Talk:Submissions/The Power of Wikipedia: Legitimacy and Territorial Control
The abstract is explicitly provocative to allow participants to address the issues of legitimacy and territorial control in a direct way. --Iopensa (talk) 13:38, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
The presentation is based on the experience of the projects WikiAfrica and Share Your Knowledge. Both projects have been promoted by lettera27 Foundation, a non profit organization based in Italy and focussed on access to knowledge and knowledge sharing. The goal of WikiAfrica is to increase African contents and participation on Wikipedia. The goal of Share Your Knowledge is to develop a methodology to increase contents and participation from cultural institutions on Wikipedia, using the Creative Commons attribution share alike license and Wikipedia as tools to strengthen the visibility and impact of their work (promoting a content-based communication rather than a communication based on the institutional brand; user-generated contents and evaluation).
Both project have a thematic approach (explicitly or implicitly focussed on Africa and African contents), they overlap with current activities implemented by the Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia chapters (activities within the "Global South" outreach programme, activities in Africa implemented by other chapters and the GLAM project) and they have an international target (both projects are involving institutions and communities all over the world and they address different linguistic editions of Wikipedia).
For those very reasons, both projects have been conceived as collaborative projects, based on the expertise and participation of a wide range of institutions. Both initiatives have tried to link their activities to the those currently implemented. More specifically both projects has invited Wikimedia chapters in Europe and Africa to collaborate and they have established collaborations with several chapters, they have encourage Wikimedia Foundation to provide fundings for Wikipedian in residence in Africa and they have contributed to the GLAM project.
None of the projects have received financial support from Wikimedia Foundation or Wikimedia chapters. Financial resources have been provided by lettera27 Foundation (since 2006, lettera27 is supported by priviate donors and Moleskine®), Cariplo Foundation (supporting in Share Your Knowledge in 2011-2012 and participating in the project) and the Africa Centre (since 2011). The projects have received technical support from all the partners involved (networking, communication, expertise and feedback).
The aim of the presentation is to underline the relevance of an "African approach" (territorial, thematic and institutional-GLAM) within the wider frame of Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects, legitimacy and territorial control. The issue can not be addressed from a "Global South" perspective or as a specific African issue. The discourse related to Africa is often trapped within the frame of offline versions of Wikipedia and local languages. I do believe the discourse related to Africa allows to consider issues related to collaboration, migration/diaspora, "minority" (or majority), colonial history, power, relevance, geopolitics and priorities. --Iopensa (talk) 10:00, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
The topic was initially conceived as a panel or workshop. Last minute I decided to make it a into a simple presentation. I will work on a paper on the same topic to develop further the arguments and to make them available before Wikimania (also in case the presentation is not accepted). --Iopensa (talk) 10:10, 19 March 2012 (UTC)