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Board: In July 2010 I was selected for a two-year term on the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees through the chapters seat selection process. Wow.

You can read my candidacy statement and question answers here: statement | Q&A. I am happy to answer questions anytime. Note: unless explicitly stated otherwise, please assume that any edits or statements I make here (or on any other projects) I am making as a community member and not in any official capacity whatsoever.


Contents
me
Hello! And welcome. My name is Phoebe Ayers. I am a librarian, currently based in Seattle, Washington Davis, California. I've been writing about, editing and using Wikipedia on and off since August 2003 (with a couple extended breaks, when my life was rudely interrupted by graduate school). There is always something else I want to do.

I work on Wikipedia, but I also talk about it a lot; I give a fair number of presentations about the site, particularly to librarian groups, and I am happy to share my notes. I am also interested in Wikip/media research. I worked on Wikimania 2006 (see below), also worked on Wikimania 2007, helped choose the location for Wikimania 2008 (and Wikimania 2009!) and am interested in events, outreach, and teaching Wikipedia (and wikis) generally.

I am interested in good essays about Wikipedia; please add them to essays.

on meta ~~ on other projects
"Wikipedia: making reference desks obsolete since 2003" -- Austin

[edit] Book: How Wikipedia Works

With Charles Matthews and Ben Yates, I am the author of How Wikipedia Works, a book about using and editing Wikipedia. It was published in September 2008 by No Starch Press. Find more information here, or find the full text of the book at How Wikipedia Works. The book is licensed under the GFDL and covers all aspects of Wikipedia from a community perspective.

If you are interested in leaving comments or questions, please add them to this wiki for now, or feel free to email me. The old page about the book, with suggestions, can be found here; user:phoebe/book; Feel free to email me if you would like to be notified of announcements and news about the book. Cheers!

[edit] Things I do around here:

[edit] Community member

  • Editor on en:wp since August 2003
  • I also served on the now-defunct m:Special Projects Committee, as of May 2006.
  • for the past year or so, I have been summarizing the Foundation-l mailing list at the List Summary Service; hopefully this is useful to those who need to quickly catch up with the list.
  • I can often be found on IRC, where I go by brassratgirl; and can sometimes be found sending long-winded posts to various Wikipedia mailing lists. I almost always regret this in the morning.

[edit] Conferences and meetups

Wikimania: I care a lot about making Wikimania a great conference, and I have done a lot of organizational work both on-site and on-wiki, including reworking the meta and internal pages about the conference. Also:

  • I was the program co-chair (and general conference co-coordinator) for Wikimania 2006.
  • I also helped with the program a bit and co-chaired the scholarships committee for Wikimania 2007 (aka Taipeimania)
  • I helped out a bit but didn't do as much for Wikimania 2008...
  • but am once again on the program committee for Wikimania 2009, which will be held in lovely Buenos Aires
  • I was on the bid selection committee for Wikimania 2007 and Wikimania 2008, because of being a past organizer; the bid jury helps pick a conference location out of the bidding cities.
  • For the bid juries for Wikimania 2009 and Wikimania 2010, I was the jury moderator, which means I didn't vote but did try to wrangle people into consensus, ran lots of meetings, etc.
  • I have also presented or moderated at all five Wikimanias:
  • Wikimania 2005: I gave a talk on user impressions of Wikipedia, based on a small qualitative study I did at UW
  • Wikimania 2006: With James Forrester, I ran an open discussion about research in Wikipedia
  • Wikimania 2007: I moderated several rounds of lightning talks and some other talks
  • Wikimania 2008: I co-organized and participated in a panel about libraries and Wikipedia; and I ran a rather silly but quite successful workshop about making sockpuppets
  • Wikimania 2009: I am hoping to run a couple of open discussions about community meetups

Other stuff: I've also done a lot with other wiki events and wiki research.

  • I'm interested in and participate in Wikipedia and wiki research. I presented a short paper at m:Wikimania 2005; recently completed a literature review of ongoing research that will be presented at ASIS&T'06; and helped with a hugely successful research BoF at Wikimania '06.
  • I was the "Wikimedia liason" for WikiSym '07, and was on the program committee. I'm also on the program committee for WikiSym 2008, to be held in Porto, Portugal (I might not get to attend though, which is a shame). I am once again Wikimedia Liaison for Wikisym 2009, to be held in Orlando, Florida.
  • I helped out with Recent Changes Camp San Francisco, May 9-11 2008: "The family reunion for the wiki ohana!"
  • Attempting to organize more regular San Francisco-area meetups. We now have a mailing list -- see that page for details.

see also:

[edit] Signpost

  • I occasionally write for the Signpost, focusing on event reporting.
  • As of January 2009, I am the lead reporter for the news and notes section, writing almost every week.

[edit] Talks and research

  • I give general presentations about wikis and Wikipedia to various groups, particularly librarians. A handout I developed for librarians may be found here. I am happy to share slides, notes, and thoughts on what works & what doesn't.
  • I have worked on several research projects; see User:Phoebe/Research
  • User:Phoebe/outline

[edit] Things I care about

  • Foundation governance, transparency, and sustainability; integrating new contributors into governance smoothly; exploring what it really means to "lead with a community."
  • Goodwill and fun with my fellow Wikipedians: hence, meetups and Wikimania :) Events are very important to the community as a whole, and I encourage everyone to go to and organize meetups.
  • References and sources in articles. This is not about arguing whether crufty websites 'count' as sources; this is about making sure the 90% of totally verifiable content gets good references added, for the sake of the readers.
  • Communicating about Wikipedia.
  • Gender on the projects; the construction of outsiders versus insiders, and implications for creating knowledge.
  • Free knowledge; parse this as you will.
Real Life Barnstar.jpg The Real Life Barnstar
For your dedication to Wikipedia meetups, and that Kat had given you the RL version -- User:WikiLeon

[edit] a long answer to a short question

see also: an essay for Wikipedia Day

Why work on Wikipedia? For me, the answer is a matter of scale. As a librarian, I am in the business of helping make sure that people get the information that they are looking for in order to do their jobs, educate themselves, satisfy their curiosity and live a fulfilling life. I am also in the business of helping people discover relevant information towards these ends that they don't realize or imagine exists. Wikipedia -- meaning the collection of people that produce this site -- is also working towards these goals, but on a global, multilingual and hitherto unprecedented scale. Because of the very heavy use the site receives, the changes that you or I make to Wikipedia are likely to touch substantially more lives than any other possible way of contributing to the information universe at this moment. It's a simple matter of efficiency -- I work on Wikipedia, and try to make it better, in order to reach as many people as possible.

Eastern Phoebe

There are other reasons as well why this is a deeply important project: the Wikimedia Foundation projects represent one of the most diverse global online communities around. The projects provide a way to get to know people from other parts of the world, and learn about their similarities and cultural differences, in a way that is unmatched online. The Foundation and Wikipedia also represent projects that are perhaps more comprehensively volunteer-driven and volunteer-governed than any other similar undertaking; the projects provide a model for what other empowered collaborative undertakings could look like and achieve. And finally, the sheer scope of Wikipedia is unparalleled in history. There's never been a reference work like this before -- never one both so general and so detailed, one that tries to be all things to all people in all languages. Wikipedia's existence is due to an accident of being in the right technological place at the right time, but it now affords a chance to work on one of the grandest undertakings ever.

Wikipedia is generally a friendly place, but it's also filled with arguments, disagreements, and actions that are angering or upsetting. For the most part people work out those differences through peaceful processes and resolution, with profound instances of assuming good faith; occasionally this doesn't seem possible. Generally, though, the Wikipedia communities are filled with some of the most extraordinary people I have ever had the pleasure to meet -- sometimes in person, sometimes not. I think most contributors who have spent very much time on Wikipedia realize what a cool project this is, and what cool people work on it -- but this doesn't get articulated enough to the world at large; it's easier to criticize a project than defend it well, and more importantly, to improve it. Wikipedia does of course have many areas in which to improve -- accuracy should be checked to a much higher standard, the rate of referencing is appalling, we can improve the climate for new and expert contributors alike. But I'm optimistic on all of these fronts, and hope to continue discovering beautiful and extraordinary evidences of human cooperation here.

[edit] Friends and usernames

Wikipedia:Babel
en-5 This user is able to contribute with a professional level of English.
Search user languages

2.3 This user has 2.3 centijimbos.


[edit] On usernames

D58 D21 G4 S29 S29 D21 G4 X1

I used to edit content under the name brassratgirl. I generally teach and present using my given name. That username is longstanding and has nothing whatsoever to do with MIT, or this. It is also not symbolic of anything in particular. If you're curious, ask and I'll send you the explanation. (I am also not user:BrassRat, or related to any other variation). wikihiero

[edit] A referencing challenge

There are many useful and scholarly online sources of further reading and information that I feel should be systematically cited in appropriate articles. For example:

for those with access to printed or expensive resources:

  • see here for a project to collect history of science biographical resources

more to come

[edit] personal principles

[edit] common sense

From the past: or the use common sense department, or why it's good to remember not to make a big deal out of things.

On RFAs:

A question from the very first batch of archived RFAs, in 2003 (around the time I joined the project):

  • Wow. I don't know. What are the responsibilities of being a sysop?
  • As far as I know, there aren't really any responsibilities, just a list of obvious things not to do.

I'd encourage anyone new to the project who is thinking about being an adminstrator, or who is getting heavily involved, to read up on your history; many of these friendly people are still around today, though many others sadly aren't.

On policy:

“

If Wikipedia achieves its potential there will be thousands of people writing and editing articles. There is no system in place that would allow all of this activity to be monitored by some central authority to insure compliance with various editorial policies. With this in mind, we should not try now to lay down policies as if the project is easily controlled. We should assume that policies will emerge from use and experience. We should not try to anticipate what the lessons of experience will be. from Tim Shell, from here

 ”


If all policy discussion was conducted in verse, the world would be so much better.

On sourcing

I wrote a rant about why sourcing is important, and posted it on Foundation-L. You can join those (unfortunate?) readers here.

[edit] A short essay on taste

(nb: I wrote the following paragraph soon after joining wp, but it holds true today; though after a couple of years I don't mind holding my own in a debate, I still don't participate in many arguments.) Things I like doing on Wikipedia: browsing, wikifying, adding citations, verifying things like bibliographies and expanding articles about common yet complicated things, and having the sense of working on an encyclopedia in the grand tradition of same, albeit in a completely new fashion. I also like reading articles. Things I don't like at all: debates about controversial subjects, flame or edit wars.

[edit] Pet peeves

My biggest pet peeve: cite your sources, people! If you need help finding sources, there's the Reference Desk, the new Newspaper and magazine article request service, the fact and reference check people, or I will individually work with anyone who needs help finding or verifying sources. Just ask.

[edit] keeps

A few of the unpopular things I have fought to keep over the years:

[edit] On mergers

Oppose. Bananas do not have nearly the nutirition and great flavor of plantains when cooked right. It would be an insult to plantains to combine the two. from Talk:Banana.

[edit] editing and teaching resources

be afraid

Random things:

[edit] Handouts

These are handouts for learning and teaching Wikipedia. Feel free to print them, distribute them, use them for presentations, change them, claim them, whatever you need to do.

Another Tip of the moment...


How to create a category

Let's say you have thought of a new category you want to place some articles in. To create this new category, go to one of the pages that you wish to put there, and add a category tag naming the new category to the end of the article, like this:

[[category:category name]]

...where in place of "category name" you type the actual name of the category. When you save the page, the category should appear on the bottom line of the page. If the page doesn't exist yet, it will turn up in red. But this doesn't mean there is no such category: it might exist but with a slight difference in naming. Before you create a new category, make sure it doesn't already exist. In a new browser window, click on "Special pages" in the toolbox menu on the left side of your screen. Then click on "All pages". Check the category namespace box, and then enter the name of the category. Look over the index for synonymous categories.

Once you have determined that the category does not exist, click on the redlink you created earlier, and then click on the article creation link provided in the instructions that appear on your screen.

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This article does not cite its references or sources.
You can help Wikipedia by not citing "My Friend Carl" as a source.[3]

shamelessly stolen from user:Ravedave

Reference: unreferenced/unsourced template should be used extremely liberally | as should Template:Not verified | Wikipedia:WikiProject Fact and Reference Check | Wikipedia:Newspapers and magazines request service

Librariana: Wikipedia:WikiProject Librarians | Library-stub articles | Wikipedia:Reference Desk

Research: Wikipedia:WikiProject Wikidemia | (see also: meta)

Fix it: Wikipedia:Cleanup resources | cleanup templates | articles to be merged (perhaps my favorite cleanup task | Wikipedia:Typo | the professor test | Engineering x fact-check articles | Electrical Eng x fact-check | Unreferenced BLPs | db reports

Make it great: Wikipedia 1.0 | Wikipedia:List of articles all languages should have | Template:Grading_scheme and Category:Wikipedia editorial validation (meta-discussion) | core biographies!

Meet: Wikipedia:Meetup (I'm still a Seattleite at heart) | Wikimania

Tools: catscan, the greatest thing ever | stats are good for you

This is a Wikipedia user page.
This is not an encyclopedia article. If you find this page on any site other than Wikipedia, you are viewing a mirror site. Be aware that the page may be outdated and that the user to whom this page belongs may have no personal affiliation with any site other than Wikipedia itself. The original page is located at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Phoebe.
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