Yochai Benkler writes in with word of a collaboration between Wikipedia and Kaltura to make open, peer-production video: "Kaltura in general is an interesting effort to create an open platform for
peer production of video and rich media. Very different, and from the
perspective of collaboration more interesting, than the aggregated
distribution platform of materials created by solo creators or off-site
collaborations, which YouTube represents, or the emphasis of some other of
the newer video sites on how to achieve monetization. Offers a collaboration
platform for video editing instead, with creative commons licensing (BY-SA)
of contributed elements and outputs built in. Software itself is already, or
on its way to being, free (still depends on Flash, but working to get GNASH
to the point where it'll be good enough to replace it)."
Link to Wikimedia announcement,
Link to Kaltura
(
Thanks, Yochai!)
the latest
latest episodes
I really love this idea. I have been thinking about video and the language of video alot latly. I'm just starting to read Yochai Benkler's Wealth of Networks(http://www.benkler.org/wealth_of_networks/index.php/Main_Page).
I think that realizing possibilities of this sort of project will be quite amazing.
It reminds me of something I've seen a long time ago, the pbs history of the computer documentary "The Machine That Changed The World" one scene in particular where an they are talking about the future of computing and there is this child in school giving a presentation to his class and behind him is a chalkboard sized computer display showing video of an erupting volcano as he talks and he is holding a tablet pc, the teacher is mugging and all kids smiling as goes on talking. Keep in mind this documentary was well before the modern internet and computers and photography had hardly been integrated let alone video. The thing that struck me the most about that scene was not the huge display or tablet pc but the fact that once you have access to powerful tools like computers it really changes our lives and makes the world a larger, richer place to live and interact.
I really hope that people get excited about this. The internet and computers really are changing our lives, we should not be afraid to jump in and shape that change for the better. Websites like wikipedia, flickr, and youtube let us interact and expand our access to knowledge and everyday we get to look into lives and places we would normally not be able to see, hear and watch new ideas that before did not have the means to reach the public.
If I had to guess I would say that it is probably something like 90% of videos on youtube are just complete garbage and in my humble opinion just a waste of space. But that in that 10% there are thousand upon thousand of really interesting ones,
I have seen footage of things that I would have never even imagined even exsisted. Now if someone asked the same thing about wikipedia and how much was garbage, I don't know about anyone else but I think a number in the teens would be too high. There is so much great content and access to knowledge a lot of times if you are doing a search on a broad topic or even specific one wikipedia can be a better place to start than google.
So the question is if we mashup youtube and wikipedia what will the garbage to great content ratio be?
This sounds a lot like the RSS media collaboration patent idea I came up with a little over a year ago.
I actually filed a provisional patent application
http://www.dealmachine.org/DealMachine_provisional_patent%20application.pdf
It expired this month, without me having done any real work on it.
Wish I'd taken Mark Frauenfelder's advice and made the idea open-source instead of trying to patent it. The idea probably would have gotten developed.
Oh well, I'm only out a hundred bucks, and someone else independently DID make it happen. I figured someone would. It's too good of an idea to not end up "in the air".
I've become MUCH more into open-source, CC and collaboration in the past year. BoingBoing may have helped.
Thank you,
MWD
...Uh, ok. Movies by peer review process. If the Wikipedia model is any indication, this might work the first couple of times, but eventually some juvenile delinquents from England will wind up vandalizing the thing, then using admin rights claim their vandalization was actually "contributing", and then ban anyone who complains on the grounds they violated WP:AGF and whatever other Wikinazi rules that prohibit arguing with an "admin".
... and then a bunch of little documentaries about civil wars be permanently erased on the justification that they are not notable enough. After all, they never even heard of these little countries in school and nowhere with a funny name like that could be real. This will be done on 28 minutes consultation in a locked forum.
#4
"...... and then a bunch of little documentaries about civil wars be permanently erased..."
and replaced by videos of doods falling off their skateboards and wrecking their balls, and videos of tin cans in microwave ovens.
Yup, it sure could turn into YouTube pretty quickly.
The thing I was proposing would be for small private ad-hoc groups, people who find each other over Craigslist or other boards.
Anyone wanna work on that, feel free to implement my idea, as described on the PDF I reference above. For free.
--Michael W. Dean
It seems like you guys are saying this sort of model will have to fail because it's a bad idea to collaborate in the first place. Wikipedia actually sounds like a horrible idea to most logical people, so how it that it has become so successful and contrary to naysayers and the fact that it still sounds like a bad idea when you explain how it works to people who have never heard of it, you can find quality, current, unbiased information.
I think that this sort collaboration and the fact that it will always be more easy to delete vandalism than create it is exactly what would get rid of all the "ball wrecking" videos.
-Michael Dean, you should open source your idea and think more about the implementation rather than trying to monetization something that you "invented", maybe the real value of your deal machine idea is that it could be used by people collaborating on a project that can later be monetized and the profits shared benefiting all the contributing people. Keep in mind that this kind of co-collaboration has already been going on for quite some time and people like to participate and will do so without the reward of compensation. I definitely see a huge amount of momentum that is picking up across the internet dealing with the idea of remixing and co-collaborating on music. It is not a far leap to think that video will be treated any different.
#6 "Michael Dean, you should open source your idea and think more about the implementation rather than trying to monetization something that you "invented", maybe the real value of your deal machine idea is that it could be used by people collaborating on a project that can later be monetized and the profits shared benefiting all the contributing people......"
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The idea is open sourced. The expired Deal Machine patent applications is still up there if anyone wants to pick up any of my ideas and run with them, feel free. I'm busy with other stuff.
I tried doing Deal Machine as open source soon after I realized a patent was not the way to go. I posted on "developer meet designer", had a few long skype calls with a few programmers. One of them wanted to do it open-source, I was open to it, but he got busy with paid work, I got busy with fun work, and I let it slide.
I come up with a *lot* of ideas, follow through on the ones that seem to have wings for me (and be fun), and let the others fall to the side.
(I've only applied for patents for two of them. Deal Machine, and the other was during the dot-com flood, it's called MouseCount: http://www.mousecount.net
which I actually found someone to program, and now it exists as a little free mouse-click counting PC utility. You can download it from there.
Currently, I mostly make media that involves spoken audio and typed text, work mostly at home with my wife, and don't need to collaborate over distances much. If I were to help develop a tool for no money up front, I'd only put in the "bleed through the eyes" time required if it's something I would actually use a lot. I needed Deal Machine when I came up with it, but I don't really have a need for it these days.
Thank you,
Michael W. Dean
http://www.stinkfight.com
# 6 "Wikipedia actually sounds like a horrible idea to most logical people, so how it that it has become so successful and contrary to naysayers and the fact that it still sounds like a bad idea when you explain how it works to people who have never heard of it, you can find quality, current, unbiased information."
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I like Wikipiedia. A lot. It's my first "go-to" site for a lot of searches I do.
But the again I just saw where a vigilant editor had reverted an edit where someone had replaced an entire article (an article about law) with the word "breasts".
MWD
Cory - thanks for writing this up! For those who are interested, you can also read more or Professor Benkler's thoughts on our blog at www.kaltura.com/blog/
Lisa from Kaltura
Cory, thanks for another great idea we got through your blog. This collaboration - combining wiki platform with wiki featured media - is great. It will greatly help our effort.
For more then a year we have been documenting our tiny field, martial arts and movement, in a semantic, media based wiki - The Akban-wiki.
I guess now our efforts will be enhanced by the wiki community effort to integrate the media and allow online, in-wiki editing with history etc.
http://www.akban.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page