Blog posts in Wiki

Wikipedia will soon provide its editors and users with video editing capabilities. Users will be able to import, edit and review videos inside Wikipedia. This is a true revolution – the ability to use the immense Wikipedia community to tag and append content to video media will contribute new insights and add knowledge.
The huge Wikipedia community and its dedicated editor section that are supported directly by contributions and indirectly by Google's algorithm are in a good position to enter this almost virgin field of scholarly tagging of media.

Earlier this month I wrote here about the reasons we had for building an independent wiki here in Akban. I wrote about the problems that still exist for Wikipedia: "Wikipedia has an unsolved problem with the copyright of non textual media types, a hurdle we solved by videoing and editing all the Akban-wiki techniques." Concisely, mediocre content will always be relatively free of copyrights while top content, content that takes time, effort and money to produce, will always be copyrighted for lack of other decent revenue generating models.
We met with Kaltura team back in the beginning of 2008 and were happy with the solutions they generated in the Akban wiki. These same great innovators are now implementing the Kaltura video system into Wikipedia.

Is the time ripe then for a merge of Akban-wiki's content into Wikipedia? I don't think it is. The Wikipedia will evolve around documenting existing content while this part of our project, as phrased in the last paragraph of our ethical code, will evolve around creating and disseminating new research material.
Link to Technology review article
Beginning of Kaltura in Akban wiki cooperation

When looking at the academical part of the Akban project there is always the question: Why did we, Akban veterans, invest so much time and effort in building and maintaining a martial art wiki when there is an alternative, namely Wikipedia?

A recent Hebrew article in Akban's journal delves deeper into the reasons. Wikipedia deals with existing fields and articles. You can write a Wikipedia article only when the knowledge and facts about this article are already known. An author wishing to publish original academic work has to publish it in a scientific journal, not in the Wikipedia.

Apart from the Wikipedia focus on publishing existing textual and numerical data, Wikipedia has an unsolved problem with the copyright of non textual media types, a hurdle we solved by videoing and editing all the Akban-wiki techniques.

Martial arts research is either adjacent to physiology , psychology and anthropology or deals with comparative backgrounds in the emerging field of Hoplology. There is almost no Martial arts research that is endogenous and deals with the techniques as an investigated entities.

We are still in the beginning of this comparative research and so far we have little more then 1000 techniques from different disciplines in the Akban-wiki. A growing part of these techniques have textual and semantic data attached and more information is added in English and Hebrew weekly.

After several years of being online we are somewhat disappointed that no one has started a similar effort. That, for us, means the independent scientific investigation of martial arts is a niche subject. It also means that we will have to continue with this effort on the current pace. At this pace we will have 5000 videos of techniques that are articles, not how-to clips, only 6-7 years from now.

We are committed to lifelong training, committed to our community and committed in this endeavour.

Most of the discussion is going on on the Hebrew part of our site, but if you have insights or feedback we would love to hear from you, send us an e-mail.

We have a new Martial Arts wiki today.
Gone are the cumbersome wikipedia skins, css and boxes. Gone is the mutual navigation with the akban.org site.

On the helm was Keith Harris from Bifugi who did it with help from Vadim Gilead and me.

Since we are a small crew we overlooked many bugs in the new design. Any remarks, corrections and suggestions mailed to us would be warmly appreciated.

mail Akban, thanks

With the help of Sensei Miles Kessler, a 5th Dan Aikido Aikiai instructor we documented in video most of the basic Aikido weapon techniques.
More to come...
links:
Miles Kessler website
Aikido in the Akban wiki

Amir Haimi, a well seasoned Akban veteran (Judo black belt, studied with Renzo Gracie, De La Riva...) with more then 20 years in the Akban school, will begin another round of seminars in Ne Waza, or Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.

Akban veterans have been augmenting their martial art knowledge with many disciplines in order to hone Randori skills. During the last several years Amir, I., N. and Gidon Zaghar noticed recurring mistakes in ground techniques. These series of seminars come to remedy these mistakes and are highly recommended to all the Akban veterans not in Rio De Janeiro at the moment.

Links:
Brazilian Jiu Jitsu portal in the Akban-wiki - all the videos of the basic and most useful techniques.
Judo portal in the Akban-wiki - All the throws.
Grade requirements in Akban Budo Ninjutsu

We are getting nearer to a complete coverage of all the Koto ryu kata in your martial arts encyclopedia.

Thanks for all the guys pitching in, it shows what dedication, martial expertise and our veterans can achieve.
link to Koto Ryu kata and techniques

Added to the Akban-wiki, the martial arts and fitness encyclopedia are most of the weapon kata of Tenshin Shōden Katori Shintō-ryū.

A new Traditional weapons portal is already on the Akban-wiki and includes, Seitei gata, Katori and Budo Ninjutsu. We also started to document western sword techniques, in that same portal.

Have fun exploring our growing Martial arts database.

Kaltura, the new guys on the web video applications, recently partnered with the Wikimedia Foundation to provide collaborative video functionality to Wikipedia's 207 Million unique visitors.
We are really glad they picked our project - The Akban-wiki martial arts encyclopedia - as a featured costumer and partner.


Kaltura lets users edit video online from a variety of sources to create informative new videos from existing ones. This correlates perfectly with our community wiki because Kaltura allows wiki editing and history of user's edits.

We have been integrating and working out minor early bugs in the Kaltura application and we can present some modest results.

We filmed and uploaded six more martial arts katas from the koryu school of Koto ryu.
This leaves only about 15 missing katas to finish the first stage of documenting this ancient martial school.
The Akban project aims to document and classify many martial arts in a free martial arts encyclopedia.
New Koto ryu kata in video:
1. Kakuhi no kata
2. Koto no kata, Okuden level
3. Kyogi no kata
4. Santo no kata
5. Shisen no kata
6. Suito no kata


Koto ryu article in the Akban-wiki.

Niradin is a system of movement and awareness based on years of research martial arts, meditation, yoga and Chigong.


We have just collected the basic movements of the first level in Niradin.

Like the techniques in the rest of our martial arts wiki, these techniques are free to use and share alike under the creative commons license.
link to Niradin first level techniques