National broadcaster & Wikipedia
The Danish national broadcaster have started working with the danish version of wikipedia on their sports-section. A really good idea to promote having the staffers of the national broadcaster contribute to Wikipedia - and having them promote wikipedia to their users. A great way to put the assets of the public service broadcaster (employee time and user attention) into the commons with Wikipedia.
What’s interesting is that it becomes really difficult to describe such a collaboration. Two sentences from DR’s website. “DR SportsWiki is a unique and brand new collaboration where we aim to get the users to collaborate in creating a good product”. “DR SportsWiki is done in a partnership between DR & Wikipedia - and especially between the users of the two sites.
To begin with the object “DR SportsWiki” doesn’t exist a part from one page on Wikipedia - it isn’t something in itself but just a page on wikipedia linking to some other pages. Also it really isn’t unique since anyone else could start promoting wikipedia contribution to their employees and users. Also it isn’t done in partnership between DR and Wikipedia - but in partnership by users.
In terms of the danish Wikipedia they’re running a special DR-skin on some of the pages on the wikipedia wiki - a first to me at least, but could have been done before somewhere in a local wikipedia edition before. A slightly worrying trend.
I salute DR for the effort, but call on them to clean up their language to reflect the new reality - there is no them and us (users vs. Wikipedia/DR), there’s only us - users. And to contribute honestly and directly to wikipedia instead of framing it as a special version of wikipedia or as their own wiki.
Difficult stuff.
June 25th, 2006 at 10:47 pm
Dear Thomas,
Thank you for your positive comments.
I guess it’s hard - and maybe even pointless to define whether something is unique.
But to the Danish Wikipedia-group this initiative was new and therefore the project was forwarded to - and approved by (among others) Wikipedia-founder Jimmy Wales and the Wikipedia Board. As far as I understand, a project like this hasn’t been done before.
As with most other projects, it only makes sense, if there are advantages to both sides.
(Da).Wikipedia has a very unique brand, a unique concept and unique content. But I believe I offend no one if I state, that the Danish Wikipedia-articles on sports could be improved.
DR.dk has a high credibility-level, and a very large audience in Denmark. This hopefully makes it possible for us to make the da.Wikipedia-site known to an even larger audience. It is our sincere hope that we can help Wikipedia by attracting more editors and by helping to raise the quality of (in this case) Wikipedias sportsarticles. Therefore the DR SportsWiki has been designed and built in close cooperation with the Danish Wikipedia-group. (Read more on their own presentation of the project)
Two years ago DR built a small sports-encyclopaedia (around the time of the Athens Olympics). Instead of updating this site the “Old School”-way, we have decided to transfer most of the articles to da.Wikipedia.org.
As you can see, the project is a Beta. We’ll listen and observe, and hopefully improve the setup along the way. If successful who knows what this could lead to.
Ernst Poulsen
dr.dk News- and Sportseditor
June 26th, 2006 at 2:36 pm
I am impressed with this initiative and excited to see where it can go. However, I also find that the DR-skin part could be a worrying trend.
As I wrote in a blogpost yesterday (in Danish), this seems to possibly confuse more than it clarifies. It is just not user friendly that the appearance of any Wikipedia article - even the front page - can look so different depending on whether you access it from Wikipedia or from DR.
Also, I don’t have any trouble with DR endorsing and supporting the sports content on Wikipedia. However, when it is put in DR skin, it seems that DR instead becomes the source. As I see it, a main point of Wikipedia is that Wikipedia as a source will always be a concept of community - not some conventional authority. Now, I generally find DR to be a fairly credibly institution pursuing the public interest, so the point is not that Wikipedia content will loose credibility with this model. It is more a matter of shaking a little on one of the core foundations of Wikipedia, the rather unique community. And if DR can make their own theme Wikipedia what other institutions should be allowed to make theme skins for Wikipedia content in different categories? Hard to say.
I do find it an admirable project, though, and I’m not exactly sure how it would be done ideally. Possibly I’m overreacting from just looking at the skin..
Maybe if instead of a completely new skin on and off there was a category or a special little nav bar called “Part of DR SportsWiki” for sports articles in the Danish Wikipedia. Or something like that. This would of course not fall into thread with the rest of DR’s design. But I don’t think that would hurt DR.
June 26th, 2006 at 3:02 pm
Ernst, thansk for the comment and open dialogue.
The solution is in the details as they say - and the more i think about the details - the more they seem pretty disturbing - all though the overall aim is great as we all agree on.
If DR is gonna contribute truly in the spirit of Wikipedia there should be no talk of a unique collaboration and no talk of a DR sportswiki as an editable wiki. There might be a browsable DR sportswiki on DR’s site - like there are many instances of wikipedia content on other sites - but all the editing and the community should be explicitly Wikipedia only - just stating on DR’s website that they aggregate the content from Wikipedia and encourage wikipedia contribution.
Because that’s the true goal of wikipedia - an open community without “unique collaboration” deals, as an independent commons that no one can say is part of a specific organization, no branded wiki’s presented as collaboration between wikipedia, DR and me, that no one get’s preferential treatment for committing ressources to wikipedia.
This is a lot more than semantics of language and execution - it’s about showing understanding of the core idea and process of wikipedia.
Could that work for DR?
June 26th, 2006 at 3:58 pm
As contributor to the danish part of Wikipedia, and as of of the wikipedians working on defining this trial, I have a few comments.
Wikipedia is all about the content, not about the community. We are writing a free encyclopedia, not trying to create another social network like friendster. So talking about respect for the community is a bit backwards. What the community really craves is that our encyclopedia gets used, and more people will contribute to it. With that focus in mind, this is a logical next step. We will definitely reach an audience who, until now, didn’t know about wikipedia. At this point, it would be pure speculation to say anything about a measurable effect, but I’m confident that it will show up over the next weeks.
The uniqeness of this cooperation can be put thorugh endless semantic discussions. From the point of view of the danish wikipedians backing this initiative, it *is* unique. So far, others wanting to use wikipedia content have set up their own mirror, mostly readonly. Even the few mirror sites offering editing of the original wikipedia content does not channel the new additions back into the wikipedia, where the articles originated. In this case, we actually do get the contributions, in as seemless a way as is possible. *This* is the unique part.
[[:da:User:Wegge]]
June 29th, 2006 at 11:30 am
“Community” as in the community of people who are the core wikipedians - jimbo wales rants about wikipedia not being the hivemind, but a community.
What i find disturbing is that what makes wikipedia unique is that there are no special unique arrangements - we’re all contributors.
This “unique collaboration” sells out on the core values and starts/keeps in place a us vs. them paradigm - “wikipedia/DR as them and the users as us” - which is the specific framing in language on the site. Wikipedia are just users, it’s really as little as possible in itself.
Let DR display a copy of wikipedia on their site and promote true unconditional contribution to Wikipedia, not a special DR sportswiki - which btw is just framing since it is wikipedia.
I thought the promise of Wikipedia wasn’t about reaching an “audience”, but about growing an architecture for participation and a community of core contributors.
Why is there a need for contributing to something that is framed as a special wiki - when it could be about true wikipedia participation?