Wikipedia:Oral citations experiment

As a pre-conference event of the 2014 Participatory Design conference in Windhoek, Namibia, there will be a workshop on oral citations for Wikipedia. The workshop runs from 1 to 3 October 2014, its purpose is to collect information that can only be referenced to oral sources, use this information to expand existing (or write new) articles, and thus create a repository of oral citations to support current and future policy discussions.

This experiment is organised by Peter Gallert and funded by the Wikimedia Foundation, Wikipedia editors will be supported with a maximum of 1,000 US$ per person for travel and subsistence. The workshop is open only for invited participants. Editors that want to participate need to follow the instructions below.

Workshop description

Abstract

Wikipedia has made tremendous progress towards its mission to provide free access to sum of human knowledge, but indigenous knowledge is largely excluded because majority of it is not available in writing. I propose a workshop where narratives are directly converted into Wikipedia content with oral citations. We will thus be able to present two scenarios for a set of Wikipedia articles: One restricted to ordinary, written sources, and one that utilises narratives originating from indigenous knowledge. We hope to be able to dismiss the suspicion by Wikipedia's editor community that the online encyclopedia has nothing to gain from the inclusion of indigenous knowledge.

Introduction

Participatory design is the direct and active involvement of users in the design of products. It has the aim of improving technologies, institutions, tools, software, and the like, through co-design, so that the user is not merely an afterthought but at the center of the design process. The Participatory Design Conference (PDC) is a biannual conference on co-creation of technology and art. It has been conducted since 1990, the 2014 PDC will be the first PDC on the African continent. My employer, the Polytechnic of Namibia is the host. PDC is a quite prestigious conference. Its proceedings are Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) rated, and it is possibly the international event on Participatory Design.

As part of this conference I will conduct a workshop with scientists and experienced Wikipedians to include oral citations in English Wikipedia articles, in the domain of indigenous knowledge (IK). Participants will interview knowledge bearers in their rural environment, create alternative article versions with oral citations as subpages of this page in the Wikipedia: name space of the English Wikipedia, and reference the content to the knowledge bearer's narrative.

The workshop is an experiment aimed at giving examples of what wealth of indigenous knowledge exists and how this knowledge can be utilised to improve articles on Wikipedia. For a few selected articles, it will allow a comparison between 'only conventional sources used' and 'enriched by oral citations'. I believe this would be filling a few gaps in the occasional discussions on the validity of oral citations: the situation that very few oral citations have ever been included in English Wikipedia articles, and the situation that where oral citations indeed have been included, their inclusion was accompanied by other (perceived or real) deficiencies.

Wikipedia at its core is a result of participatory design; essentially all writers of the encyclopedia are also readers, and many writers are policy makers. Yet through technical (Internet access), practical (hurdles for newbies) and conceptual (exclusion of oral knowledge repositories) restrictions, entire populations are excluded from reading, writing, or both. The 'participatory design' aspect of this workshop lies in combining the knowledge and skill of three distinct groups (Knowledge bearers, Wikipedians, Scientists) working on one set of Wikipedia articles.

This workshop has been inspired by a number of theoretical considerations, referenced in the link section above. The main claim is that there is something like a 'sterling' oral citation: A knower, speaking on their area of expertise, at an official occasion, in front of a general audience. As an analogy, a museum curator, explaining an exhibit in their museum as part of an official tour, would be a reliable, independent, verifiable third-party source: The next curator would essentially give the same information, the core content of the narrative would be the same on every official tour. It is not the type of content I am concentrating on because this type of information is often also available in writing, but I think it is a suitable analogy to convince people that credible oral citations can in principle exist.

Background

Wikimedia Foundation previously founded the meta:Research:Oral citations project by aprabhala. This experiment is a follow-up.

• Grant discussion and approval on Meta
• Pre-release of a book chapter on the relationship between English Wikipedia and indigenous knowledge. The pre-release was reviewed in the November 2013 Wikimedia Research Newsletter.
• Wikimania 2013 talk on Indigenous knowledge for Wikipedia: Bending the rules? (video here).
• meta:Research:Indigenous Knowledge, the research project to which this workshop project belongs
• Web site of the research cluster where this project is located: Indigenous Knowledge Technologies
• Web site of the portal we develop to disseminate indigenous knowledge: Namibia Knowledge Portal

Workshop schedule

The workshop runs 1-3 October 2014. It is a pre-conference event; the main conference runs 6-10 October.

1. Wed 1 October (voluntary): Morning session in the Namibiana section of the library of the Polytechnic of Namibia. The adopted article will, if possible, be expanded using offline written sources. After this session, all existing articles that have been improved are copied into the Wikipedia: name space so that they become a subpage of this page
2. Wed 1 October, afternoon, on the road: Travel to Otjinene
3. Thu 2 October, Otjinene: Interviews with knowledge bearers in the rural community, and expansion of articles from the list
4. Fri 3 October, morning, on the road: Travel back to Windhoek
5. Fri 3 October (voluntary): Afternoon session in a computer lab of the Polytechnic of Namibia for wrap-up and discussion

Scholarships

This workshop is supported by the Wikipedia Foundation with a maximum of 10 scholarships of a maximum of 1,000 US$ each. Details on the scholarship design are outlined here on meta.

Important dates

• Due date to respond to the Call for Participation: 22 July 2014, 23:59 UTC, responsible: all prospective participants
• Notification of acceptance of participants: 28 July 2014, responsible: User:pgallert
• Notification of acceptance of invitation to the workshop, and provision of travel information: 4 August 2014, 23:59 UTC, all prospective participants
• Notification of readiness of the workshop to PDC: 5 August 2014, responsible: User:pgallert

Call for Participation

1. Prospective participants adopt at least one open topic from the article list below, first come, first served. They use written sources to develop the article in main space as far as possible. In the event that there are no usable written sources at all, prospective participants document briefly on the list itself why the topic has to remain a red link for now (e.g. only passing mentions instead of coverage, only primary sources, only unreliable sources, no Google / Scholar hits, etc). Due date: 22 July 2014, 23:59 UTC, responsible: all prospective participants
   • Please use the {{doing}} template next to the article entry below if you decided on a topic, and sign.
   • If you are finished, please send an email to pgallertpolytechnic.edu.na, stating:
     1. your name and sex as they appear on your passport
     2. which article from the article list you developed
     3. whether you have registered for PDC 2014 or not (Note: If you only attend the workshop but not the conference, you need not register for the conference. Conference fees (about 300US$, TBD) are not refunded by me.
     4. your Wikipedia username and home wiki, if any
     5. your nearest bus terminal or airport
     6. if you don't live in Namibia or in a country neighboring Namibia: How you will raise the funds that exceed 1,000US$
     7. whether you require an invitation letter to obtain a visum
     8. any special requirements (dietary, accommodation, access, etc)
     9. a phone number to contact you
2. The workshop facilitator vets the entries that have been produced, as well as the general Wikipedia experience of the applicants. Prospective participants must, as a minimum, have produced content on English Wikipedia that still exists, and that even after thorough scrutiny would not be deleted or be peppered with maintenance templates. The amount of contributions is only a secondary criterion, a proof of concept (even if provided only during step 1) is sufficient to pass this stage. For the adopted entry on the list, a reasonable effort must have been made to develop content, or to document the impossibility thereof. Due: 28 July 2014, responsible: User:Pgallert
3. The workshop facilitator briefly vets the Wikipedia decorum of prospective participants. Editors in long-term conflict with the Wikipedia community will not be invited. Due: 28 July 2014, responsible: User:Pgallert
4. If there are more than 12 prospective participants that pass the vetting stage the workshop facilitator will categorise and rank them to determine who will be invited. The categories are a) researcher / scientist, b) Wikipedian. People belonging to the intersection of a) and b) may accumulate their score. Criteria for a high ranking are:
   • How certain is it that they will indeed attend? For researchers: Are they presenting at PDC? Have they paid the registration fee? Have they attended PDC in the past? For Wikipedians: Will the scholarship cover their S&T expenses? Do they have other funding to cover the gap, if any?
   • How much help would they likely need to produce standard (i.e., non-orally referenced) English Wikipedia content? For researchers: Are there indications of advanced computer literacy? How well-published are they? Did they ever contribute to tertiary sources of information, including Wikipedia? For Wikipedians: Are they of the 'content contributor' type? Is there any featured content they developed? Do they hold the 'autopatrolled' permission? For all: Does the adopted article from the list meet Wikipedia requirements?
5. Scholarships will be awarded as follows: all people in Category b (Wikipedian), highest ranking first, then people in category a (researcher / scientist), highest ranking first.

Article list

Note: I will add a few more geographical topics in the next few days.

• Specific topics:
  • Otjinene
  • Otjinene Constituency
  • Sangoma (What's the difference to a traditional healer, to which it currently redirects?)
  • Omuroi (a verb in Otjiherero Language, translate to a night-flyer, a form of witch where a person fly at night)
  • Herero people, section Politics
  • Herero people, in section Politics: Red Flag (traditional custom)
  • Mbanderu people, section Politics
  • Mbanderu people, in section Politics: Green Flag (traditional custom)
  • Mbanderu people, in section Politics: White Flag (traditional custom)
  • Mbanderu people, in section Politics: Green-White-Black Flag (traditional custom)
  • Herero people, section domestic animals  Doing...
  • Hunting, in section National traditions: OvaMbanderu

• Common topics: In one or all of the three articles Herero people, Mbanderu people, Himba people (because these properties are largely shared among all three tribes), a section on:
  • Homestead
  • Holy fire
  • Family trees (ejanda, plural omaanda)
  • Wedding rituals
  • Funeral rituals
  • Hunting rituals and hunting practices
  • Cattle
  • Other domestic animals
  • Homestead
  • the relationship between the three tribes

• Lists
  • List of rules of the Herero people (develop 5 entries)--Rberchie (talk) 13:12, 2 July 2014 (UTC)
  • List of medicinal plants of the Herero people (develop 5 entries) Doing...--Rberchie (talk) 13:12, 2 July 2014 (UTC)