The question that you are asked when you go to Wikimania is, Why are you here? I kept replying that I came to learn first hand how others are using wikis and Wikipedia in real world circumstances; and I was in the neighbourhood.
The real reason is more suspect. I went to Wikimania because I wanted to actually see the people that do it, Wikipedia in particular. The people that make it happen. I wanted to see what these humans looked liked and how they talked and how they walked. What kind of person would actually spend their spare time adding their knowledge to something that by its nature allows someone else to come along and edit or erase, or worse contradict, the knowledge that they have given. And then, not to take credit for it.
Well, that’s just whack.
So who are they? They are like everyone else who has a penchant for making social tools stronger. They are like those people that want to share what they know, their knowledge, even when you don’t ask for it. They are just like those kinds of people who want more from technology, and more from knowledge. They are like anyone and everyone you’ll ever meet.
I did learn other stuff, too. I learned about how wikis are being used to strengthen marginalised communities. I learned how organisations are using wikis to strengthen their workflow and internal operations. I even learned how Wikipedia is strengthening the integrity of user input. Whatever, right?
Wikimania 2006 has been blogged quite well. Yet, I believe, the underblogged of the whole event are the librarians. [That's all I'm saying, they were underblogged. I neither promise to write sufficiently nor will I.] This session was a panel composed of Meredith Farkas, Mary Carmen Chimato, Ellyssa Kroski, and Maureen Clements. They were my favourite because of my recent awareness of the awesomeness of what it takes to be a librarian and what it takes to run a library. As an aside, I’ve been using a local library in the US while here from which to work.
There were many other sessions worthy of note, many other folks very worth of note, however I ought to make clear really why I went. Intellectually, I support Wikimedia and their free-content projects
, specifically Wikipedia. Detractors, as is their wont and as valid as they may be, decry qualities of Wikipedia that are irrelevant to its discussion in the now. Concept and infrastructure have never been the best of friends. Let us leave the cynics where they lie.
I assume that searching for knowledge is the reason one would seek an encyclopaedia. They are in search of an answer to a question. In my assumption, I attend the seeker to believe that the only tangible affect one can garner from knowledge is another question that will lead them to another, et cetera, and never the answer. An encyclopaedia. is only a resource. There may be an appearance of striving for definitiveness, however the permanence of a resource ought not and does not equate to authority. It never has.
