Erik Möller
Encyclopedia
Erik Möller is a German
freelance journalist, software developer
, author
, and Deputy Director of the Wikimedia Foundation
(WMF), based in San Francisco, California
. Möller additionally works as a web designer and previously managed his own web hosting service, myoo.de.
ic equivalent to the open source
movement in citizen media
and blog
ging, though pointing out that most blogs do not compete with mainstream media
. The book was first published in 2005 by Heinz Heise
and a second edition was published in 2006, with updated and revised chapters. A review in Berliner Literaturkritik's saw practical tips but claimed the book focused too much on technical details. Möller's book is cited in the 2006 book Wiki: Web collaboration, in a section discussing "Wikis as an Engine for Social Change", and his term "secret media revolution" is used. The authors comment: "Möller provides a comprehensive look at the problems and possible solutions in dealing with difficult controversies and vandalism in blog and wiki environments."
In his earlier research on Wikipedia, Möller found in 2003 that Wikipedia's open source nature garners interest from many individuals, but also leads to gaps in topics of interest to experts. Some of his research was published in Telepolis
, where he compared Wikipedia to the digital
multimedia
encyclopedia
Microsoft
Encarta
. In his 2003 article Das Wiki-Prinzip: Tanz der Gehirne ("The Wiki principle: Dance of the brains"), he gives some background of Wikipedia and wikis, as well as on what he sees as the benefits of the project, ways to prevent vandalism to articles, and the etiquette
of Wikipedia users.
(Dipl.-Inform. FH
), is the owner and creator of the Infoanarchy website which has information on P2P
and file-sharing technologies. Thomas Mennecke of Slyck News wrote that "Like P2Pnet.net, InfoAnarchy.org contains an impressive amount of original content written by owner Erik Möller." He has also been involved in the development of the FreedomDefined website
. He is also listed as the joint host of a website known as violence.de that publishes the work of James W. Prescott
and contends that being deprived of physical affection is a major cause of depression
, aggression
and drug abuse
.
At a 2005 blogger conference in Berlin
, Möller gave a lecture on the Open Source Initiative
, free knowledge and Wikinews
, discussing the latter in the context of other models used by Slashdot
, Kuro5hin
, Daily Kos
and others. At an Austria
n conference on wikis in Vienna
in 2005, Möller discussed the advantages of using wikis to compile statistical data, stating that wikis encourage internal transparency and greater participation among coworkers.
projects including Wikipedia
since 2001 both as an editor, as a developer of the MediaWiki
software and of Wikinews
. He drafted the initial project proposal for Wikinews (using the username Eloquence), and also was instrumental in developing Wikimedia Commons
. He first proposed the idea for Wikimedia Commons in March 2004. Möller described a difference between Wikipedia and Wikinews to The New York Times
by saying: "Wikinews articles are short-lived, so there is a reduced feeling of contributing to a knowledge base that will last a lifetime." "We are the new media. We make our own rules," explained Möller at a 2005 Citizen Reporters' Forum in Seoul
. He stated that Wikinews publishes a daily print edition and is working on other formats including an audio version of articles. Möller was interviewed by Journalism.co.uk on the eightfold increase in traffic to Wikinews on the day of the 7 July 2005 London bombings
, and on the effects of free news. "While Wikinews is still much, much smaller than Wikipedia, the potential for news coverage goes far beyond what Wikipedia is currently doing," said Möller. He gave periodic "State of the Wiki" reports at Wikinews, where he defended the project's use of both original material and information synthesized from other media sources.
. At Stichting Open Progress Möller was the manager of a group of developers who worked on the implementation of OmegaWiki. Möller also hosted other wiki communities such as WikiEducator.org.
He was elected in September 2006 to replace Angela Beesley on the Board of the Wikimedia Foundation, and in October 2006 he became executive secretary. In December 2007 he resigned from the Board and was named Deputy Director. His appointment as Deputy Director of the WMF became effective as of January 10, 2008. In his role as Deputy Director Möller has been involved with financing analysis for the Wikimedia Foundation, and with Executive Director Sue Gardner
gave a presentation to Sun Microsystems
in an attempt to gain funding from the company for WMF. This presentation was later leaked to Wikinews.
As Deputy Director of the WMF, Möller is responsible for managing and implementing the technical strategy of the organization. Möller explained to the Los Angeles Times
that the foundation needed to be careful with the kinds of deals they wanted to make, and said: "We don't want to endanger the mission by entering into deals that would conflict with it." Möller is the Wikimedia Foundation's representative on the institutional council of the Encyclopedia of Life
. Through this contact, Möller helped convince the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
(a backer of the Encyclopedia of Life) to donate $3 million to Wikimedia, the single largest donation Wikimedia has received to date.
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
freelance journalist, software developer
Software developer
A software developer is a person concerned with facets of the software development process. Their work includes researching, designing, developing, and testing software. A software developer may take part in design, computer programming, or software project management...
, author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...
, and Deputy Director of the Wikimedia Foundation
Wikimedia Foundation
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is an American non-profit charitable organization headquartered in San Francisco, California, United States, and organized under the laws of the state of Florida, where it was initially based...
(WMF), based in San Francisco, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
. Möller additionally works as a web designer and previously managed his own web hosting service, myoo.de.
Published work
Möller is the author of the book Die heimliche Medienrevolution - Wie Weblogs, Wikis und freie Software die Welt verändern ("The secret media revolution: How weblogs, wikis and free software change the world"). In the book, Möller discusses the development of a journalistJournalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
ic equivalent to the open source
Open source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
movement in citizen media
Citizen media
The term citizen media refers to forms of content produced by private citizens who are otherwise not professional journalists. Citizen journalism, participatory media and democratic media are related principles.-Principles of citizen media:...
and blog
Blog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
ging, though pointing out that most blogs do not compete with mainstream media
Mass media
Mass media refers collectively to all media technologies which are intended to reach a large audience via mass communication. Broadcast media transmit their information electronically and comprise of television, film and radio, movies, CDs, DVDs and some other gadgets like cameras or video consoles...
. The book was first published in 2005 by Heinz Heise
Heinz Heise
Heinz Heise is a publishing house based in Germany.- History :Heise was created in Hanover in 1949 as an address and telephone directory publisher, then later expanded to include magazines and loose leaf collections. In 2001, the company was divided into separate enterprises, all of which came...
and a second edition was published in 2006, with updated and revised chapters. A review in Berliner Literaturkritik's saw practical tips but claimed the book focused too much on technical details. Möller's book is cited in the 2006 book Wiki: Web collaboration, in a section discussing "Wikis as an Engine for Social Change", and his term "secret media revolution" is used. The authors comment: "Möller provides a comprehensive look at the problems and possible solutions in dealing with difficult controversies and vandalism in blog and wiki environments."
In his earlier research on Wikipedia, Möller found in 2003 that Wikipedia's open source nature garners interest from many individuals, but also leads to gaps in topics of interest to experts. Some of his research was published in Telepolis
Telepolis
Telepolis is the name of a German Internet magazine, published by the Heinz Heise Verlag since the beginning of 1996. It was founded by journalists Armin Medosch and Florian Rötzer and deals with privacy, science, culture, internet-related and general politics and media.Telepolis received the...
, where he compared Wikipedia to the digital
Digital
A digital system is a data technology that uses discrete values. By contrast, non-digital systems use a continuous range of values to represent information...
multimedia
Multimedia
Multimedia is media and content that uses a combination of different content forms. The term can be used as a noun or as an adjective describing a medium as having multiple content forms. The term is used in contrast to media which use only rudimentary computer display such as text-only, or...
encyclopedia
Encyclopedia
An encyclopedia is a type of reference work, a compendium holding a summary of information from either all branches of knowledge or a particular branch of knowledge....
Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
Encarta
Encarta
Microsoft Encarta was a digital multimedia encyclopedia published by Microsoft Corporation from 1993 to 2009. , the complete English version, Encarta Premium, consisted of more than 62,000 articles, numerous photos and illustrations, music clips, videos, interactive contents, timelines, maps and...
. In his 2003 article Das Wiki-Prinzip: Tanz der Gehirne ("The Wiki principle: Dance of the brains"), he gives some background of Wikipedia and wikis, as well as on what he sees as the benefits of the project, ways to prevent vandalism to articles, and the etiquette
Etiquette
Etiquette is a code of behavior that delineates expectations for social behavior according to contemporary conventional norms within a society, social class, or group...
of Wikipedia users.
Websites
Möller, who holds a diploma degree in computer scienceComputer science
Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...
(Dipl.-Inform. FH
Fachhochschule
A Fachhochschule or University of Applied Sciences is a German type of tertiary education institution, sometimes specialized in certain topical areas . Fachhochschulen were founded in Germany and later adopted by Austria, Liechtenstein, Switzerland and Greece...
), is the owner and creator of the Infoanarchy website which has information on P2P
Peer-to-peer
Peer-to-peer computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads among peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the application...
and file-sharing technologies. Thomas Mennecke of Slyck News wrote that "Like P2Pnet.net, InfoAnarchy.org contains an impressive amount of original content written by owner Erik Möller." He has also been involved in the development of the FreedomDefined website
Definition of Free Cultural Works
The Definition of Free Cultural Works is the definition of free content put forth by Erik Möller and published on the website .The first draft of the Definition of Free Cultural Works was published 3 April 2006 . Richard Stallman, Lawrence Lessig, Angela Beesley and others helped the project...
. He is also listed as the joint host of a website known as violence.de that publishes the work of James W. Prescott
James W. Prescott
James W. Prescott is an American developmental psychologist, whose research focused on the origins of violence, particularly as it relates to a lack of mother-child bonding....
and contends that being deprived of physical affection is a major cause of depression
Clinical depression
Major depressive disorder is a mental disorder characterized by an all-encompassing low mood accompanied by low self-esteem, and by loss of interest or pleasure in normally enjoyable activities...
, aggression
Aggression
In psychology, as well as other social and behavioral sciences, aggression refers to behavior between members of the same species that is intended to cause humiliation, pain, or harm. Ferguson and Beaver defined aggressive behavior as "Behavior which is intended to increase the social dominance of...
and drug abuse
Drug abuse
Substance abuse, also known as drug abuse, refers to a maladaptive pattern of use of a substance that is not considered dependent. The term "drug abuse" does not exclude dependency, but is otherwise used in a similar manner in nonmedical contexts...
.
At a 2005 blogger conference in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
, Möller gave a lecture on the Open Source Initiative
Open Source Initiative
The Open Source Initiative is an organization dedicated to promoting open source software.The organization was founded in February 1998, by Bruce Perens and Eric S. Raymond, prompted by Netscape Communications Corporation publishing the source code for its flagship Netscape Communicator product...
, free knowledge and Wikinews
Wikinews
Wikinews is a free-content news source wiki and a project of the Wikimedia Foundation. The site works through collaborative journalism. Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales has distinguished Wikinews from Wikipedia by saying "on Wikinews, each story is to be written as a news story as opposed to an...
, discussing the latter in the context of other models used by Slashdot
Slashdot
Slashdot is a technology-related news website owned by Geeknet, Inc. The site, which bills itself as "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters", features user-submitted and ‑evaluated current affairs news stories about science- and technology-related topics. Each story has a comments section...
, Kuro5hin
Kuro5hin
Kuro5hin is a collaborative discussion website. Articles are created and submitted by Kuro5hin's users and submitted to queue for evaluation. Site members can vote for or against publishing an article and, once the article has reached a certain number of votes, it is then published to the site...
, Daily Kos
Daily Kos
Daily Kos is an American political blog that publishes news and opinions from a progressive point of view. It functions as a discussion forum and group blog for a variety of netroots activists, whose efforts are primarily directed toward influencing and strengthening the Democratic Party...
and others. At an Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
n conference on wikis in Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
in 2005, Möller discussed the advantages of using wikis to compile statistical data, stating that wikis encourage internal transparency and greater participation among coworkers.
Wikimedia Foundation
Möller has been involved with the Wikimedia FoundationWikimedia Foundation
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is an American non-profit charitable organization headquartered in San Francisco, California, United States, and organized under the laws of the state of Florida, where it was initially based...
projects including Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
since 2001 both as an editor, as a developer of the MediaWiki
MediaWiki
MediaWiki is a popular free web-based wiki software application. Developed by the Wikimedia Foundation, it is used to run all of its projects, including Wikipedia, Wiktionary and Wikinews. Numerous other wikis around the world also use it to power their websites...
software and of Wikinews
Wikinews
Wikinews is a free-content news source wiki and a project of the Wikimedia Foundation. The site works through collaborative journalism. Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales has distinguished Wikinews from Wikipedia by saying "on Wikinews, each story is to be written as a news story as opposed to an...
. He drafted the initial project proposal for Wikinews (using the username Eloquence), and also was instrumental in developing Wikimedia Commons
Wikimedia Commons
Wikimedia Commons is an online repository of free-use images, sound and other media files. It is a project of the Wikimedia Foundation....
. He first proposed the idea for Wikimedia Commons in March 2004. Möller described a difference between Wikipedia and Wikinews to The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
by saying: "Wikinews articles are short-lived, so there is a reduced feeling of contributing to a knowledge base that will last a lifetime." "We are the new media. We make our own rules," explained Möller at a 2005 Citizen Reporters' Forum in Seoul
Seoul
Seoul , officially the Seoul Special City, is the capital and largest metropolis of South Korea. A megacity with a population of over 10 million, it is the largest city proper in the OECD developed world...
. He stated that Wikinews publishes a daily print edition and is working on other formats including an audio version of articles. Möller was interviewed by Journalism.co.uk on the eightfold increase in traffic to Wikinews on the day of the 7 July 2005 London bombings
7 July 2005 London bombings
The 7 July 2005 London bombings were a series of co-ordinated suicide attacks in the United Kingdom, targeting civilians using London's public transport system during the morning rush hour....
, and on the effects of free news. "While Wikinews is still much, much smaller than Wikipedia, the potential for news coverage goes far beyond what Wikipedia is currently doing," said Möller. He gave periodic "State of the Wiki" reports at Wikinews, where he defended the project's use of both original material and information synthesized from other media sources.
Deputy Director
Möller was appointed the Chief Research Officer of the WMF in June 2005 but resigned in August of the same year, citing personal differences with members of the Board. He had been chief technology officer of Stichting Open Progress, the not-for-profit legal arm of OmegaWiki, based in the NetherlandsNetherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
. At Stichting Open Progress Möller was the manager of a group of developers who worked on the implementation of OmegaWiki. Möller also hosted other wiki communities such as WikiEducator.org.
He was elected in September 2006 to replace Angela Beesley on the Board of the Wikimedia Foundation, and in October 2006 he became executive secretary. In December 2007 he resigned from the Board and was named Deputy Director. His appointment as Deputy Director of the WMF became effective as of January 10, 2008. In his role as Deputy Director Möller has been involved with financing analysis for the Wikimedia Foundation, and with Executive Director Sue Gardner
Sue Gardner
Sue Gardner is the current Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation in San Francisco, and previous director of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's website and online news outlets.- Life and journalism career :...
gave a presentation to Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems, Inc. was a company that sold :computers, computer components, :computer software, and :information technology services. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982...
in an attempt to gain funding from the company for WMF. This presentation was later leaked to Wikinews.
As Deputy Director of the WMF, Möller is responsible for managing and implementing the technical strategy of the organization. Möller explained to the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
that the foundation needed to be careful with the kinds of deals they wanted to make, and said: "We don't want to endanger the mission by entering into deals that would conflict with it." Möller is the Wikimedia Foundation's representative on the institutional council of the Encyclopedia of Life
Encyclopedia of Life
The Encyclopedia of Life is a free, online collaborative encyclopedia intended to document all of the 1.9 million living species known to science. It is compiled from existing databases and from contributions by experts and non-experts throughout the world...
. Through this contact, Möller helped convince the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is a philanthropic non-profit organization in the United States. It was established in 1934 by Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., then-President and Chief Executive Officer of General Motors.-Overview:...
(a backer of the Encyclopedia of Life) to donate $3 million to Wikimedia, the single largest donation Wikimedia has received to date.