO NO NO PLEASE DONT DO IT
    NO MORE SOPA / PIPA
    – SRK
36. You should also black out the Spanish language version of Wikipedia. It’s just as much the language of the United States as any other. And add German, French, Italian, Chinese, Hmong, Sanskrit, Pashtun, etc. while you are at it. All cultures have been welcomed here.  – tooluser
37. This should not have been done without widespread participation… Many people want to contribute to Wikipedia without getting entangled in Federal policy debates.  – Racepacket
38. A kid, first, talks by it own way,
    after learning and teaching it talk right words.
    Institution should teach how to provide right content and publishers should learn
    – Rajagopal Jeyaraman
39. The 24 hour silence of Wikipedia will be most eloquent. Thank you for taking such a stand!
40. love wikipedia for things like this, its so…open. For the people, by people.
41. I am in complete and utter shock. I had been quietly reading what everyone thought and kept thinking no, Wikipedia wouldn’t take such a political stand. Now it is. I never thought I’d see the day… this is amazing to see happening.  – cycloneGU
42. While I totally approve of Mrs. Garnder’s letter and of the blackout protest, what is missing are clear specific reasons to oppose SOPA and PIPA.
43. Although it is hard to pick what battles to fight that wall seems to be coming closer to our backs every day.
44. Sorry, friends… fewer great minds will be willing to risk creating great things knowing that Wikipedia will confiscate the fruits of their labors, like a thuggish pimp, and whore them out.  Put away your self-righteousness, something that is so typical of mobs, and learn to honor the individual–the only thing that has ever made any great advances in any free society. Read “Atlas Shrugged” and learn.
    Do you have a response? I’d like to read it.  – Mike Whitehead
45. As a scientist and as a professional engineer… I endorse the Wikipedia stand on the free flow of Internet information. Wikipedia is the best social institution to arise since the creation and distribution of written script via the printing press, second only to the publication of those social concepts and ideals of our founding fathers set down thereupon to guarantee their preservation.  – Anthony Bielecki, P.E., PhD
46. After WWII in Japan, GHQ censored all publications in Japan. Then gradually they lifted censorship, but… step by step the publishers were trained to do what the authorities wanted; to submit to effective censorship of free expression and speech.  Too bad I won’t be doing my Media class on Friday at Toyo University. If the class was tomorrow, I would have the students get on Wikipedia, define their shock, and introduce the very important topic of free speech.  – Sarah Brock
47. Even light-weight tabloids will notice and report it.  – Michael Wild
48. Many of the objections raised about the powers of corporations to control user access to foreign sites… prohibit streaming… throttling of bandwidth… threatening ISP providers with shutdown, are already a reality here in Canada. If you can’t prevent this in the U.S., the rest of the world won’t have a chance. Good luck. Our children’s freedom is at stake.   – stephen
49. you guys are doing the right thing… Luckily for me, I am Canadian but hold dual citizenship. If this passes, I will definitely pay the $500.00 to lose my dual citizenshi  – Sean
50. SOPA will never be used to take down the largest encyclopedia in the world–to suggest otherwise is just disingenuous… Wikipedia should never take such an obviously political stance on something that will not affect them directly.

It has been 12 hours since the blackouts protesting SOPA and PIPA started.  Below is  coverage from the English-language Net.

Best quotes so far:

“Wikipedia blacked out.  Fine, I’ll buy some used encyclopedias from Craigslist.  WTF?  I’m going to Reddit to complain about this.  OMG!!”

“Icanhazcheezeburger?! OK, this is serious now.”

 

In Wikipedia land:

• The response to the English Wikipedia blackout has been overwhelmingly positive.  The OTRS team (a community group that handles most email inquiries about Wikipedia) has been handling the surge of correspondence beautifully.
• a post by Sue Gardner on the WMF blog about the blackout have together received over 10,000 comments from readers — roughly 3x the total # of comments received in the entire history of the blog.  90% of them are supportive of the blackout, 5% are opposed, and 5% are neutral.
• Fellow trustee Stu West suggests that 100M Wikipedia readers may read about the bills today via Wikipedia –  half via the blackout on English Wikipedia, and half from banners on other language projects and the mobile sites.  (Another large audience saw the ‘heads-up’ banner we ran all day yesterday.)

Elsewhere on the Web

• Google shared a brilliant doodle and a page asking for Congress’s ear have gathered a great deal of attention.
• Mozilla changed the default Firefox start page to protest SOPA.
• The SOPA/PIPA-protest music videos keep getting better.
• Microsoft comments in the mildlest possible language that it opposes the bills as currently drafted.
• Zephoria’s blog goes dark.

In Washington, politicians are beginning taking notice. They seem to be seriously considering and commenting on the demonstrated failings of the legislation on hand, not just backing off (as GoDaddy did) to await ‘consensus’.

• Late Tuesday, Rep Lee Terry [R-Nebraska], a SOPA co-sponsor, withdrew his support for SOPA.
• At 10am Wednesday, Senator Marco Rubio [R-Florida], a PIPA co-sponsor, withdrew his support for PIPA.
• At 2pm Wednesday, Rep Tim Holden [D-Pennsylvania], a SOPA co-sponsor, withdrew his support for SOPA.

Other coverage online:

• Techdirt has an excellent recap of why SOPA and PIPA are dangerous and unnecessary.
• …and reminds us that our current protections from domain seizures and shutdowns are already inadequate, and have been abused to censor smaller sites.
• SopaBlackout.org offers resources for activists
• New York papers are covering the city’s SOPA protests, the largest in the country.
• Coz Ezra Klein explains why the Internet’s still protesting, on his WonkBlog
• Sarah Stierch blogs about the SOPA blackout and why Wikipedia needs women.

Every January I spend a weekend in the Land of Mystery, tucked into a facet of MIT: that is, the MIT Mystery Hunt.

It is somewhere between a religious experience, performance art, and an exercise in observation, pattern matching, and problem solving. It is also wickedly tricky, a pinnacle of amateur puzzle contests: teams of 50+ people spend two full days solving a series of interlocked puzzles to find a coin hidden somewhere on campus.

This past weekend I took my annual pilgrimage across Cambridge to MIT for the Hunt, but for the first time my team was running the event, rather than competing. This was our tenth anniversary as Team Codex (we started out the year before as the aduni team, then adopted a proper codename), and producing the Hunt was a fitting way to celebrate. Many of us had a backlog of puzzle ideas that were converted into working puzzles over the course of the past year, with much iteration and satisfaction. Few of us had ever designed Mystery Hunt-caliber puzzles before, though we knew in principle how it was done.

We staged the first musical-themed Hunt on record, in an effort to encourage teams to share their own creativity while solving. Max and Leo from The Producers showed up at MIT, now out of jail and looking to make goo^B^B^B out like bandits, this time for good. They staged a short production of their own to get everyone in the mood, and then invited students to help them research and put on a series of guaranteed musical flops… While this didn’t work out exactly as planned, along the way were fancy cocktail parties with potential stars, swimming-pools full of Sets of ducks, research into the private peeves and longings of theater critics, campus spelunking, video game hacking, and a denouement in which, unbelievably… . . . well, it’s complicated. You’ll just have to explore the Hunt site itself to see how the saga ended.

We had roughly 70 active people on our organizing team, and everyone played multiple roles — writing, testing, and implementing puzzles, software, and skits. Our lead performers, in addition to being fine actors and musicians, happened to be professional puzzle writers and editors, and wrote many of the Hunt’s 107 puzzles as well as the book for our productions. Our lead editor also kept the production team together through stressful moments, providing black humor as needed, and preserving a fast editing pace all Fall without upending our minimal-heirarchy team. Hotshot solvers shifted gears to rewrite swaths of code. When puzzle-lover Neil Patrick Harris declined to MC the awards ceremony, we called on a home-grown rock star instead. Dozens of people joined the cast in the final weeks and picked up their parts without a hitch.

Having been involved with organizing perhaps a dozen events of similar size, I can say without hesitation that this was the most satisfying and life-affirming. We had varied and prolific organizers, an elaborate and dynamic schedule, a completely committed audience, and an extraordinary host-participant collaboration, with continual feedback. While the event ran for only 1500 people, its primary output was a broadly valuable story, told through puzzles: something that may be enjoyed for years or generations to come: a set of curious, colorful, maddening, marvelous puzzles, illustrated and interlinked, free to solve and repurpose. Just one more Act in the perennial romance between creative puzzlers and scientific endeavour.

Here is a sampling of this year’s puzzles, drawn from my favorites. Happy hunting! The average puzzle takes 2-10 person-hours to solve, depending on your experience and how quickly the right insights come to you.

Sounds Good To Me
(my all-hunt favorite)

Slash Fiction
(best casting and music, and the most expensive puzzle production)

Paper Trail
(an elegant, satisfying black box)

Yo Dawg I Herd You Like Puzzle Hunts
(yo dawg, i herd you like herd you like)

Itinerant People Of America
(man, this one is a hodge-podge.)

Picture An Acorn
(the final aha! will make you chump for joy)

The Rainbow Connection
(Now that’s rainbow-bright…)

Google Bodyslam
(“so, we’re working on a pro wrestling puzzle. what should we call it?”)

JFK SHAGS A SAD SLIM LASS
(the puzzle consists of nothing more than the title)

Coming To A Location Near You
(a wikipedia-based scavenger hunt)

This pair of single topic blogs are excellent and to the point:

Worldwide: the top 1% of household wealth/personal income starts at roughly $10M/$100K (though the available data are weak, and neither is measured consistently).

Many in the top 10% feel as though they are in the top 1%, thanks to the same effect that causes people of all backgrounds to underestimate the imbalance of wealth distribution.

Read this solid post by Umair Haque on the rise of the metamovement in our global society. This is a movement of movements that we are seeing develop unbidden, transcending national, cultural, and social norms across the world.

The opposite of a filter bubble, this directly taps into a universal need for agency and our newfound capacity to cooperate by the millions.

Hat tip to the perceptive Priya Parker.

Occupy Wall Street, a protest calling for “human rights over corporate rights“, and stating that “the 99% are fed up with the greed and corruption of the 1%”, has been in force for three weeks now. After drawing roughly 1000 people in its first week, well under expectations, last weekend police around Union Square used tear gas on a group of female protestors – during the process of arresting 80 people. The use of such force has led to a surge of coverage, support, and participation. The movement has since built momentum, and today 400  700 people were arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge, after they took over one side of the bridge, to the supportive honking and waving of many drivers.

Coverage of these protests has been slim until today. The protests are loosely organized, and the organizers such a they are did not have particularly strong cnonections to independent or mainstream media reporters. Some suggest that mainstream media had reasons to bury the story. Others suggest the lack of an obvious message and target for the protest made it hard to grasp what was going on. There have been no clear spokespeople for the protest, actual marches have been chaotic and much smaller than projected, and the only places occupied were parks and other public spaces, limiting the notability of the effort.

But all that has changed in the past two days. Earlier this week, a movement web site was set up, including a blog, calendar of events, press contacts, and a donation link – which goes (controversially) to movement supporter AFCJ. They area also publishing minutse of all meetings of the movement General Assembly, which is the governing mechanism for movement-wide decisions. Yesterday the protest (“the movement”) published its first official statement, coming out of a general assembly. In it they promised three related statements to come – listing demands, principles, and guidelines for starting your own local occupation.

Today, they took over Brooklyn Bridge, something of a first, and the 700 ensuing arrests is the largest police response to a protest in a very long time. The last time something similar happened in DC, it ended in a successful class lawsuit.

Community reporters have also been honing their work and getting picked up in Intenet memes and in mainstream media reposts. For instance, Wikipedia shutterbug David Shankbone snapped a popular photo of the protestor vibe on Thursday.

This weekend, the total crowd was up to 6000 protestors – and other smaller protests (like an anti-rape protest elsewhere in NYC) have started to claim affiliation or at least kinship with OWS. Mid-afternoon, the main protest unexpectedly moved towards the Brooklyn Bridge, and observers reported a mile-long line march of protestors.

Hundreds made it onto the bridge and occupied the car lanes in one direction, before being split from the rest of the crowd by police. (The bulk of the crowd then moved to Liberty Plaza.) They shut down traffic for at least two hours. The police were not prepared for this, nor were the mainstream city media. It took them a while to bring in paddy wagons and buses, to make hundreds of arrests, and to get more than trivial coverage of what was happening on the blogs of New York papers. Despite the ambient fears of excessive force, I had the impression that many police were not unsympathetic to the protestors — something reminiscent of the WTO protests over a decade ago.

Some good reads to get a feel for the march and protest:

• The NY Daily News had solid ongoing coverage, and recently reported there were a smaller number of protestors on the Manhattan Bridge as well.
• Army vet Ward Reilly has been curating messages and actions of support from US military personnel from all branches of the armed forces. After last weekend’s tear gas incident, groups have been attending the rallies to protect the protestors. A message that a group of 15 Marines said they were heading down to today’s NYC protests was picked up from him and spread as a rallying cry that the whole country was behind the protest. Similar shows of support and protection have been shown for smaller satellite rallies being planned or held in DC, Boston, LA, and other cities across the country.
• Evan Fleischer, representing from Boston, curated some of the best Twitter pics and comments on his blog. Via Newyorkist, who was on the scene:
• No attempt to prevent taking of bridge; no units to do so. #occupywallstreet. Matter of fact, one officer laughing at the absurdity…
• There was a surprising amount of honking, yelling and waving from vehicular traffic on BK Bridge as marchers marched…
• And Micah Sifry put this into context in a timely article this morning, just before the day’s protest got underway. (Micah: Encore!)

I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s coverage and followup, and to being back home in Boston soon.