Submissions:2015/Lessons From Wikipedia Governance

Title

Lessons From Wikipedia Governance

Theme

Community

Type of submission

Workshop

Author

Thomas Lowenhaupt

E-mail address

toml@communisphere.com

Username

Tom Lowenhaupt

Affiliation

Connecting.nyc Inc.

Abstract

Part of the magic of Wikipedia results from the 5 Pillars and the governance and accountability processes that have enabled and facilitated a wondrous accumulation of information. Other "Pillars" guide Wiktionary, WikiVoyage, WikiSources, and the other Wikimedia Projects. Each Project has developed its own governance and operational standards. The cumulative experiences from these endeavors would be of value to those charged with developing governance processes, especially in instances where a open and transparent commons is sought as the end point.

This 75 minute workshop will bring together representatives from the various Wikimedia Foundation Projects familiar with their governance, transparency, and accountability processes. The workshop has two goals. First, it will assist the workshop organizer draw upon and apply the Wikimedia experiences to a new endeavor outside the Wikimedia Foundation. The new endeavor involves offering guidelines, standards, and collaboration processes for developing a city-TLD (Top Level Domain) as a commons resource. There are currently 35 cities developing Top Level Domains such .berlin, .london, .nyc, .paris, and .tokyo. It is expected that several hundred cities will seek to acquire their TLDs when the opportunity to do so next arises later in this decade. The groundwork for that new TLD opportunity is now underway at the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. The first 60 minutes of the workshop will focus on drawing upon Wikimedia experiences that will assist the development of guidelines that will assist these cities with the planning and design of their TLDs.

The final 15 minutes will look to begin a baseline cataloging of governance processes used at the various Foundation Projects. This catalog should prove fruitful for supporting the ongoing Wikimedia Foundation Projects as well as planning future projects.

Length of presentation

75 minutes

Special schedule requests

Will you attend WikiConference USA if your submission is not accepted?

Yes

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