Recently, I resolved an edit war on GCPEDIA.  Well, that’s a bit of an overstatement I suppose.  I intervened in a situation where a couple of users were beginning to revert each others’ edits and exchange words via the edit history comments.  I smelled smoke, then stomped out the sparks before any serious fire could begin.

It would be nice to imagine that as public servants we are less prone to misunderstandings caused by lapses in judgment, errant processes and failure to communicate.  It’s just not true.  A university education and a professional work environment can’t change the fact that we’re still fundamentally flawed, emotional, irrational human beings.  In fact, we might be even a bit more at risk for inadvertent involvement in skirmishes like this.

A degreed professional already has a significant volume of writing under their belt.  You have faith in your own abilities and place a high value on the quality of your work.  When you make a revision on GCPEDIA, it’s well reasoned and well intentioned.  So why on earth is that moron fiddling with your stuff? 

As an administrator on GCPEDIA, I am the guy who fiddles with a lot of peoples’ stuff.  Call me a moron if it makes you feel better, I’ve certainly been called worse.

One of the jobs I undertook that created a lot of rumblings among GCPEDIANS was to replace nicknames, handles and other abbreviations with the policy-decreed firstname.lastname format.  Boy did I get some interesting email.  I’ve saved them all, but they’ve been shared with no-one and never will be.  They’re just a reminder that despite being who we are—professional employees treading water in a tumultuous wake of constantly shifting policies, programs, priorities, and acronyms—we really dislike forcible change when it impacts something closely attached to ourselves.

Our birth names are given to us (forcibly, if we want to think of it that way) but nicknames and handles are a personal choice.  They also allow us anonymity, which a lot of wiki users would like.  Wiki policy aside, I don’t think anonymity is congruent with the transparency we’re aspiring to in government, or even the reality of the workplace as it presently exists.  I don’t know about you, but I haven’t attended any meetings or conferences lately as “The Overlord” (a nickname I used on computer Bulletin Board Systems in 1990-91).  And honestly, 19 years later I don’t look nearly as cool as I once did, so I doubt even I could resist the urge to snicker at that moniker.  But I digress…

Our feelings of professional competence, perceived social value, and sense of self can become deeply intertwined with our editing.  Adding anonymity to the mix makes it even more complicated.   A sense of ownership of our creations combined with a shell to hide inside makes for a dangerous vehicle to travel in.  We can safely drive around, running over toes as we go, while remaining reasonably well protected from flak from others.  But we also make an inviting target.  Not a co-worker, not a person, just a personae.

I haven’t swept the user records in awhile; I know there are more of you out there, and I’ll have to change your names eventually…

But in the meantime, name or nick, I want to see more on GCPEDIA: more openness, more communication, more co-operation, more accessibility.  Here are some suggestions:

• Create your GCPEDIA user page, if you haven’t already done so.  Include all of your business card contact information, a picture, and some interesting personal tidbits about you.  Make it an introduction, and an invitation to connect. If people want to contact you, phone numbers, email addresses, and talk page links allow them to do so using the method of their choice.
• When you edit, take a look at the article’s History tab and notice who the major contributors are to the document. “Major” it isn’t  the number of times a name appears in the list either, it’s the volume of text they’ve added or changed.  Compare Selected Versions of the article to see what and how much others are contributing.
• Use the Edit Summary box to explain what you’re doing, especially if the changes you make are significant or severe.
• In addition, consider leaving a Talk Page message for major contributors, introducing yourself and making a quick remark about your work.  (“Hi there!  I made some changes to the section on…”)
• Phone, email, or leave Talk Page messages to others who have made questionable or EXCELLENT changes to your “pet” documents.

That last point is key.  Don’t wait for someone to do something wrong to contact them; a criticism should never be the context of your first introduction to another person. Recognize and praise effort from others.  An unexpected compliment from a stranger is like a pat on the back from a DG.  You have the power to make someone’s day, make them more engaged with collaboration, or even make a friend.  Use it.  Do it.

Free Culture is a difficult concept for some to understand, primarily because we have been born and raised in a capitalist society where few things in life are truly free, both in terms of their monetary cost and our ability to influence or control them. When you’re born and raised into this kind of environment — one of disempowerment — powerlessness becomes normal, to the point where we are not even cognisant of the limitations that are placed on our freedom.

Capitalism is merely a familiar frame of reference, but through indoctrination our consumerist personality becomes forged — along with an accompanying perception of reality that people are often unable to let go of in order to see things differently.

Education, both formal and informal, perpetuates this. Far from being an advancement of knowledge, it is more accurately conceptualized as a mechanism for advancing the status quo, and with advanced education can come advanced indoctrination. Through education, commercialization and cost become synonymous with quality and value.

While the trite phrase “the best things in life are free” can be applied to things equally trite — a sunny day or the smile on a child’s face — it almost certainly does not apply to “real” goods and services in our society, does it? Value is attributed to commodities by their price, and by the fact that they are privately owned to begin with. This association between cost, control and actual value, perpetuated by capitalism, becomes internalized and reflected in our own personal values and perceptions.

For example, there is a stigma attached to the notion of reducing or eliminating the scope of property (“Communism”). There is suspicion about the value of anything that one person would freely give away to another (“defective,” “worthless,” or “outdated”), and the character of any person that would depend on others to provide them with goods or services free of charge (“lazy”, “welfare”). With the amount of terms and conditions associated with so-called free gifts, and the serious limitations that our legal system imposes on what we know as freedom, the definition of the word free and its scope in terms of our real-life behaviours has really devolved into something almost completely meaningless.

I am a “consumer” of free culture (to borrow the capitalist term), and have a professional affinity for the ideas it promotes. These two realms are actually closely tied together. Social work (my previous career) has high social value, but is not well financially compensated by society.  This low value that capitalist society places on the value of my  work (and consequently reflected by the amount of income it earned) is what initially prompted me to become both a purveyor and a recipient of free culture, as a means of supplementing what was already a modest lifestyle, purely as a means of personal survival.

When I say “a consumer of free culture” I’m speaking in the comprehensive sense: many of the clothes that I wear, the items and appliances in my home, the materials I used to build my home, the music I listen to, the books I read and videos I watch on the Internet, the blogs I enjoy, the home computer I work on and the operating system and software that run the computer — all of these were freely given to me by people who made a conscious choice to cut out the capitalist middleman or simply put people before profit, and share with others.

Why? Why would complete strangers choose to share their personal and intellectual property with other strangers?

The fact that free culture seems like a new and revolutionary concept speaks volumes about the degree that we’ve been co-opted by capitalism. Once upon a time, freedom was the catalyst of all human progress. Once upon a time there existed an environment of collaboration where people worked for the common good. It wasn’t a fairy tale, 

“it was culture, which you didn’t need the permission of someone else to take and build upon. That was the character of creativity at the birth of the last century” (Lawrence Lessig).

One person had an idea, which another built upon, and yet another adapted to meet their own needs, while another still revised it in a way that improved it yet again. Who was it that said, “if I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants”? Isaac Newton.

The creativity and innovation responsible for human progress has traditionally built upon existing work, but copyright, patents, trademarks, and other intellectual property laws are working to prevent that process (Lessig). Sharing our excess time, effort and resources with each other mutually benefits us all, and leads to collective prosperity, but this flies in the face of modern drives to accumulate, hoard and protect. Over time, society is becoming more restrictive and guarded, and the potential for progress is being diminished accordingly.

Free culture promotes the creation and distribution of resources in ways that equalize opportunities for people. It encourages people to benefit from the contributions of others, contribute something back, then invite others to do the same. The concept applies to both tangible and intangible commodities: speech, ideas, books, software, music, computer networks, education, and anything else that people can create, share, and develop (freeculture.org).

I do what I can.  I use free software like the Linux operating system, I freecycle goods to others, I produce content under the Creative Commons license, to name a few things.  How about you?

The use and promotion of free culture is an exercise in radical social transformation because many of us are so deeply ingrained with the perception that usage restrictions are normal, even necessary, and that nothing of any value is given away for free. What is the meaning of charity in modern society, when even donations come with the expectation of a charitable tax receipt?

Change it. Circulate property, knowledge, time, expertise, without expectation.  Realize the value of what you possess by transferring it to others who can use it.  In North America, where middle class material wealth is high and informational wealth is nearly infinite, our real value is not in what we accumulate and hoard, but what we give away.

For further reading:

• Lessig, Lawrence. Free Culture (various formats and translations)
• Williams, Sam. Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallman’s Crusade for Free Software (HTML)
• McLeod, Kimbrew. Freedom of Expression (PDF)
• Raymond, Eric S. The Cathedral and the Bazaar (HTML)
• Gay, Joshua. Free Software, Free Society: Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman (PDF)

“Earth” image by Camille Harang.

In March of 2009 David Eaves suggested that GCPEDIA will save the public service .  As a public servant and a GCPEDIA administrator, I’d like to believe he’s right.  His main argument was that GCPEDIA has the potential to become the repository of much knowledge that will be lost (or at least not conveniently accessible) once the baby boomer generation retires.

Has this been happening in the time since his article was originally published?  While I can’t claim to be familiar with every article produced on the wiki in the last 7 months, I’d have to say: not obviously. I’ve watched with interest as Mitch Bloom has been toiling away at “Things you wish you knew as a new public servant‎” but I haven’t noticed other similar examples (note: GCPEDIA is only accessible from the Government of Canada computer network).

Whether or not you agree that there is value in capturing past and present ways of doing for posterity (and given some of the reader comments to Mr Eaves’ article, it’s a contentious issue) I still believe that GCPEDIA will save the public service.

GCPEDIA is as valuable for what it is as it is for what it represents.  As a public service renewal initiative, it functions as a collaboration tool that can aid government employees in their work across federal departments and provincial boundaries.  And as a public service renewal initiative it proves tangibly that the Government of Canada sees value in Web X.x technologies by providing these tools to public servants nationwide — tools like GCPEDIA, GCForums, and GCconnex.

As a relatively new addition to the public service, I can honestly say that until recently I had serious doubt about the government’s ability to move into the 21st century.  I never doubted there was interest in doing so, or a belief in the necessity, but as far as actually achieving this… well, the mantra I heard recited by many senior employees was a reminder of the glacial speed of government.  From my own early experiences, I was inclined to agree.  I arrived in 2007, and was promptly delivered a computer running Microsoft Windows 2000, Office 2002, and Internet Explorer 6.  Not exactly the recency that I was accustomed to from my experience in the private sector…

Don’t misunderstand, I love the public service, but nothing really excited me about it until GCPEDIA.  I blogged about this excitement recently on GCconnex, along with my own pledge to try to help Mr. Eaves’ prophecy come true:

I returned to the public service in mid-August 2009 after 9 months parental leave and was amazed to discover GCPEDIA and GCconnex, which seemed to have been getting underway just as I was planning my escape vector to Babyland.

I say “amazed” because before I left I’d had some heavy discussions with Pierre-Luc Pilon (and others) at the October 16 and 17 2008 YMAGIN UnConference about how great these types of tools would be for the GoC.  I never dreamed they would actually materialize, let alone afford me an opportunity to be personally involved. So fresh back in my chair at HRSDC, and with ~4 years of MediaWiki administrator experience, I applied for and was accepted as a sysop on GCPEDIA.  I’m thrilled to be able to put my experience to work at work, and I’m eager to donate my spare work cycles to assisting your project or group.

If you’d like to get your knowledge up on GCPEDIA but are unsure about the markup and layout, please contact me. If you’ve got a good start going, but things are becoming tangled and complex, or you need to add something new, just write or call.  I’m more than happy to help you to whatever degree you’d like, from a bit of coaching to taking a lead in structure, design and coding.   I can teach you the markup, show you by example by formatting and arranging the data as you need it, or even edit it with you live and in tandem during a phone call.

Don’t feel like you need to be an expert to get started on GCPEDIA.   This is, above all else, a collaborative tool.  Those with content but no software knowledge can help and be helped by users with the technical knowledge but no new content to share.

So… let’s get started helping each other.

I can’t imagine I’m the only one who feels this way.

I believe that GCPEDIA will save the public service not merely by storing the knowledge of those employees that it has lost, but by capturing and retaining the knowledge, involvement and interest of current and future employees.  If you’ve done any investigation into the qualities that make for an attractive workplace, you’ll know that money isn’t the highest consideration on the list.  In terms of long term retention, ranking higher is the quality of the workplace, satisfaction with the work, and highest of all, satisfying relationships with co-workers — a perception of connectedness and belonging.

This is the difference that GCPEDIA brings, that differentiates it from just another GoC software rollout.  We talk endlessly about silos.  Now, finally something that allows me to meet, learn from and collaborate with colleagues across Canada.  This platform is vital to members of Generation X, Generation Y and the upcoming Generation Z who will come to here to discover a government that embraces forward thinking and transformation — a government that finally offers the allure that has lured away so many others to the private sector.

I’m filled with much hope about what’s to come in the next five years, but for long term prosperity into the coming decades, tools like GCPEDIA and GCconnex must represent only the current iteration of a progression towards an ideal.  Nothing we build today is capable of sustaining the future indefinitely.  In five years, what GCPEDIA has become and what it must change into should already be obvious to employees at every level.  If we can maintain, or even increase the momentum we’ve created today, we’ll already have prepared to make the turn ahead, even if the ship itself can never steer as nimbly as we wish.

I admit, I was excited to read this.  While I had some concerns about the concept of “Wikinomics”, this factored greatly into my interest in reading. Not at all surprisingly, two things were immediately unsettling early in the book.

First, the language frequently lapses into nebulous hype, the likes of which I’m accustomed hearing on late night infomercials. It sounded like the authors were trying to sell me rather than tell me about a concept, or that their own knowledge of the subject was speculative, not authoritative.

Second, in my opinion, they seem to have a seriously misguided interpretation of the nature of open collaboration in the Web X.x sphere. Specifically, they freely associate projects that operate on the basis of extrinsic motivation with those harnessing intrinsic motivation. The tactics used by Goldcorp and Proctor and Gamble to attract prospectors and mercenaries are nothing akin to the lures that propelled Linux and Wikipedia from laudable but naive ideas (at the time of inception) to fully-realized icons of mass collaboration.

Distributing formerly closed data to the public and allowing individuals to offer competing solutions in return for money is still the capitalist model of old, even if wikis and other Web X.x technologies are used in the process. The company and participant motives are different. Work among participants is adversarial, not cooperative; and for individual gain, not the common good.  And the work is ultimately owned by the company.  It profits by selling the solution back to the public.  In “Web 2.0″ parlance, this is called crowdsourcing:

The text’s airy language — powerfully positive but often non-specific — seems to be the adhesive tape the authors used to hold these two dichotomous motivational halves together into a unified whole, but they are not two approaches to mass “collaboration”.

While I have some fundamental disagreements with their premise, overall I found the book a worthwhile read.  It’s preferable, if not absolutely essential, to be regularly exposed to ideas that challenge your own, and this book was provocative at times.  In other chapters it provided good conceptual summaries and a number of interesting histories, not all of which I was previously aware.