User:Gagarine/sandbox/Technology, Society and the Future (Group Assignment)

Names & Surnames & Wiki Username

 * Christopher Fraser // Wiki User: User:Hypnoseal
 * Simon Perdrisat // Wiki User: User:Gagarine (wiki en) + User:Gagarine (wiki fr)
 * Trinayan Ahuja // Wiki User: User:Tatgdt

Entry

 * Production par les pairs sur la base des biens communs (French-language translation of Commons-based peer production)


 * Minor modifications of related articles in order to update links.

Why This Entry
This entry was chosen due to the lack of a French-language translation of the “Commons-based peer production (CBPP)” Wikipedia article. The absence of a French-language Wikipedia article with the appropriate translation of “Commons-based peer production” (in French: “Production par les pairs sur la base des biens communs”) meant that French-language users of Wikipedia did not have access to an article explaining CBPP in their native language. By providing the French-language translation of the CBPP article, this group was able to contribute directly to the French Wikipedia knowledge commons.

Travail collaboratif (fr)

 * (delete) "Liens externes...Limoges)." (see diff)
 * (add) "Production par les pairs sur la base des biens communs" (see diff)

Commons-based peer production (fr)

 * (edit redirection -> Redirect to Production par les pairs sur la base des biens communs) (see diff)

Travail collaboratif (Dissussion page)

 * (add a question on discussion page) "Traduction de ... production?" (see diff)

La Richesse des réseaux

 * (add ISBN in infobox) (see diff)
 * (edit) "La richesse des ... en version originale)"(see diff)

Production par les pairs sur la base des biens communs

 * Creation de la page (traduction)

Christopher Fraser
Contributing to Wikipedia’s shared knowledge-commons was an enlightening and beneficial experience to undertake as a group project. Not only was our team able to contribute to the knowledge-base about “Commons-based peer production”, we were able to learn about team collaboration through a specific platform designed for this purpose. By translating the English “Commons-based peer production” Wikipedia article into French, we were able to directly learn about the creation of knowledge within the commons in a collaborative manner.

Our team utilized Wikipedia to assist in the translation of the English article, perform edits to the article once posted onto Wikipedia, make page improvements such as including certain Wikipedia template functions, and compile the team report utilizing user sandboxes. Fortunately, one of our team members – Simon – had significant experience with the Wikipedia platform, community and processes; our team members were able to glean a large amount of knowledge on Wikipedia and its community due to his prior participation on the platform.

Utilizing the Wikipedia platform to collaborate on the production of a translated article was both enjoyable and frustrating. On the positive side, the Wikipedia platform is simple to use and provides a wide array of publishing functions. In short, it is a straight-forward platform for producing an online article meant to be widely distributed and interconnected with other articles. On the negative side, however, the tools available to enable participation within the Wikipedia community are quite clumsy. Our team was required to communicate and coordinate our efforts outside of the Wikipedia platform; we utilized alternative technologies to enable communication between team members and it might have been beneficial to be able to utilize team tools within the Wikipedia platform itself. Furthermore, our attempts to participate within the Wikipedia community, regarding the translation of “Commons-based peer production”, on the “Travail collaboratif” discussion page went unanswered.

Translating an article on Wikipedia was also supported through the availability of existing French-language articles on the platform. These articles were utilized to strengthen our understanding during translation, but also in referring to other technical terms. Our team was simultaneously contributing to Wikipedia’s knowledge-commons and utilizing the same knowledge-commons to improve our efforts. Due to the commons-centric focus of Wikipedia, the quality of our translations were improved. In other words, because the knowledge was available in the commons, we were better able to contribute to the commons. This commons-centricity has a compounding positive effect.

On a personal level, I am grateful for the existence of Wikipedia. This platform has provided me a significant amount of knowledge and understanding of the world. Prior to this course, I had only contributed to Wikipedia through financial donations. Due to the project assignment, I was able to also contribute to the knowledge-base and the digital commons. It was both satisfying and fulfilling to have an assignment that allowed me to put into practice the ideals that were presented within the classroom.

Simon Perdrisat
I began editing Wikipedia fifteen years ago. Over this time, I have made thousands of edits, mainly in the French and English Wikis but also on Wikidata. In my line of work, people use wikis to collaborate. I'm also one of the two project leaders of baripedia.org, a collaborative wiki that was founded by former students of international relations. This site now supports over one million unique visitors per year.

Due to my prior experience, I did not expect to learn anything new from this exercise; I was wrong. I participate in Wikipedia because I did not have to ask for permission to do so. It's about emancipation and freedom through the sharing of knowledge. The situation and academic outcome of editing Wikipedia and writing a report about it was quite ambiguous to me.

When it comes to peer production and the commons, the first questions are often related to the perceived absence of compensation for the contributors. If people do not get paid for it, why would they contribute?

I believe the problem is not about income but recognition and power. Similar issues develop in marginal movements such as counter-culture and social movements; for example, these questions about power and recognition can be found at the center of feminist movements. However, a lack of recognition is not limited to the margin, but also concerns emerging mass popular culture (i.e. video gaming, YouTube, etc.) We can frame the problem as such: individuals with limited power will see their cultural capital and social practices hijacked by those with greater power.

After fifteen years of editing Wikipedia, it seemed strange that performing a few edits would provide me with six university credits because the project is held within an academic setting. Instead, the activity opened my eyes to another problem and educated me about transitions of paradigms within our cultures.

The problem is not that academia, as an institution, is slowly (yet, finally) recognising the importance of the Wikipedia project; even though academia has despised Wikipedia for decades. It's that, instead of ceding authority to the foundation that has built Wikipedia until today, academia will speak on Wikipedia’s behalf and will reap the benefits.

This form of project shifted the dynamics of my participation in Wikipedia. Asking for a report and providing a grade changed the purpose profoundly; in other words, the raison d’être of why I contribute to Wikipedia became confused and warped. First, instead of being a tool of emancipation, it became tied to a system of control and hierarchy. Secondly, instead of the "commons" being the centre of the production, the institutional value system of academia (namely grading) became the centre.

In the exercise, instead of having to use the built-in wiki tools "as they are" (i.e. an account's contribution tracking page), we sent a word document where we documented our changes. Instead of submitting ourselves to the rules of the community and their socio-technical organisations, we used another medium within the institution of academia. This is not insignificant, and through convenience, we refuse to confront the lack of capacity and practical knowledge within the general population towards participating in the commons.

Blaming academia makes little sense. Instead, we have to recognise academia as a key instrument in social control and appropriation. Academia permits the reversal of power structures by changing the rules in order to benefit the current paradigm in power. What we observe is control over the mechanism of production and subversion of value creation and retention.

Trinayan Ahuja
Contributing to Wikipedia was something that I never thought that I would do and I found that it was quite intimidating. I am positively surprised at how easy it was to publish a Wikipedia article, from creating an account to editing content.

My initial concern was that I would have difficulties with the formalities of the mark-up language. Fortunately, there were some examples in the surrounding text that I could use to learn from; since I was only editing work already accomplish by our team, and not creating an entirely new article. For instance, the existing work provided examples of how to create headlines, paragraphs or bulleted lists. If something was not already in the surrounding text, I looked for a formatting example in another Wikipedia article. Also, the visual editor was easy to use for a large amount of editing.

My suggestion for the improvement of Wikipedia would be the development of tools for image searching and upgrading. Recent years have seen a considerable growth of Wikimedia Commons, which among other things, is the media library for Wikipedia. However, searching through this content was difficult and clumsy. Our translated article suffered from not having a robust image searching functionality and, thus, we were not able to enhance our article with images.

Several art galleries and museums have released extensive collections of high-quality imagery. At current rates, however, it could be years before the volunteer community has digested those images and added them to Wikipedia articles. Many millions of articles on Wikipedia are either unillustrated or are illustrated with a low-quality images that happened to be the best available several years ago. Applications and tools that suggest related images could significantly speed up the process of illustrating Wikipedia articles.

The principal significance of Wikipedia is that it has demonstrated the success of commons-based peer production. Hundreds of thousands of people with highly varying backgrounds, views, interests, and native languages have worked together to produce something of value with only a very loose governing framework. There are many benefits that could be said about Wikipedia’s achievements over the past 19-years, but in my view, proving the success of the commons is by far the most important.

All in all, I am glad to have experienced how Wikipedia works, the effort that is put into the articles and the peer-review process. The success of the commons is under-appreciated and there is not enough public commentary or formal research on this fundamental point. I have great respect for the Wikimedia Foundation due to their immense patience and willpower to make Wikipedia the encyclopaedia it is today.