Wikileaks

I have been following the Wikileaks Afghan War Diary 2004-2010 release with great interest. I must admit I admire the work of Julian Assange, one of the main founders of the service. I thought to collect a few of the more informative sources about Wikileaks and Assange here for my reader/s.

Wikileaks at 26C3
Excellent video of the keynote by Julian Assange and Daniel Schmitt of Wikileaks at the 26th Chaos Communication Congress 'Here be dragons' in Berlin on 27th December 2009.

WikiLeaks Release 1.0

Insight into vision, motivation and innovation

During the last 12 months WikiLeaks representatives have been talking at numerous conferences, from technology via human rights to media focused, in an effort to introduce WikiLeaks to the world. WikiLeaks has had major document releases that have spawned attention in all major newspapers by now, it has triggered important reform and has established itself as part of the accepted media reality.

Little did we have the chance though to talk about a bigger picture, especially of how we perceive the future and its constraints.

We therefore would like to talk about our vision of the information society, journalism's role in that society, as well as our role in it. Along this vision we will introduce new features for WikiLeaks Release 1.0, that will be no short of changing the world as we all know it.

A video of the presentation can be downloaded from here as a torrent.

An excellent general overview of Wikileaks and the Afghan Diary can be reached from this link.

The New Yorker has a very long piece on Julian Assange and the “Collateral Murder” video:

Assange is an international trafficker, of sorts. He and his colleagues collect documents and imagery that governments and other institutions regard as confidential and publish them on a Web site called WikiLeaks.org. Since it went online, three and a half years ago, the site has published an extensive catalogue of secret material, ranging from the Standard Operating Procedures at Camp Delta, in Guantánamo Bay, and the “Climategate” e-mails from the University of East Anglia, in England, to the contents of Sarah Palin’s private Yahoo account. The catalogue is especially remarkable because WikiLeaks is not quite an organization; it is better described as a media insurgency. It has no paid staff, no copiers, no desks, no office. Assange does not even have a home. He travels from country to country, staying with supporters, or friends of friends—as he once put it to me, “I’m living in airports these days.” He is the operation’s prime mover, and it is fair to say that WikiLeaks exists wherever he does. At the same time, hundreds of volunteers from around the world help maintain the Web site’s complicated infrastructure; many participate in small ways, and between three and five people dedicate themselves to it full time. Key members are known only by initials—M, for instance—even deep within WikiLeaks, where communications are conducted by encrypted online chat services. The secretiveness stems from the belief that a populist intelligence operation with virtually no resources, designed to publicize information that powerful institutions do not want public, will have serious adversaries.

Finally the War Diary is online here and the site Wikileaks is here.

The In-House Wiki

Continuing my exploration of the world of wikis, tomorrow I am going to lead a short discussion at our staff meeting on what a wiki could be used for by the staff of the Language Studies Department. We have been discussing the use of an in-house wiki to post information, write courses, arrange meetings and develop teaching material. I plan to show three wikis that are used for planning and organisation. These are:

The HUMlab Wiki

The Electronic Literature Group Wiki

Metamedia at Stanford Wiki

I hope to start a discussion around what sort of uses a wiki could be put to in our department.

Teaching with Wikis

I have been asked to give a presentation for the staff at the Department of Language Studies (my home department) on using wikis in teaching.

My introduction to wikis was from the incomparable Bryan Alexander, who visited Umeå University and HUMlab in 2003. Back then it was Wikipedia that was grabbing the attention of many.

A wiki is a Hawaiian word for "fast". A wiki is a page or collection of Web pages designed to enable anyone who accesses it to contribute or modify content, using a simplified markup language. Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites and to power community websites. The collaborative encyclopedia Wikipedia is one of the best-known wikis. Wikis are used in business to provide intranet and Knowledge Management systems. Ward Cunningham, the developer of the first wiki software, WikiWikiWeb, originally described it as "the simplest online database that could possibly work" wikipedia

The strength of the wiki is it is very simple. A wiki is primarily a text based web page where editing can be done in a simplified markup language, sometimes known as "wikitext":

There is no commonly accepted standard wikitext language. The grammar, structure, features, keywords and so on are dependent on the particular wiki software used on the particular website. For example, all wikitext markup languages have a simple way of hyperlinking to other pages within the site, but there are several different syntax conventions for these links. Many wikis, especially the earlier ones, use CamelCase to mark words that should be automatically linked. In some wikis (such as Wikipedia and other MediaWiki-based wikis) this convention was abandoned in favor of explicit link markup, which Wikipedia calls "free links", for example with [[…]].

Changes can be made to the wiki either using an editing tool, with pictures and buttons to make changes or it can be written in code, which does not take long to learn:


Editing window of the teaching wiki I use for English A Realia

A wiki has the potential to be a highly collaborative tool where communal authorship (that can be based on group or individual work on campus or over distance)can be explored in learning. Any one who is registered with the wiki can author content on it. Content is saved, so any mistakes that may be made can be changed back immediately.


Webpage from a teaching wiki. The backup files are shown.

The use of a wiki in a course should be connected for a desire to encourage learner participation and presentation based learning. With a wiki students can organize themselves into groups, comment and discuss in forums, take up elements from the course and develop them further, comment and critique them. This is where the revolutionary aspects of wikis in the classroom come forward.

If a wiki is to be used to the full of its potential in learning and teaching the role of the teacher is changed. The teacher must be prepared to have their own work placed in a position where students have the opportunity to use it in a number of ways . By using a wiki as a platform in learning material can be added to the course by students, work that is discussed in the classroom can be altered or remixed by students. The course can be arranged to include this student input in the assessment or teaching plan.


Post Seminar
In the seminar I was joined by Satish Patel from Kalmar College, who has a lot of experience with using learning platforms in teaching. Satish told me about this video, Wikis in Plain English:



We discussed a number of potential applications for wikis, both as teaching tools and for coordinating research and teaching in the department. An interesting suggestion was made concerning using wikis as an archive for the writing process. Based on the way a wiki saves older versions of a text, one could use it to keep a record of a writing or research project. This could be done by a single author or a group. Patish recommended PBwikis and Wetpaint Wikis to get started. I have been using ProjectForum wiki and recommend it highly.

I hope to have further collaboration with Satish. As I was leaving university today I met a colleague who said he had just set up a PBwiki for his first foray into the world of wikis. I was very happy to hear it.

A text for a Short Course on Teaching and IT that finishes this week.

James ”jim” Barrett
UPC Lärande & IT ht2007

Why a Wiki?

A wiki is a versatile and adaptable web based authoring tool that has been used in education at all levels since the late 1990s. The word wiki is a shortened form of the Hawaiian word for fast (Wiki Wiki) and the first wiki went online on March 25, 1995 when Ward Cunningham (b. 1949) created

The software WikiWikiWeb in 1994 and installed it on the website of his software consultancy, Cunningham & Cunningham (commonly known by its domain name, c2.com), as an add-on to the Portland Pattern Repository. Wikipedia

Wikis today are used to build a sense of community in a class, to store and distribute information, to make students into authors and to create text materials for teaching. The famous American copyright activist and lawyer Lawrence Lessig wrote his latest book, Codev2 using a wiki and the entire text is available as a wiki online as well as a print book in shops (see: http://codev2.cc/). While every platform has its strengths and weaknesses, I believe a wiki can be a powerful and sufficiently flexible tool for teaching a course at first year university level. My model for a teaching wiki has been the Metamedia Wiki at Stanford University in the United States, which is used for teaching, archiving, advertising, forums, research, presentations and networking. The Metamedia Wiki looks good as well.
My wiki for the course Cultures of Commonwealth English (VT08) has been set up on what will soon be the Department of Language Studies server. By locating the wiki on the department server I am in effect giving the wiki to the department, to be used by subsequent teachers as a resource base for the subject. My intention is to use the wiki as the primary text for the course, which is part of a larger program course and is made up of seven two hour seminars and an exam. I will start by writing the course on the wiki; the time table, seminar topics, background material, set reading lists, film titles and audio files will all be added to the wiki or linked to under headings which correspond to the seminar topics. I can only examine the students on the material dealt with in the seminars, but the wiki will function as a sort of reference television station during the course where material will be constantly programmed for the students to immerse themselves in the topics covered. I will be using an email enabled RSS feed so I do not have to rely on them visiting the wiki to get information and primary source materials for the seminars.
For the students to use the wiki they must log in with accounts given out in the welcome email sent out the week before the course starts. Once the course is up and running certain portions of the wiki will be able to be edited by the students. They will be able to comment on material presented in seminars and even change content and add to it. It is possible to attach tracking capabilities to the wiki so anyone who does alter material will also be identified. Material that is added to the wiki by students will remain on the wiki and will be in turn added to by following students unless the students themselves request otherwise. I am not setting a main text book for the course and hope that the wiki will serve this purpose as a form of electronic compendium. While the course is still several months away I have already started collecting material on it and constructing a topic sequence for the seminars. The RSS is also functioning and I am thinking of making even the construction of the wiki public and this stage through my blog so as to invite comments and recommendations.
The first impressions I have of working with the wiki in constructing the course Cultures of Commonwealth English (VT08) is how easy it is. As well it is fun as it feels like I am authoring the course myself and this has an associated feeling of being in control of the project. The technology behind the wiki is very simple and no (or at the most very little) coding experience is needed. The wiki is completely automatic, with any changes just a matter of pressing two buttons (Edit and Save) with the tagged change in the middle. Adding links, uploading material (images, Video, audio, written texts) is very simple. As well I expect the students will come to share in the sense of control over the course with sections of the wiki being able to be edited by them. While this is very much an experiment, I expect it will be an interesting and worthwhile one.

Conspiracy!!! Wikipedia Manipulated by CIA, FBI and the Vatican

US hacker Virgil Griffiths 'Wikiscanner' points to CIA computers as the sources of 300 edits to subjects including Irans president and Chinas nuclear arsenal...

A US hacker’s homemade program to pinpoint origins of Wikipedia edits indicates that alterations to the popular online encyclopedia have come from the CIA and the Vatican.
Virgil Griffith’s “Wikiscanner” points to Central Intelligence Agency computers as the sources of nearly 300 edits to subjects including Iran’s president, the Argentine navy, and China’s nuclear arsenal.
A CIA computer was the source of a whiny “Wahhhhh” inserted in a paragraph about Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s plans for the office.
“While I cannot confirm whether any changes were made from CIA computers, the agency always expects its computer systems to be used responsibly,” CIA spokesman George Little said in response to a question.
Wikipedia is a communally refined Internet encyclopedia that taps into the “wisdom of the masses” by letting anyone make changes.
Its founders believe people who know better will quickly correct inaccurate or misleading information.
Griffith, a university graduate student and self-described hacker, says his software matches unique “IP” addresses of computers with Wikipedia records regarding which machines are used to make online edits.
“I came up with the idea when I heard about Congressmen getting caught for whitewashing their Wikipedia pages,” Griffith explains on his website.
Most edits listed at Wikiscanner involve minor changes such as spelling. Some alterations involve removing unflattering information, adding facts or inserting insults.
From the Deccan Herald

Wiki Pedagogy

When I had a thesis chapter seminar presentation last week one topic discussed was wikipedia. The opinion of the group seemed to be divided along those more senior researchers who used it but spoke of its weaknesses and those still going through basic research training who were more blindly enthusiastic about it. Now I have found a general paper looking at wikis and pedagogy:

Wiki Pedagogy
Author(s) : Renée Fountain
Abstract
This article endeavours to denote and promote pedagogical experimentations concerning a Free/Open technology called a "Wiki". An intensely simple, accessible and collaborative hypertext tool Wiki software challenges and complexifies traditional notions of - as well as access to - authorship, editing, and publishing. Usurping official authorizing practices in the public domain poses fundamental - if not radical - questions for both academic theory and pedagogical practice.
The particular pedagogical challenge is one of control: wikis work most effectively when students can assert meaningful autonomy over the process. This involves not just adjusting the technical configuration and delivery; it involves challenging the social norms and practices of the course as well (Lamb, 2004). Enacting such horizontal knowledge assemblages in higher education practices could evoke a return towards and an instance upon the making of impossible public goods” (Ciffolilli, 2003).

Wikileaks

Wikileaks is developing an uncensorable Wikipedia for untraceable mass document leaking and analysis. Wikileaks primary interests are oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, but it also expect to be of assistance to those in the west who wish to reveal unethical behavior in their own governments and corporations. The aim is for maximum political impact; this means the interface is identical to Wikipedia and usable by non-technical people. Wikileaks has received over 1.2 million documents so far from dissident communities and anonymous sources.