Category: Culture

Be Informed

You have a computer that can access all of human knowledge within seconds. Please don’t remain ignorant. Do a little research, read opposing views, learn more about something you’re not familiar with.

“Now, we are caught in a series of confusing battles between opposing forces: between truth and falsehood, fact and rumour, kindness and cruelty; between the few and the many, the connected and the alienated; between the open platform of the web as its architects envisioned it and the gated enclosures of Facebook and other social networks; between an informed public and a misguided mob.

What is common to these struggles – and what makes their resolution an urgent matter – is that they all involve the diminishing status of truth. This does not mean that there are no truths. It simply means, as this year has made very clear, that we cannot agree on what those truths are, and when there is no consensus about the truth and no way to achieve it, chaos soon follows.”

How technology disrupted the truth – The Guardian

Notes from the first Enterprise MediaWiki Conference

On May 22 – 25 I attended the first Enterprise MediaWiki Conference (EMWCon) in New York City. It’s a continuation of the similarly named SMWCon, but with a strong emphasis on all flavors of MediaWiki and how it is used in organizations large and small. I was able attend in my capacity as a staff member of the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF), but have had a personal interest in the MediaWiki community for a few years now. I thought it would be helpful to write down a few notes on my experiences and share those with folks within the Wikimedia movement.

At the conference I learned how folks are using MediaWiki, what difficulties they face in their use, and their concerns for the future of the platform. 1

Quick Take Aways

A few large points that struck me as worth mentioning.

  • There are many people using MediaWiki in interesting and unique ways. This is the 4th MediaWiki-focused event I’ve attended in the last two years and at each one I’ve discovered new uses in new industries. This time around? Johnson & Johnson, General Electric, a large banking company, and a large oil company all use MediaWiki in some capacity to help document and share knowledge within their organizations. This is on top of groups like Circ du Soleil, MITRE, NATO, and NASA that I was already aware of. I was also impressed by the half a dozen independent developers who support organizations in using MediaWiki. Some folks have smaller organizations with smaller wikis – which is impressive. It’s even crazier to think that this bit of open-source software can be used inside so many large, well-known, organizations – often to great success.
  • Users of MediaWiki – specifically those that write their own code – want acknowledgment. They want to know that the folks who are pointing MediaWiki toward its future are aware of these diverse use cases and keep that in mind when making decisions that would impact non-WMF-supported use.
  • They also want to know what the WMF’s plans are. They want to be reassured – and to be able to reassure others within their organizations, that MediaWiki will be around. A simple, high-level roadmap would do wonders here. There is a large ask of the foundation to make a decision on what sort of support will be offered – even if the answer is an uncomfortable “nothing” it would be better than the current strain of “Eh, we really don’t know.” At one point during the conference I made the joke that the WMF had ‘cookie licked’ MediaWiki. :p
  • I had one attendee, a long-time MediaWiki admin and community member, ask me, “Am I a volunteer? A contributor?” This is from someone whose organization has no less than 14 extensions on MediaWiki.org and who has contributed code to the core development of MediaWiki. They were not certain if their contributions were as valued given that what they work on has a much larger impact on third-party users than Wikimedia projects. People within the MediaWiki community want equal treatment and respect as developer contributors.
  • Lastly, the WMF should consider the impact this community has had in the development of MediaWiki as a popular and healthy open-source software. There is an incredible financial worth in the patches and extensions contributed by third parties. I mean, to be frank, we have people working at NASA and MITRE (among others) sharing their work with the MediaWiki community. The time and talent alone is something that should be considered a strength within our community.

MWF?

Another topic that has been gaining steam recently in the MediaWiki community is the idea of a “MediaWiki Foundation”. A non-profit organization that focuses on the core development of MediaWiki as an open-source software project – influenced by all parties equally. I think it’s going to happen in some capacity.

Generally speaking the MediaWiki community agrees it won’t be the big, giant, dramatic change like moving all of MediaWiki ownership out of the WMF.

Instead the focus will be on small deliverables. Right now the MediaWiki Stakeholder’s user group is looking for a small task on the wishlist, funding (passing a hat around!) and working to show that something was accomplished. Then, after being able to show their work, approach the WMF with a request for some of their time to discuss how they could work together. If you’re interested in following along, check out the MediaWiki Stakeholders’ wiki and the #mwstake room in the Wikimedia Phabricator.

A Real Community

While some wikis are internal and not public, the folks at the conference freely shared their experiences and knowledge for others to benefit from. One attendee described the community and our relationship with one another in an interesting way. We’re not competing with each other to ‘build the best wiki’ but we are competing together against closed, propriatrty systems of knowledge management that permeate organizations across industries. These systems have an antiquated model of documenting and sharing knowledge that is antithesis to truly sharing information to empower members of the org. For example, SharePoint sets permissions to be closed by default. You have to know the information exists, somewhere in the laybranith of SharePoint sites, before you can request access to it!

I think that this event acknowledges that we come together freely to share across industries and uses. It is endemic of having a natural community – not one forced out of branding, marketing, or sales departments within a for-profit organization.

Wikipedians in our midst

While the conference was focused on MediaWiki use outside of Wikimedia projects, attendees did have an opportunity to get to know more about the Wikimedia world and meet folks who are involved in related projects. One of our hosts, Pharos, is a long-time editor on English Wikipedia, president of the NYC chapter, and was a Wikipedian-in-residence at the Guggenheim Museum.

At the end of the first day the NYC chapter brought pizza and people together to talk about what they had been working on. I met no less than 3 individuals involved in Afrocrowd.org, a Wikipedia project I had never heard of until this event!

I also met a long-time MediaWikian, Frank Taylor, who was interested in the work the WMF was doing around emerging communities. He even offered to put the folks at the foundation working on this outreach in contact with folks he has worked with in Central and South America. Which is a kind and unexpected example of the communities sharing interests!

Conclusion

I encourage folks to attend future EMWCons (and SMWCons). They are a great opportunity to learn and share with one another, to create relationships beyond Talk pages, and to grow an already impressive community. In particular I would like to invite the following groups.

  • WMF staff who work on MediaWiki core development, planning, and developer relations.
  • People who use MediaWiki – or are interested in using a wiki!
  • People who want to encourage open-source software and free knowledge – even when the knowledge is shared not among the entirety of humanity. There is a very real halo effect in people using MediaWiki. The philosophy of the wiki changes organizations approach to sharing and working together. It breeds familiarity with many aspects of the wider Wikimedia movement. I know I’m only a factor of one, but my Wikimedia contributions are born out of the use of MediaWiki within a ‘closed’ organization. 2

See also

One of the Hiring Questions

When I applied for the position of community liaison at the Wikimedia Foundation I was given a set of questions to answer. Here’s one that I think was important. The answer I gave is something I try to remember when working with people who have an approach to dialog that is unlike mine.

What might you say to someone whose feedback is unconstructive?

  • Listen, ask clarifying questions, encourage action.

Unconstructive feedback usually comes from passion. That’s good! We don’t want apathetic contributors. Sometimes that passion can manifest in misguided ways. Sometimes culture plays a role in interpretation and intent. So first I’d be patient and empathetic. Maybe the editor is having a bad day. Assume good faith and engage positively with the individual. Politely remind them that their behavior reflects on the community as a whole and ask them to remember to remain civil.

If people are sticking around – on talk pages, in conversations, Phab tasks – but frustrated, I’d like to know why. Is there history there? Past experiences? Can we use our own positive behaviors to shift those expectations? For example, if someone says, “Yeah right. You’ll never get back to me. People always promise to and don’t.” I’d be sure to make a note that getting back to people is a perceived negative and use positive behavior (getting back to people when I say I will) to negate that argument.

Another big part of engaging with folks in the wiki way – transparent to a fault – is to make sure that you’re talking to the audience, not just to the person who is being unconstructive. Let others who are reading know that you’re remaining positive and constructive with your actions and don’t let things devolve. I’m a fan/practitioner of the Charles’ Rules of Argument (http://fishbowl.pastiche.org/2004/03/21/charles_rules_of_argument/). No jokes or sarcasm. Keep things simple.

In the end, you can still accomplish a lot with a diverse and productive community.

Surveillance Self-Defense 101 Notes

On Friday I attended a free workshop at SLU Law hosted by the National Lawyers Guild – St. Louis Chapter and the Electronic Frontier Foundation titled Surveillance Self-Defense 101: A CLE Workshop for Lawyers, Students & Activists. It was a pretty cool event and I learned a lot about not only how to keep oneself secure when it comes to surveillance, but also some of the issues and concerns activists and lawyers face when working with complex technology and law.

Here are a few of my notes. These are a bit ramble-ly, but I hope useful for anyone who couldn’t attend or a refresher for those that did.

Three rules of security.

1. No such thing as total security – just shades of more or less secure

2. We didn’t ‘go dark’. We were dark for many years, until folks started using technology they thought was secure, but wasn’t. Our ‘going dark’ is just returning to a state prior. Encryption, as a form of security, is one way we ‘go back’.

Security vs convince vs money – if you have more money you can pay someone to make something that is convenient AND secure. Less money often means less security at the cost of convince.

Https was an example that was secure, but not convenient and it cost money. Newer programs help to make the net secure, convent, and inexpensive.

3. Think about security as understanding your weakest link in a circle of security. You can have secure independent systems, but the weakest tool/service/avenue can undo all of that.

You might not have anything to hide, but those you work for (clients) or with (peers) might. Making yourself vulnerable puts them at risk. you can become the weakest link.

“Threat Models” can be grouped into three general types – personal, political, legal.

Personal – how our personal life is interacting with the world. Using personal email addresses for affairs(!) or political activism. Overlapping your personal and other areas of your life puts your assets at risk!

Again, look back to the weakest link. Who might be acting against you? What might they do if they can connect your personal life with your activist/professional/legal, etc.?

Example: Twitter accounts – influential accounts like FEMA, could have a higher threat model than say an individual, given that access to their account could cause serious damage – like a large-spread panic (Emergency flood warning for New York City!)

Assets – what do you have to protect? Rosters, client lists, strategy documents, SSN of family, medical history, finances, etc.

Federal government can’t keep the addresses of CIA agents secret – for 6 months the Chinese government infiltrated the portion of the government in charge of personnel records.

What we know of the NSA is only the tip of the iceberg – what Snowden revealed 3 years ago is only a small part of their capabilities.

Subversion (especially with minorities) by governments of communities (threats or promises (green cards)).

Not just federal, but local as well. Stingray devices – we only knew because someone who was being prosecuted found references in court documents. License plate readers and intersection light cameras as other venues of surveillance.

The fight against surveillance is at multiple levels (just like the focus – dragnet, targeted, on the street)

Street – cameras on street corners – fight with a local ordinance

Alderpeople have a discretionary budget where these street cameras are coming from!

Local – police department license plate readers – fight with laws, protest

Federal – ??? [I was sucked into an interesting story and didn’t take good notes here.]

Facial recognition does a poor job on darker skinned people – resulting in more false positives! Look for research this summer coming from Georgetown.

[We then broke into small groups and talked about our threat levels and assets]

Workshop questions

These are questions to ask yourself when determining your threat models for the various tools, software, services, hardware, you use and the data and information contained within.

  • What are your assets?
  • What do you need to protect?
  • What are in your communications?
  • What are the threats to those assets?
  • Who would want it?
  • How bad would that be (if they got access)?
  • How badly do they want it?
  • How high on the dial do you need to wrap your security?

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Lawyers Speak Out About Massive Hack of Prisoners’ Phone Records

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Tools

Signal for Mobile messaging – encryption from end-to-end. Can be your default txt app on Android.

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[I was able to ask a question to the hosts.]

Media, both fictional like TV shows and movies, and uh, factual like news reporting often poorly conveys the nuance of technology – especially around hacking, encryption, privacy etc.

What recommendations do you have in combating this skewed interpretations of reality?

[The answer was to advocate knowledge to people you work with, help educate others, and keep learning and sharing your knowledge.]