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Here is my report from the Wikimedia Conference 2017 in Berlin. I have written it in English and Japanese, keeping the two parts roughly in sync.

Strategy / 戦略

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My main purpose of the visit was to participate the Strategy track - a workshop spanning over 3 days, from morning to evening. The 100-something participants there were writing down and reviewing ideas.

It was first time for me to experience what I might call as a discussion workshop, and I thought this was well-structured and well-organized one. Forming small groups and going through different formats is a nice way to avoid stagnated (or even circular) discussions. I think alternating formats is also good in the sense that some people might be more comfortable in one format or one topic when expressing opinions while others might prefer other ones.

To highlight a few of my contributions there, I voiced my opinion at an AI discussion and I helped drafting a statement on Education. I also attended User:Snowolf/Wikimedia_Conference_2017_OST_9 (in which, to be honest, I was more listening and learning than speaking).

戦略トラックへの参加が今回の私の主な目的でした。ここは3日間、朝から夕方まで、ワークショップ形式で多人数がアイデアを書いたりそれをもとに議論したりしました。

こうした議論のためのワークショップははじめてでしたが、形式・進行ともにうまくいっていたように思います。形式やテーマを何度も入れ替えて小さなグループをつくって比較的短い時間で議論することにより、議論の停滞をふせぐ効果があるようです。また、それぞれの形式やトピックに得意な人・苦手な人がいるため、機会が平等になる効果もありそうです。

具体的なトピックとしては、AIの議論教育に関するステートメントの作成に協力しました。

What's next
I will keep an eye on the coming cycles of the Movement Strategy discussion. :)

Asia / アジア

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I met community leaders from Taiwan, Indonesia, China, Thailand among others, and discussed how to make regional collaboration happen for hours.

We started by introducing each other talking about activities of the organization they represent, and their challenges ahead. Among other topics, one central topic was a plan of having an ESEA (East and Southeast Asia) conference. See the meeting notes for a more complete record.

What's next
We have followed it up online post-conference and continued discussing its program and logistics. I intend to serve on a subcommittee of the event.

Wiktionary / ウィクショナリー

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I was interviewed as a Wiktionary editor by Lydia Pintscher on the coming introduction of Wikidata to Wiktionary sites. I voiced a concern on how editing experience will be changed - it sounded like eventually editors are expected to edit lexical items on Wikidata, not Wiktionary, with a UI similar to what we have for entities. This will have to be a significant change and it looks like we need to give more thoughts on the editor experience perspective.

The conversation turned to the differences between English and Japanese Wiktionaries (on which I am moderately active) for about an hour. Some of the things I discussed were: compared to Japanese Wiktionary, English Wiktionary has more pervasive use of Lua templates, has more fair-used quotations, a stricter attitude to having no-redirect in the main namespace, etc.

ウィクショナリー編集者としてウィキデータ統合について感じていることを教えてほしいと言われ、1時間ほど Lydia Pintscher と話しました。編集の手順がどうかわるかを心配していることを伝えました。最終的にはウィキデータ統合がおわると語彙項目をウィキデータ上で構造化された形式で編集することになりそうです(おそらく現在のエンティティの編集と似たやりかた)。これは現在のウィクショナリー編集のやりかたとかなり違うため、うまく移行できるようにするためには、UIにかなり工夫が必要ではないかと思いました。

日本語版と英語版のウィクショナリーの違いについても話しました。日本語版とくらべて英語版では高度なLuaテンプレートが非常に広く使われており、フェアユースの引用文が多く、標準名前空間でリダイレクトを使わない傾向がより強いです。

What's next
I will keep an eye on the staged rollout of Wikidata to Wiktionaries. :)

Commons App / Commons アプリ

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I have been a volunteer developer of the Commons Android app and I tried to introduce it to new users. I did it in a very ad-hoc way, when I happened to talk with someone with an Android phone in breakfast. In this regard, there are lessons for me to learn from. For example, something like a QR-code card for the app's installation link would have helped a lot. Searching for the app on mobile was not be as easy as I would hope. (Addendum: I passed on the QR code idea and it was used our another tech event[1][2] and the official website now has one at the bottom.)

A couple of times I was asked what the app can do for Wiki Loves Monuments. Considering how closely monuments and places (which the app supports) are related, this is an interesting area. An example of existing discussions on this is https://github.com/commons-app/apps-android-commons/issues/78 .

私はコモンズ用のAndroidアプリの開発にボランティアで参加しているので、朝食のときなど何人か出会った人にこのアプリを紹介して使ってみてもらいました。あまり準備してやったことではなかったので、反省事項もあります。たとえばアプリをその場で検索してインストールしてもらうという作業がおもったほどスムーズにはいかなかったりしたので、インストール場所にリンクするQRコードを印刷したものを用意しておけばよかったとおもいました。(その後QRコードがつきました

What's next
I continue working on the app. Some of the lessons will hopefully be reflect to events I am going to help or attend in the coming months.