 At Sikamec First Nation, we are very proud to have them here. Thank you guys, and we are so proud to have First Nation, At Sikamec First Nation here, ladies, gentlemen. Thank you for being here. They work so hard to where we are. So hey, welcome to the 30th Wikimedia in Canada. Welcome. All right, my name is Benoit Rochon. I'm the president of Wikimedia Canada. So Canada is a country, a bilingual country. Yeah, let me finish my phrase. So it's a bilingual country. If you walk in the streets in Montreal, you will hear French of course, but you also can speak to anyone in English. Don't worry, you can also speak Spanish, Latinos over there. Of course, they will sing later. They're always singing. Okay, so we are very proud to have you here, Wikimedia Canada. The board is right here. We work so hard to make this happen in such a short time. We're very happy to have you around. I'll do some words in French if you don't mind. By the way, they have some, there is some translation available for people who doesn't understand French. There will be some tracks in French. So you can get the earphones in the back here. So in the past couple years, Wikimedia Canada, we have worked very hard to bring the chapter where it is today. And if I look at the visor, I'm really proud to have to know what we've done. Benoit, I did it. To know what we've done, the ACFAS, the Association, the Lénegro Foundation, B-A-N-Q, Major Partner, B-E-N-Q. I hope you guys in your country will have such an institution like this to work with you. They are very, very good with us. So I would like to present you Mrs. Maureen Clapperton, speaking of B-E-N-Q, Bibliothèque and National Archives of Quebec. So she is the Director, General Director of the National Library. Mrs. Maureen Clapperton. Mr. Benoit Rochon, President of Wikimedia Canada, Madam Catherine Maher, Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation, dear members of the CAA, distinguished guests, hello, good morning. It is a joy and an honour for me to be present among you this morning to greet the fruitful collaboration between Wikimedia Canada and Bibliothèque and National Archives of Quebec. You know, Wikimedia Canada is one of the millions of global collaborative movement that relies on citizen participation. Its goal is to make the knowledge more and more accessible, free of charge, and everywhere. By the way, to paraphrase the declaration of the Bibliothèques québécoises recently published on the UNESCO site, you can go and see if you want, B-E-N-Q is a collective good and a place where it develops a relationship of exploration, of exchange, of knowledge, of culture, and of enrichment. It was therefore quite natural for our institution to join a project of collaborative enrichment of knowledge. It will also be said that the multilateral vector that is Wikimedia gives unprecedented visibility to the Quebec documentary heritage. Our rich collaboration established for more than three years already is declared in three flights. A first, in Wikimedia Commons, where more than 3,000 images from the B-E-N-Q archives have been uploaded and can now be used to illustrate billions of articles in Wikipedia. The second flight consists of training activities and open editing to all of you. In the name of Mondays and Weekies, you have surely heard about it, these workshops are offered for free at the Grand Bibliothèque and are made accessible by visual conferences. They allow the Wikipedians, as you are experienced, and there are employees, archivists, and B-E-N-Q Bibliothequers to share their expertise with those who want to contribute to the online encyclopedia. And finally, the third flight is made in Wikisource, where B-E-N-Q provides historical documents that the contributors are invited to transcribe to facilitate reading or even make it easier to search for key words. Manuscript documents and old printings are so transcribed by Francophones and Francophiles all over the world. The potential of distribution offered by the Wikimedia universe is unequal for B-E-N-Q. In addition to being a global showcase for our patrimonial documents, this international tool allows for the promotion of history and Quebec culture to nearly 20 million Francophones who visit Wikipedias every month. That's not all. For several years already, it has been shown that collaboration between B-E-N-Q and the Wikimedia universe is greatly beneficial for partners as well as for citizens. On the one hand, the collaborative environment allows B-E-N-Q to always be more inclusive and to welcome people interested by the new media and the new forms of appropriation of knowledge and knowledge. On the other hand, this association or B-E-N-Q opens a window on the world for each local library. For its part, the Wikipedias online encyclopedia also loves documentary institutions, particularly those that have a national character, because these institutions allow to multiply reliable sources used in articles by contributors. And of course, B-E-N-Q is a national tool that allows people to be able to communicate with the public and of course, B-E-N-Q is a prominent promoter of this reliability, as well as research by internet users, especially because it is both a national library, national archives, and an important public library. B-E-N-Q assembles, preserves and distributes the Quebec documentary heritage and its activities in 12 buildings, especially the territory of Quebec. To do this, B-E-N-Q can count on a daily and passionate staff who deserve to be warmly thanked. The partnership with Wikimedia Canada results in the employment initiative, once again in the archives of libraries that, throughout the process, have been supported by the High-Direction. These information professionals have been able to use the new media and in citizen engagement the potential of the institution. The collaboration between Wikimedia Canada and B-E-N-Q, a state society, is a first to Canada. It has given place to an unprecedented project within Francophonie, which many libraries, museums and universities are currently inspiring. Wikimedia Canada and B-E-N-Q have made a partnership during the International Assembly and we are extremely grateful for this support. Thanks to the quality of the project's management and the audacious character of our collaboration, B-E-N-Q was launched in 2016, the International Rally of the Public Administration of Quebec. A price that we share, of course, with all the employees of the institution but also with our precious partners. I would like to take a few moments here to thank, particularly Mr. Benoit Rochon, President of Wikimedia Canada, Anne Loan-Fann of the Francophone Association for Knowledge, Lac-Face and Mathieu Gauthier-Pilote of the Lionel Grous Foundation to have accompanied us on an adventure that continues. Without you, without the support of your organizations, without your enthusiasm, your generosity in time and in advice, the collaboration with the Wikimedia community would not have been the success that it currently knows. By the way, I would like to invite you to the conference that will be held by Helen Laverdure and Frédéric Juliano as well. Thus, you will be able to learn a little more about our great institution, its involvement in the Wikimedia universe and the challenges we will face in the coming years. Do not forget the visits of our buildings in Montreal if you have the time to go, obviously. I think there are still some places available. In the end, the collaborative approach created in technology with Wikimedia is a much wider movement that takes more and more to the virtual world and that is often called the concept of collective intelligence. This approach, because of the steps of validation and reliability of the institutions associated with it, supports democratic institutions which are a rampart for the quality and reliability of the information of our days. Such projects must continue. They are important for the democratic society. They allow us to re-enact immediately, innovative and connect the Quebec culture on the local, regional and international scene. I thank you for your attention and I wish you an excellent congress. Thank you, Mrs. Tapperton. I really wish you have such great institution like that. They will have some talk Sunday morning, I guess, if I recall. And we will present also all the major project that we did. If you folks were here last Wednesday, we did this canathon. So we saved some negatives that were oxidized and they were over a hundred years old. So we are very proud to work with you and Mrs. Tapperton. Thank you. Now, we are honored to have Mr. Tian, who is the Vice-Chairman of the Executive Committee of the City of Montreal. He is also responsible for the administrative reform, smart city, information technology and the youth. Mr. Aroute Chicillian. Thank you. Thank you very much, Benoit, and the whole organization who worked very hard to organize Wikimania here in Montreal. So I think we should all applaud them as a success. Thank you. First and foremost, I want to officially welcome all of the participants from across Canada, from across the world here at the Montreal, our great city that is celebrating the 375th anniversary of foundation. And I think this event is a natural to be happening here in Montreal because the City of Montreal has in the past years demonstrated its willingness to be first and foremost a human city. Why a human city? Because even in our strategy to make the city more connected, more digital, the first value that we bet it on heavily is not to be the most technologically advanced city, it's to use technology as a means to achieve quality of life, better services and equality across the city. We're a city that bets heavily on the fundamental value that Wikipedia was founded on which is transparency, collaboration and sharing. That's why two years ago we became one of the cities from across the world who will open up all its data by default deadline December 2018. And it is not enough to open the data. We have to provide our citizens the stakeholders and the civil society with the tools to analyze that data. And one of the first tools that we developed here in the City of Montreal in a collaborative fashion is a tool to go and to search every single dollar that is being spent in contracts given out by the City of Montreal. We developed a tool to drill down and to see in the collaborative transparent and open fashion also every single incident that is being handled by the Montreal Police. And there is much, much more to come in the coming years. Therefore we salute the Wikimedia Foundation, Wikimedia Canada, but especially the founder Jimmy Wills who will honor us with his presence today. And we share all of the values that all you great people here are united to discuss and to exchange about. So long live Wikimedia, Wikipedia, all the different platforms. And if anybody here is interested to add to my Wikipedia page in English I think it needs a good refresh. Thank you, merci and have a great day. Good morning everyone. That's the sort of energy. Good morning all. Thanks for being here. I am so excited to be here for Wikimedia 2017. And to start off I also want to say thank you to our sponsors who are making it possible for us to be here today. Wikihow, LeBanc, Turisme, Montreal, Mapbox, GamePiria and Google. Thank you very much for your support for our work and for this community. And of course thank you so much to Wikimedia Canada for hosting and hosting this Wikimedia. As you've already heard this is the first time that we're holding a Wikimedia in Canada hopefully it will not be the last. It's also one of the first Francophone Wikimanias. So it's really wonderful to see that represented. And of course I also want to acknowledge that we are on the traditional and unceded territory of the first nations of Canada and take a moment to recognize that. Thank you. I know I look forward to Wikimania to talk about what is important to our mission and what is important to our movement. But I also want to talk about what is important to our mission and what is important to our movement. It is three days of old friends and new friends, early morning talks and presentations, late night evening sessions that you're all familiar with. It is hallway conversations, stimulating panels, things that we learn about that for the first time, conversations that advance discussions that have been going on for a long time are important to our movement. But I also want to recognize that for all the people that are here in the room, and I think there are about nearly a thousand of us here today in Montreal, that there are many of us who are not here. And so I want to acknowledge those who are watching on the live stream, those of us who are participating remotely, but also those of us who are not able to attend because of visa challenges. And I want to take this moment to acknowledge and let announce that in this room that you will automatically be qualified if you received a scholarship this year, but we're unable to receive a visa for a scholarship next year to come to Cape Town. So that because our movement is about openness and collaboration and we want to make sure that those of us who are not able to attend for reasons outside of the control of our Wikimedia movement are still always welcome and always able to participate. So really excited about that. I also want to acknowledge and take a moment to recognize something that many of you may have heard about in the past week. It was determined last week that Basel Khartabiou, our colleague and fellow Wikimedian and free culture advocate from Syria had been executed in 2015, shortly after he went missing from the prison where he had been detained. I wanted to take this opportunity while we're all gathered here to recognize his contributions to our community and to the broader free culture movement. And I want to take a moment to bring some of Basel's friends and colleagues up on to the stage to remember him and to also make an announcement about how we plan to honor his legacy. Would you like to join me? So I am joined here on stage by Javi Padad, a friend, colleague of Basel's, also from YALA Startup. Sorry. By John Phillips of the New Palmyra Project. By Ryan Merkley, the CEO of Creative Commons. By Mark Serman, the executive director of the Mozilla Foundation. And by Barry True, also from the New Palmyra Project. Yeah, it's okay. We can applaud them. They are all friends and allies of our movement and they are all friends of Basel's. And so I want to hand the microphone over to John who's going to talk a little bit about the project that they've been working on, which is off to our left. Hi, Wikimedians. Good morning. So Basel Cardabelle was my best friend and he is exactly like you. I actually was going through my old emails and I found the first time I ever talked to him. It was just a really casual gift he gave me, which was a patch to my project Open Clip Art. And I think that signifies Basel and the work that he has done. It's nameless. It's small. It's not in your face. He probably wouldn't be on stage right now. He'd be somewhere out in the back hacking right now. He's a committer. He was someone who was really gifted in giving back and giving to his society. He was reconstructing the ancient city Palmyra and we relaunched this project called New Palmyra in his honor as well, which there's going to be an editathon later today about this and more. Basel is a committer. I think that's the message. He is one of the great ones that his light was just extinguished too early. So please, every time today and tomorrow when you're working on Wiki edits, you're doing other things just remember that maybe down the line you don't know where you're going to be. You don't know where your friend's going to be. Just think about that. Think about your friends and the people you meet at this event. You don't know what's coming next. So with that I'll give the mic to Ryan. Thank you. This is a sculpture from New Palmyra 3D model. This is actually entirely 3D printed. It's 250 pounds of plastic produced by a model that Basel produced and we brought it here for all of you to see. So come up close, have a look at it, read the boards, learn about Basel and it'll be in the East Ballroom for the balance of the weekend. It underscores something for me which is the work that we do, the work that you do that we do together is political and we can't question that anymore. People lose their lives for things that we take for granted and for those of us who work in environments where that work is okay and safe that's a privilege and we have a responsibility to those who work in environments where it's not. Basel was a leader in many movements and most of you don't belong to one movement. I'm a Wikipedian, I'm a Mozillaan, I'm a creative commoner, I support EFF and many of you could call out many, many other organizations that you're part of. We need to stick together as an open movement and you'll hear about that over the course of the whole weekend. It's why we're here, it's why we come to these events to be with you to be part of this movement. So we've come together to try to honor Basel's legacy and so today these organizations, Creative Commons, the Media Foundation, the Jimmy Wales Foundation and New Palmyra are announcing the Basel Cardi Bill Free Culture Fellowship. We're announcing that today right here, right now. It's supported financially by all of these organizations. There's a blog post that we're launching concurrently with all the details which I won't get into but we'll put out the call for people especially those who live in environments where they are in danger for doing the kind of work that we ask people to do every day as volunteers and colleagues. We want to support them we want to get their backs and we want to help them do the work that they do so that we can all benefit from free culture and open knowledge. Thank you. So I am at Basel in 2009 and it was actually in Jordan when Creative Commons was expanding from the Middle East and at that time I saw only one small facet of Basel. Little did I know that he was not just an open rights activist, he actually was a social entrepreneur. He helped me actually bring a group of Syrian entrepreneurs to Beirut in 2010 to build the big movements on start-ups. He was an innovator. He actually built a company with you, Ike Labs. He built a hacker space in Syria where he hosted all the geeks to come and work on things. He was a journalist. Actually he got into jail a few times because he wrote his views at that time on religion. He was an artist. Actually I discovered that after he went to jail. He was an activist then was jailed. And then in jail he actually started painting, writing and was a poet. And now that we are actually looking at his letters we are seeing that he had sent letters of asking his friends to get publishing rights for some books but he was transiting in jail and he was saying well my dad would be happy actually to type those. Basel's story, Basel is a unique individual and he was amazing but his story is not actually unique. Thousands of battles exist out there. In fact yesterday night as I was walking down the lobby the funniest story happened I introduced Catherine to this lady so the lady on the counter looked at me and smiled. I was like I know this person and then I walked up and she's like hey my name is such and such you are my mentor in Jordan. I didn't even know that. I didn't even put you here. How did you come here? I was first in Aleppo as you know we lost all the cash. We moved to Jordan I had to build my startup there in health food. You helped me you mentored me but then I had to build myself up and then I moved out. All my family is still there. I'm here now. I'm working in this hotel and I'm building more cash with another company after I'm done. So this is the story of the individuals the fellowship is actually encouraging. Basel's story is not unique there's many of them out there. I'll end on one poetic poem actually a friend of mine a common friend of ours, Muhammad Najem was exchanging letters with Basel in prison and there's a poem that's actually apparently the favorite poem of Basel and his wife Nura. So it's in Arabic I'll try to translate. So it starts Glory to us those who stood while God has suppressed our names that we defied destruction we take refuge in immortal mountain they call it the people we want to run we want to immigrate can a colby and there was my heart threaded by the wounds and there was my heart then there was my heart then there was my heart and there was my heart then by the dissection resting now above the remains of the city like a rose from rot Hadian calmly after it said no to the ship and I love my country and I think this really represents Basel he decided to stay back in Syria some people fled and were able to get the better life out there he stayed there and so on a more uplifting note we are celebrating his life and we want his spirit to keep on going so I'd like you all to repeat after me want to say a word just to stick it up to whoever put him and was putting many others suppressing other voices wanted to scream after me the following words Basel long live Basel I'm going to count to three and we're going to do it a few times so you can train now one, two, three one more time one last time thank you go for it one of the reasons why John and I and people that have supported Basel's work are here is just to meet everybody and talk to you and just quickly there are two opportunities to do that one of them is tomorrow there's an edit-a-thon I believe it's from 11 to 2 it's on the programming Saturday afternoon says afternoon anyway look on the programming it's moved around a little bit it's on wiki it's on the wiki and where am I and the second thing is we're having a party tonight on a more uplifting note these are heavy topics but one of Basel like to party we like to unwind a little too so from 8 to 11 tonight at the SAT it's pretty close to here it's the Society Design Technologics everybody's invited to show up we're going to have a good time so please have all your friends come there and get the details of the party on wiki and also in the telegram groups for those of you who'd like to socialize later have a drink enjoy the company of others and celebrate Basel's life and the life of so many others who are creative and open and committed to our mission and bring more joy into the world every day for more people so I was going to announce the edit-a-thon but John has already done that and so do come and check out the New Palmyra project sculpture throughout the course of the day as we said in the ballroom it's incredible the more up close you get to it the more detail that reveals itself it's truly a remarkable legacy and with that I'm going to pass it over to Phoebe our Wicca Mania program co-chair oh my goodness thanks Phoebe Mania 2017 I'm so glad to be here thank you to Catherine thank you to the Basel group this is amazing and we are here because we believe in open education and free knowledge for all and that is an aspirational promise and a sometimes dangerous promise and we are going to talk about our future this weekend in an uncertain world and what our strategy is going to be to meet that future and we're also going to talk about our hopes our successes our achievements and our plans we are going to talk about how we can build a better community better technology how we can keep improving and about some of our very coolest projects and we are here because as always we are continuing to build an open world together so I'm honored to be this year's program co-chair I want to thank everyone but especially my amazing program committee we had over 400 submissions this year which I think might be more than ever before there's been a lot of changes on the wiki as you all know and so I especially want to thank Dorar Lin and Guillaume Pommier my co-chairs for once again bringing order into chaos I want to thank personally our on-site logistics team without whom this would not have happened Ellie Young, Louise Woe Erin Lacy, Irene Tate you guys are superstars and I want us to give a special round of applause for Benoit Rochon and everyone at Wikimedia Canada for making this happen I have the job of telling you some pieces of information you need to know so some housekeeping items you need to know the schedules on the wiki that should be the latest version the end of the pond is 11 to 4 tomorrow we made it longer so the schedules on the wiki tonight we have a reception in the community village which is next door but also there are posters downstairs go check out these amazing posters that we have you'll get dinner on your own after that and then you'll go to Basel's party or explore the great city of Montreal you can also schedule an informal meetup if you would like there is a meetups board out front there's also a page on the wiki we have rooms all over this all over this venue and in addition to the formal program there's a couple of spaces I want to draw your attention to so there is a hacking space salon 7 which is open 24-7 for quiet work there's also a salon 6 the movement strategy space where they're going to be talking about movement strategy during the whole conference drop in and out I saw some lawn chairs in there I don't know I'm going to see what's going on in there second thing note taking we're going to be using etherpad for note taking during the conference there is a template for the etherpad linked on the program page and linked on the speaker information page make an etherpad for the sessions you go to take notes in there link it to the program abstracts and take pictures we encourage everyone to take pictures in this conference and document it and put those pictures on comments but pay attention to people's lanyards yellow lanyards are no photos this year so again if you see someone with a yellow lanyard please do not put them in your pictures or videos we have a ton of communications channels for this conference as many of you already know there's a telegram group there's two telegram groups there's a telegram group hashtag is wikimania hashtag wikimania and you'll see me again on stage I'll be making announcements so if you want the whole conference to know something find me and lastly if you have some kind of a problem while you're here an issue comes up find someone with the event staff badge or just go to the help desk here on level four okay I want you to do three things while you're here as participants the first thing is we have a friendly space policy for this conference it says we do not tolerate harassment of any kind familiarize yourself with that policy it's linked on the wiki I also though want you to be welcoming to your fellow attendees we have people here where this is their first wikimania and we have people here that this is their 13th wikimania and I want you to find someone that you don't know to learn from each other I also want you to learn something this weekend could be something big could be something small in a workshop in the community village learn from each other while you're here third I want you to solve a problem this weekend this is a working conference we are participants wikimania is not a spectator sport so build something solve a problem maybe you're wondering how to deploy wiki data driven info boxes on your language good news, we have a session on that maybe you are wondering just how to do better outreach in your community learn from the people who are here and pledge to solve some kind of problem that you have faced in your free knowledge work while you're here um and have a good time wikimania is magical and I am so glad you are all here and now I would like to turn it over to an old friend of mine Evan Perdomo is an entrepreneur a wiki pioneer and a Montrealer and he is the founder of wiki travel status net he is currently working on a start up called fuzzy.ai and Evan is going to moderate our wonderful keynote session with jimmy wales so Evan I'll turn it over to you thanks hi everyone I am really excited to be part of this conversation because I'm getting to talk with two of the people that I respect most in the free culture movement and helping them to have a conversation and I hope that will be really interesting for all of you in true wiki fashion so before we have a problem we start a wiki page we are going to be doing questions from the audience for this period they are going to be on the wiki so it's on the wikimania wiki there's a page called questions for friday questions for friday and we're going to be putting together those questions in document mode so I've got I'm reloading it every few minutes I've got questions from there so please feel free to add questions, integrate questions combine questions on there and now I'd like to introduce our two keynote speakers first of all a woman who holds the most game of thrones sounding title that I've ever heard she is the wolf chair of technology and science literacy at McGill she has written two great books I get the anonymous one she's written two great books the debian one and the anonymous one so debian one is coding freedom and the anonymous one is hacker hoaxer whistleblower spy and she is a really interesting person who understands a lot about our movement and has a lot of interesting things to say her name's Biela Coleman and next a man who needs no introduction but I'm going to do it anyways Jimmy Wales founder of wikipedia founder of everything we're doing here wikia founder of a new venture wikia tribune and one of times 100 most important people in the world I love that one please come on up Jimmy I think I'm going to have to so I think we're in a really interesting place with wikipedia and wikimedia projects in 2017 I think that when we were first starting these projects there was a lot of questions about reliability and where we stood in the world in terms of providing information and yet now we are one of the cornerstones of reliability on the internet what how did wikipedia change from being this kind of wild wild west to being the place you go for reliable information well I mean I think one of the things is that in the early days of wikipedia of course we were just getting started and so things weren't as good as we would like them to be but there was also I think a lot of misunderstanding in the press we were never as bad as we were made out to be and certainly I don't recall ever there being a time in the community where we felt like oh it's right whatever you like it doesn't matter if it's true or not it's wild wild west and we always wanted to get to quality and so when there would be an error then the press would make a big deal out of it and so forth but what they didn't necessarily make a big deal out of is that how passionate we were about trying to fix it but I also think that there's been a trend obviously the more mature wikipedia gets the higher quality it gets but also I think we've seen a decline in the quality of other sources in the media and so forth which it's not a great way to look better like everybody else being worse it's not good for society but it is true for example when they were complaining about wikipedia they never imagined how much fake information could be online that you literally it looks like you can trust it but you actually can't trust it and that sort of feeling that people have of I don't know what's going on it just wasn't there and now that is something that people are grappling with so hello so just to add a little bit to that I mean first of all I think you're absolutely right the press will frame things and they kind of stopped and sometimes I secretly think that journalists all go to the wikipedia page first to read up on what they have to write about and eventually they kind of had to stop dissing it I also know from the perspective of kind of being an educator there were 5-10 years ago some educators were unhappy if students went to wikipedia initially but that's not the case anymore and in fact many class projects kind of encourage students to edit the wikipedia page and I also think part of that transition is the fact that pages went from kind of having basic overviews to kind of having very detailed kind of sometimes very esoteric takes where a lot of experts were contributing to wikipedia and not contesting wikipedia as well and so with the support of experts both being contributors and non-skeptics that also really helped with that transition so I think one thing that's been really interesting in light of some of the recent controversies like fontgate and gamergate before it what is on the wikipedia page is what's true that is the definition of truth and if you can change that page and get the information on the page what role do we have as a community and do the documents that we create have in defining truth where are we in a post-truth world where does the truth we define matter I feel that it's a very heavy responsibility that we've chosen for ourselves to and to realize that when people come to wikipedia they do have that sense of trust far more I mean all of us knowing how the sausage is made it's a little bit disconcerting it's like oh you actually trust us I mean we try our best and for things like gamergate is a good example where there were it was an area that was contested by people on both sides who were from outside the wikipedia community who tried to flood in and tried to control the narrative in wikipedia which of course we've seen this many many times before but this is a particularly prominent case where it becomes I think for us the real challenge is to maintain a sort of distance and a real sense of neutrality in the sense of particularly if one side is being particularly more annoying than the other then the temptation is to be biased against that side where we have to resist that temptation and just describe the facts as best we can using reliable sources and so forth and I find it remarkable that you know we have managed to create a culture of responsibility that's thanks to all the people in this room where we're not like Reddit, we're not like lots of places online and of course we have our human dramas I mean obviously we're human beings and there's plenty of wiki drama to go around but at the end of the day there's such a large number of people who are just committed to just let's try and get it right and let's try to get all the drama out and just get on with the work Yeah so I'm not convinced we're in a post-truth moment and so far as many of the dynamics around propaganda and misinformation have been around for a long time but we are in an interesting moment where there's a kind of new conversation and visibility about it because precisely we're online talking about it and also there's all sorts of new tools from bots to these platforms that kind of contribute to it and what I think I really admire about Wikipedia is that they take truth seriously but also I think the process of the very laborious process of editing pages kind of demonstrates a quality about truth that Oscar Wilde I think really captured well with one of his beautiful aphorisms which is the truth is rarely pure and never simple right so while I think in some cases we can raise our hands and go oh my gosh there's these climate change deniers or wow I can't believe some people can't see the truth or they're misled in fact both convincing people of the truth arriving at the truth is a really difficult enterprise it's difficult in science it's difficult in journalism and it's difficult for Wikipedia as well and I think one of the reasons again why Wikipedia has become a kind of bastion for truth and people trust it is precisely because you can see the process to get there and that's a really big deal you can't even see that with trusted newspapers right how did they necessarily get to this story why did they get there why are they using these sources that kind of conversation is not there that's one element and while I do think you know many of us do trust leading newspapers like the Washington Post New York Times and so on and so forth I think there still is something different about a non-profit community project who's producing this material because in the end you're doing it for the sake of the project people are not getting paid you don't have to make money off of it and this kind of is one of the reasons why I think there is integrity in the project and people also feel that way as well and one of the things I always joke is I wish the New York Times would occasionally write the neutrality of this article has been disputed at the top right to acknowledge right as we acknowledge quite clearly like actually we're still struck we're grappling here and you know we tend to write in a very authoritative style but at least we admit when we're grappling the major newspaper is writing authoritative style but they very seldom admit that they're not sure right you know we had a huge fight in the newsroom about this and we decided to run this but here's some warnings for you they just don't do that and they should there's actually a really excellent debate between Glenn Greenwald and Bill Keller which is about the role of bias in news right and whether you can have kind of fact based but bias but fact based news which is Glenn Greenwald's position and Bill Keller's is kind of you can't right and I mean I actually I'm not going to like go deep in the debate but I do think it is really important to sometimes acknowledge when you do have a bias that's a kind of form of neutrality if you're very explicit about it as well right and some newspapers do that some do not right but what I like again about Wikipedia is that it makes the process very clear of what they mean by neutrality and the process to get there is sometimes not neutral in terms of the discussion in the fight to get there yeah and there is a huge difference and this is what I think a lot of people are finding disconcerting about the current political climate is there's a big difference between let's say a newspaper having a particular point of view arguing a case but in a fact based way so it is argumentative and it is biased in a sense but in a fact based way versus completely like playing it deuces wild and like you just have no idea which the mainstream major papers aren't doing that but there's loads of places online that are doing that so including at least one that's been recently rejected as a source by the Wikipedia community where the actual facts seem to have very little impact on what they actually put forward yeah I think that there's a like in a lot of publications well definitely in social media in a lot of publications then the byline comes first right it's right up at the top there you know we've gotten used to in the last decade of having individuals kind of express themselves and having an absolute control of their own expression whereas all of our wiki projects are very communitarian right so to find the find the individual contributions you have to go to the top pages you have to go to the edit edit histories in order to find that individual like why does that work we're in the selfie age where individuals are looking for attention why are we able to push individuals to the background and still be successful well I mean I think there's a there is kind of a misconception there so it is true there's no bylines on Wikipedia entries but in terms of social validation I think most Wikipedians take great pride in doing work that other Wikipedians think is great work so it's doing work that is impressive to people who you are respectful of yourself and that's what really matters and also in the abstract to know that your work is increasingly respected by the general public and that's very different from a kind of a fame seeking you know like and I don't mean that necessarily a negative way so if someone wants to be a blogger and make a name for themselves by having cogent and interesting opinions but it's just not what we're about but it doesn't mean that we're working without any kind of social validation of what we're doing I mean that's I think precisely right that people gain recognition among peers and that's very satisfying and a way where the individual can shine but it's also the case that some very large complicated projects can only be achieved collectively right and it's awesome to be part of that large awesome project that is having this huge impact in the world and people feel incredibly proud to be part of that and so you have the best of both worlds you can get recognition from your peers but then you also know that by kind of holding hands and working together there's this collective thing and you're attached to it and you don't feel the need to have yourself attached to it outside in the greater world and yeah Wikipedia kind of satisfies both as well as I think other large successful free software projects yeah so talking about other large projects again my history with this project goes back several years and so I kind of compare now and then and one of the things I think is different now than then is that around foundation time we had kind of this inevitableism about free culture free software that once we start a project like inevitably it will dominate in its area in its field and I think the last decade has shown that that's not the case there are a number of projects that were started and have not and have not flourished what have whereas say Wikipedia projects continue to grow and grow what have the Wikimedia communities as well as the foundation what have they done right that others may not have done as well if only we knew we could go out into other areas and make it happen there as well I mean I think a part of it is that there just is a nice fit like people enjoy writing in encyclopedia and it's useful in the end and I mean I when I think of this question I think of here's some grand here's one grand idea that didn't happen and that's that Linux on the desktop or you know free software desktop would eventually clearly come to dominate as and that's not happened and there's a lot of reasons why that hasn't happened and of course I'm not expert enough to put forward two specific of use but it's things like the type of work necessary to make a fantastic desktop environment is not that fun for free software developers who are more interested more intellectual problems or it requires a type of top down sort of Apple style draconian framework that doesn't really work with an open community I don't know the exact answer but that's that's one of the ones where I would say maybe it's just not possible maybe it's not the failing of any one person or group of people to not have done it the right way it's like maybe that's not something you can do in this way I I don't know I'm not as familiar with Wikipedia so I can't speak to why they succeeded but I know many other kind of open projects some of which have wildly succeeded like Debian and the Debian developer conference is going on right now to others like indie media which I was quite involved in and kind of grew exponentially in a few years and it's not really around anymore and I think you know one of the core elements that allow projects that are primarily online to really grow and thrive is that it is really important to meet in person and those projects that that don't do that and this happened with indie media somehow the online interaction may not be quite enough right so these sorts of events are incredibly important but you also have to configure the project in such a way that those people who don't necessarily come can still feel connected right it's not that everyone needs to come to these events but they're kind of particularly important I think the other interesting element is when to create policy you know Wikipedia has policy Debian has policy right and this also allows a project to produce itself over time but if you kind of have too much policy too early it could be a little stifling because it kind of has to kind of emerge organically but if you have none I've seen projects kind of just wither away and part of the problem I think is that there is this idea that these projects are totally ad hoc peer-to-peer and they just work because people are really enthusiastic and into it whereas no you do need some structure but people don't want overwhelming structure and it's kind of finding that right balance that I think really matters for these online projects and I think that is absolutely crucial so at Wikipedia there are certain core policies neutral point of view in POV is non-negotiable one of our oldest statements we don't debate about oh should we become the Catholic encyclopedia or the lefty encyclopedia it's just not even open for question and that framework is meaningful and it helps us get our work done but also like the detailed rules I mean typically in Wikipedia what we have done is it's not like we make policy and then follow it policy is writing down our practices that evolve over time and certainly in the early days the first time we had the BLP biography of living persons policy in English Wikipedia it wasn't like we suddenly decided oh okay we have to be ethical about biographies it was like oh actually we have these views and this is what we're doing we need to codify that and actually make it clear to people that this is what has to be done and that's important in a lot of communities so let's just talk about Reddit as an example Reddit began with and I love Reddit and I hate Reddit and all those things but it began with a really kind of we're uncensurable wide open free speech and that is a core value in a certain sense of a large swath of that community which meant as soon as they realized like actually that's pretty horrible and it creates horrible spaces within Reddit and we need to do something about it they've really struggled with that because they never had an identity in the community that we've had which is okay this isn't a wide open free speech zone we're trying to make an encyclopedia and I'm not sure what initial policy Reddit could have adopted it's a hard question in a sort of a chat forum but those initial principles do make a huge difference as to where you end up even though you can postpone detailed rulemaking until later yeah I think that that's an interesting part of not only not only the Wikimedia projects but free software kind of as a whole we've always been kind of these rule followers right like we always kind of draw within the lines if you you know if you were the kind of person who wanted to avoid copyright paranoia or ignore all rules that that area has kind of been squeezed out of Wikimedia projects and so we're kind of like in the lawful good area of the D&D matrix and I think that there are but there are associated organizations, projects ideas, movements that are more chaotic good that are more chaotic neutral sorry I'm going really deep into this analogy so you know and and Biela you've dealt quite a bit with that with with anonymous like what is the relationship between these kind of hacker collectives that are doing that are you know going over the lines with projects like Wikimedia yeah I mean it's so interesting because my first project was on Debian which is one of these kind of really let's stay within the law so much so that we'll invent our own law you know around the copy left and it's really transparent accessible and then all of a sudden I went to the total opposites which was anonymous which was totally chaotic and people were breaking the law left and right and doing some really wild things and you know speaking very personally right now what I find really interesting and important is that I do think that people who care about the internet whether you come at it as a technologist or a librarian or a citizen you know over the last 20-25 years we've really seen a political movement's grow around the internet and related values from privacy to transparency to information access and I'm of the personal belief that it's very important to have a diverse movement and different tactics and this is the case for different reasons some are very pragmatic so for example sometimes if you need to bring attention to an issue having some kind of these crazy hackers hack into a company and take information post it online and create a video is a really wonderful way for the media to report on the issue and it's not that everyone's going to necessarily agree with that tactic but it can have a place in some ways but it's really really important to have other kind of sectors and domains that stay within the bounds of the law and others and the policy I just think that the more kind of vectors you have to work on a certain issue it will then bring in different types of people because people have different styles of engaging politically in the world now there are moments where perhaps things get a little bit too crazy and you're like well maybe I just can't support that direct action and it's okay to talk about it but a movement that can kind of tolerate that difference or being met can be very effective and I know with anonymous it was very interesting there were very controversial and some individuals in this kind of movement hated them others loved them some people secretly loved them I knew people in the kind of non-profit hacker world who were like well I can't say it publicly but I'm really glad they're doing what they're doing right but I do think it signals that the movement around these issues has become mature enough that there's a diversity of tactics to fight for these elements but I also think it's important to have a conversation about why we may disagree with some of these tactics without having such kind of vitriol and fragmentation that people can't talk to each other I mean it's interesting how those different allied communities or loosely working towards some similar goals and in some ways different goals have a lot of the same rhetoric I think one of the things that's probably been troubling for people in this community and other places is that a lot of those banners of internet freedom, freedom of speech freedom of expression have been used to harass or abuse people online right and I guess one of the things that's probably interesting for us to talk about is how are those balanced out how are those freedoms versus people's right to not be harassed balanced out especially online yeah I mean it's a really really tough problem and it's one for us because we have an objective of building an encyclopedia and we're not a wide open speech zone I think it's a little bit easier we just say no personal attacks and we really do expect a high standard of behavior of ourselves and others within the Wikimedia community within Wikipedia of course we fight human beings everybody understands that's just not okay to attack other people personally I'm actually a little bit sympathetic to a platform like Twitter which has an enormous problem with abuse I mean really enormous but it's also a place where you're supposed to go and post your opinions and the thoughts that flick through your mind and so on and people will argue and they will make personal attacks on famous people or not famous people and so forth and really figure out how to stop people from going too far I don't know it's a really hard problem for them I'm glad we don't have that problem so yeah I mean I think in one sense the issue at one level it's not complicated and so far as you know a person who's being targeted and harassed is basically put in a position where they can't speak out right so their ability to speak freely is infringed and so there's really no room for that the problem is of course it's just difficult to deal with in some instances precisely because certain tools for anonymity which are so important for dissidents enable that so that's the tough part at some level but you know platforms are doing more or less a good job I think one of the important things is that when someone is being harassed that people jump in in support of them that can make a really big difference and I think in the last few years that's what has happened a bit more I remember when Kathy Sierra a long time ago was attacked by a lot of trolls the kind of blog or community then was like deal with it this is what happens whereas today the discourse has kind of changed and if someone is being attacked there's kind of really interesting sometimes counter attacks people really speak up in support of the person and so these little shifts even if they don't fix the problem I think are at least a step in the right direction I think talking about you know especially women in hostile environments where there can be challenging or personal attacks and they drop off as contributors is a really big problem and it's a big problem for our projects because we need women and we need women's perspectives and having more women editors more women participants is a big deal we need them we need us do women need to be participating in wikimedia projects what is our pitch to them I mean yeah obviously we need them for the same reason they need us that we as humanity need diverse perspectives we know that people's interests vary that gender is one of the ways people's interests vary and you know it's all we are is a very small group of male computer geek types there's loads of the world that we just aren't that interested in it's just not our hobby right and we want all those perspectives we want all kinds of people and those people also need to be visible and it goes both ways this is a project for everyone so yeah I completely agree and I just think what's interesting is that if you work at an institution like a university often times there's very well not always but sometimes there's very clear procedures for things like harassment community projects it's a little different right and it's a little bit harder actually simply because you don't have an HR unit necessarily and I've been seeing the tour project and a little bit the Debian project deal with community issues by creating things like a community council and tour Debian has an anti-harassment team right and these are first of all really important moves because if someone feels like they are being harassed or there's some other incidents first of all just having some recourse to be able to report it and talk about it is essential but then how to solve it is not a straightforward thing and these projects are struggling with that right now and hopefully if they kind of do succeed and it might take a couple of years to come up with procedures I mean with Debian it took them one year to come up with a procedure for how to integrate new members of a project right and so it was a kind of very clever set of testing procedures that they decided to do it was one year and so maybe for some of these procedures for Torra and Debian will take a couple years and then once they exist it would be good to kind of get them out in the world to help other projects start to deal with it because it's much easier for community projects than employer based projects it takes us a long time too I mean our code of conduct took a very long time to to work out and and that's problematic on the other hand the strength of that kind of a process is that at the end you do tend to end up with something that's quite nuanced and robust and actually does manage to handle the complications around a lot of things you know I mean one of the things we face in within the Wikipedia context just purely from the Wikipedia editing context is you know everybody assumes we'll have a lot of trouble with trolls trolls are super easy just bam like vandalism bam bam bam the hard ones are the people who are doing really good work but they're just unbelievably annoying because then you end up with people with different perspectives of like well we can't really understand because I mean amazing what they're doing on this obscure area of Wikipedia on the other hand are they driving away more people than they're helping etc etc and that ends up being very judgment call and so a policy which is too simplistic can't account for okay what about a person who just they just need a little social help as long as somebody can adopt them and kind of help them not be too annoying maybe that'll be complicated and written policies to deal with that are it takes a long time to get it right yeah yeah it's a so I think that that you know that that question of how we how we do encourage that diversity you can mark that off on your bingo cards how we do encourage diversity is really is really important I think the other aspect of it is that you know small l liberal tradition of ideas about freedom of speech that that we should be that everyone kind of has a right to participate that we can solve problems through discussion and these are you know things that in a lot of ways are the underlying base of our projects kind of depend on without us necessarily thinking about them and there are also issues that are kind of under under threat in 2017 the idea that debate and discussion is good for society and good for a project is no longer universally accepted what are what does the changing role of discussion discourse and freedom in projects like Wikipedia I mean I don't think those ideas are very much under threat in this room right with the Wikipedia community because we all know the value of chewing on things and debating and in good faith debating and really trying to explore ideas and try to get it right and understand the nuances and things like that where that's very robust where I do see a real problem is to the extent that breaks down elsewhere then people begin to assume that because Wikipedia doesn't echo mindlessly the narrative you heard about climate change on Fox News that we're some kind of we're part of the left-wing conspiracy or whatever it might be and you can go in the other direction and find examples from the left of the rarer and to the extent that then people if people begin to assume that all writing is biased and partisan at its core then you begin to break down trust and you can concede that of course all writing has a bias to some extent but there is a difference between really trying hard to be as neutral as you can really trying hard to be as fact-based as you can and just going crazy then there's hope and I actually think a lot of what people are saying about post-truth world and all of that is it's not like human beings have fundamentally changed people still do value good solid information Wikipedia is unbelievably popular even in the face of being extremely uncompetitive on certain metrics clickbait headlines and things like that I mean we're not shareable content in the way that you see so many outlets pursuing and yet people still come to Wikipedia because they just want the facts yeah so I do think this is an interesting moment it's not the first moment where as you said Jimmy people in this room see the value of dialogue, debate and I work at a university that has many of the same values but I think this moment is important because it does show that while we can't give these up they may not be enough necessarily always to convince people of the truth that sometimes simply confronting other ideas even if they're right it's necessary but people come from very different positions they have certain biases certain kind of visions of the world and this will color the way that they interpret things and so there's this kind of idea that part of the problem in terms of post truth is that people are in their little filter bubble and that's true to some degree but actually if you read some of the kind of news coming out of the alt-right conservative world they first of all link to the New York Times to the Huffington Post they're quoting them and so they're confronting that material and they're just interpreting it quite differently and there's this one moment where this really hit home for me it was when Sally Yates was giving her testimony in Congress the kind of liberal progressive Twitterverse was like Sally Yates is killing it she's awesome and then I was also following the conservative kind of feeds and they're like Ted Cruz is killing it Sally Yates is doing terrible and we were seeing the same thing and I think it's just really important to confront this because the work of creating dialogue sometimes has to exceed putting information out there even though I do think that's a base requirement and as an educator I do think this is a particularly important place for that to happen because with students I actually see them multiple times a week and that's a sustained long-term kind of practical conversation and it's that sustained conversation in person face-to-face that matters as much as sort of confronting different information out there which may or may not convince people. I'm glad that we got around to US politics eventually we took a while to get to it because it's one of the main questions on the questions page I'd like to thank everyone who's been footnoting the questions in the question page like getting those citations in there very important one of the questions from the early days of Wikipedia we have taken advantage of the relative freedoms of publishing copyright and libel law hosting the project in the US the US has really been the gold standard for publishing freedom. If those laws become more hostile what are the community's options? Well I mean that's that's a tough question so I think we can look at and take a realistic approach to which pieces of those are likely to become more hostile. So one I mean the first amendment is the first amendment and we're unlikely to see any law passed requiring us to take down content critical of Donald Trump right that's that is not at risk yet until we see him arrest the Supreme Court and that's all we're in a whole other world there but there are things about Section 230 so intermediary liability where that is not automatic in the law that could be changed it could be changed in ways that are incredibly detrimental to our work you know right now the community does a fantastic job I mean if you look at our transparency report the number of takedowns that the Wikimedia Foundation honors is microscopic but also the number of complaints we get compared to other platforms is microscopic and that's because the community does a fantastic job of policing copyright violations and so on and so forth but let's imagine that the Wikimedia Foundation if a user posts a copyright violation and the community takes it down but it was up for five minutes and yet the foundation could be sued for millions for that breach meaning we would have to have staff pre-approve everything that's posted it would destroy Wikimedia that's not likely to happen because obviously there are powerful interests alongside us well there's powerful interest including us because we would go black for a day and freak everybody out but there could be shifts in the law in the US that could make it harder for us to do our work and the problem is there aren't that many jurisdictions around the world who would be easy I mean Europe has a lot of problems Canada has a lot of problems and it becomes quite tricky and I think this is an area where we need to be continue to be proactive at explaining why a certain legal framework is necessary in order for Wikimedia to thrive and sort of making the foundation responsible for everything that everyone does isn't an answer even though it might feel like an answer to the problems of Twitter for example even though there I would say it's a bad idea yeah good yeah I think it's a very interesting question and I think it's one as the project has continuously grown more international the questions around leadership from western European culture from North American cultures is something that's really interesting there I mean maybe I'll add a small thing go to it I mean there have been some threats against journalists in the United States right with phones being tapped with the Associated Press and also they're supposed to have very strong source protections the journalists are supposed to be able to not have to reveal their sources but Obama went after folks like James Risen very strongly and I just think it's again what's so important about this community is that there is a community that has a lot of affinities with journalism even if it's not journalism that can precisely support each other at moments when those press freedoms are under attack yeah and that's the kind of I think there's some indirect danger to the project but Wikipedia itself is directly undermined but to the extent that journalism is undermined then clearly our sources are not as good and knowledge becomes not as high quality and so forth so there's a another question which I really like and I'm going to read here how can we bring back the positivism and progressivism that was dominating the first 20 years of the web and I kind of want to first ask is there actually a golden age of the internet or the web that we're passing out of and is it important for us to reach back to it and get back to it for both of you I mean for me I always say I'm a pathological optimist so I think everything's fine I think it's quite easy to look back with nostalgia on an era and forget that it wasn't great in lots of ways and I don't think we're passing out of a golden age of the web I mean there are threats and there are dangers for sure certainly the rise of walled garden platforms and things like that has been problematic although the walled gardens aren't that walled as much as people might have feared at some point and I think we're alright still yeah I mean it is I think very easy to paint the past as this like rosy time but I mean one of the great things about the present compared to the past is way more people are online doing things finding each others are very different types of communities from people with illnesses who kind of connect and share information to all sorts of political communities right like we that's what we wanted and that's what's happening and when you get the world on the internet you get the world's problems on the internet as well right and a lot of what we see which is horrible has to do with the fact that you know humans are complicated and do a lot of horrible things as well as wonderful things as well but I think one of the great things about the online world is that software is still a lot easier to take and change than physical infrastructure you know Montreal is famous for being under constant construction and it is just a nightmare when they pull down massive highways that are going through the city and everything's really disruptive and it costs so much money and it takes forever and with software yes there's a lot of problems right but there are ways which a kind of software solution can be easier to erect or fix than kind of cement infrastructural one right and that just gives me a little bit of optimism that solutions sometimes can be more realistic to implement and change on the internet so long as people are allowed to connect to the internet and attach software as long as you don't have to ask permission for that it's a slightly more dynamic egalitarian space even though there's all sorts of problems with the internet as well one of the things that I think is a remarkable positive change in the last few years is that encrypted chat apps is pretty much the norm like everybody uses WhatsApp and telegram and the idea that a government encryption is just a joke now it's completely absurd and occasionally in the UK they saber rattle about this from time to time but it's like right sure you're not going to do that it's stupid whereas that wasn't always so clear the idea of I mean trying to do PGP email is still a freaking nightmare it's hard but most people now have completely easy access to very good quality encryption and they use it and that means the public doesn't think of it as something crazy terrorists are doing off in a corner they just think oh right it just means my chats are secure I think that's a great example precisely where in some ways a lot of the pieces were in place people were working towards it and then the right political conditions like Snowden and the revelations came into being and it kind of accelerated the process and precisely it's far more common today and I think the important thing is again to make sure that we have a robust community of people who want to contribute to these projects right because still a number of these projects are community driven and you know it's not necessarily the case in 40 years that you will have a kind of robust community of geeks and librarians, technologists contributing to these community projects so it's always important to think about the health of the community because they're the ones feeding into these really important projects so we're running out of time and I have one final question which is kind of stems from our previous discussion about Basel Kartaval who you know I think for me as someone who's always participated in free culture projects from a safe place of privilege in the western world it's kind of an honor to have someone like that as a as a colleague and as a kind of fellow traveler and I guess what I wanted to ask for both of you is that there are you know thousands of people like Basel out there right now doing this work in conflict zones in repressive regimes in inocracies like what would you use if you were well we are if you were speaking directly to those people right now what would you say to them be careful be safe encryption be careful about your identity online be thoughtful about these kinds of things I actually want to mention I think he's here in the room who's saying I've met at the very first Wikimani in Frankfurt I think it's the first time we met in person spent several years in prison in Iran and is free now and for a long time we worried about what would happen to him so talk to someone like him he's here is he here hello he's not raising his hand so maybe he's out so I'm talking to people but you know it's important like if you're living in a difficult area talk to others who've been through it and talk to others about best practices and things like that to be safe and make sure the foundation is aware of you and so we can try to help if something happens but the best thing is don't get arrested in the first place that's my advice and it's often the case sometimes I mean this I'm a little bit more familiar with like the hacker world where some people are taking risks and there was a lot of arrests in 2011 and 12 and a lot less today I mean sadly sometimes certain tragedies are these visible flash points and best practices do kind of emerge from them after and there are the tools that help with this but it requires extreme discipline as well to have good security and it's a kind of constant process as well that one can never let go of but oftentimes these tragedies can be the basis for you know I guess learning and education so in the future people can be better protected and hopefully that will happen from this awesome well Jimmy Biala thank you very much really appreciate it and thanks everyone amazing alright can I have a mic