A New Epistemic Culture? Wikipedia as an Arena for the Production of Knowledge in Late Modernity Lior Gelernter Department of Sociology and Anthropology Ph.D. Thesis Submitted to the Senate of Bar-Ilan University Ramat-Gan, Israel May 2013
Welcome message from author
This document is posted to help you gain knowledge. Please leave a comment to let me know what you think about it! Share it to your friends and learn new things together.
Transcript
A New Epistemic Culture? Wikipedia as an Arena for the Production of Knowledge in Late
Modernity
Lior Gelernter
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Ph.D. Thesis
Submitted to the Senate of Bar-Ilan University Ramat-Gan, Israel May 2013
This work was carried out under the supervision of Professor Ilana F. Silber of the
Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Bar-Ilan University.
Acknowledgements
This dissertation would never have been realized without the guidance and help
of various individuals who assisted me in preparing, compiling and – last but by no
means least – submitting it. I would like to take the opportunity to thank some of
them.
To my advisor, Prof. Ilana F. Silber, for her committed and sensitive guidance,
for continually challenging me to refine and improve my ideas and my work, and for
her enduring faith and dedication.
To the President's Fellowship (Milgat HaNasi), for their generous financial
support.
To Avi Cordova and Natan Sznaider, both of whom I am proud to call my
teachers and mentors.
To Iddo Tavory, a true friend and colleague who has read and re-read this work,
for his encouragement and inspiration.
To my friends and colleagues who have read, commented on and discussed parts
of this work: Hagay Bar, Tama Halfin, Esty Katz, Stav Kaufman Raviv, Idit Livneh,
Ayelet Oz and Tom Pessah.
To the guides of the Ph.D. workshop, Prof. Larissa Remennnick, Prof. Ilana F.
Silber and Prof. Ephraim Tabory, and for its participants, my fellow Ph.D. students,
for their intellectual and moral support.
To the founders and participants of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, without
which the world, and my life, would have been poorer and duller.
To my family and friends, who were there for me even when I was absent.
Finally, to my lovely, adored and benevolent wife who endured me heroically
through these long years of work, and to my children, Yotam and Ayala, who prove
children can be cuter and more fun than anything you can find on the internet.
Table of Contents
Abstract ..................................................................................................................... i Chapter 1: Introduction ............................................................................................. 1
1.1 Wikipedia's Rise to Fame ............................................................................. 4 1.2 Review of the Literature ............................................................................. 10 1.3 Theoretical Framework ............................................................................... 29 1.4 Research Objectives ................................................................................... 49
Chapter 2: Methodology ......................................................................................... 53
2.1 Data Corpus 1: Web Archives .................................................................... 57 2.2 Data Corpus 2: Interviews .......................................................................... 61
Chapter 3: Nupedia ................................................................................................. 66
3.1 Historical Background ................................................................................ 67 3.2 The Encyclopedic Model ............................................................................ 71 3.3 The Mode of Production ............................................................................. 77 3.4 A Controversy: Modifying the Mode of Production .................................... 85 3.5 Conclusion ................................................................................................. 90
Chapter 4: Wikipedia's Founding Period ................................................................. 95
Chapter 5: Encyclopedising the Wiki Technology .................................................104
5.1 Phase 1: Setting the Ground Rules .............................................................109 5.2 Phase 2: Purifying Article Pages: the “Refactoring Debate” .......................116 5.3 Phase 3: The Neutral Point of View ...........................................................124 5.4 Conclusion ................................................................................................142
Chapter 6: Wikifying the Encyclopedic Form ........................................................146
6.1 Phase 1: Wiki is not Paper .........................................................................149 6.2 Phase 2: Wikipedia is not a Dictionary ......................................................152 6.3 Phase 3: What Wikipedia is Not ................................................................176 6.4 Conclusion ................................................................................................191
Chapter 7: Wikipedia in the Field of Israeli journalism ..........................................197
7.1 Wikipedia in the Journalistic Environment ................................................200 7.2 Wikipedia in Journalistic Practice ..............................................................204 7.3 Using Israeli Journalists as Interviewees ....................................................220 7.4 Conclusion ................................................................................................221
Chapter 8: Conclusion and Discussion ...................................................................225
8.1 Theoretical Implications ............................................................................231 8.2 The Gift of Knowledge ..............................................................................239 8.3 Wikipedia and Contemporary Epistemic Culture .......................................244
Bibliography .........................................................................................................248
Appendix: Primary Resources ...............................................................................272
א ........................................................................................................................ תקציר
i
Abstract
Wikipedia is a multilingual internet encyclopedia which users can freely use
or edit, and whose contents are written collaboratively by volunteers from all over the
world. Over the last decade, its innovative mode of production allowed it to
accumulate and organize unprecedented volumes of content and establish itself as a
prominent resource in contemporary information society. At the same time, however,
its reliance on un-vetted and unprofessional voluntary labor raises widespread doubts
regarding its reliability and legitimacy as a source of information.
This study explores the institutionalization and subsequent reception of
Wikipedia as a distinctive, emergent form of epistemic culture – i.e. amalgams of
standards and practices underlying the production and legitimation of knowledge
(Knorr-Cetina, 1999). As such, it presents a strategic case allowing us to observe how
new epistemic cultures are constructed, debated and institutionalized in practice.
Current research tends to explain Wikipedia’s success in a-historical terms, using its
current features as taken for granted explanatory factors. In contrast, this study draws
attention to the contingent and contentious processes through which these features
were formed, negotiated and institutionalized during Wikipedia's initial, founding
phase using previously unavailable archives from that period. Moreover, while
research has tended to neglect the context of Wikipedia's consumption, this study also
examines Wikipedia's reception and use by a specific category of knowledge experts
—namely, journalists—who use it routinely in the course of their work and have the
capacity to propagate its legitimacy. Combining attention to both production and
reception, I suggest can lead to a better understanding of Wikipedia's actual success
and legitimation processes.
Theoretically, this research reconstructs Wikipedia’s history and patterns of
production and consumption through pragmatist lenses—emphasizing the importance
of exploring concrete practices and objects rather than abstract beliefs or values. Thus,
the argument centers on the ways in which actors creatively solve problems they
encounter in the course of action, focusing on their use and translation of extant
repertoires of practices and justifications. It draws upon insights from several
pragmatically oriented theoretical streams, mainly related to Studies of Science and
Technology (STS), such as Knorr-Cetina’s constructivism, Susan L. Star's
interactionism and Actor-Network Theory (ANT). Opting for such a pragmatist
ii
approach allows me to both conceive of Wikipedia as a modern epistemic object, and
outline actors’ modes of engagement with the practicalities of knowledge giving
which sustain it.
Methodologically, the first part of this study is based on a newly available
database of almost all the web activity conducted in Wikipedia's formative first year,
providing a comprehensive record of every edit entry and dispute in the field. The
main analytic tool I use here is the “cartography of controversies” (Venturini, 2009),
an Actor-Network Theory inspired approach which maps the locations and actions of
different actors within a network, and traces how disputed claims become taken-for-
grated and “black-boxed.” The second part, examining Wikipedia's reception, is based
on in depth, semi-structured, interviews I have conducted with 20 journalists in Israel.
The following, empirical section starts with two chapters linking Wikipedia to
its immediate historical origins – the first of them tracing the failure of Nupedia as the
first serious open internet encyclopedic project, and the second comparing this failure
to the processes which eventually led to Wikipedia subsequent success. In an attempt
to give it a solid basis of legitimacy, Nupedia's founders designed a production system
based on rigid and restrictive practices of knowledge giving imported from the
academic world, and relied on the participation of volunteer certified experts. Its
failure to capitalize on the legitimacy of existing cultural practices, expressed in its
inability to build a viable gift-economy attractive to the volunteers they sought, led its
founders to try and supplement it with its mirror image, i.e. an open, almost
unstructured project. The result was Wikipedia: a project aiming for production
volume rather than legitimacy, and based on an essentially unrestricted contribution of
knowledge.
Subsequent chapters then show how Wikipedia's policies and standards were
established from this chaotic origin in the midst of a series of conflicts and
controversies. As I show through detailed analysis of several such controversies, the
negotiation of these conflicts led to the emergence of number of key principles of
coordination: the primacy of the traditional encyclopedic model as a "standard for
standards"; the legitimacy of the Wiki cultural as a resource for schemes and
practices; radical collaboration and lack of hierarchy in the writing and editing
process; the reliance on effective consensus between editors to establish policy; the
dialogical nature of knowledge construction; the reliance on references to other texts
rather than on expertise and original research to establish knowledge; and finally, the
iii
preference for productivity and content quantity over control and quality. In addition,
I demonstrate how various "conscription devices" (Henderson, 1991), such as policy
pages, warning templates and software features, were erected to sustain these
principles as well as to establish new forms of gift practices, many of which still stand
at the basis of Wikipedia's current structures and practices.
Emerging from this description is a distinct form of knowledge production,
contribution and coordination displaying a relatively informal pattern of
institutionalization, based on the erection of what I term "Privileged Passage Points,"
(PPPs) a concept coined to highlight the common features of several elements in
Wikipedia – such as its policy pages and the authority of its founders—that funnel
action without becoming obligatory. As Wikipedia encourages and relies on the
voluntary contribution of knowledge even by anonymous or inexperienced users, and
as its body of editors is extremely diverse, such flexibility was crucial in allowing it to
attract gifts of knowledge from diverse contributors and function as a “boundary
object” (Star and Griesemer 1989) for them.
The last empirical chapter explores how knowledge experts use Wikipedia and
assess its reliability, based on semi-structured interviews with Israeli journalists. Here,
I found a routine and universal use of Wikipedia. Simultaneously, however, the
interviews revealed a systematic taboo preventing journalists from publicly
acknowledging having made use of Wikipedia. Wikipedia thus functions as a
hazardous yet practical shortcut to the more fundamental sources of knowledge
understood to reside elsewhere, in external authoritative sources indicated by links
and references framing Wikipedia's text. Journalists tend to assess the validity of the
information conveyed in Wikipedia articles basing themselves on a semiotic frame
found in and around the latter, and used to attest to its own credibility and legitimacy.
The result, I suggest, is a mode of consumption based on practical legitimacy, i.e. a
limited form of legitimization embedded in the practices of Wikipedia's users, and
granting article contents a limited yet observable measure of authority, as it takes into
account and encapsulates both Wikipedia's de-facto legitimacy—in the sense that
"everybody does that"—and lack of de-jure legitimacy.
Finally, the conclusion discusses the implication of Nupedia and Wikipedia's
cases for the study of contemporary knowledge-giving practices, as well as for a
better understanding of the latter's relations with the vision of enlightenment and
notions of rationality, science and expertise commonly associated with the very
iv
concept of modernity. As for the former, I find that Wikipedia's success is related to
its ability to retain a flexible and open gift repertoire congruent with its extremely
dynamic social and technological online context. In contrast with Nupedia's reliance
on academic-like practices, Wikipedia built on gift-practices already prevalent in the
online environment it operated in, adapted them to its innovative goals, and kept them
flexible enough to support various types of giving.
As for the relevance of the concept of modernity, Wikipedia may seem to
challenge the accepted vision of modern knowledge as it is based on the decoupling of
knowledge and expertise and of theoretical and practical legitimation, two amalgams
standing at the very core of modern theories and methodologies. However, it does so
in a way that also keeps assuming the legitimacy of modern epistemologies, and
indeed, attempts to insert itself in the legacy of previous encyclopedias. Rather than a
radical rift, then, Wikipedia presents a case of more nuanced and subtle
transformation. By practically moving from obligatory to privileged passage points,
and from essential to practical legitimacy, it constructs a new form of epistemic
culture, which draws from earlier conceptualizations of knowledge, but re-aligns the
notions of knowledge and expertise in novel ways.
1
Chapter 1: Introduction
"The zeroeth law of Wikipedia - The problem with Wikipedia is that it only works in practice. In theory, it can never work" (Wikipedia, 2006)
"Even if you don't like the idea of Wikipedia replacing the old knowledge hierarchies of the Encyclopaedia Britannica or the newspaper's archive, you find yourself using it. It just becomes a vital tool. However, you never cite it or link to it. So you can say Wikipedia is like porn – no one talks about it, but everybody uses it" (interview with Eyal, journalist)
Wikipedia is a multilingual internet encyclopedia whose contents are
accessible without charge under a free content license, and is composed
collaboratively by volunteers from all over the world. It is overwhelmingly popular,
consistently ranked as one of the 10 most popular websites worldwide and routinely
linked-to from other websites and mass media venues as a source for general
information and as means for substantiating knowledge claims. However, even though
Wikipedia is woven into the very fabric of World Wide Web, and perhaps even into
that of everyday life in the contemporary knowledge society, it remains controversial
and often viewed with suspicion.
The quotes above uncover two fundamental and related tensions that surround
Wikipedia as an innovative source of information. As "the zeroth law of Wikipedia,"
(Wikipedia, 2006) often used by supporters and defenders of Wikipedia (cf. Cohen
2007, 2011; Jesus, 2010; Kelly, 2008; Lee and Karuga, 2010) exemplifies,
Wikipedia's popularity presents a paradox: its reliance on the collaboration of myriad
unnamed and unprofessional volunteers deviates so drastically from culturally
sanctioned methods of encyclopedic knowledge production that even when it is
proved a resounding success (in practice) it cannot be regarded as one (in theory).
This does not mean that Wikipedia does not have its own theory or
methodology of encyclopedic knowledge production. As I show in this dissertation,
Wikipedia's accomplishments owe much to the success of its founders in establishing
relatively effective, coherent and justifiable mechanisms of knowledge production and
legitimacy mechanisms. Wikipedia began as an experimental project, based on an
2
unprecedentedly open and heterogeneous social structure, incorporating an innovative
and risky technology, and lacking the ordering and legitimating mechanisms of
previous encyclopedic projects. To succeed against skepticism, doubt and conflicts,
its founders had to produce new knowledge production and legitimacy mechanisms
that could be made commensurable with those of earlier encyclopedic projects. While
these efforts proved immensely successful, the epistemic culture1 (Knorr-Cetina,
1999) which emerged as their result is inherently and consciously risk-laden and far
from being completely trustable. As they chose to embrace the uncertainty and
instability of their new creation, they willingly traded a measure of authority for
increased productivity. The result was a new form of practical legitimacy, which
grants knowledge with diminished authority as it takes into account and encapsulates
both its usability and its liabilities, both its de-facto legitimacy and its lack of de-jure
legitimacy. Thus, Wikipedia pays for its ability to harness unprecedented voluntary
labor power by explicitly admitting that it cannot, in principle, produce certified
knowledge and that the legitimacy of its contents is inherently unstable.
The journalist’s quote with which I have opened the dissertation—taken from
one of the interviews I conducted—demonstrates the ironic effects of this state of
affairs on Wikipedia's reception. The widespread doubts regarding its reliability do
not prevent it from being intensively used, even by the very ones who doubt it – as
long as they don't have to acknowledge using it and thus to regard the knowledge it
contains as certified.
The origins and implications of this peculiar situation are the main subjects of
this work. Using historical archives and interviews, I draw the general outlines of this
new epistemic culture; I trace its institutionalization in Wikipedia's founding period,
thereby also addressing more general patterns of institutionalization in contemporary
networked knowledge society; and examine how it is reflected in Wikipedia's
reception and consumption by knowledge experts – namely, journalists – who use it
routinely in the course of their work.
1 Knorr-Cetina defines epistemic culture as those "amalgams of arrangements and mechanisms – bonded through affinity, necessity and historical coincidence – which in a given field, make up how we know what we know" (Knorr-Cetina, 1999, p. 1. italics in the original).
3
While Wikipedia is already the subject of a substantive research literature, this
work contributes to our understanding of Wikipedia and its reception in three
important ways: first, it explores the concrete controversies and deliberations through
which these tensions were negotiated, allowing a better understanding of the
processes which produced Wikipedia's epistemic culture. Second, it makes use of
previously unavailable historical records to trace these processes of
institutionalization which mainly occurred in its early, founding phase. Lastly, it
studies the correspondence between the routine practices of both producers and
consumers, thereby giving a fuller portrayal of Wikipedia as a cultural phenomenon.
These contributions may allow for a deeper understanding not only of
Wikipedia itself, but also of more general mechanisms underlying the
institutionalization of knowledge production projects and their reception, especially in
voluntary and/or unprofessional settings. While other studies emphasized the
importance of flexibility and inclusiveness in contemporary networked knowledge
society (Castells, 2001; Fuchs, 2008), this work studies how it is actually constructed
and sustained, through concrete practices and objects, and through more generalizable
network formations. Rather than assume or acknowledge Wikipedia's flexibility, I
focus on the complex local processes through which its unique epistemic culture was
produced and institutionalized, thus engaging flexibility as an end point of social
processes, rather as their cause.
A central theoretical contribution which stems from this analysis is the
development of the concept of Privileged Passage Points. As opposed to Obligatory
Passage Points, “loc[i] that could shape and mobilize the local network” and “have
control over all transactions between the local and the global networks" (Bijker and
Law, 1992, p. 31), Privileged Passage Points have less power and allow for greater
variability, though they succeed in effectively controlling the network in most cases.
This relative weakness allows them the whole network to change and adapt faster to
changing circumstances and allow for practical compromises between conflicting
actors. These features make them especially effective in situation involving relatively
unpredictable voluntary participation and contribution, as they preserve participants'
sense of free (or at least relatively unconstrained) giving.
4
A second conceptual contribution of this work is a conceptualization of
Wikipedia's unorthodox mode of access: in attempting to explain Wikipedia's peculiar
consumption patterns, I develop the concept of practical legitimacy. This concept
designates a form of legitimation which grants knowledge (or objects, or persons) a
diminished yet observable measure authority, as it takes into account and encapsulates
both its usability and its liabilities, both its de-facto legitimacy (in the sense that
"everybody does that") and lack of de-jure legitimacy (observable thorough repeated
utterances expressing doubts and criticism). This concept may prove helpful in
accounting for the epistemic culture of digital, widely distributed knowledge
production projects, or even become the basis for a better understanding of under-
theorized legitimacy formations that fail to achieve a full measure of legitimacy, yet
are still effective.
This introductory chapter will be comprised of four parts: the first provides a
brief overview of Wikipedia and its history. The second presents the burgeoning
literature about Wikipedia, focusing on studies that touch on Wikipedia's knowledge
production methods, its content, and its reception. The third part outlines the
theoretical framework underlying this dissertation. I conclude with an outline of the
dissertation in its entirety.
1.1 Wikipedia's Rise to Fame
Wikipedia, which celebrated its tenth anniversary in January 2011, is a
multilingual internet encyclopedia whose articles are constantly written and edited
online by internet users from all over the world. Anyone interested can edit almost
any article without restrictions2, using a nickname or remaining completely
anonymous. Wikipedia's contents are free, published under a copyright license that
allows it to be used or reproduced freely, demanding only that it be cited as a source.3
2 Some articles, susceptible to vandalizing or biased edits, are protected or semi-protected, allowing only veterans to edit them. 3 Wikipedia was originally published under a license called GNU-FDL (abr. for Gnu Free Documentation License). In &oldid09 it migrated to a new very similar license, CC-BY-SA. Basically, both licenses dictate that reuse of content should be accompanied by an attribution to its source, and that derivative works produced using it should be distributed under the same license. See Wikimedia (2009)
5
Wikipedia's website has a uniform structure, based on a clear and schematic
design: each page, associated with a specific encyclopedic article4, has two main
"tabs" that can be switched by a click of a mouse button: the Article tab containing its
content and the Talk tab containing a discussions and commentary regarding the
article. Three additional tabs provides alternate ways of accessing the contents of the
article or discussion: the default Read tab presents the most recent version of the
content; the Edit tab presents the content in a relatively simple word processor format
that allows users to alter it, almost without restrictions5; and the View history tab
contains all previous versions of the content and various details about them6. This
structure renders Wikipedia's production extremely open and transparent, and
simultaneously cater to the needs of various users: information seekers in search of a
specific fact as well as flaneurs in the realm of knowledge; Students looking for help
in their homework as well as professionals interested in a general impression of a
subject matter in the periphery of their field; passive readers as well as active editors.
Behind this simple and inviting interface, however, lies a huge and complex
sociotechnical structure, which governs the countless contributions made to
Wikipedia everyday and ensures its stability and growth. Behind the scenes, edits are
monitored, users’ actions are judged and rewarded, policies are determined and
enforced, and sophisticated technological tools are developed. These mechanisms are
the product of long series of processes of institutionalization and transformation,
where standards and practices were developed over a long period of time.
Wikipedia began as an offshoot of an earlier "open-source"7 encyclopedic
project named Nupedia. Both projects were founded by Jimmy Wales, a dot-com
4 This description refers to Wikipedia's main namespace, containing encyclopedia articles. Wikipedia is divided to several "namespaces", each containing another category of pages. Namespaces currently include: Main, User, Wikipedia, File, MediaWiki, Template, Help, Category, Portal, Book, Education program, TimedText, and Module. Each namespace has a corresponding Talk namespace (see below). The basic structure described below is the same in each of these namespaces. 5 Some of Wikipedia's more sensitive or vandalizing-prone articles are protected or "semi-protected", allowing only specific categories of users to edit them, but their amount is negligent in relation to Wikipedia's overall size. 6 The View history tab also contains notes for each version its editor's username or IP, the exact date and time it was created, and a short summary written by the editor. It also contains research tools, such as a comparison between versions and various search and statistics options. 7 Formed in 1998, the open source movement was a commercially driven effort to promote collaborative software development and permissive user license agreements. It was gaining notability and success at the time, and initial attempts were made to translate its success from the realm of software to that of internet content.
6
entrepreneur, and Larry Sanger, a young philosophy PhD and internet enthusiast
whom he hired to manage them. Wales was inspired by the Free and Open Source
Software (FOSS) movement, which advocated the use of distributed peer-production
(Benkler, 2006) to create software which can be copied, re-used and modified. The
Gnu/Linux operating system and the DMOZ web directory project, which attempted
to copy the FOSS principles to the realm of content production, both gained
recognition and success at the time were prominent examples that these ideas can
work.
Nupedia, launched March 10th 2000, was a rigorous and serious project, with
an academic advisory board and painstaking editorial process. However, it soon
proved unsuccessful—only a dozen articles were published within its first year of
operation, due to the relatively small number of active volunteers, slow article
submission pace and complex editorial process. In January 2001, frustrated by this
meager output, Sanger and Wales announced a new initiative: an experimental project
where articles can be written and edited without any limitations. Sanger named it
Wikipedia, a portmanteau of Wiki – the technological infrastructure for collaboratively
producing hypertext pages used in the project – and encyclopedia. It was, as he later
noted, "a silly name for what was at first a very silly project" (Sanger, 2005).
When Wikipedia went live on January 15, 2001, it contained nothing more
than a few test pages. Wikipedia's founders, however, quickly amassed a vibrant
community of volunteers (as most of Nupedia's participants declined to join it),
created standards and practices for this highly unorthodox setting, and modified the
Wiki infrastructure to fit aims it was never meant to serve. The newly fledged
"Wikipedians" capitalized on both their personal knowledge and the abundance of
content and knowledge available on the web to make Wikipedia useful for readers
(though still very limited in its contents) in merely a few months. Before long, it
proved so successful that Wales moved his focus of interest away from Nupedia and
ultimately shut it down. After only a couple of months, the first non-English
Wikipedias were set up, and the volunteer population began growing exponentially.
Wikipedia's community's success was especially surprising when considering
its heterogeneity: The community was comprised mostly of Americans, but it had a
large minority of participants from other countries, mainly Europeans. It included
7
supporters from a variety of fringe ideologies: libertarians, socialists, anarchists and
techno-utopists, as well as more mainstream vies. Areas of interest were also diverse,
spanning such realms as statistics and mathematics, political theory, philosophy,
computer and programming, and popular culture and current events.
In light of this heterogeneity, and the lack of established practices, Wikipedia's
participants soon began setting some policies and ground rules to foster cooperation
and to ensure that the content produced in Wikipedia would promote the vision of
creating an encyclopedia. The success of these efforts was far from trivial, as
Wikipedia didn't have an editor-in-chief, advisory board, formal policy documents or
participant selection mechanisms. Policy decisions were generally entrusted with the
"Wikipedia community," determined through deliberation and "rough consensus,"
although the project's founders had a privileged position in these deliberations, and at
times insisted on setting policy even against vocal opposition. During Wikipedia's
first year, Sanger (who was officially employed as Nupedia's editor in chief and had
no formal position in Wikipedia) took the lead role in steering Wikipedia's
community, attempting – and generally succeeding – to establish policies and
guidelines that will keep Wikipedia's content is as close as possible to that of
traditional encyclopedias, in terms of style and tone8. However, Wikipedia's authority
structure remained highly flexible and lenient – a leniency expressed in the fact that
one of its major principles was (and still is) the "ignore all rules" policy, dictating that
"If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it"
(Wikipedia, 2012a).
Following Sanger's departure in the beginning of 20029, Wales took the
leading role in the project, assuming a position often referred to as that of a
"benevolent dictator”10 (or "constitutional monarch," as he preferred. Cf. Reagle,
2010a, chapter 6). In this capacity, he held such prerogatives as introducing software
and policy changes and banning users. However, he seldom used these capacities,
relying on community deliberation and consensus for most decisions, and generally 8 The topics considered relevant for the encyclopedia, however, were way beyond the scope of traditional ones, as articles relating to such topics as popular culture and geek culture were intensively produced. 9 Sanger was laid off Bomis, who was in financial difficulties at the time. He continued to frequent the project from time to time, but subsequently lost his position of authority in it. 10 A term often used in FOSS projects to describe the privileged position of a project's founder in setting policies and steering the developer community.
8
reduced the use of his special position over the years. In 2003 he transferred the rights
to Wikipedia from Bomis, his company, to the newly erected Wikimedia foundation,
a non-profit organization which operated it ever since.11 At the same year, he erected
the Arbitration Committee, a panel of editors12 responsible for deciding on disputes
that the community was unable to resolve. In the following years, Wales continued to
give up his privileges such as vetoing appointments and blocking users. Today,
Wales' formal authority is limited to a sit in Wikimedia's board of trusties, a
ceremonial role in appointing new members to the arbitration committee (after they
have been elected by the community), and special "founder" privileges in Wikipedia's
software, which grant him access to unique technical capabilities, such as removing
the privileges of other users.
Over the years, Wikipedia’s hierarchy structure became more layered and
institutionalized. The emerging status-groups were based mainly on degrees of
privileges in Wikipedia's software. As the project grew ever larger, and as new
technical tools emerged to help maintain it, more and more users were entrusted with
such tools, receiving a position of "administrators."13 While Wikipedia is a highly
flexible project, it is by and large institutionalized, as the technical and social changes
it continuously undergoes have relatively little effect on its general model and
methods of operation.14
Wikipedia's contributor-base grew immensely over time, and it now has more
than 80,000 regularly active editors, 35,000 of them in the English language
Wikipedia, by far the largest and most productive15. The contribution pattern also
changed over time, as more contributions were being made by more casual users.16
Moreover, Wikipedia had come, over time, to rely heavily on "bots," software scripts 11 As well as sister projects created later such as Wikitionary, Wikiquote, Wikisource, Wikinews etc. 12 The first members volunteered, or were "Drafted" by Wales. Subsequent members were annually elected by the community (Wikipedia, 2012c). 13 Subsequently, a whole set of user access levels was devised, including such positions as "bureaucrats," "stewards" and "CheckUsers," each endowed with a special set of privileges. Advancement in the hierarchy was initially based on personal acquaintance and reputation, but later a formal election became routinized and institutionalized. 14 This description is only true to the English language Wikipedia; Wikipedias in other languages does not comply to the same polices, and there is a large degree of variance in the way they operate. 15 All the quantitative data presented in the following paragraphs was extracted from Wikimedia (2012), an automatically generated aggregation of statistical information concerning Wikipedia, unless noted otherwise. 16 As Kittur et al., (2008) noted, "Although Wikipedia was driven by the influence of 'elite' users early on, more recently there has been a dramatic shift in workload to the “common” user."
9
that automated much of the work of assembling, editing and safeguarding in
Wikipedia. These programs perform such functions as blocking vandalism; linking
similar articles in different languages; importing data from external resources and
converting it to articles; and assisting Wikipedians by pointing to articles in need of
editing and suggesting possible changes. currently, some 39 percent of edits done in
all the various language Wikipedia's except for the English language one are bot edits
(Niederer and van Dijck, 2010). Even in the English language Wikipedia, which has
the lowest percentage of bot edits, they account for almost 10%.
These processes allowed Wikipedia to grow enormously over the years. After
a long period of exponential growth, its growth is now linear – but still extremely fast,
with 12,760 new articles and over 370,000 edits per day in December 2011, (876 new
articles and over 100,000 edits in the English Wikipedia). Wikipedia's total size is
almost unimaginable: spanning more than 8 billion words in 20 million articles
written in over 280 languages, (roughly 4 million in the English version alone), it is
the largest and most diverse encyclopedia ever produced.
In terms of exposure, Wikipedia is by far the most popular online reference
work, and one of the web's most popular websites. It is ranked by Alexa as the world's
5th most popular website (Alexa, 2011) and ComScore estimates its global reach at
about 30% of global internet user population, with more than 365 million unique
visitors each month, (Wikimedia, 2011). According to a recent PEW survey, it is used
by 53% of all adult internet users in the U.S.A. and almost 70% of users with college
education or higher (Zickuhr and Rainie, 2011).
The status of Wikipedia in terms of its size and usage are somewhat marred by
Wikipedia's ambivalent reception. It is often attacked as unreliable, biased, and
damaging to contemporary culture. In 2005, it was attacked by the Association for
Computing Machinery's Committee on Computers and Public Policy, which claimed
that it “cannot attain the status of a true encyclopedia without more formal content-
inclusion and expert review procedures” (Denning et al., 2005). Jaron Lanier (2006)
claimeds that the importance accorded to Wikipedia's "online collectivism" as means
of knowledge production leads our culture on the path to "digital Maoism" which
crushes the individual. This is a dangerous phenomenon, as "History has shown us
again and again that a hive mind is a cruel idiot when it runs on autopilot. Nasty hive
10
mind outbursts have been flavored Maoist, Fascist, and religious, and these are only a
small sampling. I don't see why there couldn't be future social disasters that appear
suddenly under the cover of technological utopianism." Similarly, Andrew Keen
accused wikipedia of fostering a "cult of the amateur" which degrades expertise and
damaging contemporary culture (Keen, 2007). It was even suggested by popular TV
host and comedian Stephen Colbert that Wikipedia creates its own Wikiality – a "truth
by consensus," detrimental to reason and enlightenment.
Wikipedia’s influence, innovative technology and unorthodox production
processes places it at the heart of questions and dilemmas regarding the production
and consumption of knowledge in contemporary society. It is thus no wonder than
that Wikipedia became the center of a growing body of research. In the next part, I
outline the major themes and disagreements emerging within this body of knowledge.
1.2 Review of the Literature
There are three main themes prevalent in the extant literature on Wikipedia:
(a) its content as a cultural product, (b) its usage and influence as an information
resource, and (c) the dynamics underlying its production as a voluntary collaborative
knowledge production project.17 The first two of these strands demonstrate the overall
success of Wikipedia's aspirations, as they demonstrate its success in producing an
effective encyclopedia (though it is arguably inferior to more conventional
commercial information resources), and its diffuse and widespread use. The last
strand, the most sociologically oriented and relevant of the three, aims to explain this
success by analyzing the social structures production dynamics that enabled it. Thus,
I'll describe the first two relatively briefly, and then move on to discuss the literature
about Wikipedia's production at length.
17 In addition to the studies presented here, there are also works dealing with Wikipedia that will not be included in this review. These are mainly works from the point of view of network analysis who analyze Wikipedia's network correspondents with various mathematical models. Cf. Almeida, Mozafari and Cho (2007), Bellomi and Bonato (2005), Buriol et al. (2006), Capocci et al., (2006), Holloway, Božicevic and Börner (2007), Korfiatis, Poulos and Bokos (2006), Zlatic et al., (2006). Another type of works is review essays in information science publications that describe Wikipedia's interface and techno-functional makeup, without attempting to analyze it. Some (such as Mckiernan, 2005; Voss, 2005) are completely descriptive, while others compare it to other electronic knowledge management systems (Kolbitsch and Maurer, 2005, 2006; Wagner, 2006). In the following review, I will only describe these works in cases where they have a direct bearing on the content of the dissertation.
11
1.2.1 Wikipedia as a Cultural Product
There is general agreement in the literature that Wikipedia, as a cultural
product, retains most of the features prevalent in traditional encyclopedias, though
there are disagreements regarding its relative quality as such. The results of studies
assessing Wikipedia's accuracy, style and coverage indicate that Wikipedia's articles
on traditional encyclopedic topics are generally similar to traditional encyclopedias in
terms of their style and content. However, they tend to disagree on the merits of
Wikipedia articles in comparison with other encyclopedias or resources, with some
regarding Wikipedia as inferior to them and other positing it as equivalent
In an oft-cited study, Giles (2005) found Wikipedia's science-related articles to
contain only a slightly higher rate of mistakes than the Encyclopaedia Britannica's,
although they were generally inferior in terms of style.18 Similarly, Rosenzweig
(2006) found that Wikipedia's accuracy in articles about history related topics was
similar to that of the Encarta online encyclopedia19. Brown (2011), who reviewed
political science related articles in Wikipedia,20 found that "Wikipedia's political
coverage is often very good for recent or prominent topics but is lacking on older or
more obscure topics." Finally, Halavais and Lackaff (2008) compared Wikipedia's
coverage in comparison with three specialized print encyclopedias. They found that
the percentage of articles that had no parallels in Wikipedia was 37% for a poetry
encyclopedia, 21% for linguistics and 18% for physics.21
Relatively extensive attention had been given to Wikipedia's coverage of
health issues, which was found to be generally good but inferior to professional
resources. This finding was consistent across several studies with different topics and
methodologies: it was the conclusion of a study comparing Wikipedia's coverage of
18 This study was widely cited both in the press and in scholarly articles (Benkler, 2006; Chandler-Olcott, 2009; Chandler and Gregory, 2010; Mercer, 2007) as evidence that Wikipedia is generally reliable not inferior to Britannica. Britannica publicly contested the methodology and results of this study (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2006), but nature rejected their criticism (Nature, 2006). 19 However, both were inferior to those in American National Biography Online. 20 He examined articles concerning specific candidates, elections, and officeholders. 21 It should be noted that the use specialized encyclopedias renders this comparison problematic, as their coverage is generally wider than that of general encyclopedias. In addition, the data from Wikipedia was gathered in 2006, making it somewhat outdated
12
medical drug information to that of Medscape Drug Reference22 (Clauson et al.,
2008); a study comparing Wikipedia's coverage of osteosarcoma with that of US's
National Cancer Institute (NCI) website23 (Leithner et al., 2010), and a study in which
experts reviewed Wikipedia's articles on four psychiatric disorders (Mercer, 2007).
More recently, however, a study which examined articles concerning depression and
schizophrenia found that "the quality of information on depression and schizophrenia
on Wikipedia is generally as good as, or better than, that provided by centrally
controlled websites, Encyclopaedia Britannica and psychiatry textbook" (Reavley et
al., 2011). Similarly, Schweitzer (2008) found Wikipedia's coverage of psychological
topics to be comprehensive.
Finally, some studies were attempted to assess the style of Wikipedia's
articles, usually by comparing it to the style of other encyclopedias or information
resources. 24 Giles (2005) found Wikipedia's natural science articles were less clearly
styled and less structured than those of the Encyclopaedia Britannica's, though their
accuracy was relatively similar. Similarly, Rosenzweig (2006) found the prose style in
biographies of historical figures was significantly inferior to that of American
National Biography Online (written by expert historians), noting that "overall, writing
is the Achilles' heel of Wikipedia".25 Other studies found Wikipedia's style to be on
the same level with that of previous encyclopedias: Emigh and Herring (2005) found
that Wikipedia is "largely indistinguishable stylistically from the expert created
Columbia Encyclopedia," and Elia (2006) found that Wikipedia's articles style is
similar to that of Britannica Online. Finally, Bell (2007) found that Wikipedia articles
are similar to parallel ones found in Britannica in terms of readability and
grammatical textual composition.
To conclude, the disagreements about Wikipedia's quality hide a deeper
consensus, about its status as an encyclopedia and its usability as one. To paraphrase
the old proverb, considering Wikipedia's unorthodox production methods the wonder 22 The authors found that "Wikipedia has a more narrow scope, is less complete, and has more errors of omission than the comparator database." However, they also noted that it's useful and that the quality of information improved significantly over the preceding 90 days. 23 The authors found that "the quality of osteosarcoma-related information found in the English Wikipedia is good but inferior to the patient information provided by the NCI" 24 The emphasis in such comparisons is mainly on similarities of "quality", and it seems that many of them are not critical enough of their research methods and categories of comparison. 25 However, he also found the style of said articles to be similar to their equivalents in the Encarta encyclopedia.
13
isn't how good of an encyclopedia it is, but that it is an encyclopedia at all. As
Wikipedia defines itself as a "work in progress" (Wikipedia, 2012b) any shortcomings
are only to be expected. The fact that similar standards can be used to measure it
alongside respectable information resources is undisputed in this strand of research,
and the very fact that it is often found equal, attests to the project's overall success.
1.2.2 Wikipedia's Usage and Influence
A second strand of research looks into Wikipedia's reception rather than its
content. This set of studies examined the extent of Wikipedia's use in various contexts
and fields, primarily in higher education. The general consensus emerging from these
studies is that Wikipedia is extensively used, even though it is often shunned by those
in positions of authority (such as university professors, teachers, etc.). Moreover, they
indicate that the growing use of Wikipedia tends to undermine the authority structure
characteristic of institutionalized realms of knowledge.
Several studies that examined Wikipedia's use in academic setting found that it
was widely used (Eijkman, 2010; Head, 2007; Head and Eisenberg, 2010; Lim, 2009;
Pechacek, 2007; Schweitzer, 2008), and that its use increased over time (Judd and
Kennedy, 2010). While most of these studies address students' use of Wikipedia, a
study that focused on academics, found that many of them use Wikipedia extensively,
though cautiously (Eijkman, 2010). Similarly, the use of Wikipedia to search for
medical information is not restricted to patients: Spence (2009) claimed that roughly
half of the doctors used Wikipedia to look for medical information. While several
studies found that teachers often raise concerns about Wikipedia's use, to the point of
discouraging its use (Chandler-Olcott, 2009, Chandler and Gregory, 2010; Eijkman,
2010), some teachers see it as a unavoidable part of contemporary education
environment (Maehre, 2009; McPherson, 2006; Rosenzweig, 2006), and some even
advocate its use, or report using it successfully as part of their teaching apparatus
(Barton, 2005; Caverly and Ward, 2008; Chandler-Olcott, 2009; Chandler and
Gregory, 2010; Eijkman, 2010; Nix, 2010; Pollard, 2008; Tarasiuk, 2010).
A number of articles point out the increasing and routine use of Wikipedia in
both judicial decisions (Peoples, 2009; Murray and Miller, 2010) and law review
14
articles (Baker, 2009).26 In both cases, Wikipedia was cited primarily on extra-judicial
issues, as a source for definitions of terms or for references to technology, pop
culture, or current events. All of the writers mentioned above share reservations about
citing Wikipedia, pointing to the evolving nature of its articles and reliability
problems as central causes of concern.
Studies that examined Wikipedia's influence finds that its popularity tends to
undermine the authority structures of institutionalized realms of knowledge. Barton
(2005) claims that Wikipedia changes students' academic writing, and that it takes
part in the creation of a critical public sphere that undermines established knowledge
hierarchies. Similarly, Eijkman (2010) found that academics believe that Wikipedia
disrupts the conventional academic power-knowledge arrangements. Lih (2004a),
who analyzed Wikipedia's effects on mass media, found that it has played a
significant role in the spread of a participatory form of journalism which undermines
the global media ecology (Lih, 2004b, 2004c). Rosenzweig (2006), who described
Wikipedia's impact on history teaching in higher education, concluded that it
undermines the authority of professional historians and offered possible ways to
mitigate this effect.
Finally, a few researches attempted to study how Wikipedia's users assess the
quality of its articles. Chesney (2006) asked expert academics to rate the quality of
Wikipedia articles (and of Wikipedia in general) under tow conditions: half of the
participants were assigned an article in their area of expertise, and half were assigned
an article outside it. While no difference was found in the assessment of Wikipedia in
general, it was found that on average, participants who were assigned articles in their
areas of expertise rated it higher then those who were assigned articles outside it.
Metzger, Flanagin and Medders (2010) used undergraduate students' focus groups to
study how individuals assess the credibility of online information sources. They found
that they tend to rely on the opinion of others, often through the use of social
networking sites or reputation systems, or on heuristic processes – reputation,
endorsement, consistency, expectancy violation, and persuasive intent. Many of their
participants questioned Wikipedia credibility, and it was generally considered less
26 Murray and Miller (2010) found that Wikipedia was cited on more than 500 federal or state cases (as of September 2009), and Baker found that Wikipedia was cited in some 500 American law review journals, including 29 of the 30 top ranked law reviews.
15
reliable than information from "real people". Yaari, Baruchson-Arbib and Bar-Ilan
(2011) also studied how students evaluate Wikipedia articles. However, in contrast
with Metzger et. Al. (2010), they observed users while they evaluated articles. They
found that the most frequently mentioned attributes for determining article qualities
were not unique to Wikipedia: students used such attributes as the article's length, the
presence of external links, and Wikipedia templates (such as "featured article"), most
of them similar to ones often mentioned in other information quality studies on the
web.
To conclude, these studies (as well as the usage statistics described above)
indicate that Wikipedia, in terms of its reception, is a highly popular information
resource, and keeps gaining ground. Over the previous years, it became a major force
in the field of knowledge distribution, exceeding the expectation of its founders. This
achievement, as well as its ability to present itself as a genuine encyclopedia,
indicates that despite its unorthodox and innovative production, it can and needs be
considered a highly successful project. Thus, in the next and central part of this
review, I'll outline theories that attempt to explain its success by attributing it to its
production processes.
1.2.3 Wikipedia as a Voluntary Collaborative Project
Studies dealing with Wikipedia as a knowledge production project usually
begin by describing its success, and then attempt to explain the mechanisms or
processes that enabled it.27 In general, they agree that the keys to Wikipedia's success
are its ability to harness the knowledge and efforts of many volunteers with diverse
areas of interest, and its innovative technology and model of collaborative knowledge
production which coordinates their actions. Its technology and production model, as
these studies point out, compensates for the lack of expertise and control inherent in
its voluntary production system by virtue of their ability to accommodate radical
forms of participation and collaboration whereby each participant (and theoretically,
each reader) can easily and quickly supplement or correct the contribution of any
other participant (Bryant, Forte and Bruckman, 2005; Emigh and Herring, 2005;
27 This one, it should be noted, is no different.
16
Konieczny, 2009; Kuznetsov, 2006; Lih, 2004a, 2009; Viégas, Wattenberg and
McKeon, 2007).
Beyond this broad agreement, there are important disagreements about critical
characteristics of this model, resulting in two general approaches in the literature. The
first is a network-centered approach focusing on "crowdsourcing" or "the wisdom of
the crowds" (Surowiecki, 2004), which highlights Wikipedia's openness as the main
principle behind its ability to harness voluntary contributions from huge numbers of
casual users and active editors whose work is relatively unconstrained and
unreciprocated. A second, community-centered approach focusing on "the wisdom of
the few" or "the wisdom of chaperons" (Wilson, 2008), emphasizes the importance of
Wikipedia's core community of very active contributors who produce most of
Wikipedia's content, effectively governing it by setting and enforcing standards and
policies, and taking part in an internal gift-giving culture sustaining their social
relations.
These approaches are not unique to the research of Wikipedia, but are rather
related to broader conceptualizations and analyses of FOSS projects (or "digital
commons") and online communities, especially those focusing on knowledge-sharing
and voluntary contributions28. Similar to the distinction made above, some
conceptualizations stress the highly distributed and somewhat individualized aspects
of online participation and sharing (Benkler, 2006; Bruns, 2008; Lessig, 1999; Shirky,
2008, 2010; Surowiecki, 2004; Tapscott and Williams, 2006; Weinberger, 2007,
2011; Rainie and Wellman, 2012), while others stress the communal context of such
practices, immersed in an internal gift-giving culture (Barbrook, 1998; Bauwens,
2005; Bergquist and Ljungberg, 2001; Giesler, 2006; Jenkins, 2006; Kollock, 1999;
Rheingold, 2000). A similar contention relates to the issue of reciprocity: while some
writers (cf. Barbrook, 1998, 2000; Barbrook and Cameron, 1996; Bruns, 2008;
Raymond, 1998; Tapscott and Williams, 2006) stress the importance of symbolic
exchange in this context, manifested in the existence of a "gift exchange" structuring
expectation for recognition or symbolic returns, others stress the non- or even anti-
utilitarian nature of such contributions (c.f. Rheingold, 2000; Bauwens, 2005),
highlighting rather the ideological basis in such acts. However, recent findings point 28 This is hardly surprising, as many of these works used Wikipedia itself as an important example for such settings – in fact, this is true to every such work I found which was published after 2004.
17
out that at least in the context of Wikipedia, these conflicting attitudes are not as
mutually exclusive as they may seem, and that both these two modes of social
structures and practices have to be taken into account in understanding its operation.
Thus, new "technology-centered" explanations try to uncover how Wikipedia exerts
control over various types of contributions by pointing to the cooperation between
human and non-human actors (such as protocols and software) that together make up
the Wikipedia's sociotechnical ensemble29. In what follows, I describe these
approaches in the context of research regarding Wikipedia.
1.2.3.1 Network Centered Approach: the Wisdom of the Crowds
Some of the most notable interpretations of Wikipedia posit it at the center of
a new model of content production based on very large scale voluntary and
decentralized (or "networked") collaboration. A term often used to denote this
approach is "the wisdom of the crowds"30 (coined by Surowiecki, 2004, and used, for
example, in Arazy, Morgan and Patterson, 2006, Kittur and Kraut, 2008; Kittur et al.,
2008): it explains Wikipedia's success as a ability to attract a very large and diverse
body of volunteers, each producing only a small part of the work in an area she is
familiar with, and collaboratively correcting each other's shortcomings. While some
researchers in this approach acknowledge the importance of highly active regular
users, the emphasis is on the great number and diversity of relatively small individual
contributions31. In any case, the difference between the productivity of various
participants is usually constructed in quantitative rather than qualitative terms. Writers
often invoke the concepts of "the long tail" or "power-law distribution" (Benkler,
2006; Kittur and Kraut, 2008; Kittur et al., 2008; Shirky, 2008): concepts that point to
the fact that many participants contribute very small amounts of content, while a few
contribute large amounts – and that this pattern is shared by many online phenomena
as is thus symptomatic of the internet's technological infrastructure.
29 On the notion of sociotechnical ensemble and sociotechnical systems see Law, (1991), Bijker and Law (1992), Bijker (1993, 1995a, 1995b). 30 It should be noted that a similar term coined by Rheingold (2003) in the headline of his book Smart Mobs, meaning pretty much the same, did not catch as well. 31 Sunstein, for example, claimed that "an essential part of the answer [to the question why Wikipedia is so successful, L.G], is that large numbers of knowledgeable people are willing to participate in creating Wikipedia, and whatever errors they make usually receive massive correction, simply because so many minds are involved" (Sunstein, 2006, p. 151, italics not in the original).
18
In this approach, giving and sharing knowledge is predominantly seen as
emerging from the individual acts of isolated actors. Several studies highlight the
importance of intrinsic motivations (Okoli and Oh, 2007) such as "fun" (Nov, 2007),
"altruism" and "self direction" (Oreg and Nov, 2008) or "educating humanity" and
"making a difference" (Kuznetsov, 2006). While self-interest (appearing in such
expressions as gaining experience, exposure, and social connections) was also found
relevant in such studies, altruistic motivations were found to be more dominant. In
any case, such studies usually hold a methodological individualist point of view, as
the social or communal side of giving is usually underemphasized in them. Finally,
this approach is often related to some soft version of technological determinism which
posits that social media technology, informational (rather than physical) goods and/or
excess leisure facilitates such acts of giving, making Wikipedia a prominent model for
this new form of production (Benkler, 2006; Shirky, 2008, 2010; Tapscott and
Williams, 2006).
Benkler (2006), one of the major theorists of collaborative online projects,
coined the term "peer production"32 to describe this model, and posited Wikipedia as a
prominent example of its achievements. Benkler describes it as "a new modality of
organizing production: radically decentralized, collaborative and nonproprietary;
based on sharing resources and outputs among widely distributed, loosely connected
individuals who cooperate with each other without relying on either market signals or
managerial commands" (Benkler, 2006, p. 60). Following similar ideas developed
earlier by Lawrence Lessig (1999), he praised this model as part of a major cultural
and economic revolution fostering a new networked information economy based on
giving and sharing rather than economic exchange or organizational hierarchies. This
new modality, whose expansion is dependent on new information technology,
enhances freedom, democracy and critical culture, and is based on autonomy and self-
fulfillment wishes of individual contributors.33
Tapscott and Williams (2006) re-articulated this conceptualization in more
economic terms. In contrast with Benkler's emphasis on networked organization, they
claim that Wikipedia functions so well because it operates as a free market where 32 His original term was actually "commons-based peer production", emphasizing the giving and sharing aspects of this mode of production, but the shorter version has taken roots in the relevant discourse. 33 However, Benkler also emphasized the importance of Wikipedia's norms and community. See below.
19
masses of contributors act more or less individually. The market is perceived as faster
and as more reliable than a centrally controlled system and as more efficient the more
participants it includes. In outlining this model of peer production, they claim that it
depends on the following conditions: a) the object produced is cultural or
informational; b) the work of producing it can be "chunked out into bite-size pieces
that individuals can contribute in small increments and independently of other
producers"; and c) the costs of assessing and integrating those pieces must be low
(Tapscott and Williams, 2006, p. 70). Wikipedia is portrayed as benefiting from all
three conditions.34 Its openness, and the large user population it encourages, allows it
to utilize an "almost infinite wealth of talent, energy, and insight that far exceeds what
Britannica's closed model can muster" (ibid).
A similar economic approach is advocated by Clay Shirky (2008, pp. 109-142,
2010), who used Wikipedia as a prominent example for a model for new online social
tools that utilize the "cognitive surplus" created by expanding leisure for collaborative
production. He claims that "Wikipedia's lack of managerial direction makes it easier
for the casual contributor to add something of value; in economic terms, an open
social system like Wikipedia dramatically reduces both managerial overhead and
disincentives to participation" (Shirky 2008, P. 130), thus solving the potential “free-
rider problem” inherent in such projects. In allowing for differing levels of
participation, Wikipedia encourages a power-law distribution of contributions,
meaning that a minority is responsible for most of the contributions, but an extremely
large population of low-level users is responsible for many others – and often more
substantial ones. While Shirky acknowledges the importance of highly active
contributors, he hardly addresses such issues as community norms and project wide
policies, focusing on the levels of individual contribution and local interaction.
Weinberger also stresses the distributed nature of knowledge production in
Wikipedia, as well as in the internet in general. As suggested by the subtitle of his Too
Big to Know (Weinberger, 2011) – “Rethinking Knowledge Now That the Facts Aren't
the Facts, Experts Are Everywhere, and the Smartest Person in the Room Is the
34 While Tapscott and Williams (2006, p. 72) acknowledges the importance of the "hard-core group of about five thousand Wikipedians who gladly accept responsibility for the large variety of tasks that keep Wikipedia humming," they view Wikipedia's advantages as stemming mainly from its open model which allows anyone to edit it, and the masses of contributors involved in mainly individual work.
20
Room” – he sees Wikipedia as a network whose knowledge surpasses that of the
individuals in it:
“As knowledge becomes network, the smartest person in the room isn’t the person standing at the front lecturing us, and is in the collective wisdom of those in the room. The smartest person in the room is the room itself: the network that joins the people and ideas in the room… It’s not that the network is becoming a conscious super-brain. Rather, knowledge is becoming inextricable from – literally unthinkable without – the network that enables it. [p. xiii]
A central point in this argument is that Wikipedia (and similar projects’) success in
building a successful network stems from its distributed leadership pattern and
decentralized or network decision-making (pp.170-171).
Lastly, reformulating this standpoint from a more organizational position
Konieczny (2009, 2010) maintains that Wikipedia has an extremely decentralized
governance structure. This structure, which he argues is very close to that of an
adhocracy, is characterized by "flat hierarchy, decentralization, little managerial
control, and ad-hoc creation of informal multidisciplinary teams" Konieczny (2010).
This structure, the open technology underlying it, and its heterogeneity, makes
Wikipedia a unique case of organization immune to the iron law of oligarchy. While
Konieczny does not preclude oligarchy as a future option, he thus holds it to be
structurally unlikely. As he state, "Among the millions of editors and hundreds of
wiki organizations, there is too much diversity for the formation of a conscious
oligarchy" (Konieczny, 2009).
As is evident, this approach is immersed in a technological utopian ethos that
accompanied the growing interest in the trend known as "web 2.0" (O'Reilly, 2007) –
the emergence of websites (such as Youtube, Flicker, Wikipedia, etc.) based on the
contributions and interactions of many individual users, and lacking central
authority.35 In this reading, Wikipedia is envisioned as a veritable spearhead of this
trend, celebrated as a restructuring of the internet in a way that fosters participant
democracy and subverting central authority. However, this approach soon came under
criticism, first and foremost by Wikipedia's participants themselves. This reaction,
based on a mixture of academic and independent research, stressed the fact that most
35 For a history and critique of technological utopianism see Segal, 1985, Tenner, 1996, Hayden, 2009.
21
of Wikipedia's edits are made by a very small minority of contributors. This criticism
was related to, and significantly promoted, a second interpretation of Wikipedia,
focusing on "the power of the few" (Kittur et al., 2008) or "the wisdom of the
chaperons" (Wilson, 2008).
1.2.3.2 Community Centered Approach: the Wisdom of the Few
While the approach described above stresses the importance of Wikipedia's
openness, decentralization, heterogeneity and networked structure, this second strand
of research attributes Wikipedia's success mainly to a relatively small and cohesive
community of dedicated and experienced editors, and the culture of giving and
reciprocity associated with it (cf. Reinhardt, 2003; Bryant et al., 2005; Rafaeli, Hayat
and Ariel, 2009, O'Sullivan, 2009, Reagle, 2010a). This community not only produces
much of its content and guards it against disruption; it is also responsible for
Wikipedia's policy formation, technological development and maintenance.
Influenced by theories of virtual communities (Rheingold, 2000) and communities of
practice (Lave and Wenger, 1991, Wenger, 1998), the studies employing this
approach usually highlight issues such as the effect of communal identity and norms
on motivation and practices, the sense of commitment to the community and project,
and socialization of new participants.
As noted above, the basic finding underlying this approach is the
disproportional quantity and quality36 of work done by a relatively small group of
regular contributors. The initial assertion by jimmy Wales in the early days of
Wikipedia, based on a research he conducted using raw data from Wikipedia was that
more than half the edits made by logged-in users in Wikipedia are made by only 2.5%
of these editors (Wales, 2005a). Later, refining his claims, he asserted that "over 50%
of all the edits are done by just.7% of the users … 524 people. … And in fact the most
active 2%, which is 1400 people, have done 73.4% of all the edits" (quoted in Swartz,
2006). Later studies seem to reinforce this assertion. Ortega and Gonzalez-Barahona
(2008), for instance, found that in each of the ten largest language versions of
Wikipedias, less than 10% of the registered users are responsible for more than the
36 While there is no clear measure for quality in Wikipedia, a number of studies used retention rate (i.e. the percentage of an edit which survived subsequent edits) as an approximation.
22
90% of the total number of edits. Anthony, Smith and Williamson, (2007), who
checked the retention rate of content in the French and German Wikipedias, found
that content added by veteran registered users tends to stay in Wikipedia more than
new or unregistered users.37 Similarly, Priedhorsky et al., (2007) found that frequent
editors dominate what people see when they visit the English Wikipedia, as more of
their words are retained in subsequent edits than those of irregular ones, especially in
popular articles. They also claim that this domination is increasing over time.
The importance of Wikipedia's core community of very active editors is
further highlighted in studies about Wikipedia's response to vandalism and
disruptions, such as the insertion of false or biased content, replacing or
supplementing legitimate content with obscenities or gibberish, and deleting of whole
article pages. Ciffolilli (2003) claimed that Wikipedia's success in dealing with
vandalism stems from a reputation system based on contribution to the project that
underlies a consensual community and authority structure geared towards improving
useful content and deleting unwanted contribution. Similarly, Lorenzen (2006)
contended that Wikipedia's community succeeded in developing robust production
norms and sophisticated mechanisms for detecting and warning against potentially
problematic behaviors and assessing their nature, as well as effective sanctions to
deter problematic editors. He concludes that "there is a strong and viable reaction to
problematic behavior at Wikipedia. The community is quite capable of defending
itself from obvious vandals."
As this approach stresses the social context of production processes in
Wikipedia, it attempts to describe how this context enhances participants' productivity
and motivations. The most essential aspect of such explanations is probably the
emphasis on the importance of social norms and their enforcement by the Wikipedia
community. This aspect is highlighted in many accounts of Wikipedia, (Bryant et al.,
2005; Emigh and Herring, 2005; Farrell and Schwartzberg, 2008; Pentzold, 2011;
Priedhorsky et al., 2007; Rafaeli, Hayat and Ariel, 2009; Reagle 2010a, 2010b;
Viégas, Wattenberg and McKeon, 2007), and is most often credited as a direct cause
to its success. Such accounts usually highlights such norms as cooperation, consensus
building, assuming good faith (especially Bryant et al., 2005; Reagle 2010a, 2010b), 37 The only category with similar retention rates was the rare "Good Samaritan" experts, who contribute only once.
23
adhering to the stylistic tropes of encyclopedia articles, and especially to a neutral
point of view, assuming a critical point of view towards knowledge and attempting to
debate it in a rational and matter-of-fact manner (Benkler, 2006; Emigh and Herring,
2005; Farrell and Schwartzberg, 2008).
A second essential feature of this approach is the importance of Wikipedia's
community to the identity and motivation of contributors. In contrast with studies
emphasizing "intrinsic" motivation (see above in the previous section), most
researches in this approach stress the importance of community related motivations
(Rafaeli, Ariel and Hayat 2007, Rafaeli, Hayat and Ariel, 2009; Schroer and Hertel,
2009). Thus, while Kuznetsov emphasized the important of intrinsic motivations, he
also found that 15% of Wikipedians report that they contribute in order “to give back
to the Wikipedia community" (Kuznetsov, 2006). Ciffolilli (2003) posited that
Wikipedians were moved to contribute by their desire to gain reputation within the
community. Similarly, Anthony et al., (2007) claim that Wikipedia "zealots"38 are
motivated primarily by their wish to acquire reputation and to belong to Wikipedia's
community.
Reagle's Good Faith Collaboration (2010a), the most extensive ethnographic
account of Wikipedia to date, describes its social norms and community processes at
length, presenting it first and foremost as a community driven project. His explanation
of Wikipedia's success is essentially a description of the beneficial features of its
community. As the title of his book suggests, the most prominent of these is its "good
faith collaboration culture": a collection of prosocial norms which reflect a trusting
attitude towards contributors (whether they are familiar or not) and their actions. A
second feature is its nature as an "open content community" characterized by its focus
on open (as in open-source) content; the transparency of its rules and processes; the
integrity of the processes; the evaluation of person and contribution based solely on
their merit; and the right to "fork"39. A third feature is the community's reliance on
consensus for most of its decision making processes, and the various community
mechanisms used to establish and create such consensus. Finally, the last feature is
38 Who are responsible to most of the high quality contributions in Wikipedia, see above. 39 Reagle calls this right "non-interference". Forking, the right and ability of dissatisfied community members to copy existing content and use it as the basis for a new or derivative project, is considered a basic right in all FOSS projects.
24
the "authorial" leadership pattern embodied in Jimmy Wales, based on merit and trust,
and enacted through civility and humor.
A similar approach was offered by Axel Bruns (2008), who coined the term
produsage to explain its essence40. In his insightful analysis of Wikipedia, based on
concepts such as collective intelligence and knowledge spaces developed by Pierre
Lévy (1997), Bruns claims that it is Wikipedia's innovative community structures and
processes that drive its success:
Content in Wikipedia evolves under the influence of policing and development not by individual actors operating in inherent isolation from one another, but by communities organized through emerging and increasingly complex yet fluid heterarchical structures; far from being unspecified, a great number of implicit and explicit conventions, rules, and norms… govern – on a ad-hock basis – this continuing communal process…" (Bruns, 2008, p. 128)
Thus, while stressing Wikipedia's "complex and fluid community," he
highlights "community standards" as the main factor for improvement in quality.
Bryant et al., (2005) focus on the socialization process of Wikipedians,
examining how Wikipedians move from a state of Legitimate Peripheral
Participation (LPP) to full community involvement, taking on more roles and
responsibility41. They contend that the socialization process transforms participants'
perceptions, motivations and actions, as their participation becomes more central and
frequent: "They identify the site, not as a random collection of articles, but as a
community of co-authors who play distinct roles and have distinct talents as they
build a resource. They move from a local focus on individual articles to a concern for
the quality of the Wikipedia content as a whole and the health of the community."
It should be noted that the community approach does not stand in total contrast
with the network approach, but rather they are a matter of emphasis. Benkler's
description, for example, stresses the importance of decentralization and openness but
40 Burns claims that in virtual communities such as blogs, second life and Wikipedia the very separation between producers and consumers is inapplicable. His alternative term, produsage, "[…] highlights that within the communities which engage in the collaborative creation and extension of information and knowledge […], the role of ‘consumer’ and even that of ‘end user’ have long disappeared" (Bruns, 2008, p.2). 41 However, Panciera, Halfaker and Terveen (2009) rejected Bryant's finding, claiming that "Wikipedians are born, not made": that is, the writing pattern of users that subsequently became dedicated users was distinguishable from their early days in the project, and did not change much over time. Further evidence is needed to determine the validity of these conflicting claims.
25
at the same time argues that Wikipedia's success is dependent on "self-conscious
social-norms-based dedication to objective writing" and "self-conscious use of open
discourse, usually aimed at consensus" (Benkler, 2006, p. 72). This combination, he
asserts, prevents it from having to use software based editing restrictions and
sanctions and allows it to exercise greater freedom than similar projects. In his latest
book, the Penguin and the Leviathan (Benkler, 2011), he moved closer to the
community approach, further emphasizing the importance of Wikipedia's norms and
communal mechanisms, and stressing the crucial role of moral commitments to such a
community structure which fosters and sustains them (Benkler, 2011 pp. 152-159).
Similarly, Bruns (2008) does not only focus on community enforced norms
and standards, but at the same time highlights the "complex yet fluid heterarchical
structures" underlying it, and Rainie and Wellman (2012) focus on the heterogeneous
networked in which "networked individuals" in Wikipedia chose to take part.
Similarly, while most studies concerned with motivations for giving side more closely
with one of the approaches, they usually also acknowledge the relevance of
motivations related to the other approach.
While the community approach is indispensible in attempting to understand
Wikipedia's success, recent research seems to indicate that it is gradually losing
ground. Recent findings suggest that Wikipedia's workload, initially carried out
mainly by a core community of Wikipedians is now increasingly skewed towards
more casual users, or "crowds" (Kittur et al., 2008). Other studies found that
Wikipedia's governance is becoming increasingly decentralized (Forte and Bruckman,
2008; Forte, Larco and Bruckman, 2009). Moreover, it seems that Wikipedia's core
community began suffering from erosion, as it was suggested that editor retention
rates are dropping (Ortega, 2009). These changes brought about a third approach
which attempted to transcend previous dichotomies and focus on Wikipedia's
sociotechnical makeup.
1.2.3.3 Technology Centered Approach: "The Technicity of Content"
This approach attempts to go beyond the two mentioned above, as it highlights
the conditions that allow the co-existence of both individual and group-oriented
26
participation in Wikipedia. Thus, it explains Wikipedia's success by pointing to its
ability in to harness various types of contributors and contributions, with divergent
and often conflicting motivations. As a growing number of studies began to address
multiple types of contributions (Anthony et al, 2007; Kittur et al, 2008) and
motivations for contributing (Kuznetsov, 2006; Rafaeli and Ariel, 2008), this
approach attempt to point at specific features in Wikipedia which fosters this
diversity, manifested in its technological makeup or design.
While the approaches outlined above focus on Wikipedia's human resources,
Niederer and van Dijck (2010) offer a fresh approach as they focus on the
sociotechnical makeup of the website. Wikipedia, they claim, exerts "protocological
control": a mode of control that is at once social and technical based on standards of
action for using specific technology. At the same time, they stress the importance of
non-human content agents, such as bots42. Contesting the dichotomy between the
network and community approaches, they contend that Wikipedia's functioning
depends on its ability to exert effective control on all contributors, both casual and
very active one. Wikipedia is "a gradually evolving sociotechnical system that
carefully orchestrates all kinds of human and non-human contributors by
implementing managerial hierarchies, protocols and automated editing systems."43
Niederer and van Dijck (2010) focus on the sociotechnical makeup of
Wikipedia and on the constant collaboration of human and non-human agents in
defining the quality standards in Wikipedia. Building on the work of Galloway (2004)
they contend that Wikipedia's production process is neither "open" nor
"communitarian," but rather mediated through modulated disciplinary control.
Contributors – both humans and non-humans – enjoy different permission level to
Wikipedia's tools, and their contributions are regulated through a system of rewards
(manifested in access to higher permission) and restrictions (manifested in blocking or
removing user permissions). Moreover, Wikipedia's content is increasingly "co-
42 Bots are software scripts that automatically handle much of the work of assembling, editing and safeguarding in Wikipedia. 43 In addition, Niederer and van Dijck claim that the pattern of relations between humans and bots is indicative the robustness of various language Wikipedias, as smaller language Wikipedias exhibit a larger percentage of bot edits and less human interactions with them; in contrast, "a richer variety of bot activity, largely subservient to human edit activity, could be considered an indicator of a large and lively language space."
27
authored by bots" – non human content agents – whose contribution is crucial to
Wikipedia's activity.
Niederer and van Dijck (2010) were not the first to address the importance of
technology in Wikipedia – for example, Priedhorsky et al., (2007) claim that
Wikipedia's ability to counter vandalism is increasingly dependent on the use of anti-
vandalism bots. Similarly, Viégas, Wattenberg and McKeon (2007) note that
Wikipedia's "featured articles" process depends on technological aspects of the Wiki
and Wikipedians' creative use of them. However, they are the first to conceptualize it
as the crucial element sustaining its overall success.
While this approach goes a long way towards explaining Wikipedia's success,
I would contend that it has two major shortcomings: first, it fails to explain how such
technological and protocological mechanisms were constructed in the first place.
Second, I contend that it misses a crucial element in Wikipedia's success: the fact that
it owes its success, at least in part, to the relative lack of control over the contribution
of its participants, which allows it to maintain an ethos of "free giving" at the expense
of accuracy and reliability.
To summarize this subchapter, studies about Wikipedia generally agree that it
is commensurable with more traditional encyclopedias and that it is widely and
increasingly used in various cultural fields. However, they differ in their explanations
of the underlying social structure mechanisms responsible for this success. In this
study, I shall attempt to answer some of the lacks in the literature, while providing a
more general model for networked production and legitimation.
First, the attempt to assess Wikipedia as a cultural product by comparing its
content to that of traditional encyclopedias is limited in its contribution to
understanding what Wikipedia is and how it functions. Such studies fail to address the
ways people actually use Wikipedia. Despite all the differences between the studies
reviewed above, they all share a common methodological problem: they study a very
small group of articles, namely those that have parallels in more traditional
encyclopedias or reference works. However, with more than 3.5 million articles in the
English Wikipedia, it seems that the overwhelming majority of articles have no
parallels that can be used for comparison and thus remain unstudied. This problem is
28
even greater when considering the actual uses of Wikipedia: a study of Wikipedia's
traffic found that the most visited category of articles was entertainment,44 rating
topics that have no parallel in traditional encyclopedias higher than those that do
(Spoerri, 2007).
Thus although it is certainly interesting to compare Wikipedia entries to
parallel entries in traditional encyclopedias, it may be more productive to examine the
shared practices, standards and policies that shape the bulk of Wikipedia's articles,
including those that have no parallel in traditional encyclopedias. Instead of focusing
on the standards set by traditional encyclopedias, studying these policies help uncover
the important differences that make Wikipedia's usable and popular, such as its
readiness to dwell on fleeting and concrete subjects that are absent from traditional
encyclopedias, its use of references and external links, and the way criticism,
interpretation and reservations are manifested in it.45 In order to examine Wikipedia's
characteristics as a cultural product, I examine how Wikipedia articles in general are
structured, and how their features render Wikipedia at the same time very similar and
very different from other encyclopedias.
Taking a pragmatist position, this direction will be supplemented by a focus
on how Wikipedia's articles are used in everyday life, rather than in the controlled
environment of a review process. I will thus demonstrate how these unique features
are central to Wikipedia's use, and argue that these features are more relevant to the
needs and prevalent practices of Wikipedia's users than its accuracy or readability.
This direction is especially warranted considering that studies that assess Wikipedia's
social impact failed to describe how Wikipedia is incorporated into the shared and
routine practices in established fields, changing their micro-level formations rather
than their macro-level structures and ecology.46 Moreover, they do not attempt to
describe the alternative structure of authority over knowledge that Wikipedia
44 Subsequent categories were politics and history, geography, sexuality and science. Entertainment, together with politics and history accounts for more than half of the most popular articles. 45 Foucault (2001) studied the emergence of criticism and hermeneutics as form of writing in the discourse that bred Diderot and D'alamber's Encyclopedie, while Rosenberg (2001) pointed to the far reaching significance of cross references in it. 46 A rare exception can be found in Lim (2009), who describes how students use Wikipedia, claiming that they do so more often for personal purposes than for academic ones, and generally tend not to use if for homework assignments and reference search. However, the small sample (it used an online survey conducted only in one public university), as well as the use of broad categories of use, implies that further research is needed.
29
advances (except for generally claiming that it is more "open" or "collaborative"), and
how it is received. Thus, I use interviews with journalists – a milieu previously
studied in this context – to examine how they incorporate Wikipedia into their
everyday routine, and how this incorporation reflect a distinctive structure of authority
over knowledge.
The central contribution of this dissertation, however, lies in the attempt to
account for Wikipedia's success by analyzing the institutionalization of its social
structures and dynamics. Previous accounts of Wikipedia's success, described above,
attribute it to either "the wisdom of the crowds," to the "community norms," or to
sociotechnical mechanisms. Leaving aside theses differences, these explanations all
share a common problem: they neglect to address the fact that Wikipedia had to gain
considerable initial success in order to attract crowds; that "community norms" are
not a given but an achievement – and an extremely difficult one at that; and that the
technology it incorporated had to undergo considerable development and changes to
accommodate the needs of the project (rather than the opposite direction of influence
underlined by some of the studies above). Although important, these theorizations
thus begin with a relatively static, “finished,” system. An explanation of Wikipedia's
success has to account for its ability, starting in its early days, to achieve these
accomplishments. Thus, using previously unavailable archives containing almost all
of Wikipedia's activity in its first year, as well as other resources, I examine the
creation and institutionalization of Wikipedia's epistemic culture, essential to
explaining its subsequent success.
1.3 Theoretical Framework
The theories underlying the literature regarding Wikipedia thus have two main
shortcomings: first, they are usually a-temporal in their orientation; second, in
focusing on Wikipedia's success they fail to conceptualize its peculiar mixture of
popularity and lack of legitimacy. The tendency to neglect Wikipedia's time-bound
aspects is most evident in the widespread descriptions of Wikipedia as a kind of
structured totality: a social structure with relatively stable features which explain its
success, and are approached from a synchronic rather than diachronic perspective.
They present selected features of Wikipedia (e.g. social structure, culture, technology)
30
as the causes for its success, without explaining how these features themselves were
erected. The goal of this work, however, is to better understand how such features are
constructed, through a more dynamic and processual approach. Thus, I explore the
contribution of the pragmatist tradition, which dealt with these issues intensively, and
three related strands in the social sciences: the symbolic-interactionist perspective,
social studies of science and technology, and pragmatic sociology. Subsequently, I
briefly outline two additional theoretical issues to be addressed in this work: the
charitable giving of knowledge and the relations between contemporary information
society and modernity.
1.3.1 Pragmatism
Pragmatism is a philosophical perspective which emerged in the United States
in the end of the nineteenth century. Its main proponents were Charles S. Pierce,
William James, John Dewey and George Herbert Mead. These thinkers shared an
emphasis on experience and practices, and rejected attempts to build overarching
systems of abstractions that would fix the world in one "true" form. In contrast with
Cartesian rationalist philosophy, their basic view of the world posited it as being in a
constant state of flux. As James put it:
"The essential contrast [between pragmatism and rationalism] is that for rationalism reality is ready-made and complete from all eternity, while for pragmatism it is still in the making, and awaits part of its complexion from the future. On the one side the universe is absolutely secure; on the other it is still pursuing its adventures" (James, 2008 [1907] p. 108)
It is up to human beings to make sense and give a concrete order of this world
– not once and for all, but in the context of their specific environments, needs and
situations they encounter. Deeply influenced by Darwinism and rejecting traditional
idealist or dualist philosophies, they believed that "humans are problem solvers and
the function of thought is to guide action in the service of solving practical problems
that arise in the course of life" (Gross, 2009). When no such problems exist, human
behavior is generally guided by habits (or beliefs, concepts that were usually
constructed as synonymous) and runs along smoothly. However, when action is
obstructed, humans experiment and attempt to generate new practices and meanings.
31
Pragmatism was thus, perhaps more than anything else, a theory of knowledge
(or more generally, culture) and its production. Its basic premise is that knowledge is
actively constructed, and thus always local, contingent and contextual. It is intimately
woven into of the everyday situations that make up our lives. Knowledge, meanings
and objects are the result of practical needs, and are manifested in practical outcomes.
As Pierce’s original formulation of the pragmatist maxim states: "[T]here is no
distinction of meaning so fine as to consist in anything but a possible difference of
practice… Consider what effects, which might conceivably have practical bearings,
we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of those
effects is the whole of our conception of the object" (Pierce, 2012 [1878], p. 119.
italics added L.G.).
As their emphasis on experimentation betrays, the pragmatist thinkers were
generally committed to the notion of scientific enquiry. However, they tended to
generalize it in ways that lead to a highly contextual and often pluralistic view of
knowledge production. Knowledge production, claims Dewey (1941), is always done
through a concrete inquiry borne out of concrete problems, and its results (i.e.,
knowledge) are contingent upon its procedure, or means. These means in themselves
have no universal properties, and should be suited both to the object of study and to
the concrete circumstances in which the inquiry takes place.47 These means tend to
start out as rather "vague and coarse," but progress over time, as the problem itself
takes on a clearer shape and is gradually articulated. Thus, the pragmatist conception
of knowledge is inherently social – a feature extensively developed both in Peirce’s
notion of "a community of inquiry” (Pierce, 2012 [1878]),48 and in Mead’s seminal
Mind, Self and Society (Mead, 1967[1934]).
This theory of knowledge production is highly useful in attempting to
understand Wikipedia's temporal trajectory. As I show throughout this work,
Wikipedia's history follows a very similar trail, by which the object of knowledge and
the means to construct it are gradually articulated and co-constructed, and habit and
creativity alternate as problems lead to re-articulations of both the project and its
47 Dewey (1941) notes that means "are formulated in discourse, i.e., as propositions, and…as means they have the properties appropriate to means (viz., relevancy and efficacy-including economy)." I take the word efficacy to relate (at least amongst other issues) to the social circumstances that condition them. 48 This notion was later elaborated and broadened by Dewey (1944 [1916]).
32
goals. This approach is also highly relevant to understanding how Wikipedia is
incorporated into knowledge production practices of consumers, as its use is
conditioned upon and conditions the concrete environments in which it operates.
Moreover, this view helps redirect the focus from the overly theoretical and
judgmental question of Wikipedia's legitimacy as a project and as a cultural object (cf.
Sanger, 2009; Wray, 2009) to the actual practices its producers and consumers
perform in their attempt to construct it as legitimate.
As the above makes clear, the present study has deep affinities with pragmatic
thinking. However, the pragmatist tenets presented are philosophical heuristics rather
than a method of social inquiry. I thus move now to describe three sociological
legacies that are inspired by pragmatism, and from which I draw heavily in this work:
the symbolic-interactionist perspective, social studies of science and technology, and
pragmatic sociology.
1.3.2 Symbolic Interactionism
Symbolic interactionism is perhaps the most obviously pragmatist form of
sociology (Shalin, 1986; Gross, 2007). According to Shalin, the basic tenets of
symbolic interactionism – the philosophical perspective on reality as being in the state
of flux, the sociological view of social structure as emergent process, the
methodological preference for participatory modes of research and the ideological
commitment to ongoing social reconstruction - are derived from pragmatist thought.
George Herbert Mead, influenced by Dewey's pragmatism, began translating it from a
philosophical school to a social research endeavor, a task later continued by his own
student, Herbert Blumer, who coined the term (which he, himself, called a “barbaric
neologism”) "symbolic interactionism". Mead emphasized the social aspects of
pragmatic behavior: objects, meaning and knowledge are created intersubjectively,
through social acts and social processes (see Mead, 1967 [1934], especially pp. 68-
82). Blumer later expanded this insight, positing three basic premises for the new
school:
"The first premise is that human beings act toward things on the basis of the meanings that the things have for them. Such things include everything that the human being may note in his world—physical objects, such as trees or chairs; other human beings, such as
33
a mother or a store clerk; categories of human beings, such as friends or enemies; institutions, as a school or a government; guiding ideals, such as individual independence or honesty; activities of others, such as their commands or requests; and such situations as an individual encounters in his daily life. The second premise is that the meaning of such things is derived from, or arises out of, the social interaction that one has with one's fellows. The third premise is that these meanings are handled in, and modified through, an interpretative process used by the person in dealing with the things he encounters" (Blumer, 1969, p.2)
An important concept in the symbolic-interactionist tradition, developed to
compensate for its initial orientation towards micro-level, face to face phenomena, is
that of the social wholes, or rather social Worlds. A social world is a collective of
individuals with shared commitments, who act in relation to one another, and who
gather in particular sites to perform at least one primary activity, using a technology
(means of carrying out the relevant activities) and gradually evolving formal
organizations. Social worlds are highly fluid, constantly changing due to conflict,
competition, negotiation, or exchange (Strauss, 1978). The social world perspective
dealt intensively with the boundaries between social worlds, and their intersection.
These intersections are related to the existence of arenas: spaces where practical
issues are negotiated and fought over by representatives of the various social worlds
and sub-worlds; their dynamics are usually those of struggles over power, authority,
and legitimacy.
As I demonstrate throughout this study, understanding Wikipedia as such an
arena is a highly productive move. Indeed, Wikipedia can be seen as an extremely
important arena, whose uniqueness lay not only in the wide variety of social worlds
potentially related to it, but also in the ease and immediacy in which members of
worlds interested in their representation can make it their arena. The results of these
conditions required Wikipedia to produce innovative mechanisms to regulate and
contain the dynamics of these encounters. Especially important in this respect is the
interactionist research done in the domain of science and technology studies, and
especially the framework developed by Susan Leigh Star (Star and Griesemer, 1989,
Bowker and Star, 1999, Star, 2010). However, as this work is related to a different
strand of research also relevant to this study, namely that of social studies of science
and technology, I will now describe the context for these developments in this latter
field.
34
1.3.3 Science and Technology Studies
The last thirty years saw a tremendous increase in science and technology
studies, and a major shift in their theoretical orientations. These new studies contested
both the traditional internal understanding of science as an autonomous phenomenon
developing according to its own logic and the macro-sociological and externalist
analysis of the sociology of knowledge, which held that it should be explained against
the backdrop of “social” factors.49 Such an approach, based on the distinction between
society on the one hand, and science and technology on the other, was clearly
problematic in a society where the two were increasingly enmeshed. Thus, both the
traditional sociology of science developed by Robert K. Merton50 (which refrained
from externalist explanations of the actual methods and content of science) and David
Bloor's51 "strong program" (which attempted to attribute the success of scientific
theories to external social factors, mainly in terms of group interests) were rejected.
In their place came various constructivist and contextual currents, such as
laboratory studies, social studies of scientific knowledge (SSK), science and
technology studies (STS) and science, technology and medicine studies (ST and MS)
– all of which attempted to study the production of technology and scientific
knowledge "from within," as an ongoing achievement– a project which retraced many
the steps taken by pragmatist philosophers. While most of these currents were not
informed by pragmatist philosophy or symbolic interaction initially, they were, as 49 Thus, Marx explained that "the ruling ideas are the ideas of the ruling class" (Marx, 1913, pp. 11-12), Durkheim explained the emergence of perception categories as a result of social processes (Durkheim and Mauss, 2010 [1903]; Durkheim, 1995 [1912]) Weber (1930) illustrated how Protestant ethics gave rise not only to capitalism, but to the growing rationalization of modern societies, and Mannheim contended that "mental structures are inevitably differently formed in different social and historical settings" (Mannheim, 1936, p. 238), focusing on the effects of differences in class and generation. 50 Following Weber, Merton (1973) pointed out the Puritan origins of modern science and went on to offer a comprehensive account of the "scientific community" as a social system complete with its norms (namely, Communalism, Universalism, Disinterestedness, Originality and Skepticism ), institutions (such as the peer-review system), gift-exchange like reward system, social organization and stratification. The thrust of criticisms against him focused on his claims regarding the role of norms in science – which now interpreted as a "justificatory ideology" (Mulkay, 1976, p. 654) – and his assertion that the development of scientific methods and knowledge themselves lie beyond the realm of social research. For a discussion of attitudes towards Merton in the new sociology of science, see H.M. Collins (1982); Gieryn (1982a, 1982b); Knorr-Cetina (1982); Krohn (1982); Mulkay and Nigel (1982). 51 Bloor (1976, 1986; Barnes, Bloor and Henry, 1996) criticized Merton's sociology of knowledge for exempting the actual content of scientific knowledge from social inquiry, and claimed that sociology of knowledge should be based on a principle of symmetry, which posited that all knowledge claims – whether true or false – should be explained through social structures and interests. This "strong program" was later criticized for its own lack of symmetry, as it took a realistic-absolutist position with regards to social categories and objects (classes, power relations etc.), while taking an opposing relativist position regarding scientific categories and objects.
35
Shapin noted, ”wholly compatible with pragmatism, and, by extension, with strands
of academic sociology-those of Mead, Blumer, and their progeny-that drew
inspiration from James and Dewey" (Shapin, 1995).
While highly divergent in their orientation, these approaches share a
commitment to describing and explaining concrete practices in concrete sites of
knowledge production through both ethnographic "laboratory studies”52 and historical
accounts53 (For a general review see Shapin, 1995). They contest the traditional
distinctions between "the social" and the "scientific" or "technological," and instead
strive to account for the concrete relations between all the relevant entities, whether
human or non-human, without attributing primacy or agency beforehand.
One such approach that guided me through my research was Karin Knorr-
Cetina's constructivist and contextual framework to understanding knowledge
production. One of the pioneers in laboratory studies (Knorr-Cetina, 1981), Knorr-
Cetina went on to study sites of knowledge production with some properties that are
very similar to Wikipedia's, such as the CERN laboratory for particle physics, global
financial markets, and international terrorist networks. These fields are characterized
by collaboration on a massive scale by geographically dispersed participants, a lack of
a clear and explicit hierarchy, decentralized authority structure and a reliance
advanced computation and communication technology. In her writings, Knorr-Cetina
developed several concepts that will be useful in understanding Wikipedia as a
knowledge production project.
One such concept is that of epistemic cultures, developed against the prevalent
view of a science (or the scientific community, or method) as a single, unitary system
of knowledge production. In her seminal book, Knorr-Cetina (1999) claims that
science studies should distinguish between different modes knowledge production
prevalent in different scientific fields. Each such field has its own epistemic culture –
defined as those "amalgams of arrangements and mechanisms – bonded through
affinity, necessity and historical coincidence – which in a given field, make up how
we know what we know" (Knorr-Cetina, 1999, p. 1, italics in the original). Such
52 See, e.g. Knorr-Cetina (1981, 1999), knorr-Cetina and Mulkay (1983), Lynch (1985), Latour and Woolgar (1986), Latour (1987), Pinch (1986), Traweek, (1988). 53 See, e.g. Harwood (1993), MacKenzie (1981, 1990), Pickering (1984), Schaffer (1996), Shapin, (1994, 1996), Sahpin and Schaffer (1985), Warwick (1993).
36
cultures have distinct patterns of authority and organization, different relevant objects
and subjects of knowledge, and different mechanisms mediating between them.
Understanding the construction and institutionalization of such a culture in Wikipedia
is one of the primary goals of this work. This may help shed light on the processes by
which "amalgams of arrangements and mechanisms" are bonded together in practice –
an issue Knorr-Cetina hardly addresses.
Another concept important for understanding Wikipedia's social makeup is
that of global microstructures, "forms of connectivity and coordination that combine
global reach with microstructural mechanisms that instantiate self-organizing
principles and patterns" (Knorr-Cetina, 2005). Global microstructures are
conceptually opposed to formal organization, as they are based on features
characteristic to face to face interactions such as trust and acquaintance, rather than on
clear structure and hierarchy. Lacking formal organizations' rational structuring of
social relations, they are inherently unstable and unpredictable. Despite this semi-
chaotic character, these structures tend to be highly effective and sustainable thanks to
extensive use of strategies of amplification and augmentation, which allow them to
mediate conflicting goals and magnify the outcomes of a given effort. This is done
both by using technological resources, such as computers or digital communication,
and by using social mechanisms, such as outsourcing certain functions to the external
environment, thus remaining structurally "light" and more adaptable. In my research, I
attempt to uncover the construction of such strategies, focusing on scopic media,
"centering and mediating device[s] through which things become assembled and from
which they are projected." Such technological aids help coordinate actions in the
global microstructure: "like an array of crystals acting as lenses that collect light,
focusing it on one point, such mechanisms collect and focus activities, interests and
events, and project them in identical fashion to dispersed audiences" (Knorr-Cetina,
2005).
A second approach, or rather a broader current which guided me is the Actor-
Network Theory (ANT), developed by Bruno Latour, Michel Callon and John Law.
According to ANT, the world is comprised of an array of actors (or actants, in
Latour's terms), both human and nonhuman, material54 and conceptual, which
54 In one of his famous articles Latour (1992) analyses the door closer as an actor.
37
generate sociotechnical networks. Actors are constantly formed and defined through
their interrelations with one another. They have no constant, stable and immanent
properties outside these relations. Actors build diverse relationships with each other,
thus influencing each other's interests and action. In this process, various actors with
divergent viewpoints and interests are brought together and enlisted through processes
of translation so that their interests and character will enable cooperation. The
network durability and stability is determined by it density, the number of elements
and associations it encompasses. The more durable it is, the harder it is to doubt it – in
a sense, the more essential it becomes.
In this account, knowledge is produced through chains of translation which
move objects and concepts across the network, each stage making the object either
more "material" or "conceptual." These stages are always reversible, allowing objects
to be reexamined, reconceptualized, and restructured. The durability of knowledge is
thus a function of the integrity of the chain as a whole – cut any link, and the whole
array collapses, preventing knowledge from flowing through it (Latour, 1999). When
the attempts at enlistments and translations succeed – usually through trials of
strength against other possible networks (Yonay, 1994) - and a strong, stable network
is created, one may speak of the creation of a new object, or “fact.” In this stage,
movement in the network is so smooth and obvious, that it becomes opaque, creating
a blackbox, or institution. The attribution of something as "knowledge" thus
designates the institutionalization of a network that is so dense that it can be taken for
granted. All actors are not equal in this process: at times, certain actors succeed in
positioning themselves as "Obligatory Passage Points" (OPPs), through which all
actors have to pass through to achieve their goals. They thus succeed in becoming
"spokespersons" and representing others,55 funneling the actor-network and aligning
the actions of all the other relevant actors (Callon, 1986, Latour, 1988, p. 43, 2005,
p.31).
This model was later extended by Susan Leigh Star (Star and Griesemer, 1989,
Bowker and Star, 1999, Star, 2010), who connected the social studies of science and
technology with a symbolic-interactionist social world's perspective (see above). Star
55 Representation here is used in the widest sense of the word: it can refer to just as well to a politician representing a group of people through his "leadership", a scientist representing objects through signs, or an example representing a larger phenomena
38
moved the focus to situations where several social worlds have different claims to the
object of studies, thus preventing the creation of a single OPP. In this situation,
"several obligatory points of passage are negotiated with several kinds of allies".56
The primary results of these negotiations are methods standardization, the
coordination of the activities of various allies to make their products compatible
through a common standard, and the creation of boundary objects.57 Boundary objects
are "[scientific] objects which both inhabit several intersecting social worlds…and
satisfy the informational requirements of each of them… [they] are both plastic
enough to adapt to local needs and the constraints of several parties employing them,
yet robust enough to maintain a common identity across sites" (Star and Griesemer,
1989: p. 393). The notion of boundary objects was further developed by Kathryn
Henderson (1991), who analyzed Engineering sketches and drawings, claiming that
they serve both as boundary objects and as conscription devices, which enlist and
organize group participation.58
Following Star, I emphasize the interplay between policies enabling method
standardization and boundary objects related to them. However, while in Star's model
the actors involved in their creation represent distinct social worlds, the participants in
Wikipedia's case overtly refused representation: they are more individualized, their
relevant identities are harder to pin down, and their constant influx demanded ever-
recurring acts of translation. These challenges were compounded by Wikipedia's
spatial make-up: Wikipedia was (and to a large extent, still is) a network of text
pages, each dedicated to an encyclopedic subject. Its radical collaboration process
meant that in principle, at least, alignment had to be achieved regarding each
individual page, as each was a boundary object in itself, edited by various actors with
potentially conflicting interests. This situation created in Wikipedia an epistemic
culture that is even more flexible and polysemic than the ones described by Star and
her co-writers. Having no OPP's that can commit a large amount of allies to a 56 Another important aspect of this move is the attribution of agency mainly to human actors who do the actual negotiations, rather than distributing it equally to humans and non-humans. See below, chapter 2. 57 The term has since been applied in a wide range of topics, and became prevalent in the field (cf. Flichy, 2007a, 2007b; Fujimura, 1992; Henderson, 1991). 58The concept of conscription device is very close to Knorr-Cetina's (2005) conceptualization of scopic media. However, while the later refers to a wide variety of coordination devices based on common visibility, the term "conscription device" refers specifically to devices bridging between different social worlds, designating them as boundary objects. In this work I use both terms, preferring in each case the one most suitable to the circumstances.
39
common pattern of action or generate stable methods standardization, it had to
generate softer measures of social coordination, less authoritative and strict than those
found in scientific contexts, but still effective enough for the project to function59.
While the above-mentioned theoretical approaches will serve as the basis of
my study, they lack an element which I find extremely important: the connection
between knowledge and moral issues. The production and reception of information
involve serious moral issues, which makes some networks more plausible than others,
by virtue of their alignment or Interessement with the moral preferences of relevant
actors. Such preferences play a very important role in knowledge production, as they
set standards that help determine what practices and object may be considered
legitimate (or rather, legitimable). I thus turn to discuss French pragmatic sociology,
which helps address such issues.
1.3.4 French Pragmatic Sociology
The new French pragmatism (or "pragmatic sociology") was formulated by
Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot in the eighties, as an opposition to Bourdieu's
dominance in French sociology, and further developed in the following decades along
with other researchers.60 It is inspired both by philosophical pragmatism and by
Garfinkel's ethnomethodology, in itself closely related to pragmatist assumptions
(Emirbayer and Maynard, 2011). While description of this school usually focus on
their analysis of "regimes of justification" (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006) in the
context of this work, its most relevant aspect is its analysis – especially by Laurent
Thévenot – of pragmatic regimes governing the engagement with the world
(Thévenot, 2001a).
Emphasizing the importance of practice and social action rather than social
structures, Thévenot claims that human beings constantly need to shift their mode of
engagement with the world. Environment, by this account, is not a "given," mute
background, but rather a dynamic and multifarious reality whose relevant aspects are
59 This preference was also related to a broader cultural context: that of the egalitarian and extremely liberal ethos of the hacker culture, influential in the relevant social milieus (Lih, 2009). 60 Notable works in this tradition include, among others, Boltanski and Chiapello (2005); Boltanski and Thévenot (2006) and Lamont and Thévenot (2000).
40
dependent on actors’ mode of engagement, which are at the same time resistant and
changing. Engagement with the environment is governed by pragmatic regimes:
"social devices which govern our way of engaging with our environment inasmuch as
they articulate two notions: a) an orientation towards some kind of good; b) a mode of
access to reality" (Thévenot, 2001b). Thévenot posits three such regimes: familiarity,
regular planned action, and justification. The regime of familiarity is based on an
aspiration towards personal and local convenience in a familiar milieu. It is
completely individualized, as actors engage objects in idiosyncratic ways, attempting
to adjust them to their bodily existence and gestures. The regime of regular planned
action sets in as soon as other actors engage the first: it is based on an aspiration
towards successful conventional action, in which all actors can function in a "good
working order." The regime of justification is the most formal, and the most studied
of the three: it is based on an aspiration towards collective conventions of the
common good. It is used when a dispute erupts, and regular planned action breaks
down. In such cases, actors deploy one of several orders of worth, all of which have
their own conception of the good to be aspired.61 Each of these orders measure worth
differently, and each has its own standards to evaluate people, objects and practices.
Thévenot's analysis of the way orders of worth are negotiated is of central
importance to this work, as it focuses on critical situations (Thévenot, 2001a, 2002a,
2002b): situations that have no predetermined order of worth, as was Wikipedia in its
early history. Critical situations are those that are not subject to a single mode of
evaluation and require social negotiation of its overarching principles of coordination.
Thévenot suggests that coordination in such situations is heavily dependent on a
process of form investment – that is, creating equivalences across time and space
between various practices, objects, persons, etc (Thévenot, 1984). Its successful
completion enables divergent parties to cooperate in such critical situations, and
eventually surpass them.
The importance of this analysis lies in its emphasis of external cultural and
moral factors, incorporated to the situation through this process in the form of pre-
existing cultural models and justifications. However, in contrast to Thévenot I
61 Boltanski and Thévenot (2006) originally describe six such orders of worth (or ‘cités’) – the inspirational, the domestic, the civic, the cité of fame, the market, and the industrial cité (later, other regimes, such as “the regime of the project” were added).
41
emphasize the importance of habitual activity even in such critical situations:
following the original pragmatist school, I observe the ways in which habit and
creativity alternate in processes of problem-solving and institutionalization (Joas,
1993, 1996; Gross, 2009). Moreover, while Thévenot addresses general modes of
coordination or orders of worth, my focus here is on much more localized cultural
models and modes of coordination62, focused primarily on the moral aspects of
knowledge production and consumption, encapsulated under the notion of epistemic
virtues (Wood, 1998; Daston and Galison, 2007): “norms that are internalized and
enforced by appeal to ethical values, as well as to pragmatic efficacy in securing
knowledge” (Daston and Galison, 2007, p. 40).
While Daston and Galison may use a language that is too normative for my
taste63, their analysis of the historical succession of epistemic virtues informing
scientific representation is highly compelling, as they also show how different and
contrasting epistemic virtues are constructed and coexist. It serves as a reminder that
knowledge production has its own field of moral concerns, intimately intertwined
with practical ones. Thus, I explore how Wikipedia's producers and consumers cope
with this combination of practical and moral concerns by constructing or
implementing relevant epistemic virtues.
1.3.5 The Gift of Knowledge and Contemporary Culture
Having outlined the general theoretical consideration that guided me in my
research, I now go on to briefly present two additional theoretical issues to be
addressed in this work: first, the question of social embbededness in gift practices;
and second, the relations between contemporary information society and modernity.
1.3.5.1 Wikipedia and the Gift of Knowledge
Wikipedia success in harnessing voluntary, un-remunerated contributions highlights
the connection between knowledge and gift-giving. This is far from innovative, as this
62 For an analysis of the embbededness of models in a concrete epistemic culture, see Breslau and Yonay (1999), Yonay and Breslau (2006). 63 Mulkay (1976) offered the paradigmatic critique of this stance.
42
connection was present since at least the ancient Greeks, and the more so since
Enlightenment, which accorded knowledge an emancipatory quality and saw its
dissemination as a moral obligation inherent to the virtues of "men of letter"
(Foucault, 2001; Hénaff, 2010a; Lyotard, 1984). However, Wikipedia's success in
developing innovative and unorthodox gift practices where its predecessor Nupedia
failed, suggests that the ability to harness this moral obligation to the creation of a free
online encyclopedia is far from self-evident. In what follows, I outline the literature
regarding gift giving in general, and specifically regarding knowledge-giving,
relevant to explaining this difference.
Mauss's (1990 [1925]) seminal essay on the gift presented it as a complex
phenomenon, riddled with internal tensions such as interestedness/disinterestedness,
freedom/obligation, reciprocity/competition, etc. However, this attention to the gift's
complexity was coupled with a relative neglect of the gift's diversity, as Mauss
emphasized the basic similarities in its varied historical and expressions (Silber,
2007). This almost essentializing outlook is most clearly manifested in Mauss's
insistence on the three obligation involved in the gift (to give, to receive, to
reciprocate), and especially in his emphasis on the universality of reciprocity. While
this emphasis had a significant effect on later conceptualizations of the gift, the last
few decades saw writers challenge this view, claiming that retribution is not a
necessary part of the gift's pattern of action, and that our view of the gift should be
more open to historical and cultural variations. Mauss's emphasis on the importance
of reciprocity was immensely influential in the social sciences. This direction was
taken to its extremes in the social exchange theory (Blau, 1964; Homans, 1958), in
Levi-Strauss' (1987) structural anthropology and in Bourdieu's genetic structuralism
(1977, 1998)64.
In contrast with this emphasis on reciprocity and exchange, recent years had
seen a growing number of writers who highlighted unilateral, non-reciprocal forms of
giving where the obligation to reciprocate played a lesser part, or was absent
altogether. Following Parry's (1986) research on the ideal of a "pure" gift in
Brahmanic Hinduism, which described unilateral gifts in the context of transcendental
64 While Bourdieu's theory is considered more critical than the others, he followed the same trail as he supplemented Levi-Strauss' structural theory of gift exchange with an emphasis on its temporal structure, intimately linked to its strategic aspects and the hidden interests underlying it.
43
religions, much of the subsequent writing on the subject focuses on the sacred or
religious aspects of such gifts (Godelier, 1999; Laidlaw 2000; Silber, 1995, 2000;
Tarot, 2000). However, Titmuss (1971) stressed a similar theme in his discussion of
the modern and predominantly secular phenomenon of blood donations as a unilateral
“gift to strangers.” Hénaff (2010a, 2010b) also discusses the "gracious giving," a
gesture "without any expectation of reciprocation and without any association with a
situation of scarcity," without connecting it necessarily to religious themes.
Similar tensions regarding the role of reciprocity in gift giving are also
reflected in the burgeoning literature about knowledge production in general, and
more specifically about FOSS production. The literature about gifts in knowledge
production settings such as science and the academia traditionally emphasize interest,
reciprocity and exchange. In this context, the scientific community is constructed as a
gift-exchange system (or gift-economy), a feature apparent both in the gift-relations
involved mentoring of new scholars (Cronin, 1995; Savolainen, 1999; Hénaff, 2010a),
and in the gift economy of scientific publications (Berthoin-Antal and Richebé, 2009;
Hagstrom, 1982). The latter phenomenon was used to contrast academic life and the
market, as scientists are not paid for their publications, but rather rewarded with
recognition and prestige, often expressed through citations65. Thus, the concept of gift
economy in this context is almost always linked with personal interest in prestige and
acknowledgement. Similar claims were made regarding other knowledge intensive
production environments, such as the high-tech industry (Barbrook, 1998).
Closer to our subject matter, the concept of gift economy became popular in
studies of peer-production (Benkler, 2006) settings, such as online communities
(Barbrook, 1998; Rheingold, 2000; Jenkins, 2006), open-source projects (Bergquist
and Ljungberg, 2001) and file sharing networks (Giesler, 2006). Many of these
studies stress the communal context of such practices, claiming that acts of giving
online usually follow the pattern of generalized exchange, where reciprocation comes
from the community as a whole rather than to the specific beneficiary (Bauwens,
2005; Bergquist and Ljungberg, 2001; Giesler, 2006; Jenkins, 2006; Kollock, 1999;
Rheingold, 2000). Some posit the act of giving as the result of values and norms
prevalent in the immediate social context of the actors, often described as a "gift 65 However, Hagstrom also notes that prestigious professors still publish new works, attributing due to their commitment to the scientific community.
44
giving-culture," which constructs sharing and openness as virtues (Kollock, 1999;
Benkler, 2011). Other writers focus more on the individual interest of the actors,
stressing the importance of expectation for returns or social acknowledgement and
prestige (Bruns, 2008; Raymond, 1998; Tapscott and Williams, 2006). However, both
sides agree in their view of the act of gift as embedded in some form of exchange,
whether generalized or restricted, and on the interest of the actors in the act of giving
– whether articulated in individualistic or communal terms. Thus, both sides generally
reject the notion of a free or pure gift, and stress the importance of symmetry and
recognition in the gift. This connection presumes the relevance of a consistent social
identity of social actors, who can gain recognition and reputation from this
environment.
At the same time, other conceptualizations of peer production or produsage
(Bruns, 2008) are closer to the idea of the "pure" or "free" gift. Such
conceptualizations downplay the importance of community, reciprocity, and
recognition in online giving, and emphasize rather broader cultural factors and
intrinsic motivations for giving (such as ideology or fun), and help address the
prevalence of anonymous giving in online contexts, a phenomenon which defies
explanation relying on the relevance of recognition. Some writers stress the non- or
even anti-utilitarian nature of such contributions in online communities or FOSS
projects, (c.f. Barbrook, 1998, 2000; Rheingold, 2000; Bauwens, 2005), while others
merely emphasize the free, de-centered and individualized (or networked) aspects of
online giving and sharing (Benkler, 2006; Bruns, 2008; Lessig, 1999; Shirky, 2008,
2010; Surowiecki, 2004; Tapscott and Williams, 2006). While this emphasis does not
necessarily preclude the existence of individual or communal interest in the act of
giving, it does deny the centrality of individual identity and belonging.
So how are we to approach these seeming complexities, variations and
contradictions? One productive way may be to address them as expressing the
simultaneous existence of different modes or dimensions of giving. Indeed, such
move has been highly influential in studies of the gift. In recent decades, research had
moved from trying to explain away its complexity to rather trace it diversity. This
move is at the heart of what Silber (2007) calls "the typological turn": the appearance
of studies such as Vandevelde (2000), Caille (2001), Graeber (2001), or Hénaff
45
(2010a, 2010b) who suggest types or dimensions of gift-giving practices as categories
of analysis.
However, as this typological orientation still generally fails to address the
unique combinations of forms and practices of giving in specific contexts, Silber
suggests the idea of a gift repertoire (Silber, 2007): "the available store of ideals,
practices, institutions, priorities and dilemmas, foundational stories, ideological and
even cosmological theories of giving coexisting and made available in a specific
historical and cultural settings. Such repertoires may vary not only in the options
which they provide for thinking, practicing and contesting giving but also in their very
scope, richness and internal diversification".
Thus, this work aims at demonstrating how attempts at creating a free online
encyclopedia took into account and at the same time shaped such a repertoire of acts
of knowledge giving. The concept of a repertoire of gift practices may prove useful in
attempting to understand Wikipedia's success and Nupedia's failure: rather than
focusing on the motivations of contributors, it opens the perspective to the wider
context of their actions, shaped at least in part by the project itself. This attempt may
also help us understand better how gift repertoires are shaped and constructed in a
concrete and limited setting, and the effect of their dissemination. As most studies of
the gift tend to analyze it strictly in broad, macro-level contexts such as whole
societies or civilizations, this may prove of some contribution not only to the study of
Wikipedia, but also to the literature on the gift.
Following the review of the literature about giving to Wikipedia described
above I focus on distinguishing between two relevant modes of online knowledge
giving. Group-oriented giving may be either communal or exchange-oriented (or
both), but in any case involves practical manifestation of the shared social context of
givers, and the expectation for acknowledgement and recognition, from others, as well
as some sort of reciprocity. This mode is dependent on the existence of relatively
stable social relations, and personal identities which can be recognized and
reciprocated. On the other hand, individual giving is at work when the giver is not
engaged in long terms social relations with others related to his gift and/or does not
have a consistent social identity which is socially recognized and accumulates
reputation. This mode is dependent on the existence of mechanisms for publishing
46
content anonymously to a public which would accept and consume it as knowledge. It
also depends on an ideology that constructs such an act as worthy.
However, both types of giving should not be viewed as general, abstract types
only, but rather as historically and culturally embedded, as both the social structure
and the cultural setting in which the act of giving described here is embedded are
culturally historically specific. Thus, I now go on to discuss the more general social
and cultural setting in which Wikipedia exists – namely, that of contemporary
knowledge society.
1.3.5.2 Wikipedia and Conceptualizations of Contemporary Culture
The wider implications of Wikipedia's epistemic culture may be better
understood against the backdrop of theories analyzing contemporary societies as
knowledge societies, or information societies. There is a widespread consensus that in
the last few decades, the production of knowledge and information moved to the heart
of social, economic, political and cultural structures and processes. Beginning in the
1970s, a plethora of concepts and ideas emerged to describe this transformation, often
by contrasting it to its predecessor, namely industrial society. Such concepts include,
among others, the postindustrial society (Touraine, 1971; Bell, 1973), knowledge
society (Bell, 1973; Böhme and Stehr, 1986), the information age (Castells, 1996,
1997, 1998), information society (Drucker, 1993), postmodern society (Lyotard,
1984), late modernity (Giddens, 1991), reflexive modernity, (Beck, Giddens and Lash,
1994), second modernity (Beck, 2000) and after modernity (Beck and Sznaider,
2010).
At the same time, however, there remain highly contentious disagreements
regarding the question if change signals a transformation within modernity, or rather a
break from it. Some commentators advocate the continued relevance of the concept of
modernity66, at least if used to connote an existence of a common cultural center, a
sense of historical continuity with the vision of enlightenment, and the centrality of
rationality, science and expertise (cf. Beck, 2000; Eisenstadt, 2001; Giddens, 1991,
1994; Habermas, 1984). On the one hand, Other notable commentators, which
66 Such commentators often identified through their use of the terms late or second modernity.
47
maintain that contemporary society represents a break from modernity, with new and
dissenting knowledge production structures, processes and legitimation principles
may help come to terms with this paradox (c.f. Baudrillard, 1983, 1994; Jameson,
1991; Lyotard, 1984).
In the context of the latter body of literature, it has become commonplace to
claim that the last decades were characterized by an erosion in the metanarratives of
enlightenment, the dominance of cultural centers and the monopoly of experts over
knowledge (Best and Kellner, 1997, J. Collins, 1989; Featherstone, 1989, 1991;
Jameson, 1991; Lash, 1990; Lash and Urry, 1994). The resultant postmodern culture
is characterized by an erosion of the aura (Benjamin, 1968) related to knowledge
production and the emergence of a wide range of intermediate social categories which
undermine the coupling between knowledge production and expertise by producing
unprecedented stocks of signs and representations67. An integral part of this process is
the transgression of cultural boundaries, the waning of enlightenment's meta-
narratives68, and the decline of regimes of signification underlying modern culture69.
While this approach can help make sense of some of Wikipedia's unorthodox features
such as the de-coupling of knowledge and expertise70, it does not account for those of
its basic premises and motivations which are still manifestly related to ideals of
enlightenment and modern culture – such as the construction of knowledge
dissemination as a moral act.
Thus, a more nuanced approach, which stops short of asserting a complete
breakdown of modern cultural categories, but which also goes beyond the emphasis
67 Such categories include, among others, the "new cultural intermediaries" (Bourdieu, 1984; Featherstone, 1991; Lash and Urry, 1994), consumption and lifestyle brokers (Appadurai, 1986, p. 54, 1990), the devout computer enthusiasts who played a major part in the development of the computer and internet industry (Castells, 2001); and media fans (Jenkins, 1992; Abercrombie and Longhurst, 1998). 68 Such Meta-Narratives, which include the progress of humanity, the triumph of reason and enlightenment, the liberation of the subject etc. are central to the construction of knowledge production and dissemination as moral acts. See e.g. Lyotard (1984). 69 The extreme versions of this argument go as far as questioning the principles underlying reality itself. Baudrillard (1983, 1994) claims that the accelerated production of signs and information results in an implosion whereby all the dichotomies and boundaries of late capitalism collapse, along with meaning, knowledge, subjectivity, society and reality itself. 70 The coupling of knowledge and expertise in modernity was highlighted by Giddens (1990), who claimed that modern society is increasingly saturated with expert systems which provide ontological security. Wikipedia's success, despite the fact that it cannot generate the very trust that underlies expert-systems, suggests that others social processes are at work here.
48
on continuities with it, may be more promising. Such an approach, advocated by
writers such as Laermans (1992), Lash (1994) and Knorr-Cetina (1999, 2005) claims
modern culture's centers, distinctions and meta-narratives did not completely
disappear. Rather, they are now supplemented by various subcultures, communities
and network which flourish at its margins. Such cultures are increasingly global in
scope, and their participants act as local experts or prosumers (Toffler, 1980. For a
critique of the term see Comor, 2011), as they foster immanent standards, practices
and justifications. Such standards and practices have varying degrees of affinity to
modern culture, but in any case are local in character, failing to achieve widely
acknowledged legitimacy (Laermans, 1992; Lash, 1994). Their expertise is embedded
in an intersubjective, micro-level trust, rather than formal standards or organizations.
Such structures are increasingly (though not exclusively) built in and through the
internet, as it allows people around the world to transcend their immediate
environment and create the mediated intersubjectivity that they require. Knorr-Cetina
(1999, 2005), which studied several such cultures, stresses the important structural
and "textural" differences between them, as well as the great variability in their
relations with modern cultures71.
Wikipedia seems to fit very well with this type of theories, as it depends on
internal standards and intersubjective mechanisms, and is similar in many of its
aspects to other subcultures studied in this theoretical context. However, Wikipedia
occupies a unique position it this respect: while this approach stresses the blurring
between consumers and producers and the importance of internal or local standards
and practices, Wikipedia's success involved reaching diverse crowds for whom these
standards are external and readymade. Thus, assessing the extent to which specific
form investments72 made by Wikipedia's participants correspond with central tenets of
modern culture may help assess its viability and relevance in contemporary
information society.
71 In her empirical studies, encompassing diverse topics such as high energy physics (Knorr-Cetina, 1999), financial markets (Knorr-cetina and Brugger, 2000), and terrorist networks (Knorr-Cetina, 2005), she focuses on the use of information technologies for social coordination, and the temporal aspects of this coordination. 72 As noted above, critical situation where standards and practices are unclear demand "form investment" in prevalent cultural models to coordinate expectations and actions.
49
1.4 Research Objectives
The production and institutionalization of a new epistemic culture in
Wikipedia and its dissemination, processes previously unstudied, are the focus of this
research. In the context of production, I describe how various people, technologies
and cultural models were amalgamated to bring forward an innovative way of
constructing and legitimizing knowledge in Wikipedia. In the context of consumption
or use, I describe how Wikipedia is used by a specific group of knowledge experts –
namely journalists – and how they incorporate and put into practice the epistemic
mechanisms underlying it.
In other words, the objective of this research is to examine: how was
Wikipedia's unique epistemic stance formed, and how is it reflected in its everyday,
practical use?
After the next chapter, in which I describe the methodology used to answer
these questions, the first empirical chapter (chapter 3) describes the concrete
environment in which Wikipedia was born, embodied in its predecessor, Nupedia.
Founded by the same team – Larry Sanger and Jimmy Wales – Nupedia was an open
internet encyclopedia project, which was based on production by experts and a
rigorous production process. Its epistemic culture was based on two strong Obligatory
Passage Points (Bijker and Law, 1992; Callon, 1986; Latour, 1988): the
Encyclopaedia Britannica, which was constructed as the authoritative standard for its
content; and the ethos of expertise, coupled with a reliance on formal academic
credentials, as the basis of the projects authority structure and production methods.
While its production process incorporated innovative elements, such as the use of an
"open review" process in which anyone who wanted to could critique articles, it
ultimately remained highly conservative in its epistemic assumptions and methods.
This approach, rooted in an attempt to endow the project with traditional
legitimacy (Weber, 1978, pp. 266-231), proved ill-suited, as production pace was
excruciatingly slow. Attempts to alter it failed, as the Obligatory Passage Points
erected in it prevented any significant changes in the production process. Thus, when
Sanger and Wales learned about the Wiki technology, the decided to start an
independent project, named Wikipedia, free from the constraints exerted by Nupedia's
50
OPP's. Wikipedia thus began without an overarching epistemic culture. The creation
and institutionalization of this culture is the subject of the next three chapters.
The next chapter (4) is a relatively brief chronology of Wikipedia's founding
period in its first year or so, which outlines its emergence and institutionalization as a
knowledge production project. In that, it also lays the ground for the next two
chapters, which focus on events occurring in the described period.
The next two chapters describe the institutionalization of standards and
policies governing the production of articles in Wikipedia. Such policies were socially
constructed and institutionalized through a relatively regular pattern of actions,
involving a conflict or controversy over the question what is the legitimate conduct in
a certain case; the formation of a more or less binding general policy relevant to other
hypothesized cases; subsequent conflicts over the application (or at times even
legitimacy) of this policy; the institutionalization, through the enactments of power
and authority, of a policy which is regularly re-articulated and expanded; and the
development of social or technological enforcement mechanisms to uphold it. They
thus became Privilege Passage Points in Wikipedia, governing effectively, though not
completely, its production processes and epistemic mechanisms73.
Chapter 5 focuses on the creation of radically collaborative mode o production
in Wikipedia, and the construction of two Privilege Passage Points that were essential
in fitting it to the established model of encyclopedia articles. The first of them created
a special category of Wiki pages referred to as article or subject pages, where writing
is to be styled after traditional encyclopedia articles. It also specified that discussion
of articles should not take place in the article pages themselves. This policy was the
most essential in domesticating the Wiki technology as it set a precedent that content
policies should be based on traditional encyclopedic standards, even if those contrast
with standard Wiki operation. The second major content policy, neutral point of view,
was created originally as means to enable the joint work of participants with
conflicting views; it dictated that that the opinions of all parties to the disputes should
be presented in the article in a manner they can agree on. Later on, it transcended its
73 As opposed to Obligatory Passage Points, “loc[i] that could shape and mobilize the local network” and “have control over all transactions between the local and the global networks" (Bijker and Law, 1992, p. 31), Privileged Passage Points have less power and allow for greater variability, though they succeed in effectively controlling the network in most cases.
51
initial context and was extended to comprise a general standard for representing
knowledge in the project.
Chapter 6 picks up the theme of the previous one, but focuses on the
institutionalization of policies establishing standards for the inclusion or exclusion of
content, rather than collaborative production. The first of them stated that Wikipedia is
not a dictionary, was responsible for affixing the notion that Wikipedia's goal is more
specific than producing an innovative reference work, or a general information
resource. Wikipedia was constructed through it as an encyclopedia, first and foremost,
with unique characteristics derived from the history and conventions of the genre.
This articulation paved the way to further policies dealing with types of content not
prevalent in traditional encyclopedias. These policies were grouped to form the
second such policy, What Wikipedia is not, which became a general standard
distinguishing between legitimate and illegitimate content. Setting the standard for
legitimate content via negativa, it was a readymade tool for an orientation of new
editors on content policies, and was quickly adapted to answer this need. As time
went by, new types of content were gradually added to it, as they appeared in
Wikipedia and were then de-legitimized as anti encyclopedic.
The policies outlined in chapters 5 and 6 became the backbone for Wikipedia's
epistemic governance, and shape till this very day the implicit contract between
Wikipedia and its users. They construct Wikipedia's users as active, critical and
engaged participants, rather than passive consumers, offering them all available
information regarding the article's production and possible disagreements or conflicts
regarding it. The construction of its consumers as competent judges allows Wikipedia
to demand of them to individually assess the quality of its articles, which are deemed
inherently suspicious in terms of their authority.
Chapter 7 sets to explore the everyday manifestations of this mode of
consumption through interviews with Israeli journalists about their use of Wikipedia.
Based on these interviews, I constructed a model of journalistic use of Wikipedia
comprised of five stages: Problem Google search Consulting Wikipedia
Triangulation Re-articulation. In this process, the journalist moves from her
immediate practical needs and environmental constraints following a chain of
references (Latour, 1999) leading to a hypothesized origin of information, until she
52
reaches a point where following further references becomes impossible or unpractical.
In this process, Wikipedia serves as a Privileged Passage Point – a practical shortcut
to knowledge that originated elsewhere. Over time, however, It gradually tends to
develops into a practical end-point in this process, as users tend more and more to rely
on the validity of the information it contains, based on evidence found in its articles
that further valid references were involved in their compilation. As users increasingly
tend to suffice with information found in Wikipedia articles, consuming them thus
involves judgmental and critical practices meant to establish the validity of the sought
after information. The result is a mode of consumption based on practical legitimacy:
a form of legitimation which grants knowledge (or objects, or persons) a diminished
yet observable measure authority, as it takes into account and encapsulates both its
usability and its liabilities, both its de-facto legitimacy and lack of de-jure legitimacy.
53
Chapter 2: Methodology
To account for the institutionalization of Wikipedia's epistemic culture, I used
two distinct corpuses, one addressing its internal formation and the other its external
implications. The first corpus was assembled by retrieving relevant data from web
archives containing almost all the actions and interactions conducted within
Wikipedia's founding period of 2000-2002. Out of this data, I reconstructed the
controversies and social dynamics that led to the institutionalization of various central
features of Wikipedia's epistemic culture. The second corpus was comprised of
twenty interviews conducted in 2010 with knowledge retrieval and production experts
– i.e., journalists – about Wikipedia and the way they use it. The data gathered was
used to assess how this emergent structure was implicated in the lives of its users,
effecting society at a larger scale.
The methodological orientation of this work is informed primarily by studies
related to the tradition social studies of science and technology. As noted earlier, such
studies attempt to trace the concrete interactions and associations which occur in sites
of knowledge production, and describe how they bring together heterogeneous
elements which together shape its methods and content. Specifically, I am most
influenced by the methods developed in the ANT school.
ANT is notoriously ambiguous about issues of methodology: Latour (2004) is
famous for his directive "just describe". However, it does have some methodological
imperatives, most explicitly manifested in the "cartography of controversies"
approach, which is a "practical" version of ANT. Its most systematic account was
articulated by Tommaso Venturini (2009), on which I rely in its description. A
controversy, in the language of ANT, is "every bit of science and technology which is
not yet stabilized, closed or 'black boxed'" (Macospol, 2007, cited in Venturini, 2009).
Controversies tend a number of common features, and their research is
supposed to reflect them74: First, controversies involve heterogeneous actors – human,
social, cultural, natural, technological, etc. the research should reflect this
74 The list below is somewhat different from the articulation appearing in Venturini (2009), reflecting my personal emphases and preferences.
54
heterogeneity rather than reduce it to one "explaining" variable. Second, they are
extremely dynamic, with ever-changing composition, and ever shifting relations and
alliances. The research must not posit given, predetermined "subjects," as any
network of objects can congeal into an actor, and any actor can dissolve or mutate. It
is the controversy and its evolvement that should stand in the heart of the study.
Third, they involve conflicting articulations – and thus force the researcher to be
attuned to local definitions of the situation, rather than forcing his own. Fourth,
controversies are essentially conflictual events, as different articulations clash, merge,
and mutate to fit or contradict each other. Thus, social order and social hierarchies are
always implicated in such situation – not as determinants, but as results or
achievements (see Latour, 1986). The study should focus on moments of conflicts and
their resolution, not assuming that their outcome is determined by preexisting "social
power," but describing how they are manifested concretely in the situation – via
translations, compromises, coercion etc.
Controversies usually share a direction, or a common drive: that of reducing
complexity of interactions and creating stable entities. In this sense, observing
controversies is watching a world in the making. The researchers should thus be
attuned to processes where boundaries and distinctions are created, to the processes of
congealment which create order from chaos, simplicity from complexity. This
approach is extremely useful in the case of Wikipedia, a subject shrouded in
controversies – both internal and external – from its inception, but gradually
institutionalizing and gaining stability and robustness.
Wikipedia satisfies all the criteria of a "good controversy": it is "hot," as fierce
disagreements and conflicting visions of the project and of knowledge production
frequently light up in it – and did so even more often, and with greater consequences
within the project's founding period. While many of the original internal controversies
had cooled down, it is possible, through archives and edit-histories, to approach them
as if they were current. In addition, Wikipedia is still a controversial issue in the
public at large, an issue that will be discussed in the dissertation's final chapter. The
controversies surrounding its creation are well bounded, both thematically (the
conceptualization and building of a free encyclopedia) and geographically – almost all
the controversies related to Wikipedia's inception can be located in two websites
55
(Nupedia and Wikipedia) and two mailing lists (the Nupedia-l and Wikipedia-l
mailing lists). Other nods are usually traceable through links and referrals from these
sources. This feature also means that the debate was generally open and public,
meaning that it can be easily observed.
How do we go about researching the controversies regarding Wikipedia? The
basic attitude is that of maximizing the effect of the actors, and preferring descriptions
that follow their actions rather than explanations that reduce them or interpret them
through foreign factors articulated beforehand. Venturini (2009) offers three general
maxims: "1) you shall not restrain your observation to any single theory or
methodology; 2) you shall observe from as many viewpoints as possible; 3) you shall
listen to actors’ voices more than to your own presumptions." To a large extent, these
maxims reflect the ideas basic attitude of anthropology, and the idea of "thick
description" (Geertz, 1973) – indeed, Latour originally rejected sociology and referred
to himself as an anthropologist75 – but back away from it focus on "culture" and the
idea of interpretation, promoting instead a "realist" stance which rejects
phenomenology and its emphasis on human intentionality.
In terms of the actual process of research, the cartography of controversies
offers a variety of "lenses" through which the researcher can pick and organize his
materials. First, to map the web of references: that is, to trace statements and practices
until one feels he reached the boundaries of the arena, and then to organize them into
relatively coherent positions and discourses (or literatures) in which they support
each other. Second, to locate the actors – that is, any object in the field that produces
statements and practices, or has a visible effect on their articulation76. Third, to locate
the networks of actors: not as stable entities, but rather as ever changing series of
connection which are being tied and untied as the controversies unfold. Fourth, to
reconstruct, as best he can, the relevant cosmoi (Venturini, 2009) or panoramas
(Latour, 2005, 183-190) – i.e., visions, totalities, ordered and idealized versions of the
world – which inform controversies and clash in their process. Finally, to describe the
75 For a discussion of the affinities between ANT and anthropology, see Latour, (1993, pp. 91-109). His reconsideration of his relations with sociology is one of the main goals of Reassembling the Social (Latour, 2005, especially pp. 3-17, 37-42). 76 Actors, it should be remembered, may be of any sort: human (such as a participants in the controversy), natural (such as a phenomena discussed in it), cultural (such as models and practices that serve as precedence or cautionary tale), technological (such as the medium thorough which it is carried), etc.
56
cosmopolitics – the common world emerging from the meeting of different networks
and cosmoi, and regulates their relations. These lenses were highly valuable in the
research process of this work, and were reflected in the research and writing of this
dissertation (see below).
I chose to divert from the ANT tradition in two main ways: first, in the
attribution of agency and attitude towards interpretation. While ANT emphasizes the
need to attribute agency to all actors in the field, I focused almost entirely on the
agency of humans. That is not because I disagree with the general point: on the
contrary, it is precisely because I believe that this cardinal point in ANT was
demonstrated successfully enough and adapted to the point that demonstrating it once
again is of no great consequence.
More than anything else, this is a stylistic choice. The convention of referring
to humans as actors and to objects as implicated in their actions rather than acting on
their own comes more easily (but not "naturally") to me. Thus, in my field notes and
in my organizing summaries I did just that: refer to human as actors, and while
emphasizing the effects of non-human entities such as models and technological
artifacts, I did not refer to them as purposeful or intentional, but rather concentrated
on how they fit in with human beings and their actions – which they, of course, have a
visible and undeniable effect on. In writing my report, I chose to leave this organizing
structure as it was – not the least because I believe that in most cases it makes for a
better, more coherent read. In a more principled argument, I may add that this
orientation is not "natural" – but rather informed by works in the tradition of symbolic
interactionism, especially those made in the social studies of science and technology.
Such works, while acknowledging the importance of material environment,
nonetheless focus on humans and their interactions, highlighting the importance of
social (in the narrow sense) definitions of the situation.
That preference is closely related to my second divergence: namely, an
emphasis of moral concerns implicated in the building of networks. While this is not a
clear break with the ANT tradition, it is certainly a shift in emphasis. Closer to the
pragmatic sociology point of view, I observed closely the justifications and definitions
of the good which was implicated in the relations of (human) actors to others.
Attempting to go beyond indentifying cosmoses, I attempted to reconstruct the
57
epistemic virtues (Wood, 1998; Daston and Galison, 2007) which inform and justify
the actions of individuals, imbue the form and content of objects, and dictates
standards that qualify them (Thévenot, 2001b, 2002a, 2002b; Star and Griesemer,
1989, Bowker and Star, 1999, Star, 2010).
To account for the institutionalization of Wikipedia's epistemic culture, I used
two distinct corpuses, one addressing its internal formation and the other its external
implications. The first corpus was assembled from web archives containing almost all
the actions and interactions conducted within Wikipedia's founding period of 2000-
2002. The second corpus was comprised of twenty interviews conducted in 2010 with
knowledge retrieval and production experts – i.e., journalists – about Wikipedia and
the way they use it.
2.1 Data Corpus 1: Web Archives
The first part of the research was comprised of tracing controversies whose
decision shaped Wikipedia's epistemic culture, both on the World Wide Web and in
mailing lists. By the time the research began, these controversies were, to a large
extent, decided and blackboxed, and the relevant discussions were had to be
excavated and retraced. By using various web archives, I was able to reproduce with
very few gaps the relevant arenas and networks, in a way that allowed me to conduct
my research in manner close to a virtual or online ethnography (Markham, 1998,
Hine, 2000). As some of the methods I used were innovative, I will describe them in
some length.
2.1.1 Assembling the Corpus
The first step was to locate the relevant locations where controversies took
place, and build a corpus of relevant material. I began my explorations by reading
previous research that touched upon Wikipedia's inception (most notably Lih, 2009
and Reagle, 2010a), as well as reports and memoirs written by Wikipedians at later
dates (most notably Sanger, 2005 and Wikipedia, 2012d). These resources contained
links and references to much of the archives I later used to build my corpus. Reading
58
them, I soon realized that to trace the main controversies at their origin, my research
had to go further back in time and include Nupedia, the project from and against
which Wikipedia developed.
Thus, I used four main archives to construct my corpus:
1) The Nupedia-l mailing list, the main mailing list that was used to coordinate
and discuss the project. This archive was constructed by Joseph Reagle and
kept at his website (Reagle, 2006).
2) Internet Archives containing several versions of Nupedia's website, accessed
through the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine (Wayback Machine, 2011a).
The fact that the website was routinely re-archived (though in uneven
intervals) allowed me to observe how the resolution of controversies was
reflected in it, and shaped its content.
3) The Wikipedia-l mailing list, the main mailing list that was used to
coordinate and discuss the project until November 2002.
4) Several archives containing almost all the edits made in Wikipedia:
a) Wikipedia's edit histories, saved automatically to the website,
documenting each and every change made to its content. They are easily
accessible, enabling an almost complete reconstruction of Wikipedia's
history. There are some gaps in this history: histories of deleted pages, or
pages that were moved or renamed, are missing or hard to find. The
greatest drawback of this archive is that as a result of software issues, the
edit histories of Wikipedia's first year are almost entirely missing, as are
parts of its second year. This lacuna in the documentation of Wikipedia's
founding period, which limited the research regarding Wikipedia's
institutionalization up till now, was overcome by use of other archives.
b) Two archives containing early versions of Wikipedia, the first in the
Internet Archive Wayback Machine (Wayback Machine, 2011b) and the
other in "Nostalgia Wikipedia" (Nostalgia Wikipedia, 2012), a
reconstruction of Wikipedia as it was in December 2001. While far from
59
comprehensive, they contained valuable – though limited – edit histories
saved in the periods missing from Wikipedia's edit histories (as they
appear on Wikipedia's website).
c) A complete, chronologically ordered, backup of all Wikipedia edits from
its inception on January 2001 until mid-August of that year77. It
contained the time of every edit and the identity (whether in the form of
a system-recognized account nickname or an IP address) of its maker,
the name of the page edited and the content added or deleted from the
Wiki. As the original archive was stored in a huge, barely usable text
file, I recoded it to fit the needs of this research: I edited the raw text
files it contained to build a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet placing each
edit in a separate row (the final file contained 58,018 such rows). This
allowed me to both chronologically reconstruct the development of
Wikipedia, and sort it according to various features, such as editor or
page.
A Bibliographical note: As this archive is not easily accessible (or processed,
as it appears in the form of a very large Microsoft Excel file), I gave references to the
previous sources whenever possible, even in cases when I originally used this archive
to uncover the relevant information. In cases when it was not possible, the reference
points to the Wikipedia Backups Archive and to the unique timestamp automatically
generated for each edit in the archive. This allows the reader to find the relevant
location through a simple search in the archive, which can be downloaded from the
following URL: http://liorgimel.wordpress.com/2011/05/18/old-Wikipedia-edits-
from-2001.
2.1.2 Method of Analysis
After assembling the relevant corpus, I reconstructed the main controversies
through which Wikipedia was negotiated and constructed, using methods very similar
77 This archive was considered lost due to software issues relating to the Wiki software used at the time, until it was found and extracted by Tim Starling in 2010. See Starling (2010) for the original announcement of the discovery.
60
to those practiced in the mapping of controversies. My analysis of the data included
the following stages:
1) Reading the mailing lists and noting in a separate file the main discussions and
controversies, thus creating a tentative timeline of controversies. For each
discussion, I also noted the relevant links which were mentioned in it, thus
extending the network of references to external locations (mainly, but not
exclusively, to Nupedia or Wikipedia).
2) Accessing Nupedia's archives and noting web pages that were connected to
discussions in the mailing list. These connections were not limited to links, but
rather included the contents of the pages. In cases when standards, rules, or
practices appearing on a webpage were subject of mailing list discussion, I
added it to the files containing the relevant mailing list threads.
3) Accessing Wikipedia's backup of edits histories from its first few months. All
controversies or discussions regarding standards, rules, practices or
epistemology were saved, each in a different file, with all the relevant
documents that were linked to. Discussions that had corollaries in the mailing
list were merged with them to form a single file.
4) Arranging and describing the controversies. Using the previously mentioned
files, each discussion was arranged and analyzed diachronically. As what I
was looking for was a longitudinal process, I analyzed each concrete
controversy as a social drama (Turner 1967, 1968, 1974), in which contingent
and local interactions determine the outcome78. Furthermore, the diachronic
outlook allowed me to observe how each resolution of a controversy
conditioned (with varying degrees of success) the outcome of later ones.
5) Tracing the networks. Network of relevant actors were identified for each
controversy. As virtually all entries were attributed to specific, identifiable
actors and contained explicit references and links to relevant objects, it was
relatively easy to construct the networks operating in the field. The networks I
observed were highly mobile, realigning themselves to address each
78 In contrast with turner, however, I did not always construct the dramas as results of "cracks" in the social structure, as "structure" is the goal of this work, not its hypothesis.
61
controversy and changing their configurations over time. At times these
changes were very minor; at other times they were revolutionary.
6) Following the process of translation. I followed closely the processes of
translation and enlistment that took place as the controversies unfold, paying
special attention to the visions, models and epistemic virtues implicated in
them.
7) Assessing the outcomes. Finally, I observed the results in terms of the
emergent epistemic culture (Knorr-Cetina, 1999): the cosmopolitics that
emerged and determined how knowledge ought to be assembled and which
actors and objects are qualified to partake in its production.
2.2 Data Corpus 2: Interviews
The second part of the research was comprised of semi-structured interviews –
a highly flexible tool, allowing for new and unexpected issues to emerge. This
strategy is based on the assumption that research questions should never be
completely closed and that this openness should be reflected in research methods.
Moreover, flexibility is essential in attempting to come close to the interviewee's
world (Berg, 1998).
2.2.1 Assembling the Corpus
The interviews had two main purposes: first, to explore interviewee's
perceptions of Wikipedia and its production, with special emphasis given to their
attitudes towards its validity and legitimacy as a source of information. Second, to
understand if, how and in what occasions journalists used Wikipedia. Originally, I
assumed that these two directions would later intersect; I hypothesized that there
would be a correlation between interviewees' perceptions of Wikipedia and their use
of it. However, after I conducted a few pilot interviews to chart the main aspects of
the topic and test my questions and understanding of the field (cf. Kvale, 2008, pp.
46-47) it became clear to me that such a correlation did not exist, and that journalists
62
used Wikipedia regardless of their perception of it and whether they trusted it or not:
as all interviewees concurred, consulting Wikipedia it was already a firmly instituted
journalistic research method. At the same time, it became just as clear that there was a
strict taboo on mentioning Wikipedia as a source. I thus changed the interview to
reflect my interest in this apparent contradiction.
The interviews began with a general explanation of the research and its aims,
and an invitation to ask any question the interviewees may have about it. In its final
version, the interviews were comprised of four batches of questions: first, a number of
general questions meant to identify the interviewees' position in the field of
journalism and their background. The decision to open this kind of questions was not
incidental: apart from being informative, they also help build rapport (Alvesson,
2003). The second batch focused on questions regarding the interviewees knowledge
about Wikipedia, such as what do they know of the way its managed and constructed,
how familiar are they with aspects of the website outside the scope of article pages
(such as article history and discussion), etc. The third and largest batch related to
journalists' relation with Wikipedia: first in general, i.e. how widespread is the use of
Wikipedia in their workplace; when, how and under what circumstances it is
legitimized as a research tool in the workplace. Then I moved on to more personal
questions: how much they use it, when, for what purposes, how essential it is to their
workflow, etc. when setting up interviews, I specifically requested interviewees to try
and remember – and write down, if possible – actual occurrences when they use
Wikipedia, and a substantial portion of this part was devoted to discussing and
analyzing it. In the fourth and final batch, the questions focused on attitudes towards
Wikipedia, focusing on its perceived reliability, on justifications for using it, on the
legitimacy of using it, etc. I finished every interview by requesting interviewees to
talk about how they felt about Wikipedia in general. This question often proved
highly fruitful, as interviewees described their views and opinions at length and quite
openly.
The selection of interviewees was based on maximum variation sampling, a
purposive sampling method which "aims at capturing and describing the central
themes that cut across a great deal of variation" (Patton, 2002, PP. 234-235). To
maximize variation, I picked journalists in various Israeli news venues: I interviewed
63
journalists from Israel four major daily papers, Yediot Aharonot, Maariv, Ha'aretz and
Israel Hayom; from two of Israel's three financial newspapers, namely Globes and
Calcalist, and three major Websites, Ynet and Walla positions. I also attempted to
cover various typical roles in the journalistic world, those of reporters, editors, copy-
editors and proofreaders. Finally, I aimed at interviewing journalists in various
specialties: domestic news; foreign news; sports; finance; science and technology;
culture and entertainment. This variation allowed me to reconstruct shared practices
that cut across local or role-dependent differences.
To reach interviewees I used a modified snowball method where I asked each
interviewee for more contacts, specifically soliciting contacts that fitted the venues,
roles and specialties I was aiming for. Twelve of the interviewees were men, and eight
were women. Most of them were in their late twenties or early thirties, the youngest
bring 25 and the oldest 38. This does not represent the full diversity of the journalistic
field, as interviewing older journalists may have produced different result. However,
it does represent the generations which came of age professionally at a time when
computer and internet technology were already commonplace, or on their way to
Become commonplace.
All interviews were recorded and transcribed, with the permission of the
interviewees. I also took some notes, highlighting certain aspects of the interview for
later contemplation.
2.2.2 Method of The Analysis
In the spirit of works done in the realm of human-computer interactions
(Heath, Knoblauch and Luff, 2000; Guimares, 2005; Rutter and Smith 2005; Turkle,
1995, 1996; Wellman and Haythornthwaite, 2002), I used the data collected in the
interviews to understand the way humans (in this case, journalist) construct
technology through their everyday practices, and how they interact with, changing
both their practices and identity, and the technology itself (or at least adjusting it to
their needs).
64
I analyzed the interviewees' descriptions of how they use Wikipedia, to
reconstruct the chains of translation which incorporated Wikipedia. From a very early
stage, it was evident that these were very similar, and no systematic deviations were
emerging. I thus built a model of how journalists use Wikipedia which was gradually
refined as more data was added in subsequent interviews, until new interviews made
no impact to it. To build it, I used a process of analytic induction (Robinson, 1951;
Denzin, 2007), whose steps are:
1) A rough definition of the phenomenon to be explained is formulated.
2) A hypothetical explanation of that phenomenon is formulated.
3) One case is studied in light of the hypothesis, with the object of determining
whether or not the hypothesis fits the facts in that case.
4) If the hypothesis does not fit the facts, either the hypothesis is reformulated or
the phenomenon to be explained is redefined so that the case is excluded.
5) Practical certainty can be attained after a small number of cases have been
examined, but the discovery of negative cases disproves the explanation and
require a reformulation.
6) This procedure of examining cases, redefining the phenomenon, and
reformulating the hypotheses is continued until a universal relationship is
established, each negative case calling for a redefinition or a reformulation.
(Denzin, 2007, p. 134)
In the building of this model, I put great emphasis on the epistemic practices
and standards described by the interviewees, as I tried to trace the methods journalists
used to assess the credibility and value of information in Wikipedia. In addition, I
tried to understand how these practices are incorporated in the larger context of
journalistic workflow, rather than focusing on them in isolation (see Heath,
Knoblauch and Luff, 2000). Apart for reconstructing journalists' practices, I used the
interviews to observe how journalists frame their use of Wikipedia in a way that is
coherent and justifiable. I used their descriptions, narratives, proverbs and metaphors
to reconstruct cosmos or epistemic virtue relevant to their field of work.
65
2.2.3 The Use of Israeli Journalists as Interviewees: a Caveat
As noted above, my interviewees were all Israelis working in Hebrew written
venues. This may limit the generalizability of the findings presented above. As
Nicholas Johns' (2011a, 2011b) studies about the diffusion of the internet to Israel
during the eighties and early nineties suggest, the institutionalization of new media is
highly dependent on individual and state level machinations. This means that further
research is needed to understand the differences between the ways journalists in
different countries use Wikipedia. Moreover, the most relevant version of Wikipedia
for the needs of my interviewees was the Hebrew one, while this study's assessment
of Wikipedia is mainly based on the dominant English language version. This
problem is compounded by the fact that Wikipedias in different languages do not
comply to the same polices (with a few exceptions, including the Neutral point of
view policy, considered binding in all Wikipedias), and there is a large degree of
variance in the way they operate. However, I would like to note that all interviewees,
without exception, noted that they frequently use the English Wikipedia, some of
them more often than they did the Hebrew one. Moreover, they report similar patterns
of use and evaluation in different language versions, and more often than not use the
English version as a higher authority than the Hebrew one. Thus, I believe that their
reports may be used to construct a pattern of action generalizable to audiences of
various language versions of Wikipedia. This belief, however, obviously demands
further research to affirm. I will discuss these issues further below in chapter 7.
66
Chapter 3: Nupedia
Cultural and epistemic changes often have modest origins. In this chapter I
trace the very early stages of such a change, tracing the concrete and gradual micro-
level processes involved in it and attempting at the same time to uncover the older,
more stable parts of the relevant cultural repertoires (Lamont and Thévenot, 2000)
whose assembly allows it to emerge. This assembly is constrained by the need to
use familiar and legitimate cultural resources to cope with what Wuthnow calls the
problem of articulation:
"if cultural products are not articulate closely enough with their social settings, they are likely to be regarded by the potential audiences of which these settings are composed as irrelevant, unrealistic, artificial, and overly abstract, or worse, their producers will be unlikely to receive the support necessary to carry on their work; but if cultural products articulate too closely with the specific social environment in which they are produced, they are likely to be thought of as esoteric, parochial, time bound, and fail to attract a wider and more lasting audience" (Wuthnow, 1989, p.3)
This problem limits the range of possible networks, leading to a preference of
networks that succeed in enlisting already established actors and objects that can
impart their legitimacy to the network.
This was especially true for Nupedia: as a project based on the volunteer labor
of (mainly academic) experts, it was designed and constructed by its founders
specifically to bestow it with legitimacy and respectability, to make it attractive to
them. Thus, I focus my attention on attempts by the project's founders and
contributors to qualify objects and practices as legitimate in terms of more general
cosmos (Venturini, 2009) or order of worth (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006, Thévenot,
2001b).
This chapter is divided into four subchapters: the first is a brief historical
overview, based mainly on the chronology presented in (Sanger, 2005). The second
subchapter describes Nupedia's encyclopedic model, which was intimately linked
with that of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. The third subchapter analyzes Nupedia's
mode of production, which was conservative in its assumptions about knowledge
67
production and based primarily on the ethos of expertise. The final subchapter depicts
a social drama that occurred as a result of attempts to change Nupedia's mode of
production. This drama uncovers the dialectic moved that took place in Nupedia,
which began as a very conservative project but gradually began to downplay the
reliance on experts – a trend that ultimately led to the creation of Wikipedia.
3.1 Historical Background
Nupedia was initiated and operated by Bomis, Inc., a dot-com company
founded in 1996 and owned by Jimmy Wales, Tim Shell and Michael Davis. Bomis
was a relatively small company (with ten employees in October 2001), which ran a
web portal (bomis.com) and made some profit from banner ads located in it. Nupedia
was one of many ideas developed in this self-proclaimed "laboratory for
experimenting with new ideas about the modeling of information, about new systems
of online community and collaboration" (Bomis, 2006). It was supposed to be an
"open source encyclopedia," produced by volunteers and generating income through
banner-ad placement79. The presentation of Nupedia as the product of a commercial
venture may be deceiving: Wales, the driving force both behind Bomis and behind the
Nupedia project,80 previously used Bomis's servers for various purposes without
financial motivation, such as providing hosting for Objectivist81 and Libertarian
websites and databases. However, as I shall demonstrate, its roots in this commercial
setting did condition its features and development, tying its fate with those of its
owners, and the market in which they operated.
In January 2000 Wales offered Larry Sanger to plan and spearhead the
project82. Sanger was a Ph.D. student specializing in epistemology in Ohio State
79 Formed in 1998, the open source movement was a commercially driven effort to promote collaborative software development and permissive user license agreements. It was gaining notability and success at the time, and initial attempts were made to translate its success from the realm of software to that of internet content. 80 As he himself put it, "it is sort of funny to me when I read people discussing 'Bomis' in the abstract. Ultimately, that just means me, since I'm the final decision making authority. Bomis is not a big abstract company; it's just the people that you know. A down home mom and pop dot-com. :-)" (Wales, 2001a). 81 I.e. supporting the ideas and philosophy of Ian Rand. 82 Wales was acquainted with Sanger through online forums dedicated to discussing Ayn Rand's ideas, such as the #AynRand IRC channels and alt.philosophy.objectivism Usenet group (a contemporary
68
University at the time, and Wales was apparently looking for a like-minded
philosopher to lead Nupedia. This seems to be at least partly a move which was meant
to grant the project respectability – as is apparent from his insistence that Sanger will
finish his dissertation as soon as possible.
Sanger accepted the job and a month later moved to San Diego, where Bomis
was located. He began working on the project in the beginning of February. The first
copy of the Nupedia.com website in the internet archive is dated to March 4th
(Wayback Machine, 2011a), but the project wasn't officially launched until March 9th.
At that date the first messages were sent to the project's mailing list (Reagle, 2006),
which was the main site of activity in his early days. First steps were taken towards
publicizing the project and drawing volunteers: a day later, on March 10th, an article
about the project appeared on PC World magazine (Gouthro, 2000), and mails were
sent to mailing lists and newsgroups soliciting volunteers. If the date March 10th rings
a bell, it is not incidental, and not entirely unrelated to our subject matter: it was the
day the NASDAQ Composite index reached his highest point, after doubling its value
over the year before due to "wild stock speculation and freewheeling venture capital
investment that resulted in the often ludicrous overvaluation of sketchy internet
companies" (Long, 2007). A day later, it started its long and hard decline, marking
March 10th as "the day the bubble burst". This unfortunate economic coincidence was
posthumously credited by some, including Sanger himself, as the main reason for
Nupedia's failure.
In the first months of the project, most of the efforts were directed at attracting
volunteers and finalizing the guidelines for the project (Sanger, 2000a). On May 10th,
Nupedia's news page reported that over 1800 members already joined the project
(Nupedia, 2000a). By December 15th, the number rose to over 2500, including 15
subject area editors and 81 peer reviewers (Nupedia, 2000b). Throughout the first year
of the project, most of the activity was carried out through various mailing lists. The
majority of these lists functioned as review groups of specific encyclopedic topics,
while some others were dedicated to general issues such as policy formations,
copyediting etc. By June, the first drafts of articles were submitted to the topical
account can be found in Wilcox (1994). Such forums provided the main social medium in which Nupedia – and to a large extent also Wikipedia – developed.
69
mailing lists for review (Nupedia, 2000a). At the same time, an advisory board
comprised of Nupedia's editors and peer reviewers was set up and began discussing
the project's guidelines, which were composed and edited primarily by Sanger. They
did not change much as a result of these discussions. Version 2.1 of the guidelines
was released in May (Nupedia, 2000c), and version 3.2, which was highly elaborate
and relatively stable, was released in June (Nupedia, 2000d).
By June, there were active review groups83 in the fields of biology; classics;
computers; engineering; health sciences; literature; music; psychology; and zoology.
An article assignment system was in place on the website and about twenty articles
have been assigned, mostly on topics related to music and classical studies, the most
active and populated of Nupedia review groups (Nupedia, 2000a). A great deal of the
activity was still centered on recruitment: a flyer was posted on the website and
mailing lists, and participants were requested to post it, both online and offline
(Sanger, 2000b). By July, copyediting groups84 began their activity and started
working on submitted articles and various technical improvements were carried out
by programmers hired for the project, including an "anonymous remailer" system to
enable blind peer review. For the first time, small incentives were offered to
participants partaking in article production: editors, writers of at least one article and
copyeditors of at least five were offered T-shirts and coffee mugs with Nupedia's logo
and motto85. Copyeditors were also offered reimbursement for their reference books
once they copyedited five articles (Nupedia, 2000a).
According to the "newest articles" webpage (Nupedia, 2001a), it seems that
the first article, "Atonality," was published in July 25th, and three more followed in
August. By that time, however, the project's founders already began to raise concerns
about the rate of production. Despite the continued development of the still unfinished
technical system behind Nupedia and the founders' promise of long term commitment,
maneuvers were soon set in motion in an attempt to accelerate production, most of
them attempting to do so by flexing Nupedia's structures and processes: in August,
83To qualify as active and begin assigning articles, a topic needed at least an interim editor and two peer reviewers. 84There were two such groups, one for American English and the other for British English. 85"Suppose scholars the world over were to learn of a serious online encyclopedia effort in which the results were not proprietary to the encyclopedist, but were freely distributable under an open content license in virtually any desired medium. How quickly would the encyclopedia grow?" (Campeu, 2000)
70
Sanger suggested active solicitation of brief introductory articles from non-experts
and the introduction of a new "general" review group for fields that did not yet have
an active review group (Sanger, 2000c, 2000d); in September, the whole production
system migrated from mailing lists to a web based system (Nupedia, 2000b); and in
November, a new policy was formed to enable and encourage the incorporation of
open content materials produced outside Nupedia (Sanger, 2000e).86 At the same
time, more moves were made to enlist new volunteers: in December, a contest was
declared in which monetary rewards going up to 250$ were proposed to participants
recruiting new members. However, these moves proved ineffective as by the end of
the year only 12 articles were published, and an overall of 53 drafts were submitted to
review process (Nupedia, 2000b).
In January 10th, 2001, another such move was announced, when Sanger posted
on Nupedia-l mailing list a mail with the heading "Let's make a Wiki!" inviting
participants to examine the innovative Wiki technology, and offering to open one for
Nupedia (Sanger, 2000f). Although initially planned as a side project, it was soon
transferred to its own domain, Wikipedia.com. While Nupedia kept operating, it soon
started dwindling – at least partly as a result of Sanger spending more and more time
on the fast growing new website. Later, even after being fired from Bomis in February
2002, Sanger made several attempts to revive it by simplifying its editorial
mechanism, introducing a modified Wiki platform (named "Nupedia chalkboard," see
Sanger, 2001a) or using materials from Wikipedia for Nupedia (a project named
"sifter," see Sanger, 2001b), but he ultimately failed. Nupedia only published 13
articles in 2001, none at all in 2002, and while an attempt to revive the project
resulted in publishing two articles in April 2003 (Nupedia, 2003), it was the project's
dying breath. After a server malfunction the website went down in September 2003,
and with that ended project Nupedia. When it ceased to exist, it had produced a total
of 27 articles (three of them being brief versions of longer ones), and had less than 60
articles that had undergone peer review. At the time, Wikipedia had long passed the
100,000 articles benchmark.
86 While the first two changes were implemented almost immediately, the later were not: the web-based system was not completed until the end of the year, and as far as I can tell, the use of external materials never got off the ground.
71
In what follows, I focus on two specific aspects of Nupedia which together
defined its epistemic culture: its encyclopedic model and its mode of production. I
track the "literatures" they are referencing to (Venturini, 2009), and describe how
each of them was inscribed in Nupedia's mechanisms and practices. I then go on to
describe how they interacted in a critical situation that involved the attempt to modify
Nupedia's mode of production.
3.2 The Encyclopedic Model
The goal of the Nupedia project was first and foremost the creation of an
encyclopedia. However, questions such as what is an encyclopedia, and what kind of
encyclopedia Nupedia is going to produce were seldom discussed, indicating that it
held an unproblematic position in the project. Practically, Nupedia's main features
relied on the general model of traditional paper encyclopedias – and specifically the
Encyclopaedia Britannica. Indeed, the few texts and discussions that do deal with the
completed work seem remarkably conservative, as features such as the overall
structure of the encyclopedia, the writing style and the representation of knowledge
were all explicitly modeled, to a large extent, on those of previous encyclopedias. In
the few discussions where alternatives were raised concerning these features, the
project's founders' position leaned – and tipped the scale – in favor of sustaining the
traditional model.
By and large, while most aspects of the Nupedia project were repeatedly
articulated, explained and justified, its encyclopedic model was considered relatively
unproblematic. Nupedia's founders didn't feel they had to explain it or coordinate
expectations concerning it. Moreover, there was almost no demand from readers and
participants for the presentation and explanation of that such a vision. There were
even fewer controversies regarding it. This attitude seems to indicate two things: the
robustness of the encyclopedic model as it developed in the 20th century, at least
amongst the academic milieu which the bulk of participants belonged to; and the
general adherence of Nupedia's founders and participants to this model. Thus, the
epistemic underpinnings of the encyclopedic model remained relatively unarticulated,
operating within Nupedia mostly in the form of underlying schemas or habits that are
72
"relatively unconscious, in the sense that they are taken-for-granted mental
assumptions or modes of procedure that actors normally apply without being aware
that they are applying them" (Sewell, 1992). In what follows, I use documents and
self-descriptions found on Nupedia's website to reconstruct the taken-for-granted
encyclopedic model underling Nupedia.
As noted, Nupedia's founders hardly attempted to describe in advance the goal
of their project, and where they did address it they did so in very indistinct terms. A
characteristic example can be found in the "about" page, dedicated to an overview of
the project. Explaining the need for a new encyclopedia, it constructs Wikipedia as
different from other encyclopedia only in terms of its quality:
"Our goal is to grow Nupedia indefinitely, to set a new standard for breadth, depth, timeliness, and lack of bias, and in the fullness of time to become the most comprehensive encyclopedia in the history of humankind" (Nupedia, 2000e)
Nupedia's aspired quality is constructed in this text with regards to parameters
that are implicitly constructed as central to encyclopedias: breadth, depth, timeliness,
lack of bias and comprehensiveness. This list of common measures was used on
several other occasions (see cf. Nupedia, 2000d, 2000f), indicating its importance to
the project's self-presentation. In all these instances, the meaning of these parameters
is not explicated, indicating that they are perceived as self evident with regards to the
readers. The universal character of these parameters point to their meaning in broader
terms: they create equivalences (Thévenot, 2001a, 2002a, 2002b) between Nupedia
and an ideal model of an encyclopedia and construct a relation of commensurability
between Nupedia and previous encyclopedias. Through these equivalences, Nupedia's
founders indicate that it aims for the same objectives as traditional encyclopedias, and
is different only in terms of its improved quality.
An important implication of this construction is that it presents the reader with
a vague but plausible vision of the project's outcome: Nupedia is going to be similar
to existing encyclopedias, only bigger and better. As the content of the encyclopedia
was yet to be produced, this vision encapsuled a definition of the situation in which
the epistemic stance, the structure and the type of content in Nupedia are seen as taken
for granted, and the main challenges are rather practical in nature.
73
Similarly, Nupedia's FAQ page (Nupedia, 2000g) presents an answer to the
same question worded in greater length: "why is there a need for another
encyclopedia? Aren't there already quite enough excellent encyclopedias?" This
wording is very telling, as it positions Nupedia in a competitive relation with
"excellent" traditional encyclopedias, and assumes it should justify its existence with
regards to them. The answer, describing the "ways in which Nupedia has the potential
of becoming unique," states that:
Nupedia may well end up with a broader base of contributors than any encyclopedia in history. Moreover, it is hypertext, and online. Hence it is in principle infinitely expandable. So, our ambition for Nupedia is for it to become the largest -- broadest, deepest, and most up-to-date -- encyclopedia in history. Where Britannica might have 1000 words on a given relatively obscure subject in the history of science, Nupedia might, in the fullness of time, have a treatise.
This text is a clear example of form investment (Thévenot, 1984), as it
proposes to judge Nupedia with regards to parameters that are implicitly constructed
as central to encyclopedias: breadth, depth, timeliness, lack of bias and
comprehensiveness, indicating its importance to the project's self-presentation. The
universal character of these parameters point to their meaning in broader terms:
Nupedia is constructed as better, not different. It is subject to the same regime of
justification (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006) and adheres to the same epistemic virtues
(Daston and Galison, 2007).87
This quote uncovers another important theme: the centrality of the
Encyclopaedia Britannica in the self-presentation of the project. While the question is
worded in a way that compares Nupedia with "excellent encyclopedias" in the plural,
the only such encyclopedia mentioned is Encyclopaedia Britannica. This mention
asserts Britannica as the model against which Nupedia judges its outcome. The
reference to Britannica in this paradigmatic point is not accidental, as it played an
important role in the construction of Nupedia's vision and policies. Nupedia's
founders had in the Encyclopaedia Britannica a highly valuable resource in their
attempt to make their vision a reality, as it helped narrow the interpretive openness of
the abstract and implicit "traditional encyclopedic model." Britannica's hegemony in
87 This is especially evident in the illustration given for these consequences: the hypothetical topic is a traditional encyclopedic one (history of science), and Nupedia's advantage in this case is articulated as a matter of size only.
74
the realm of encyclopedias meant that virtually all those interested or taking part in
the project knew it, and knew of its dominant status in the realm of encyclopedias, so
that it could embody a culturally sanctioned model for general encyclopedias. As
such, it could be used as a concrete point of reference or “test” (Boltanski and
Thévenot, 2006) that narrows the interpretive possibilities and can be consulted in
times of doubt88.
Nupedia's founders were quite explicit about using the Britannica as a model
for the Nupedia encyclopedia. On several occasions, they named Britannica
specifically as the benchmark for quality they were trying to surpass, while neglecting
to mention any possible changes to Britannica's structure and style. This position is
salient in an article published in the pc-world journal the very day Nupedia was
launched, which states that:
"Aimed mainly at consumers, Nupedia considers Britannica its main competition. Britannica, which has been around for more than 200 years, recently made all of its content free on the Web. Sanger acknowledges that Britannica is a mighty force to reckon with, but maintains Nupedia will be a contender. 'Eventually we're going to out-Britannica Britannica,' he says. 'By that, I mean we'll do all the things that they do, only we'll do them better and in more depth.'" (Gouthro, 2000)
Apart from setting a concrete model for the encyclopedia, Britannica
influenced the Nupedia's encyclopedic model in a more subtle way. As it allowed free
access to its content on its website, Nupedia's founders couldn't claim that they offer a
new internet service, and thus had to find other justifications for the project's
necessity. They used two such justifications: the first, demonstrated above, was that
Nupedia would be better than Britannica. The second was that it would develop a
substitution to Britannica's paper encyclopedia universally available only for just the
cost of printing. This was a major rhetoric strategy used to mobilize volunteers by
constructing the project as one of moral implications. This vision constructs Nupedia
first and foremost as a not-for-profit substitute to Britannica in the realm of paper
publications, and not as an internet centered initiative. These aspirations, in turn,
conditioned its model, as they reduced the feasibility of features that exceeded the
limitations of traditional desk encyclopedias. And indeed, Nupedia generally adhered
88 Moreover, there were already several online encyclopedias active at the time, including Microsoft's encyclopedia Encarta and the Encyclopedia Britannica online, which adhered to a similar model.
75
to the traditional model of encyclopedia in terms of the general structure, writing
style, and attitude towards knowledge representation.
In terms of the general composition and structure of the encyclopedia,
Nupedia was supposed to be arranged in a topical category structure similar to the
ones found in indexes of traditional encyclopedia89. Sanger openly admitted that in
order to compose it he "consulted several English language desktop encyclopedias,"
and that he omitted subcategories when he felt he "lack[ed] the competence to say
authoritatively what the subcategories should be". Nupedia's initial category scheme
(Nupedia, 2001b) was thus arranged along manifestly conservative90 disciplinary
lines. In terms of the writing style, Nupedia's guidelines do not exceed what one
would generally expect from an encyclopedia, including referring to such resources as
the Chicago Manual of Style or Strunk and White's Elements of Style (Nupedia,
2000d).
Nupedia's founders' statements regarding Wikipedia's encyclopedic model
usually stressed the equivalence between Nupedia and paper encyclopedias in terms
of article content, and the need to stick to their standards. A significant manifestation
of this tendency can be found in a discussion started when a participant suggested on
the Nupedia-l mailing list to supplement traditional articles with manifold versions
suited to a particular audience: "Short, long, complex, simple, technical, practical
articles" (Banerjee, 2000). This suggestion raised a long discussion between the
project's founders and contributors, and forced the later to present argument in favor
of their conservative attitude.
The most comprehensive response was Jimmy Wales', in a post later
supported by Sanger. In it, Wales writes as following:
I think this discussion is extremely important. Here are some thoughts.
89 Like almost all paper encyclopedias, the preliminary organization of Nupedia's contents was based on a version of the traditional division of the branches of knowledge, its top-level categories being foundational disciplines, natural sciences, social sciences, applied arts and sciences, and culture, each branched into disciplinary categories (Nupedia, 2001b). 90 As Sanger explained, when he defended his inclusion of the classics category, "there is no reason why we should… [deny] the importance or usefulness of well-accepted categories of scholarship such as, indeed, Classics" (Nupedia, 2001b).
76
My dream for Nupedia is to have a tool that is very widely (universally!) accessible. The open content license will enable people to take the content and redistribute it in a great many forms, including paper books to be sent to countries who cannot yet afford an internet infrastructure.
As such, Nupedia ought not to be an extremely high level academic encyclopedia aimed only at specialists. Articles should be encyclopedic, as opposed to polemic or academic, if you see what I mean.
At the same time, I don't envision this as an encyclopedia for kids -- at least not in the first pass.
The idea that hypertext and computers can support a wide variety of levels is a very good insight, as is the insight that a high level article with hypertext links to a glossary for the "hard" words can render an article more widely available.
However, my reservation is that many overly ambitious projects never manage to get off the ground. We intend to _succeed_ at building a fantastic resource, which means that we ought to *actually do* just what we *can do*, rather than simply dreaming of utopia.
------------
If we make one solid pass through -- aiming for breadth, i.e. more-or-less complete coverage of everything, then at that point it will make sense to seek volunteer "translators" who can translate the articles to a different reading level, to put together a "Kid's Nupedia". This will be in many ways similar to translation efforts which seek to create a "German Nupedia" or "French Nupedia" or "Chinese Nupedia".
But we can't do everything at once, not even with 1500 volunteers.
If we can demonstrate to the world our _success_ at creating a first-pass high-quality encyclopedia, at the reading level of Britannica, let's say, then we will create a _movement_, an avalanche of support like the avalanche that is carrying Linux forward. We'll have thousands and thousands of volunteers streaming in, making even the most impossible tasks possible.
But -- one step at a time. :-)
--Jimbo
(Wales, 2000a, Underscore in the original)
77
As this quote shows, the vision of the project is articulated as one that
surpasses the realm of the internet, aspiring to reach, in book form, "countries who
cannot yet afford an internet infrastructure." This vision, central to the project
construction as a moral project, is mobilized as justification for not making Nupedia
"an extremely high level academic encyclopedia aimed only at specialists," or
alternatively "an encyclopedia for kids." After he acknowledges the virtues of
proposed changes, Wales explains that Nupedia has limited resources, and trying to
go beyond the traditional format might consume them and fail the project before it
gets off the ground. The last and most important part of the post outlines the founders'
argument for their conservative attitude.
The strategic outline justifying the founders' attitude is based on a two-step
program: at first, the project has to succeed in creating a "high quality encyclopedia,
at the reading level of Britannica" (ibid). This, in turn, will generate enormous support
that will enable to surpass the vision of traditional encyclopedia. However, this will
only be possible once the "first-pass" encyclopedia is finished – And that
encyclopedia is a traditional, Britannica-like one.
As this description illustrates, Nupedia's founders were very insistent in their
attempt to keep Nupedia in line with the established traditions of modern
encyclopedism, and took a generally conservative outlook towards it. Britannica thus
functioned in it as an Obligatory Passage Point (Bijker and Law, 1992; Callon, 1986;
Latour, 1988), funneling all the activity in the project though its standards. The
authority of this standard was based on a strict traditional legitimacy (Weber, 1978,
pp. 266-231), as neither rational-legal justifications nor charismatic claims were
involved in its formation. A similar attitude, though somewhat more complicated, can
be seen in Nupedia's mode of production.
3.3 The Mode of Production
"I maintained from the start that something really could not be a credible encyclopedia without oversight by experts. I reasoned that, if the project is open to all, it would require both management by experts and an unusually rigorous process." (Sanger, 2005, italics in the original)
78
This quote sums up well the attitude held by Sanger towards Nupedia's mode
of knowledge production. While the Nupedia was supposed to be an encyclopedia that
anyone could edit, it was had an elaborate editorial review process overseen by
experts. This process combined two models of knowledge production, one based on
academic peer review and the other based on public debate in mailing lists. These two
models embodied different epistemic assumptions, the first relying on an expert-based
stance and the other more akin to public deliberation. They were similar, however, in
that they embody culturally sanctioned models of knowledge giving and of
representation which stand at the heart of the modern stance.91 They thus both confer
legitimacy, and provide ready-made solutions for the problems of knowledge giving,
production and verification. However, the inherent tension between divergent modes
of representation meant that their relative standing in the project had to be explicitly
addressed and practically resolved. Evidently, the expert based model held an
undisputed superiority within the project, and was deeply engraved in Nupedia's
structure and processes. This dominance, however, waned over time, as slow
production pace became a serious problem in the project.
Nupedia's organizational structure, proposed by Sanger and elaborated with
the help of other contributors, was based on a horizontal separation between areas of
expertise (topical categories) and a hierarchical division of labor between several
types of volunteers. At the top of the hierarchy was the editor-in-chief (Sanger
himself), who was the final ruler on matters of knowledge production. Under him
were the subject editors, responsible for formulating topic-specific policies and
assigning and approving articles. Peer reviewers were responsible for approving
articles during the review process. The editors and peer reviewers were also the
members of Nupedia's advisory board, officially responsible for discussing and
setting Nupedia's policies. To each article was assigned a single writer. Moderators
were supposed to moderate the discussion of articles by non-experts in the open
review process (see below). Finally, there were two roles that did not require expertise
and were not associated with topical categories: Copyeditors that were supposed to
91 Latour (1993, pp. 12-48) even goes so far as claiming that the distinction between political and scientific representation – the epistemic cultures related to these models - is the very cornerstone of modernity.
79
copy-edit all the articles after their content was approved. Finally, casual
participants could comment on articles during the open review process92.
The manning of positions was based primarily on formal credentials. In the
top of the hierarchy was the editor-in-chief, an academically certified epistemologist.
Under him, the subject editors were supposed to be experts in their field and (with few
exceptions) posses a Ph.D. in it. The demands from Peer reviewers were smaller, as
"the vast majority have Ph.D.'s or are a few months from getting their Ph.D.'s, or have
equivalent publishing, teaching, and/or professional experience." Editors and peer
reviewers were (with very minor exceptions) the only persons allowed access to
Nupedia's advisory board, officially responsible for discussing and setting Nupedia's
policies. Writers were supposed to be "often, and as appropriate, an expert on the
topic". Lead-reviewers were "selected from those with the greatest expertise in the
relevant area". Moderators were "expected to have at least a bachelor's degree or
similar qualification in the subject area they're moderating."93 Finally, Copyeditors
and casual participants are the only two roles that did not require any expertise
(Nupedia, 2001c). Thus, while not all participants in the project were supposed to be
experts, they were always implicated in a hierarchy that vested authority according to
level of expertise.
This organizational structure was also the basis for the recognition and
acknowledgement scheme which were an integral part of Nupedia's attempts to create
a rewarding gift economy for its potential contributors. This connection was
highlighted in a section appearing in Nupedia's page devoted to attracting volunteers,
titled "Join us!" This section outlined the different functions in the project, the
qualifications needed to perform each function, and the credit which volunteers filling
each role will receive in the text: Editors get their names on each page in their
category, and have biographical pages; Writers names appear in a byline on any
article they write (indicating, by the way, that they are supposed to write them without
collaboration). They may also receive biographical pages if they wish to; no credit is
mentioned for Peer reviewers, Copyeditors and Observers. Thus, the main point of
92 Two other roles were those of programmers and translators. 93 However, their authority was not extended over the experts on the subject of the debate, as comments by the subject editor; the subject peer reviewers and the author were not moderated.
80
this section (besides explaining the possible roles of potential participants) is the
coupling of credentials, responsibility and renown.
The production process in its mature form94 included seven steps: (1) the
editor-in-chief or one of the subject editors assigns a topic to a writer. (2) The subject
editor finds a lead reviewer. (3) The lead reviewer and writer engage in a blind review
process, revising the article until the reviewer decides it is "nearly satisfactory for
inclusion in Nupedia" (4) The article is published on a dedicated webpage, where
peer-reviewers of the category as well as "the general public" comment and suggest
improvements until the editor, lead reviewer and another peer reviewer approve it. (5)
After the article is approved, the author selects two copyeditors to go over it. (6) The
article is published on a dedicated webpage, where "the general public" can comment
and suggest copyediting improvements until the two lead copyeditors approve it. (7)
The category editor approves the article before it is published.
As is evident from its review process, Nupedia relied on the participation of
certified experts for its operation. The project's general structure was based on a
hierarchy in which one's position and role was determined by his education and
credentials95, and decisions and products in each level were subject to oversight and
control of the levels above it. The manning of positions was executed in a top down
fashion, and the writing of articles could not begin without a subject editor to assign
them, and two additional peer-reviewers to form an "active" review group. However,
the reliance on official, academically recognized expertise and identity was
complemented by a second conception of knowledge production and authorization,
based on egalitarian public deliberation.
The contrast between these two models is evident in the existence of two
review systems for articles, the first modeled after that of academic peer review, and
the second after that of public discussions in mailing lists. Each reviewing and editing
94 This description is derived from version 3.2 of Nupedia's editorial policy guidelines (Nupedia, 2000d). Initial versions were less elaborate and did not include a separate lead review process, but very similar otherwise. 95 This is evident in the very first practical step Jimmy Wales made towards creating Nupedia: recruiting Larry Sanger to lead the project from the planning stages. According to Sanger (2005), Wales told him upon his recruitment that he was specifically interested in a philosopher to spearhead the project. He also conditioned his employment upon his finishing his Ph.D. quickly, and promised him a raise when it was done.
81
process embodied different epistemic cultures, with different notions of consensus;
different origins; different goals; different technologies; and different principles of
authority and responsibility. In general, the one relying on the competence of experts
was deemed superior to the one relying on public discussion. In what follow, I
describe the two review systems and the way they evolved to answer the pressing
problem of slow production pace.
3.3.1 The Peer Review Process
The source of Nupedia's peer review process is, in all probability, the
academic model of article production96. Given Nupedia's leaning towards
respectability and its founder's academic history, it is not surprising that they chose
such a model. Within the academic community, the peer review model is widely
considered as an integral part of the scientific process, to the point that it was
considered "crucial for the effective development of science" (Zuckerman and
Merton, 1971).
The peer review model of legitimation suggests that the content of the article
should be scrutinized by experts on the subject. These should be with a similar or
superior educational background to that of the writer ("peer"). However, once the
reviewer is chosen he is supposed to put aside his and the author's personal identity,
their relations, academic status, etc. To ensure this, the review process is usually
"blind" (as was the case in Nupedia), meaning that the authors and reviewers do not
know each other's identity. This practice is considered of utmost importance, as it
reduces the risk of contamination by personal or irrelevant aspects. Nupedia's lead
review process followed the same practices, and could thus seek to appropriate the
legitimacy that peer review process was accorded within scientific community.
The participants in the peer review process are thus supposed to be endowed
with an epistemic virtue (Daston and Galison, 2007) which allows them to set aside
personal considerations and engage the process of evaluation with fairness97 (Mallard,
96 Sanger indicated this connection on several occasions, as when he stated that "So far we've been following the academic/peer review model of article writing" (Sanger, 2000c). 97 The meaning of fairness is usually constructed as entailing the transcending of particularistic considerations and the use of universalistic criteria of evaluation (Zuckerman and Merton, 1971).
82
Lamont and Guetzkow, 2009). In the deliberations between the writer and reviewer
both are expected to set aside their personal opinions and assess the value of the
written work objectively and impartially. This distancing of the act of judgment from
the subjectivity of the judge is inherent to the peer review process. However, it is still
embedded in the subjectivity of the peer reviewer as the carrier of the adequate virtue.
In a similar vein, the lead reviewers in Nupedia were supposed to use as a rule of
thumb the question "If this draft of this article were to be published under my name,
would I be embarrassed by it?" the use of the notion of embarrassment here is very
appropriate, as it targets the reviewer’s sense of professional competence while not
forcing him to agree with the particular contents of the article. It also brings to the
front the moral aspect of knowledge production: epistemic virtues, which dictate and
qualifies standards, are mediated – at least in part – through the attribution or avowal
of shame on those breaching them98.
3.3.2 The Open Review Process
The open review process was modeled after the public discussion that took
place on internet mailing list since the seventies. At the time, mailing lists were the
most popular mode of extended online communication, and the model for the other
widespread mode, the online forum99. As the World Wide Web was still composed
mainly of static pages, this was the obvious choice for a method of deliberation.
Originally based on the email format (though transcending it in later web
manifestations), mailing lists allow multiple participants to post messages, see them
and comment on them, and to group different discussions in "threads". Participants
enter the discussions at will, and leave it at will. Participants can – and often do - post
their comment through a virtual identity, and remain anonymous with respect to their
real life identity. Discussion groups can also have a moderator approving or deleting
posts, and are usually archived.100 Sanger and Wales both founded and moderated
Though different articulations of fairness exist (for an overview, see Mallard, Lamont and Guetzkow, 2009) they all agree that fairness involves the reviewer putting aside his personal views to assess the article through some sort of impartial criteria. 98 See Mills (1940) on the attribution and avowal of motivation. 99 For a historical overview of the development of e-mails and mailing lists, see Hafner and Lyon, (1996, pp. 187-218). 100 Their most influential manifestation was in UseNet, the main venue for internet communication before the creation of the World Wide Web. For an overview, see Lueg and fisher (2003).
83
discussion groups in the past, and came to know each other when they participated on
each other's lists.
In contrast with the "one-to-one" communication of letters, and "one-to-many"
communication of print, mailing lists are also participatory and communal, enabling
communication of many-to-many (Wilson and Leighton, 2002). They are thus often
considered as generating a kind of public sphere where issues can be discussed freely
and without fear of repercussions (c.f. Poster, 1997). Mailing lists also often generate
virtual communities which sustain participation-based, meritocratic gift economy
which encourages their participants to share their knowledge with each other
(Bergquist and Ljungberg, 2001; Rheingold, 2000). In these features and others, they
embody the essence of the "new media" (Logan, 2010, see especially chapter 5). In a
same vein, the open review process in Nupedia involved public discussions of specific
articles, in which participants debated about the merits of the article, and raised
suggestions to improve it101. Following the prevalent customs, and in contrast to the
identity-based peer review system, Nupedia allowed anyone interested to participate
in open review groups, even anonymously.
The peer review and the open review models embody very different
assumptions about the connection between subjectivity and knowledge. The public
discussion model is based on the idea of contrasting different ideas, opinions and
identities. It assumes that a discussion needs to be conducted between proponents
representing different views, and that every view may be relevant. These ideas stood
at the heart of the justification of the open review process in Nupedia. For example, in
the FAQ page, when explaining how Nupedia can avoid bias, it is stated that in the
open review process, "if the proponent of a controversial view slants an article in such
a way as to make his view look better than the others, representatives of the other
views will be on hand to ask him to tone it down, to include arguments in favor of
other views, etc" (Nupedia, 2000g). In stark contrast with the assumption of
objectivity and expertise implicit in the peer review model, this quote asserts an
antagonistic view, in which opposed parties balance each other's biases until the truth
is achieved. In this process, the personal views and positions of the participants are of
utmost importance, as they do not serve as impartial judges but as adversaries. The 101 This process was initially supposed to take place on mailing lists, and was later moved to special web page.
84
consensus reached is a result of negotiation between opposing views that balance each
other out, and the impartiality is the result of the process, not its precondition. This
transgression from the epistemic culture of expertise, however, was not allowed to go
very far.
As arenas for public deliberation mailing list discussions they have no final
ruling mechanisms and notoriously persistent, even in those very rare cases where
some consensus is reached. As Nupedia's open review process was supposed to
generate a final decision, an adequate mechanism had to be formulated. Interestingly,
the mechanism chosen for that task was not that of a consensus between the
reviewers, or a majority vote: In order to pass this stage and be approved, the article
had to gain the approval of the editor, the lead reviewer and at least another peer
reviewer of the subject category, while the opinion of other participants had no say in
it102. As this procedure indicates, the weight of the overall editing process was placed
on peer review, rather than on the open review, since whatever effects the open
review had on the article was mediated by the editors and peer reviewers and the
public itself had no power to intervene in their decisions. Thus, the basic tenet of
Nupedia's knowledge production process relied, in the last instance, on the authority
of experts.
To summarize, Nupedia dual review system tried to combine different
mechanisms of mediated interaction, reconfiguring them according to the specific
technological, environment and cultural assumptions of the project. While it strived to
venture beyond conventional modes of knowledge production, it did not venture far
from them. Its only innovation – the attempt to supplement the peer review process
with an open review – was highly controlled and restricted, and was ultimately
subsumed under the supremacy of experts.
This, Nupedia's dual process actually relied on only one Obligatory Passage
Points (Bijker and Law, 1992; Callon, 1986; Latour, 1988): that of expertise. In that,
it is very closely implicated in what Boltanski and Thévenot's (2006) termed "the
industrial polity," a regime of justification based on efficiency and productivity,
102 Peer reviewers, as opposed to casual participants, may, at this point, "wish to make it clear that that particular article version is not acceptable." However, if they are outnumbered, the article is still approved.
85
whose "men of worth" are technical experts. However, in a deeper sense it also relies
on traditional legitimacy, as expertise is constructed in ceremonial terms (exemplified
in the emphasis of credentials), rather than in functional one.
3.4 A Controversy: Modifying the Mode of Production
Over its relatively short history, Nupedia's mode of production saw a number
of changes, most of them occurring after Wikipedia's establishment (see above in the
brief historical overview section). However, at least one major change predated it, and
it proved a major step in the rethinking of the project that would ultimately give birth
to Wikipedia. This change demonstrates the project's leaning towards the egalitarian
public deliberation model and away from expertise/peer-review, as well as the
ambivalence and hesitation towards this direction. Moreover, it illustrates the process
of translation which objects and practices undergo as social changes displace them. I
will thus describe this social drama at some length.
While publicly adhering to an ethos of long term commitment and thorough
work, Nupedia was soon confronted with the major problem that would eventually
facilitate its failure: the slow pace of article production. By August 2000, it had only
produced four articles. The project's founders decided they had to act103. In a post on
Nupedia-l mailing list Sanger (2000c) introduced major changes to the production
process. The opening and the ending indicate Sanger's decisive position: he begins the
post by stating that "We in the office are concerned about the slow pace of article
production, and we've decided on two ways to increase the pace of production"; and
ends it by stating that "comments on these proposals are requested, but I want to act
quickly, so please respond quickly if you want some input here". This wording frames
the post in a way that asserts his right to change the article production system, while
requesting "comments" from participants. His wish to act "quickly," as well as the
very concrete articulation of his suggestions implies that he is determined on making
them, and feels it is his prerogative.
103 It seems that the main driving force was Wales, and that Sanger was more skeptical towards the proposed changes (cf. Sanger, 2005).
86
The "two big changes" suggested address perceived problems in the article
assignment and the review process that stems from the project’s reliance on expertise.
The first change was to "actively encourage articles from nonexperts on topics that do
not need experts" (Sanger, 2000c). In a later post summarizing and further explaining
these same changes, Sanger (2000d) explains that the idea is that " we will accept all
(or nearly all) article proposals for *brief, introductory* articles. […] You do not have
to be an expert; you need only be a competent writer with decent research skills." This
change, thus explained, implies a significant shift away from the ethos of expertise. It
is further emphasized in Sanger's explanation for the change, where he contrasts the
new, hopefully productive policy to the old "academic/peer review model of article
writing" that is blamed for the slow pace of article production.
The second change is even more substantive in terms of the production
process: rather than peer-reviewing all the articles in the topical review groups, it is
suggested that a new general review group, headed by Sanger himself will be set up to
review articles on topics that don't yet have active review groups. This move both
relies on Sanger's prestige as the editor-in-chief, and augments his role in the project.
The rationale behind this move is that there are cases in which there are enough
competent editors within the project, even if there's not yet a relevant review group.
Moreover, it is suggested that all participants, regardless of credentials and expertise,
should join the list and offer their input. This seemingly erodes even more the ethos of
expertise.
While the suggested moves appear to increase the weight of public
deliberation model in the project, Sanger insisted on the supremacy of expert
oversight. First of all, he limited the articles to be written by non-experts to short
introductory articles on "prosaic topics of the sort that experts are not usually
writing," suggesting that this move is in accordance with the routine practices of
traditional encyclopedias and setting higher standards for more substantive or less
"prosaic" articles. Secondly, he suggests using the general review process as an
excuse to solicit the help of professionals outside Nupedia and thus to attract them to
the project, indicating that experts are still the project's main sought-after resource.
Finally, he asserts that articles approved by the general review list "aren't really peer
reviewed" and should be properly reviewed once the relevant groups are formed
87
(Sanger, 2000d). Thus, he translated the seemingly anti-expert move in a way that can
conform to the ethos of expertise.
A more radical position can be found in Wales' replies to those opposing the
move. In a post (Wales, 2000b) answering the objections of one of the most
prominent contributors (Ruth Ifcher, nicknamed Rose Parks in the mailing list, the
chief copyeditor of the project), he makes a much stronger case in favor of public
participation as a substitute for experts review, at least with regard to short articles. In
it, he offers several claims in favor of the proposed changes.
Wales does not deny the importance of expertise in general, or in the project.
However, he claims that in the process of writing and reviewing short articles the
demand for expertise is redundant. As he states it, "for a short article, it is fairly easy
for us to review basic quality without resorting to specialists. This will free up time
for the specialists to do what they do best." Instead of expertise, he suggests another
criterion for writer and reviewers, that of "competence". When he tries to illustrate the
concept, he gives this example:
"Milton Friedman is a famous economist. Britannica has a 2 paragraph article about him here […] Right now, we do not have an economics review group. But we do not need one in order to competently review a short 2 paragraph article about Milton Friedman. What is necessary is fairly simple... a few moments research on the web reveals a great deal of information about Friedman […] Taken together, any competent person could piece together an article as good *or better than* the article in Nupedia104, and we can easily quality control articles of this type.
Competence is thus constructed as a quality shared by any "reasonably well
educated" person who can access available online resources, compare versions of text,
and compile his own account. This description radically changes the epistemic virtues
related to writing articles: rather than knowledge and expertise, writers should posses
the ability to consult and review texts – primarily online – and summarize them. This,
as I show in the next chapter, is a major move towards the articulation of epistemic
virtue in Wikipedia.
The project's reliance on the model of the Encyclopaedia Britannica plays a
critical role in Wales' reasoning. As Britannica was the model Nupedia sought to 104 Mistake in the original, should read Britannica instead of Nupedia.
88
emulate, it could serve as a standard against which particular articles can be assessed
by the abovementioned competent persons. When required to make an important and
controversial change in the project, Wales used Britannica as a pivot against which
the project can change practices, all the while making sure that its standards remain
adequate. From a more practical perspective, setting the Britannica article as standard
allows Sanger and Wales to change the practices in Nupedia while guaranteeing that
its process will still be legitimate in the eyes of the expert-participants. This move is a
good example for the pragmatist principle that innovation usually arises from
practical problems, as it is only due to such problems that the conservative stance
typical to Nupedia was undermined. It also brings to light importance of external
objects that can be used as equivalences and thus ground and justify changes in
knowledge production. Britannica's articles serve
Besides for the practical points noted above, Wales also makes a broader and
more fundamental claim, asserting that that the project should be more open to non-
experts. In the end of his post, Wales elaborates on the broader point of view behind
the suggested changes as he states:
"I have a major concern that we are currently intimidating and scaring off many very good people. We want this project to be open, inclusive, rewarding to volunteers. One way to do that is to recognize that not every article needs an expert, and that not all reviewing needs to be handled by experts.
Let's leave the experts time to do what they do best, but let's allow *everyone* to participate in their own way."
Thus, in contrast to Sanger's more ambivalent position towards public
participation, Wales emphasized its importance, and for the first time questioned the
primacy of expertise in the project. However, He did not reject this ethos altogether,
as he suggested that the changes will allow experts to limit their efforts to "advanced"
articles. And while both Wales and Sanger conceded that the project needs new
volunteers, Wales emphasized the need to use and attract non-experts while Sanger, in
his post, addressed the need to attract more experts,
Finally, in the last paragraph Wales explained the need to generate a large
amount of general articles. As the project's backer, he asserted that instead of him
"personally spending hundreds of thousands of dollars," the production of such
89
articles will help it "become self-supporting [...] by becoming useful to the general
public, so that I can promote it." While I'm not sure what he means by the word
promoting, the general idea seems to be increasing traffic to the website, and probably
to sell advertisements in it. This explanation both asserts Wales' authority in the
project, and at the same time moves the focus from the long term ambitions to the
immediate need to generate productive content and make the encyclopedia usable as
soon as possible, even at the expanse of the production process' rigor.
To summarize, this social drama involved a shift of balance between
Nupedia's two models of knowledge production, as it moved from an ethos of strict
scientific expertise to a more public and inclusive model. This model, however, was
now subtly changed: the public participation was now more than a matter of
deliberation and contrasting views, as it relied on non experts constructing knowledge
from available resources rather than rely on their own knowledge. While this shift did
not seriously undermine the dominance of expertise, it certainly paved the way for
more far-reaching attempts in the same direction.
Following these discussions, both offers were implemented, and the general-l
mailing list soon started operating (Sanger, 2000g). However, these changes weren't
enough. The slow production process – and complaints about it – remained a constant
throughout the project's history. As the year drew to a close, and the dot com markets
kept declining, Wales kept trying to make Nupedia a more open project, based on a
communitarian, meritocratic gift economy. At the same time, he tried to advance his
epistemic stance based on the use of available materials rather than personal
knowledge and expertise. Thus, in November, he pushed for the use of open content
materials produced outside Nupedia (Sanger, 2000e). However, as far as I can tell, the
actual use of external materials never got off the ground. In January, another attempt
was made: creating a Wiki for the project, and allowing anyone who wished to edit it
into an encyclopedia. The results of seemingly desperate move exceeded by far the
expectations of its founders and changed the way we look for knowledge - and
perhaps even the way we look at knowledge.
90
3.5 Conclusion
As this chapter shows, the assembling of new epistemic projects is an act of
bricloage (Hebdige, 1991, pp.102-106). They are built of older building blocks,
collected from divergent and at time conflicting repertoires and models. In the case of
Nupedia, many of these models – such as the peer review model, the ethos of
expertise, the knowledge gift economy or the Britannica – exhibited a common,
perhaps surprising feature: they were inherently modern, connected to traditions of
representation that are at the heart of modernity, according to several interpretations
(Giddens, 1991; Lyotard, 1984; Latour, 1993. And see above, chapter 1). These
models, which helped generate a coherent vision for the project, were so widely
familiar to the participants, that they warranted little, if any, translation. Nupedia's
vision was modern through and through. In accordance with the attitude of its editor
in chief, its actual manifestation was subject to a logic of cultural legitimacy, and
based on academic expertise. In retrospect, this stance seems more limiting than
enabling, as Nupedia failed to attract and mobilize the experts needed for its
operation.
I would like to suggest that this failure should be attributed, at least partially,
to Nupedia's founders' reliance on practices derived from the academic world. This
severely limited the repertoire of gift practices (Silber, 2007, 2013) usable by their
potential contributors, and especially those prevalent in online content production at
the time. Imitating the scientific gift economy (Hagstrom, 1982), Nupedia's
production scheme was based on soliciting voluntary work from experts, in exchange
for acknowledgement and recognition. Eventually, however, Nupedia did not succeed
in creating an attractive gift economy attractive for credentialed experts, and blocked
types of giving that could potentially undermine this economy but which were
nevertheless potentially beneficial (for a review of design elements useful for
institutions based on voluntary giving and cooperation, see Benkler, 2010).
In spite of its attempts, Nupedia failed in creating and sustaining a
contribution-based reputation system that offers sufficient symbolic rewards for its
participants. As noted above, Nupedia's production process relied on the participation
and contribution of credentialed experts, and the participants' standing in the project
91
was determined, to a large extent, by their academic credentials. Credentials
determined their level of participation, their influence on individual articles and on
general project policies – and the level of acknowledgement and recognition awarded
to them. The coupling of expertise, responsibility and renown posited contribution as
a mere intermediary between credentials and acknowledgement, naturally undermined
enthusiasm for socially-embedded giving. This was even truer for non-experts, whose
participation was restricted and considered a-priori less valuable. Even when attempts
were made to actively solicit lay participation, their status in the project remained
inferior.
Moreover, there was a clear imbalance between Nupedia's demands of its
academic participants and the rewards it offered. Academic experts were asked to
engage in tasks – such as writing, editing or reviewing papers – very similar to their
everyday activities, while being offered considerably less prestige and symbolic
capital. And in contrast with the scientific gift economy they were routinely engaged
in, the conversion rates of this capital were highly uncertain, as they could only be
determined when and if Nupedia succeeds. In any case, the notion that participation in
a private venture for an online encyclopedia could yield symbolic gains in the
academic field was – and still is – very doubtful.
Finally, Nupedia failed to create the communitarian context necessary to
sustain interest in inter-community reputation. As noted above, its social structure was
based on a formal hierarchy and topical differentiation, both of which undermined
attempts to construct it as a community. Moreover, it operated through many topical
mailing lists dedicated only to professional discussions (almost all of which had
relatively few participants), a general mailing list that seldom included important
discussions and was thus not very popular, and one used solely by the advisory board
for policy discussions. Thus, lacking a mutual space for interaction, Nupedia failed to
form a global microstructure105 (Knorr-Cetina, 2005) that could transcend its nature
as a formal organization, and generate the feeling of communal participation and
engagement needed to encourage acts of generalized exchange. It didn't even have a
space where members could see each other's actions and contributions, which could
105 Global microstructures are based on features characteristic to face to face interactions such as trust and acquaintance, rather than on clear structure and hierarchy.
92
have encouraged participation either as a form of reciprocity for other participants'
actions or as a means of out-giving them.
Regarding the second, individual mode of giving, Nupedia attempts to create a
design that would sustain a viable gift economy hampered its ability to attract such
gifts. Its design failed to create a mechanism for free, unmediated giving, and also did
not give its participants a feeling of worth and fulfillment in their contributions. First,
giving knowledge to Nupedia demanded of the giver much more than the giving
itself: Nupedia's production process demanded participants to undergo a rather
lengthy identification process before beginning to contribute to it, and many positions
in the project required contributors to divulge their real life identity. These demands
posed a barrier between the willingness to give and its fulfillment, which may have
deterred potential contributors interested solely in the free, immediate and
unconstrained giving of knowledge.
Moreover, Nupedia's processes demanded that contributors be assigned tasks
and article topics by higher-level participants, thus conditioning their gift upon their
willingness to partake in a hierarchical social structure. Such conditions for giving
virtually prevented the possibility of an individualized gift that is detached from a
specific social context. They posed obligatory passage points (Bijker and Law, 1992;
Callon, 1986; Latour, 1988) which seriously constrained the possibility of a free,
disinterested giving.
Finally, Nupedia failed to abide by one of the most essential aspects of the gift
process: the obligation to receive (Mauss's (1990 [1925]). Knowledge given to
Nupedia was not accepted as is, but rather had to undergo a review process by
experts. This method of operation may very well have damaged individual givers'
enthusiasm towards giving knowledge – especially since it made their act of giving
extremely similar to the unpleasant chores of schools and academic institutions. As
Jimmy Wales later noted:
"I knew [Nupedia] wasn‘t going to work when I personally sat down to write an article about Robert Merton, who[…] won a Nobel Prize for option pricing theory. So I said, oh well, I have a published paper in the area, I know something about this, and I sat down to write the article and I felt like I was back in graduate school because they were going to give my paper to professors to review and I was
93
going to get comments and, you know, I might get a C grade or a B grade or something" (Lamb, 2005)
Bricolage is always a gamble. And in the case of Nupedia, this gamble failed.
Ambitious and serious as it was, Nupedia never got off the ground. It did not succeed
in attracting sufficient productive volunteers, it failed to make them produce articles,
and its review process was excruciatingly slow. The result of Nupedia's failure to
receive voluntary gifts of knowledge was a dialectic movement: an attempt to make
the project less serious, less ambitious, and less strict. The two most notable
Obligatory Passage points in Nupedia, the model of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and
the expertise-based rigorous production process, were the first to be dismantled. Thus,
it may be argued that Nupedia's most important contribution to Wikipedia was a
negative one: the rejection of traditionally legitimized models and practices forced
Wikipedia's founders to devise a new epistemic culture, based on innovative codes,
standards and practices.
As Pragmatism tells us, it is only when problems occur that unthinkable
epistemic practices emerge. To save his project, Wales suggested a new epistemic
virtue, based not on personal knowledge and education, but rather on the ability to
competently judge and import resources available on the web. The first signs of this
move are visible already in the processes described in this chapter, but its true
repercussions only became evident when the founders' worry about production pace
resulted in a new, self-proclaimed "very silly project" (Sanger, 2005) with the silly
name Wikipedia.
95
Chapter 4: Wikipedia's Founding Period
As the previous chapter shows, Nupedia was infused with a tension between
conflicting attitudes, with Wales usually pulling towards more openness and faster
content production, and Sanger pulling towards legitimacy and authority. While
Sanger's attitude originally had the upper hand, the tension grew as the time passed.
The project's failure to produce large quantities of articles resulted in Wales' attitude
slowly becoming more manifest. Moves such as soliciting articles from non-experts,
the founding of General-l and the suggestion to use open content materials produced
outside Nupedia were all indications of a shift of balance away from an emphasis on
legitimacy and quality and towards an emphasis on openness and quantity.
In a sense, Wikipedia was a continuation and radicalization of shift away from
the pursuit of legitimacy. It was self-consciously constructed as unrespectable – as
Sanger (2005) later stated, "I came up with the name 'Wikipedia,' a silly name for
what was at first a very silly project." At the same time, it wasn't constructed as an
integral part of Nupedia but first as a complementary project and very soon as an
independent project – with the explicit intent to preserve Nupedia's legitimacy.
Wikipedia began as an experiment, and it exceeded its creators' wildest dreams for
better and (in some cases) for worse. It replaced Nupedia seriousness and rigor with a
very liberal outlook, its formal organizational structure and hierarchy with a loose
network structure, and its emphasis on the moral commitment and potential gains of
its participants with an explicit emphasis on "fun". In what follows, I'll describe how
Wikipedia grew from an empty website to a robust and dynamic community,
dedicated to the creation of an encyclopedia using new models of knowledge, its
producers and its production.
Wiki, short for WikiWikiWeb, was a Perl-based application developed by
Ward Cunningham and introduced on his website on 1995 as means to enable
collaborative editing and idea sharing between extreme programmers. Extremely
simple, it was nothing but a very simple hypertext system designed for the World
Wide Web. It allowed users to easily edit text pages and connect those pages using
hyperlinks. Hyperlinks were generated by writing of a word with two bolded letters
96
(e.g. WikI or WikiPedia). If a page by that name did not exist, it was automatically
generated as a blank page. Over the last years of the nineteen-nineties, a small
network of Wiki based websites began developing around Ward Cunningham
website, some using his application and others based on newly developed ones based
on his design (see Leuf and Cunningham, 2001).
The question who was the first to introduce the idea of using a Wiki to create
an online encyclopedia was, for a time, the subject of an intense quarrel. In 2005, as
Wikipedia rose to fame Wales began claiming that he was its sole founder, and that
the idea of using a Wiki for Nupedia came from another Bomis employee. Sanger, in
response, published a memoir of that time (Sanger, 2005), a large part of which was
dedicated to rebuke these claims, as well as other descriptions of the early history of
Nupedia and Wikipedia he found misleading. Its publication sparked a long, heated
and fascinating debate of the memoir and the issue of how to attribute a "founder"
status.106 As Wales noted in this discussion that he had "only very very minor
quibbles with Larry's history" (Wales, 2005b), I use it as a generally credible source
for the early history of Wikipedia. Other important resources for this section are the
"Wikipedia announcements" page (Wikipedia, 2001a, 2002a) and Wikipedia-l mailing
lists. These are the sources of the information in this overview, unless noted
otherwise.
The decisive moment in the usual story of Wikipedia's origins is known as
"The conversation at the taco stand". On January 2nd 2001, Sanger met Ben Kovitz, a
friend whom he met when they both participated on philosophy-oriented mailing lists
(including the one Sanger created). Kovitz was a programmer employing the method
of extreme programming (Wikipedia, 2012e) and had been, for some time, a
participant in Ward Cunningham's Wiki, a central location for discussions and
development of extreme programmers. Thus, when he and Sanger met over dinner, he
enthusiastically told him about the concept of Wiki, and they discussed the possibility
to use it in Nupedia107. Kovitz later noted the extreme programming standard
106 See the discussions in Wikipedia-l mailing list from April 2005 (Wikimedia, 2005). Most relevant comments' subject is "Sanger's Memoir" or "Re: Sanger's Memoir." 107 Kovitz and Sanger's report diverge on the details of the discussion: Kovitz remembered that he mentioned Wikis in response to Sanger's complaints about Nupedia and its slow rate of production, while Sanger recalls that he just told him about it, and that it made him think it could be a good solution to his problems. Also, Kovitz's remembered that Sanger was initially skeptical, but thought it
97
technique of "pair programming," the collaboration of multiple programmers on a
single piece of code (cf. K. Beck, 2000), as an inspiration for the idea of using Wiki
as a means to create an encyclopedia.
Sanger contacted Wales that very night, and suggested they set a Wiki for
Nupedia. For his part, Wales remembers hearing about the Wiki earlier from Bomis
employee Jeremy Rosenfeld, but doesn't deny that it was Sanger's suggestion that
made him set up a Wiki for Nupedia (Wales 2005b).
In January 10th, Sanger posted on the Nupedia-l and the advisory board an
email introducing the idea and asked if there were objections to start a Nupedia Wiki.
The same day, the Nupedia Wiki was up. However, due to objections raised in the
advisory board mailing list, it was decided to set it up as an entirely independent
project, on an independent website. Wikipedia.com went live on January 15th, the date
since then celebrated as "Wikipedia day". The Wiki was open to editing by everyone,
and anyone could start a new page or edit an existing one. Editing was relatively
simple and the Wiki contained only simple text and very basic markup.
During the first months of its existence, Wikipedia enjoyed a period of relative
isolation that was essential for its subsequent success. During this period, a small and
relatively stable group of participants laid the ground for future development, as they
formed a cohesive and productive virtual community. As they built the initial mass of
articles required to attract web surfers, and formed a relatively stable community, with
internal standards and established practices. Within this period, Wikipedia changed
from a chaotic and unstructured experimentation with the Wiki concept to a real
project – though one based on the notion of "fun" more than morality or self interest.
Participants in the project knew each other personally, and had time to get acquainted
and learn how to resolve issues in the project. Arrivals of new participants were
relatively infrequent during that period, and they usually joined the emergent
community on its terms or quickly left. Bomis personal – Sanger, Wales and Tim
Shell – held a prominent position in the community, had a central role in discussing
policy and contributed a lot of content. A few participants – such as Astronomer,
AyeSpy and Ruth Ifcher, arrived from Nupedia, while others arrived following links was an interesting option. Sanger, on the other hand, remembers he "was nearly instantly excited by the idea." (Both versions appear in Wikipedia, 2012e).
98
from ward's Wiki. Many of the first Wikipedians, such as Wales, Shell, Manning
Bartlet, Bryce Harington and Lee Daniel Crocker, were computer programmers, web
developers and internet enthusiast – a fact that had a profound impact on the project.
There were relatively few academics in the humanities and social sciences.
Wikipedia soon began attracting new participants, most of which were not
related to Nupedia. As it took considerable time for Wikipedia to generate traffic from
search engines, most participants arrived through links placed in stories about the
project featured on various websites. Some arrived following links from ward's Wiki,
but many, if not most, of the new participants arrived from Slashdot.com, a highly
popular website featuring "news for nerds" and excessive discussions about them.
Many computer programmers and members of the technical elite frequented the
website, and each time a link was given to Wikipedia some of them would join the
project. Wikipedia was "slashdoted" (as these events came to be known) twice in its
early months, on March 5th and March 29th (Wikipedia, 2001a). Slashdot brought to
Wikipedia a very distinct group of participants: savvy and dedicated internet users
immersed in its culture and ethos, technologically inclined and suspicious of any
attempt to police and regulate it – or parts of it. This group, the regular audience of
such websites, had a profound effect on Wikipedia108, as they brought with them ideas
and practices that would shape many of Wikipedia's features and policies.
Policies regarding legitimate content were very liberal during this period, as
all sorts of contents were added to the encyclopedia including, for example, Larry
Sanger's lecture notes from a philosophy course he taught (Wikipedia, 2001b), Tim
Shell's extensive notes on Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged (Wikipedia, 2001c) and various
materials in public domain copied from other websites. There was no clear distinction
between articles and other types of content – such as policies, discussions, personal
user pages and commentary on the project – apart for indications in the page names.
Thus, the responsibility to distinguish between types of content, and to adhere to the
project other content policies, was laid on the project's participants.
During these first few months, many of Wikipedia's norms and policies were
articulated and institutionalized. The initial policies of the project were very liberal, a 108 This influence was so apparent that Wikipedia was sometimes referred to as "the encyclopedia that Slashdot built" (Lih, 2009, p. 69).
99
spirit captured in one of Wikipedia's earliest policies, called "ignore all rules"
(Wikipedia, 2012a). Formulated by Larry Sanger, it stated that "If rules make your
nervous and depressed, and not desirous of participating in the wiki, then ignore them
entirely and go about your business." However, this policy itself was a direct
indication that Wikipedia started having some rules, as important Wikipedia policies
and practices were being shaped during this period, moving it away from the cultural
norms prevalent in Wiki culture. These included the creation of naming convention
for articles; the deletion of vandalism and "patent nonsense"; the removal of
discussions from article pages to special discussion subpages (called "talk pages"); the
copying of public domain materials available on the web (such as the first volume of
the Encyclopaedia Britannica's 11th edition and the CIA factbook's website); and the
articulation of Wikipedia's main content policies, namely "neutral point of view" and
"what Wikipedia is not" (Wikipedia, 2012f, 2012g). Such policies were usually
implemented through the creation of an effective consensus (or rough consensus, in
internet parlance): a state where standards and policies are usually not enforced by a
designated authority but rather embraced by enough of the participants to become de
facto rules. However, first attempts were made, especially by Larry Sanger, to enforce
some policies even against opposition. These attempts brought about some
resentment, but Sanger's positions and actions were usually respected, as he was
considered by participants (alongside jimmy Wales) as having a measure of authority
over the project109.
The delicate balance between freedom and rules that was achieved in this
stage did not hold for long, as a wave of new participants entered the project in late
July. On July 24th, Sanger noted in a post on Wikipedia-l that Britannica was now
beginning to charge readers for viewing full articles, and suggested using this move to
promote Wikipedia. The next day, following on his own advice, Sanger posted an
article about Wikipedia and Nupedia as alternatives to Britannica to Kuro5hin.com, a
collaborative discussion website that presented itself as focused on "Technology and
Culture, from the Trenches" (Sanger, 2001g) A day later, the article was mentioned in
109 Another important development that happened during that period was the development of Wikipedia's in languages other than English. As Nupedia already had foreign language versions, and some of their contributors were active in Wikipedia, it was only natural to start sister-projects in these languages. Thus, Catalan, German, and Japanese Wikipedia's were formed in March, joined by French, Chinese, Esperanto, Hebrew, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Russian in May. The links between international Wikipedias were rare, and each evolved independently.
100
a prominent location on Slashdot. This resulted in heavy traffic to the website, and the
arrival of a relatively large body of new participants. These participants contribution
to the project proved vital in following months, but they also brought unrest. Some of
those new participants were reluctant to partake in the effective consensus gathered
around established policies. As new decisions had to be made on important issues,
they began challenging the leadership of Larry Sanger, who was the one actually
initiating and practically making most of them. Tensions in the project began to rise,
but the production of content went on in a rapid pace.
On July 27th, Sanger announced that with the help of these new participants,
Wikipedia passed the 7000 articles benchmark (Wikipedia, 2001a). At the same time,
the surge of traffic to the website caused rose concerns about Wikipedia's
UseModWiki software ability to handle the project's needs. Thus, discussion of a
"phase II Wiki" began. On august 24, Magnus Manske, a contributor to both
Wikipedia and Nupedia, announced that he wrote voluntarily a PHP code for a new
version of Wikipedia (Manske, 2001). A day later it was uploaded to a test site, to be
tested and debugged by the Wikis editors, who reported bugs and requested features
on Wikipedia-l and on a special Wikipedia page. After a period of testing and
improvements Wikipedia moved to the new software on January 25th, ten days after
its first anniversary. It was further improved and debugged by Wikipedia editors in
the following months (Wikipedia, 2002a).
The surge of new editors in July was, in retrospect, only a precursor for what
was to follow in September, a groundbreaking month in terms of notability and
traffic. On September 4th, MIT's techreview.com website featured an interview with
Sanger and Wales about Wikipedia. On September 10th, wired magazine gave a link
to the techreview.com interview, generating more traffic. In September 20th, an article
on the project appeared in the New York Times (Meyers, 2001), and republished again
on the 24th by the International Herald Tribune. On the same day, Kuro5hin.com
featured another article by Sanger on the project (Wikipedia, 2001a). This story was
picked up by technically oriented blogs, which generated more traffic.
While these reports had a major impact on Wikipedia, they were
overshadowed by this month's dramatic events. On September 11th 2001 – now
universally known as "nine eleven" – Wikipedia's participants (almost all of which
101
were Americans) followed with anxiety the news and reports of the attacks and their
aftermath. A Wiki article named "September 11 attacks" (the earliest available version
of this page can be found in Wikipedia, 2001d) was immediately created (even though
Wikipedia did not cover news events up to that point), and was updated rapidly as
events unfolded. An editor known as "The Cunctator," one of the new participants
that arrived after July's slashdoting, orchestrated and contributed much of the work on
the article. The article soon became the basis for an extensive project covering a
plethora of subjects, ranging from regular articles about issues related to the event to a
minute by minute timeline of the events, a list of casualties, survivors and missing
persons, summary of political and economic effects, calls for blood donations, etc.
This project was a tour de-force, giving a clear example of Wikipedia's potential as it
became a highly useful resource for surfers looking for summaries of the event and
background information. It was linked to from various websites, generating more
traffic.
In September and Octobers traffic to Wikipedia developed very quickly, both
due to increased publicity, and to a sharp increase of traffic coming in from
google.com. This surge brought with it an increase in article production rate, as
Wikipedia reached the 10,000 articles benchmark in September 7th, 11,000 in
September 19th, 12,000 in October 4th and 15,000 by October 25th (Wikipedia, 2001a).
The surge in traffic and production caused some server problems, which led to
hastening the work on the new software, but its main effect was a surge of new editors
unfamiliar with Wikipedia's norms, and also of vandals who defaced and erased
content. In response, Sanger formed in November 29th "the Wikipedia militia," a
group of volunteers that would make sure that surges of traffic will not cause abuse to
the project. This move stirred up serious controversies (Wikipedia, 2001e), which
were rooted in deeper disagreements about authority and social relations in the project
that had already caused conflicts between Sanger and some of the contributors.
As noted above, Sanger had a directing role in the project, but he constantly
stressed the important of community consensus about policies, and had no means to
impose his stand against divergent views. As new editors that did not agree with the
consensus started objecting, increasingly heated and unresolved debates about policy
became commonplace. Sanger felt obliged to enforce his opinion against those of his
102
opponents, and began taking a more active role in policy setting and enforcement,
further escalating conflicts with his opposition110.
There were numerous points of friction, all connected to the same basic issues
concerning Wikipedia's authority structure. Notable controversies broke around issues
such as the "neutral point of view" policy (Wikipedia, 2001f), Sanger's deletion of
articles containing dictionary style definitions (Wikipedia, 2001g); Wales' idea to
equip a group of Wikipedia veterans with anti vandalism tools not available for
ordinary users (Wales, 2001b); Sanger's deletion of content posted by users to their
personal userpages (cf. Kissane, 2001; Meta-Wiki, 2001a, 2001b); the decision to
move commentary and discussions about Wikipedia to a separate Wiki, called meta-
Wiki (Wales, 2001c); the decision to exclude subpages from the phase II software
(Cunctator, 2001), etc. quickly turning into personal battles abundant with mud
smearing, they destabilized Sanger's position in the project, and forced Wales to take
a more active role in policy setting. This resulted in Wales' posting, for the first time,
a statement of principles outlining his vision of the project and his role as a final
arbitrator in it (Wales, 2001d), but even this failed to put an end to skirmishes.
This series of controversies came to an abrupt end when Larry Sanger was
fired from Bomis. His salary was reduced in December and January and he was
ultimately fired in February. In his announcement about his being fired, on February
13th, he stated that he will continue to be involved in the project – and that he hopes
that a plan to place advertisements on Wikipedia will allow him to get his old job
back (Sanger, 2002a). That statement stirred up such a controversy in a community
largely opposing to advertisements on web pages, that the Spanish Wikipedia soon
forked, copied all their content and started a mirror project under the title
Encyclopedia Libre (Tkacz, 2011). Less than a month later, on March 1st, Sanger
announced his total resignation from the project, leaving Wales as the sole authority
in Wikipedia (Sanger, 2002b). Surprisingly, perhaps, Wikipedia's production went on
virtually undisturbed, as it reached the 20,000 articles benchmark on January 9th, and
23,000 by February 4th and 27,000 by March 12th (Wikipedia, 2002a). Press coverage
and links from websites accumulated, as well as traffic from Google. In retrospect,
however, it is amazing how small and underdeveloped Wikipedia was at the time.
110 For a summary of Sanger position and consequent responses, see Meta-Wiki (2001a, 2001b).
103
Most of the articles were very far from the standard set by traditional encyclopedias,
and basic topics were still very far from comprehensive coverage. Traffic was still
very low, as it was only in August that Wikipedia reached an average of about 20,000
hits per day (Wikipedia, 2002b). The number of regular active editors was still below
200. The project had an uncertain future – but also the foundations that will enable it
to grow.
104
Chapter 5: Encyclopedising the Wiki Technology
As noted in Chapter 1, accounts of Wikipedia usually attribute its success to
either the "wisdom of the crowds" (Surowiecki, 2004, Benkler, 2006, Tapscott and
Williams, 2006), to "community norms" directing the production of knowledge and
the relations between various participants in the community of practice producing it
(e.g., Reinhardt, 2003; Bryant et al., 2005; Rafaeli, Hayat and Ariel, 2009; O'Sullivan,
2009; Reagle, 2010a), or both (Kittur et al., 2008; Niederer and van Dijck, 2010). All
these explanations stress the centrality of Wikipedia's technology and the radically
collaborative production process, allowing anyone to edit Wikipedia's articles at any
given moment and encouraging multiple editors to work together on a same article.
However, these explanations neglect to address the fact that this production process
was not present upon Wikipedia's inception, and is rather an accomplishment
achieved by its founders and early participants. The feasibility of the project was
originally doubted by many, including the inventor of the Wiki software (Lih, 2009,
p. 75) and Wikipedia's own founders (Sanger, 2005). The main concern was the
radically collaborative production process of Wikis at the time111, which stood in stark
contrast with traditional encyclopedia production, based on individual writers, post-
factum editing and expert review.
Wikipedia thus had to develop procedures governing radical collaboration and
mechanisms of epistemic governance, which would enable the construction of both
community of practice and underlying technological and managerial dynamics
(Niederer and van Dijck, 2010) needed for mass participation. Both the Wiki
technology and its production processes had to undergo considerable changes to
accommodate the unique, evolving needs of the project. In the following chapter, I
will use a symbolic-interactionist (Clarke and Star, 2003) and constructivist (Knorr-
Cetina, 1981) framework to explain the development and institutionalization of
policies and mechanisms governing collaborative content production in Wikipedia.
This process, initiated as a response to concrete, local problems and conflicts,
111 The production process of earlier Wikis was different from the one subsequently developed in Wikipedia.
105
changed both the Wiki technology and the encyclopedic model, and created a new
epistemic culture that would prove crucial to Wikipedia's success.
Wikipedia in its early history was in what Thévenot termed a critical situation
(Thévenot, 2001a, 2002a, 2002b): a situation that is not subject to a single mode of
evaluation and requires social negotiation of its overarching principles of
coordination. Such negotiations emerged in the attempt to establish policies that
would regulate radical collaboration and solve problems stemming from its
inconsistencies with the traditional encyclopedic model. Thévenot suggests that
coordination in such situations is heavily dependent on a process of form investment
(Thévenot, 1984), creating equivalences across time and space between various
practices, objects, persons, etc. Its successful completion enables divergent parties to
cooperate in such critical situations, and eventually surpass them. The importance of
this analysis lies in its emphasis on the important of external cultural factors,
incorporated to the situation through this process in the form of pre-existing cultural
modes of coordination. However, in contrast to Thévenot I emphasize the importance
of habitual activity even in such critical situations: following the pragmatist school
(Joas, 1993,1996; Gross, 2009), I observe the ways in which habit and creativity
alternate in processes of problem-solving and institutionalization Moreover, while
Thévenot addresses general or universal modes of coordination or "orders of worth"
(such as domestic, market or industrial modes), my focus here is on a much more
localized cultural factors and modes of coordination, based mainly on the model of
the encyclopedia and the Wiki process.
In contrast with Thévenot universal modes of coordination, Laclau and
Mouffe (1985) emphasize the highly contingent nature of the process of articulation,
rooted in social antagonisms. Laclau and Mouffe (1985, p. 105) define articulation as
"any practice establishing a relation among elements such that their identity is
modified as a result of the articulatory practice," resulting in the "structured totality"
of a new discourse. The importance of their approach for this work as indicated by the
antagonistic undertones of this conceptualization, this process took place amidst
conflicts between various individuals and groups with conflicting visions of the
project; moreover the coordination of action was also accompanied by mechanisms of
social control, enactment of authority, and exclusion of the opposing party from the
106
project. However, describing these processes and their result in terms of "discourse"
would be misleading, as Wikipedia was not a structured totality, but rather a much
more flexible structure never achieving the level of totality, but rather a dynamic
meeting point of several discourses, or social worlds.
To describe how mechanisms enabling such a dynamic tension between
various positions were constructed, partially stabilizing their relations whilst creating
a semi-hegemonic dynamic structure, I will utilize the framework developed around
the concept of translation in science and technology studies. (Callon, 1986, Latour,
1988, p. 43; Bijker and Law, 1992, p. 31), In this process, various actors with
divergent viewpoints and interests are brought together and enlisted in favor of the
common construction of a epistemic projects 112. In the original Callon-Latour-Law-
model of translation, the translation culminates with the creation of a definitive
authority or Obligatory Passage Point (OPP): an actor, a problem, a procedure, etc.
that funnels the actor-network and aligns the actions of all the actors connected
through (or to) it. This model was later extended by Susan Leigh Star (Star and
Griesemer, 1989, Bowker and Star, 1999, Star, 2010), as she moved the focus to
situations where "several obligatory points of passage are negotiated with several
kinds of allies"113. The primary results of these negotiations are methods
standardization, the coordination of the activities of various allies to make their
products compatible through a common standard, and the creation of boundary
objects114. Boundary objects are "[scientific] objects which both inhabit several
intersecting social worlds…and satisfy the informational requirements of each of
them… [they] are both plastic enough to adapt to local needs and the constraints of
several parties employing them, yet robust enough to maintain a common identity
across sites" (Star and Griesemer, 1989, p. 393). Following Star, I emphasize the
interplay between policies enabling method standardization and boundary objects
related to them. However, while in Star's model the actors involved in their creation
represent distinct social worlds, the participants in Wikipedia's case were more 112 Thévenot (2002b) noted that translations, (as well as boundary objects discussed below) are Parallel to his term "compromise," I preferred the concept of translation as it does not presupposes that its subjects are general orders of worth. In contrast with Laclau and Mouffe's conceptualization, they transcend the primacy of discourse, treating it as only one of several elements involved in this process. 113 Another important aspect of this move is the attribution of agency mainly to human actors who do the actual negotiations, rather than distributing it equally to humans and non-humans. 114 The term has since been applied in a wide range of topics, and became prevalent in the realm of technology studies (cf. Flichy, 2007a, 2007b; Fujimura, 1992; Henderson, 1991).
107
individualized, their relevant identities harder to define, and their constant influx
demanded constant, recurring acts of translation.
These challenges were compounded by Wikipedia's technological and spatial
make-up. Wikipedia began as a bare network of text pages, each dedicated to an
encyclopedic subject. The radical collaboration process meant that in principle, at
least, alignment had to be achieved regarding each individual page, as each was a
boundary object in itself, edited by various actors with potentially conflicting
interests. As it lacked such elements as a registration form, terms of use document, or
selection mechanism, Wikipedia did not have any obligatory passage points that could
regulate selection, socialization and guidance. It had no built-in surveillance and
enforcement mechanisms that could help deal with problematic edits. This situation
created in Wikipedia an epistemic culture that is even more flexible and polysemic
than the ones described by Star and her co-writers. Having no OPP's that can commit
a large amount of allies to a common pattern of action or generate stable methods
standardization, it had to generate softer measures of social coordination, less
authoritative and strict than those found in scientific contexts, but still effective
enough for the project to function.
As I shall describe below, this type of coordination was achieved in one of two
ways: in policy pages, special, highly visible sections of the network that were
systematically and strategically linked to, and thus made accessible from various
nodes in the network; and in the software code arranging the very form and attributes
of the website and network of web pages it contained. None of these methods, it
should be noted, was effective enough to be considered a genuine OPP (Obligatory
Passage Point). While certain participants (namely, Sanger as Wales) and cultural
schemes (mainly the encyclopedic model) did have privileged position in negotiating
standards and boundary objects, authority in the project never came near the power it
held in scientific projects of the kind described by Latour, Callon, Law or even Star.
Thus, I would rather call those passage points that funneled Wikipedia's activity
privileged (rather than obligatory) passage points115.
115 I will discuss this concept further in the last chapter of this dissertation.
108
In what follows, I first describe the initial actions and interactions which led to
the formation of a mode of production based on radical collaboration and extremely
liberal standards for inclusion of content. I then go on to describe the construction of
two policies that were developed as means of make this form of production suitable
for the task of creating an encyclopedia: The purification of article pages and Neutral
Point of View. The first of them created a special category of Wiki pages referred to
as article or subject pages, where writing is to be styled after traditional encyclopedia
articles116. It also specified that discussion of articles should not take place in the
article pages themselves. This policy was the most essential in domesticating the Wiki
technology as it set a precedent that content policies should be based on traditional
encyclopedic standards, even if those contrast with customs prevalent in other Wikis.
The second major content policy formulated in Wikipedia enjoined a neutral point of
view, still noted today as one of Wikipedia's hallmarks, and considered as a major
reason for its success (Reagle, 2010a). Created originally as means to enable the joint
work of participants with conflicting views, it dictated that that the opinions of all
parties to the disputes should be presented in the article in a manner they can agree
on. It was the first and only policy to be declared "non-negotiable" (Wikipedia,
2012f), and subsequently became an OPP (or nodal point117) for almost all later major
content disputes. While other such policies were created at the time, these policies,
and the privileged passage points constructed to sustain them, became the backbone
for Wikipedia's epistemic governance
Through the institutionalization of these policies, the following principles of
governance rose to reside over the process of coordination: the primacy of the
traditional encyclopedic model as a "standard for standards"; the legitimacy of the
Wiki process as a resource for schemes and practices (where these do not contradict
the encyclopedic model); radical collaboration and lack of hierarchy in the writing
and editing process; the reliance on effective consensus between editors to establish
policy; the dialogical nature of knowledge construction, and the reliance on references
116 The distinction had to be socially constructed and enforced, as Wikipedia's Wiki software did not differentiate between types of wikipages. The differentiation of namespaces did not take place until the launch of the "phase II Software" in January 2002 (See below). 117 Nodal point, a term originally coined by Lacan, is a master signifier – "a particular element assuming a 'universal' structuring function within a certain discursive field – actually, whatever organization that field has is only the result of this function – without the particularity of the element per se predetermining such a function" (Laclau and Mouffe, 1985, p. xi).
109
to other texts rather than on expertise and original research to establish knowledge;
and finally, the preference for productivity and content quantity over control and
quality. They were also heavily implicated in the construction of PPP's in the project,
setting precedents to later attempts at translation of that sort.
5.1 Phase 1: Setting the Ground Rules
Wikipedia was born as an experiment in collaborative content creation, with
very little idea of what actually to do with such content once created. The text placed
on its homepage during its first days first read
This wiki is an experiment. But, for those who might be confused about this point, it is '''not Nupedia'''. Nupedia is a serious encyclopedia project found at http://www.nupedia.com. This wiki is a proposed "fun" supplement to Nupedia! (Wikipedia, 2001h)
Wikipedia's first participants were a small but heterogeneous group,
comprised of Nupedia editors, a few participants that arrived from other Wikis, and a
group of students from a Human-Computer Interaction class at Lewis and Clark
College that was sent by their teacher. As Wikipedia had no institutionalized structure
or practices at the time, most of them simply played with it, creating and editing pages
at random without giving much thought to the consequences of their actions. Larry
Sanger, on the other hand, quickly began attempting to steer the project towards a
productive path, by writing various pages explaining the tradition developed in Wiki
website (often referred to as "Wiki culture"), its processes and its goals. His first
move was to create conscription devices (Henderson, 1991): mechanisms enlisting
group participation and coordinating production practices by invoking collective
knowledge created and articulated through social interaction. A page titled Wikipedia
Process (Wikipedia, 2001i) was started in January 17 was to discussions between
participants regarding the Wikipedia's functioning, spanning all sorts of topics.118.
Another page, titled how does one edit a page? was erected on the same day as a
118 While Sanger was the most frequent writer in it, stating his opinions regarding many of the questions raised, he was not alone in this: some other editors, especially those arriving from other Wikis, took the project seriously enough to raise initial policy issues and attempt to offer solutions. The topics discussed were highly varied, including naming conventions for articles, adding images to articles, Wikipedia's relations with the FOSS movement, and how to prevent disruptive or problematic participants.
110
tutorial to Wiki-culture, explaining the established practices prevalent in other Wiki
websites at the time, and linking to pages concerning more specific issues.
While most of the instructions in how does one edit a page? and the pages it
linked to were rather technical, one such page named be bold in updating articles
became a major policy addressing the issue of collaboration in Wikipedia, and
arguably the most important of them. It was initially formulated by Larry Sanger in
January 17, mainly as an explanation to how Wikis work in general. Initially, it
simply stated that "Wikis don't work if people aren't bold. You've got to get out there
and make those changes, correct that grammar, add those facts, precisify that
language, etc., etc. It's OK. It's what everyone expects. Amazingly, it all works out. It
does require some amount of politeness, but it works. You'll see" (Wikipedia, 2001l,
bold in the original). However, as two days later Sanger added another section to the
page, this time much more prescriptive in its tone, stating: "OK, you folks still don't
understand, so let me make this clear: if someone writes an inferior or merely
humorous article or article stub, don't worry about their feelings. Correct it, add to it,
and if it's a total waste of time, outright replace it! That's the nature of a WikiWiki,
and long live Wikipedia!" on the same day, Sanger posted a link to the policy from
Wikipedia's homepage (the only policy to receive such an honor), making it highly
visible and giving it special significance in the project.
Being bold in updating articles is, in some respects, a translation of practices
already institutionalized in Wiki-culture. However, it took on new meaning in
Wikipedia: in former Wikis, it was customary to alternate between discussions and
summaries of them (see below in the next section), and everyone was welcome to edit
summaries they feel did not represent their view. In Wikipedia, on the other hand,
editing each other's articles became a tool for managing disagreements without
discussions. It thus became the basis of a new mode of production, based on radical
collaboration. This mode was subsequently inscribed in each and every page in the
project: instead of the standard "edit" link appearing at the bottom of pages in Wikis
at the time, Wikipedia's founders placed at the bottom of every page in the project a
standard text reading "you can edit this page right now! It's a free, community project"
(with a link leading to the edit interface).
111
This radical mode of production stood in stark opposition with Nupedia's
rigorous editing and deliberating mechanisms. In a sense, this was a rejection of the
open-source gift economy as a form of peer review (Bergquist and Ljungberg, 2001),
as direct editing were to take the place of comments, criticism and dialogue. It also
denied the relevance of hierarchy and expertise, as it gave participants a free hand in
their involvement with each other's contributions. Everyone could participate in this
collaborative authoring experiment. It didn't even demand a stable online identity, let
alone the divulgence of real-life identity.
This radical form of collaboration, which now seems so essential to
Wikipedia's process, was not self-evident upon its inception. In order for it to become
self evident if first had to be introduced and taught. This is evident not only from the
creation of conscription devices to promote it, but from Sanger's need to reiterate it
and elaborate it two days after it was first posted. This seems to indicate that editing
each other's texts was far from self evident even after this policy was first declared.
Moreover, the events of the following days proved that even this reiteration was not
sufficient to encourage radical collaboration.
On January 21st, after various nonsense and obscenities continued to be posted
on the Wiki, some Nupedia users started posting septic remarks questioning the use of
the anarchic and chaotic Wiki and the wisdom of radical collaboration on the
Wikipedia Process page. In response, Sanger attempted to supplement the be bold in
updating pages policy and put things into order. His thus posted on the Wikipedia
Process page the suggestion "I propose that we delete Patent nonsense when we run
across it". Fifteen minutes later, Sanger started the page patent nonsense (Wikipedia,
2001j), where he distinguished between legitimate content and content that had no
place in Wikipedia:
Patent nonsense (to be carefully distinguished from brilliant prose as well as private nonsense), particularly on a wiki, falls into a just few general categories:
* Literal nonsense, i.e., text that, usually intentionally, has no assignable meaning at all. This tends to be created after the consumption of too much adult beverage, for example, or under the influence of immaturity and/or stupidity. (The writings of James Joyce being the obvious exception).
112
* Stuff that, while apparently meaningful after a fashion, is so completely and irremediably confused that no intelligent person can be expected to try to make heads or tails of it. (The writings of James Joyce being the obvious exception.)
The following, while often regrettable, is not patent nonsense, and therefore according to a proposed rule on the Wikipedia process page, should not for ''that'' reason be deleted (but some suggestions for improvement are included):
* Really badly-written stuff. (So correct it.)
* Partisan screed. (Make it hedged or add qualifications in order to make it less biased.)
* Religious excogitations. (Make it factual. Yes, there are ways of doing this; e.g., add phrases like "Followers of X hold that...")
* Mere opinion, masquerading as fact. (Remove it to an appropriately-named page, or reword in order to make it fact-stating.)
* Incompetent and/or immature stuff. (Well, it's not nonsense, but perhaps it does deserve to be greatly improved. So improve it.)
As the quote above shows, this move towards creating an authority structure in
the project was done very carefully: the suggestion was made with humorous and
light-headed wording, deletion was to take place only in the most extreme cases, and
personal jokes (Private Nonsense) were explicitly allowed119. When Sanger actually
began implementing his suggestion, he even started a page called "bad jokes and other
deleted nonsense" (Wikipedia, 2001k), and offered to archive the deleted texts in it.
While in principle, this crux of this policy regarded the deletion of content,
more than half of the text dealt with content that should not be deleted. This part of
the policy was especially important, as it supplemented and completed the be bold in
updating articles policy by explaining what should be done with presumably
inappropriate content. The stance it reflected, which had a deep and lasting impact on
Wikipedia's epistemic culture, was quite simple: recycle and reuse any content that is
not completely worthless. This stance meant that Wikipedia, as a rule, should accept
almost any edit, whether it is well written or not, biased or not, substantiated or not.
119 Though this was a later addition by an anonymous editor, Sanger implicitly supported it as he left it on the page after editing it multiple times.
113
In contrast with the be bold in updating articles policy, which was articulated
as a description of practices derived from prevalent Wiki-culture120, in the patent
nonsense case Sanger avoided any kind of justification (Boltanski and Thévenot,
2006) or form investment based on existing cultural models. This occasion marks an
initial attempt to shape Wikipedia as an autonomous project, independent of Wiki-
culture. However, the lack of articulated justifications for this policy – even in narrow
terms such as "Wiki tradition" – was a significant precedent. This lack of theorization
may be seen as an initial step on a path that led Wikipedia to its current position as a
project that "only works in practice" (Wikipedia, 2006).
Sanger's actions soon proved themselves as effective, as the Wiki began
settling down. By the end of the month, his and other editors' attempts at removing
"Patent nonsense" and creating actual articles were successful enough to demonstrate
that Wikipedia did have a potential to be a productive and promising endeavor. While
a large variety of text formats were submitted to Wikipedia's pages, many of them not
resembling encyclopedic articles by any measure121, "patent nonsense" became rare
phenomena, and almost all the texts submitted to Wikipedia pages were related, in
some way or another, to the effort of creating an encyclopedia. This situation
conformed to the initial vision of the project's founders, who explicitly rooted for
experimentation and preferred quantity over quality, at least in these early days.
As there was no real opposition to Sanger's proposals, they became an
"effective consensus" – not necessarily practiced by everyone, but considered
legitimate and practiced by at least a considerable part of the participants. By
affirming Wikipedia's aim (creating "fact stating" encyclopedia articles) and methods
(collaborative editing and deletion of "nonsense" texts), Sanger set the terms which all
later policy developments in the project have to accommodate. This move constructed
Wikipedia process and how does one edit a page? (along with their subpages) as
scopic media, "centering and mediating device[s] through which things become
assembled and from which they are projected" (Knorr-Cetina, 2005). They functioned
as conscription devices (Henderson, 1991), enlisting group participation and 120 And was thus an instance of form investment (Thévenot, 1984). 121 Wikipedia included, for example, a large number of lecture notes from a philosophy course Larry Sanger taught (Wikipedia, 2001b), Tim Shell's extensive description and analysis of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged (Wikipedia, 2001c), copies of various states' constitutions, parts of the bible, personal commentary pages and personal user pages.
114
coordinating production practices by invoking collective knowledge created and
articulated through social interaction. This bundle of pages created a seed for a core
network inside the larger network of Wikipedia pages which veteran participants
knew they should check into if they were interested in policy and policy debates, and
which could be used to educate newcomers.
Shortly after, however, the Wikipedia process page lost its prominent position
as a conscription device. The abundance of discussions, the wide diversity of topics
(which included important policy issues, technical discussions and trivial comments),
and the lack of an established format for posting and interactions made it ineffective.
Thus, when a series of problems and controversies – which will be described below –
emerged which demanded discussion and decision, Sanger opened a new page
specifically for policy discussions, called Rules to consider. Its first paragraph read:
Since this is a wiki, there are no editors. We must rely on developing our own good habits and occasionally taking a bit of time to correct the results of someone else's bad habits. But it might help to specifically enunciate particularly rules that some of us wish we'd make an effort to follow. So here's a page containing such rules. Two suggested features of this page are: add your name to a list of the rule's "supporters" to get an idea of how strongly Wikipedians support a rule and "[nameofrule] Debate" pages where we can talk about the merits of the proposed rule. (The latter will help keep this page nice and clean for those people who are mainly interested in the rules themselves). (Wikipedia, 2001ad, italics in the original)
This page, in contrast with the ones described above, was a thoughtfully
designed mechanism for coordination and policy making. It soon became Wikipedia's
most important venue for policy making, and remained so in the following year.
Moreover, it set the tone for policy discussions and formation procedures: the
procedures suggested above, as well as the articulation of the page's goal, are strictly
egalitarian, as they preclude the option of hierarchy, both in editing Wikipedia and in
policy setting. The articulation precludes any sort of coercion in the implementation
of these policies, making it a voluntary effort dependent on community participation.
Thus, Wikipedia's main policy page at the time maintained a productive tension
between freedom and obligation.
This tension was intensified by Sanger's decision to add at the top of the page,
above all the other rules added to it, a rule titled ignore all rules, which stated that "if
115
rules make your nervous and depressed, and not desirous of participating in the wiki,
then ignore them entirely and go about your business." Sanger later noted that it
reflected on his decision to add this rule, stating that "the reason was that I thought we
needed experience with how wikis should work, and even more importantly at that
point we needed participants more than we needed rules" (Sanger, 2005). Indeed, this
rule, even though it was more symbolic than practical, served to remind that in
contrast with Nupedia, Wikipedia's founders favored productivity over control and
oversight, and were willing to forgo any claim for legitimacy in exchange for the
encyclopedia to actually being produced.
This liberal stance played a major role in Wikipedia's initial growth, as it
allowed it to accumulate potentially problematic resources at a time when in needed
quantity more than quality. The combination of radical collaboration and a liberal and
inclusive attitude towards contributed content, set it apart from Nupedia, and allowed
it to succeed in amassing content whereas the latter failed. As noted above, Nupedia's
insistence on cultural legitimacy and control mechanisms, which were meant to attract
experts to partake in its gift economy "crowded out" (Benkler, 2010) spontaneous,
individual giving. Wikipedia's liberal stance, an antithesis of Nupedia's policies,
catered exactly such individual giving, as participants were encouraged to contribute
immediately, and anyway they saw fit.
Moreover, Nupedia was undermined by the considerable delays in the process
needed to complete the act of giving: the registration process, the articulation of a
complete, good enough article, the length of its copyediting and peer-review
processes, etc. in contrast with these delays, as well as to the similarity of the
submission process to that of school chores (Lamb, 2005), Wikipedia's automatic
acceptance of contributions allowed givers to complete their act immediately. The
swift appearance on the website accorded the giver actions with instantaneous worth,
and embedded his content – if not his persona – in the project. Thus, This immediacy
did not only encourage individual giving, it was also crucial in soliciting socially
embedded giving, as such spontaneous edits are usually the first steps towards
becoming a socially embedded Wikipedian (Bryant et al, 2005).
At the same time, these steps did not crowd out socially embedded
contributors, as they provided a context through which an environment sustaining a
116
viable gift economy can emerge. Though extremely liberal, be bold in updating
articles and patent nonsense represented initial attempts at creating orders of worth
(Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006, Thévenot, 2001b), standards for evaluation of actions,
and epistemic virtues (Wood, 1998; Daston and Galison, 2007) – all of which lay the
basis for locally embedded social recognition and reciprocity. The following sections
will outline the intensifications of such efforts, focusing on problems and
controversies related to the radical production method constructed in the events
outlined above.
5.2 Phase 2: Purifying Article Pages: the “Refactoring Debate”
Around the end of January 2001, the actions of Sanger and a few other editors
made the creation and editing of pages on encyclopedic topics the prominent activity
in Wikipedia. Sanger's suggestion that editors should delete patent nonsense
(Wikipedia, 2001j) and be bold in updating articles (Wikipedia, 2001l) were well
received, and participants began treating Wikipedia as an experiment in encyclopedia
production rather than just a "'fun' supplement to Nupedia". Before long, however,
disputes began over the content of articles, conducted in first-person remarks added
above or below the disputed content – and in some case completely replacing the
relevant article. This development is not surprising, even though it may seem as
conflicting with prevalent portrayals of Wikipedia as a harmonious and cooperative
community. While Nupedia's mechanisms for discussing and deciding disagreements
were detached from the actual articles, Wikipedia's founders' insistence on immediate
publication precluded such options, and forced them to chose alternatives that will
enable post-factum discussion while preserving the integrity of article content.
Initially, Sanger and Wales decided to use the model prevalent in Wikis at the
time. Wikis (and especially the ones that inspired Wikipedia) usually emulated the
form of threaded discussions in mailing lists and internet forums, and much of their
content was written in the first person and signed by their author. Like many
communities created in such environments, Wikis were communitarian projects based
on a gift-economy which bestowed participants with recognition and reputation
(Rheingold, 2000; Lih, 2009). However, as discussions grew longer, respected
117
participants often summarized the discussions to create "documents" which would be
better organized and readable. Thus, the use of the first person discussion was
essential to the Wiki process. At the same time, however, the use of first person and
dialogue stands in contrast with the established model of encyclopedia articles. The
question of how to deal with this conflict was the heart of the conflict later known as
"the refactoring debate". Through this conflict, Wikipedia's participants made the first
crucial steps towards articulating the Wiki process and the model of the encyclopedia,
at the same time changing their use and meaning. Moreover, this conflict set a crucial
precedent for the development and institutionalization of policies in Wikipedia.
On January 26th, AyeSpy posted on the Christianity (Wikipedia, 2001m)
article a few paragraphs of musing about religion, politics and the distinction between
eastern and western religions, giving it the title "Commentary." In response, Sanger
deleted these paragraphs, opened a new page titled Christianity/Talk (Wikipedia,
2001n) and moved them there, leaving a note on the original Christianity page stating:
Commentary moved to Christianity Talk. Let's avoid stating idiosyncratic views on the main pages. Put those for *Talk, *Discuss, or whatever.
While this incident, in itself, was unrelated to the problem of discussions in
article pages (as there was no discussion here, but rather an addition of content by a
single user), and was not accompanied by a form investment or justification, it
produced a standard new practice that was later transported and translated into a new
context, where it was entangled with other practices and justifications to become a
new content policy.
The existence of disputes in article pages first came under scrutiny in a
Wikipedia-l post on January 27th (one of the first sent to it since its opening on
January 21st) by Tim Shell, a partner in Bomis, where he commented that:
If Wikipedia is to be an encyclopedia, then it probably is not appropriate to have threaded discussions on a subject page. See for example Altruism, where one person gives a flame bait description of the concept, and numerous people then argue back about that description.
If a discussion is appropriate, perhaps there should be a standard discussion page, as Altruism Discussion or Altruism Debate that is linked to from the subject page. (Shell, 2001)
118
As its opening sentence indicates, Shell's attempted to de-legitimize a
prevalent (or at least emerging) practice by making an explicit form investment
(Thévenot, 1984): pointing out its inconsistency with the encyclopedic model. He
then proposed a practical alternative, based on the technical features of the Wiki
(namely the ease of opening new pages and moving content from page to page), that
could enable Wikipedia to stay consistent with that model.
While Shell's suggestion may seem obvious in retrospect, it was not at all
obvious when it was presented. In fact, in the debate that followed, both on the
mailing list and on a Wikipedia page named Refactoring policy (Wikipedia, 2001o)
opened by Sanger to further debate the subject, the majority of participants had
reservations about the suggestion, or rejected it outright. However, before going on to
describe the debate's content I would like to describe Shell's actions and their
consequences on the issue of policy creation in Wikipedia.
The strategy Shell used to tackle what he thought of as a problem in Wikipedia
was the first attempt at creating a mechanism to debate and rectify such problems. Its
focus was the Wikipedia-l mailing list, which he used as means for propagating his
articulation of the issue. Through his reference to the altruism (Wikipedia, 2001v)
article, Shell built a connection from a peripheral node in the Wikipedia network (i.e.
the article) whose exposure to other participants was limited to a medium which
reached the project’s founders and major participants in their private email inboxes.
This move constructed the mailing list as a conscription device122 (Henderson, 1991).
While Wikipedia already had the beginning of such a system – the Wikipedia process
(Wikipedia, 2001i) page and its various subpages – Shell was either unaware of its
existence or simply preferred the mailing list format with its convenient threaded
discussion feature and established conventions.
Initially, this move seemed successful as participants started replying to Shell's
comment and debating the subject. However, a day later Wales posted a message
stating that "I supported the creation of this list, but it occurs to me that quite possibly
discussions which take place here ought to be taking place on Wikipedia itself"
(Wales, 2001f). As a result, Sanger established the primacy of the former scopic 122 As noted earlier, conscription devices are boundary objects that enlist and organize group participation.
119
medium by opening the Refactoring policy page to continue the debate, and linked to
it from the Wikipedia process page. The discussion of Shell's suggestion was carried
on mainly in the Refactoring policy page, and new pages dealing with other policy
issues soon began appearing, interlinked through the Wikipedia process page and later
through a new page substituting it, titled Wikipedia policy (Wikipedia, 2001p). This
method had some advantages over the mailing list as a conscription device, as the
creation of connections (links) in it was much simpler, and the movement through
them much faster. Its existence prevented the need to re-articulate policies in each
new dispute, as participants versed in these policies could just link to them when
conflict appeared in one of the Wiki pages rather than opening a discussion on the
mailing list.
Moving now from the mechanisms for policy debate to discuss its substance,
the reasons for rejecting Shell's suggestion to move discussion to special pages were
rooted in the Wiki process: conventions developed in existing Wikis regarding the
right way to use them. Participants that were acquainted with such conventions, such
as Jimmy Wales123, Bryce Harrington and Clifford Adams124, rejected Shell's
suggestion claiming that mixing discussion and content was a crucial element in the
"Wiki process"125. As Wales stated,
There is already a cultural tradition in the wiki world called "refactoring". The idea is that there is a "discussion mode" and a "document mode". In discussion mode, people have a threaded discussion, with many different issues being raised.
Then, some WikiMaster comes through after the discussion has died down, and "refactors" the page. This involves editing/rewriting/rearranging, so that all points of view are presented fairly. (Wales, 2001g)
Thus, the refactoring debate was a conflict between two contrasting modes of
coordination, or investments of form. While Shell justified his position through a
contrast between prevalent practice and the encyclopedic model, his opponents
123 While Wales originally objected Shell's position, he later took a more moderate position claiming that the decision to keep the discussion on subject page or move it to a Talk page should be contextual, depending on factors such as its length, inflammatory potential etc. (Wales, 2001e). 124 Author of the UseModWiki which was used by Wikipedia at the time. 125 This process, integral to the concept of the Wiki at the time, but problematic from the point of view of an encyclopedia process, was one of the reasons for Cunningham's original skepticism towards the project (Lih, 2009, p. 75).
120
justified theirs through basing it on the institutionalized Wiki process. The debate was
essentially over what form should have primacy in Wikipedia.
What tipped the balance in the discussion was Larry Sanger's support for
Shell's position. While he was not an "editor-in-chief" in Wikipedia (as he was in
Nupedia), Sanger did have a measure of authority in the project – mostly due to the
fact that he was the most active participant and the most enthusiastic about policy
making. Sanger stated in several places that discussions in general are unproductive,
and that the best way to work on Wikipedia is simply edit articles. However, he
agreed with Shell that if discussions were to take place, it was better to put them in
separate pages. Thus, in response to Wales' position on the mailing list (Sanger,
2001c) he explicitly rejected the relevance of Wikis' history, claiming that "I'm not
sure that the history of wiki is relevant here, because we are, after all, making an
attempt at creating an encyclopedia…" He later reiterated his position on the
Refactoring policy page, where he explained that "There's an excellent reason for
Wikipedia in particular to encourage the practice of moving discussions to separate
pages: the pages are supposed to be encyclopedia articles, not discussions." In another
post on the same page, he explained that:
[…] mainly what I'm concerned about is that people will start treating Wikipedia as yet another discussion forum, rather than an encyclopedia. As I see it […] all that emotional energy that goes into hashing through partisan and other issues could much more easily be channeled toward improving articles. […] The purpose of the wiki, as I see it, is--well, it's whatever people make it--but what I'd like it to be is the creation of good encyclopedia articles.
Underlining this concrete discussion lay a more philosophical disagreement,
concerning the relations between technology and culture. The supporters of
refactoring claimed that Wikis, as sociotechnical ensembles126 that include social
aspects as well as technological ones, comprised both the code supporting the website
and standard methods for using it. If these methods were overlooked, it wouldn’t
function properly. The encyclopedic model, on the other hand, was constructed as
flexible enough to include the option of discussions – at least temporarily. In contrast,
Shell and Sanger supported a position which saw the Wiki as a flexible tool that can
be adapted to various forms of practice according to the needs of its users, 126 On the notion of sociotechnical ensemble and sociotechnical systems see Law, (1991), Bijker and Law (1992), Bijker (1993, 1995a, 1995b).
121
emphasizing human agency and cultural constructs over technology. This is evident
not only in their rejection of their opponents' position, but also in Sanger's invocation
of the fear that Wikipedia could turn into "yet another discussion forum" – thus
stressing the polysemic nature of technology. On the other hand, Shell and Sanger
constructed the model of the encyclopedic article as immutable, justifying their
position through the claim that "encyclopedia articles don't have discussion right there
on the page itself".
While there was no mechanism in place to decide between these opposing
views, Shell and Sanger were the ones whose opinion ultimately won. While Sanger
had the last word on the Refactoring policy page as no one continued to argue with
him after a while, the most important reasons for his victory were not coercion or
persuasion127, but rather practice and momentum. While the debate was going on,
Sanger (and some of his supporters) kept deleting discussions from articles and
copying their content to subpages labeled /Talk128. After starting Christianity/Talk on
January 26th, he went on to create Bush/Talk on January 27th (Wikipedia, 2001q),
History of United States/Talk on January 30th129 (Wikipedia, 2001r), etc130. This
practice met no opposition, and was immediately imitated by other participants in the
project who began moving comments and discussions to talk pages, making them a
standard in the project. While not all users avoided commenting in article pages, the
vast majority of users did, creating an "effective consensus" that became taken for
granted in the project. When new participants arrived, they often saw talk pages while
going through the website, making it a taken-for-granted part of the website from their
127 Some measure of authority was evidently involved in this process, as his opponents ultimately accepted the legitimacy of Talk pages. 128 The use of the word "talk" for the subpage is a reminder for Sanger's inspiration for this practice: the Nupedia subject specific mailing list (such as sociology-l) were always accompanied by a second list called talk (such as sociology-talk) dedicated to general discussions of the subject unrelated to the concrete editorial work. As Sanger feared that endless discussions of the type common on Usenet newsgroups will draw the projects focus if allowed in the editing process, he decided to give them a place of their own. In Wikipedia, he drew upon his original idea, but in a way that changed its meaning from a relief valve for editors seeking discussion to a central part of the production process. 129 At the same time Joshua Grosse, a participant who supported Sanger's position started another page called History of United States Discussion (Wikipedia, 2001t). The debate continued on both pages for some time. 130 Interestingly, the Altruism article that helped sparked the refactoring debate only got a Talk page on March 2nd (Wikipedia, 2001u), long after it became a standard.
122
perspective. And if they began discussing issues on article pages, they soon learned
that it was inappropriate, as their comments were moved to talk pages131.
Even though the refactoring debate set a clear precedence that the
encyclopedic model should have primacy in Wikipedia when making policy
decisions, its actual results were a compromise between the Wiki and encyclopedic
models132: Article pages were written only in the third person and left unsigned133 and
controversial or conflicting opinions were presented in the articles itself from a
neutral point of view and not as assertions of personal opinion (see below). However,
unlike conventional encyclopedia articles, they contained a direct link to the
discussions that helped create their content134. The traditional practices related to the
Wiki process were delimited to talk pages, where the central mode of writing was a
threaded discussion in the first person. In these pages, refactoring remained a
prevalent practice, as long and outdated discussions were summarized and deleted.
Moreover, a third type emerged, in the form of commentary pages. On March 26,
after he felt that too much of the writing in article involved a significant idiosyncratic
note, Sanger started the Wikipedia Commentary (Wikipedia, 2001db) page, where
participants can publish their opinions and thoughts that were unsuitable for both
article pages and discussion pages. Subsequently, he moved texts that he felt were
inappropriate to that section, and began publishing his thoughts there himself.
By May 6th Sanger felt confident enough to suggest the automatic creation of
talk subpages by the software (Sanger, 2001d). This suggestion was picked up in the
specifications talks preceding the construction of the "phase two software" by Magnus
Manske in August (e.g. Manske, 2001), and was indeed incorporated in it upon its
release in January 2002, making Sanger and Shell's position irreversibly inscribed in
the technological infrastructure of the project. For every Wiki page, a corresponding
talk page was automatically generated, and a link to it appeared automatically
whenever the article was viewed or edited. Articles and talk pages were assigned
131 Another important practical move towards institutionalization was made when WojPob came up with the idea of creating Talk pages as subpages of articles, a move that made their creation much easier and automatically linked them to the article page. This practice was later publicized by Wales, and became standard in the project (Wikipedia, 2001s) 132 With some additional input from the mechanism developed in Nupedia, see above note 125. 133 This practice was not self evident, as some users did sign their names on article pages. 134 In addition, they contain links to previous edits of the page – an automatic feature in the Wiki software installed for the project.
123
different namespaces, making the talk pages an integral part of the websites code and
structure135. This move transformed the website's design into a privileged passage
point: as it automated the creation of talk pages, Wikipedia's structure made them
omnipresent and more institutionalized. The use of computer software enabled
Wikipedia's participants to deploy a manifestation of this privileged passage point at
any node in the network, without having to set one up by manual labor, translating an
institutionalized practice to technological object. However, this technological object
did not amount to the level of an OPP, because participants could still write in first
person on article pages. As there was no approval mechanism for edits before their
publication, dealing with such edits was confined to efforts after the fact.
To conclude, the refactoring debate laid the ground for the way standards are
created and enforced in Wikipedia: through debate of a concrete and immediate
problem, a practice that was developed elsewhere in the Wiki was adopted and
translated to become a socially accepted solution. It then underwent a process of form
investment, aligning itself with the model of the encyclopedia, and institutionalized
through discussions and policy pages to the point that it became the subject of an
effective consensus. This effective consensus was maintained through routinization
and through technological codification, as it was reprogrammed into the technological
infrastructure of the website. This process should not be confused with the building of
a consensus in functional or cultural terms, as such did not exist. The supporters of the
original Wiki process approach were not all convinced, nor were they made to comply
with the decision.
What took place in this episode was the construction of pragmatic tools that
succeeded against rival options. It resulted in the creation and enactment of authority,
albeit one which had to be periodically reiterated to avoid atrophy. Its outcome was
thus a semi-hegemonic dynamic structure within which opposition had to function. As
we shall see, this route became typical to Wikipedia's policy development.
135 It also meant that a simple search for a term would only lead to the article pages.
124
5.3 Phase 3: The Neutral Point of View
The creation of effective consensus on refactoring in February was
accompanied by further attempts to articulate a new, radical form of collaboration,
now partially divorced from the original Wiki-process, and the encyclopedic model.
The most notable and influential attempt was the formation of the neutral point of
view policy (Wikipedia, 2012f). The elaboration of this policy was much longer and
more complex than the one described above, as it involved the de-legitimation of
subtler and more divergent practices, and the tying together of a substantial number of
conflicts. As noted in the previous chapter, the emphasis on "lack of bias" was central
in Nupedia's discussions and guidelines, and was one of Sanger's "pet peeves" as an
editor (Sanger, 2005). In Wikipedia, the issue of bias surfaced as a practical reality
and problem almost as soon as it was launched. In its first month, it already saw a
considerable number of discussions and conflicts fueled by accusations of bias, in
articles such as Altruism (Wikipedia, 2001v), History of United States (Wikipedia,
2001w), Libertarianism (Wikipedia, 2001x), Anarchy (Wikipedia, 2001y), Traditional
Anarchism (Wikipedia, 2001z), Democracy (Wikipedia, 2001aa), and George W
Bush (Wikipedia, 2001ab). These discussions, which initially took place in the topic
pages, were one of the main reasons for the refactoring debate, and were gradually
moved to the adjacent talk pages after its resolution. However, this did not solve the
essential problem, namely the need to enable participants with opposing views to
collaborate in building content pages.
The dissenting and conflicting opinions of participants in these debates offer a
glimpse into the plethora of radical positions prevalent in the social milieu that
fostered Wikipedia on its early days: Wales was an avowed objectivist; Tim Shell was
a libertarian; Richard Kulisz was an anarcho-syndicalist; Bryce Harrington, an editor
in the radical political site indymedia.com, was an American dissident; Joshua Gross
was a leftist liberal; WojPob was a polish social democrat. This diversity, inherent in
its nature as a global microstructure (Knorr-Cetina, 2005; Knorr-Cetina and Brugger,
2000), presented a serious challenge to its attempt to rely on their collaboration in
producing articles. The cultural and political differences made attempts to reach
consensus on the content of articles exceedingly problematic, and led the project's
founders to try and find general ways of dealing with such views. The solution found,
125
as we shall see, was a combination of several practices developed in specific
controversies, and a mode of coordination and justification rooted in a specific
encyclopedic form. As we shall see, This path exemplified the way pragmatic patterns
of action involving local problem solving are translated into higher level transposable
schemes (cf. Sewell, 1992; Wenger, 1998), and the importance of external cultural
factors, appearing in the form of pre-existing cultural forms, models and modes of
coordination – such as the traditional encyclopedic form – which did not function as
overreaching principles determining the outcome of situations, but were rather
incorporated in them through antagonistic processes of form investment. The
properties of such preexisting forms and models have an important role in selecting
and transposing certain solutions rather than other options.
5.3.1 The First Controversial Articles
The first attempt to solve a major content dispute took place on January 30th
2001, amidst the refactoring debate. On January 29th, Bryce Harrington started a page
called History of United States (Wikipedia, 2001w) and posted a rather lengthy and
critical article, which he himself admitted to be "depressing." On the very same day,
Wales posted on the top of the page a comment characterizing the article as "very
biased and anti-American." A few hours later, Joshua Gross posted a response saying
that he thinks the article is "remarkably fair […] I think this is fairly close to what a
real, objective summary (maybe a little bit of negative propaganda but nothing
compared to the positive stuff you normally get) would look like. Leaves out good
things, but also bad things, being a summary."
This discussion was the type of dialogue that Sanger feared when he warned
that Wikipedia is in danger of becoming "yet another discussion forum" and
suggested proactively editing the content of articles rather than discussing them.
Within the next hour, Tim Shell began to extensively edit the article in order to paint a
more positive picture of American history. After reading Shell's edits, Gross added
another comment noting that "instead of going ahead and adding good and deleting
bad and deleting good and adding bad, and so forth, I suggest we have a separate
discussion on what is an appropriate take here on History of United States Discussion.
126
Leave this as is for now, and know that it is controversial." He then started a page
called History of United States Discussion (Wikipedia, 2001t), where he suggested to
"carefully discuss each controversial point that comes up before writing about it" and
he and the other participants started debating specific points in the article.
A few minutes after Gross stated the History of United States Discussion page,
Sanger started another page called History of United States Talk (Wikipedia, 2001r)
and copied to it the comments from the original article page. Under Joshua Gross's
comment quoted above, he added the following segment:
Joshua, here is my view: I think we shouldn't aim for objectivity; we should aim for lack of bias. The way to achieve lack of bias is to explicitly acknowledge within the article itself points on which there is disagreement, and make sure that the body of the article does not betray any particular position on these disagreements. Thus, lack of bias is not achieved by striking a middle position between the views that the U.S. had a glorious wonderful history and that it was dark and evil. It is achieved by relating what objective facts everyone can agree on, and then making explicit what points people disagree about.
By the way, anyone is free to change this article at any time, you know. :-)
Sanger's solution to the problem was an attempt to suggest a general
standardized method for the project. However, As Sanger's suggestion came after the
issue was already being resolved through direct interaction between the parties to the
controversy, and as it did not conflict with that process, no opposition was voiced, and
participants soon returned to discussing how to actually write the article. In fact,
Sanger's view had no real bearing on the case, as the original article was abandoned
rather than fixed. The debate started on the History of United States Discussion page
soon sprawled over many articles as participants began breaking up the article to
smaller topics and historical periods, and writing them in some details rather than
engaging in broad characterizations of the kind Harrington's original article included.
The original article was deleted from the page a day later, replaced with a list of links
to the various articles and discussions started as a result of the discussion (Wikipedia,
2001ac), and work on an overview article was discontinued136.
136 It was resumed after a few months up by new users who weren't involved in this episode.
127
The outcome of this controversy was a practical policy, or a sequence of
actions for dealing with conflicting views: moving discussions and controversies to
separate talk pages, and splitting a big controversial subject into multiple smaller
ones. What was still missing was a solution for the text in the original article page,
which in this case was completely erased. Both the erasure of the article text and the
fracturing of the discussion to multiple pages (mostly talk pages) seem to represent an
attempt to avoid having to reach a final decision on the text of the page. This strategy
was understandable, as the article page was supposed to be a boundary object that all
sides of the conflict could utilize. As compromise seemed far, and any decision would
exclude some participants (thus denying the page its status as boundary object), the
strategy formed was one of diffusion, replacing a single boundary object, whose
position was both highly important and highly unstable, with a host of boundary
objects.
While Sanger's actions had no immediate effects, it did have important
consequences. Sanger outlined a sequence of action designed as a mediation and
representation strategy for dealing with conflicts, and gave it a name: "lack of bias".
That name “blackboxed” (Latour, 1999) this sequence of actions and gave them a
theoretical and justifying context. It became one of the first policies to be suggested as
a general rule in the project. When Sanger started the first actual policy page in
Wikipedia, titled rules to consider (Wikipedia, 2001ad), on February 4th, it one of the
first two rules he posted on it was "avoid bias":
"Since this is an encyclopedia, after a fashion, it would be best if you represented your mere opinions either (1) not at all, (2) on *Debate, *Talk, or *Discussion pages linked from the bottom of the page that you're tempted to grace, or (3) represented in a fact-stating fashion, i.e., which attributes a particular opinion to a particular person or group, rather than asserting the opinion as fact."
Incorporating the lessons of this controversy, Sanger forced the practical
solution to undergo a process of form investment, aligning itself with the model of the
encyclopedia, though specifics of that model itself were almost never invoked. In a
sense, Sanger reintroduced in Wikipedia Nupedia's "lack of bias" policy (see previous
chapter). This act of translation subtly changed the meaning of the original policy:
while the Nupedia lack of bias policy was concerned with the correct representation
128
of disagreements between experts137, its corollary in Wikipedia policy was concerned
with the problem of editors expressing their "mere opinions" and resolution of
disagreements between editors.
As former examples demonstrated, the creation of conscription devices
(Henderson, 1991) or PPP's demands careful coordination between various processes.
When the processes involved – the generalization of the solution to a particular
problem, its effective translation through form investment (Thévenot, 1984) in
prevalent modes of coordination, and its technological or social inscription – occur
simultaneously and support each other (as was the case in the refactoring debate), a
general policy may emerge and achieve the status of a privileged passage point. In
this particular case, however, Sanger's attempt failed, as he did not succeed in
achieving an effective consensus. The inclusion of "lack of bias" in the rules to
consider page did not have the desired effect, as other controversies and accusations
of bias soon flared up on other articles.
There are several possible explanations for this failure. The first is Sanger's
failure to use Wikipedia's conscription devices effectively. As the policy was located
inside a list of "rules to consider" and written as a suggestion ("it would be best")
rather than a directive, it was a problematic resource to rely on for socialization or in
cases of conflict. Moreover, the form investment relating to the encyclopedic model
was done offhandedly, sufficing with the somewhat demeaning assertion that "this is
an encyclopedia, after a fashion." Finally, the policy was not really translated from the
practical solution developed to answer the local problem in the History of United
States, but rather from Nupedia's policies, thus failing to address such issues as the
creation of talk pages as a response to bias or controversy, the forking of article pages,
what to write in the article page itself in cases of controversy, etc. Thus, the
production of an effective policy had to wait for other conflicts to present examples of
successful resolutions.
The ineffectiveness of the lack of policy bias was demonstrated merely four
days after its suggestion, when a major controversy similar to the previous one and
137 As the Nupedia guidelines state "This question is a good (albeit not infallible) test of a lack of bias: 'On every issue about which there might be even minor dispute among experts on this subject, is it very difficult or impossible for the reader to determine what the view is to which the author adheres?'
129
involving many of the same participants erupted on the article capitalism (Wikipedia,
2001af). On February 2nd, Tim Shell posted a brief article on capitalism, defining it in
terms embedded in libertarian ideology as
"A system based on the absence of political intervention in the economy, which rests on the assumption that politics and economics are distinct from one another. Often capitalism is part of a wider, Libertarian social theory that advocates the absence of political intervention from most aspects of society."
This definition, as well as the list of relevant theorists that included only
liberal and neo-liberal ones,138 caused unrest amongst some participants such as
Joshua Gross and the user nicknamed Astronomer, who tried to improve it through
editing rather than discussion, by expanding it and hedging the more controversial
claims. However, the bulk of the article remained the same.
Conflict erupted on February 8th, when WojPob posted in the bottom of the
page the page a polemic response stating, amongst other objections, that "This is a
very biased, right-wing article, written in a style that reminds me of Goebbels'
propaganda." Less than two minutes later, Astronomer started a talk page and moved
WojPob's comment there, and Tim Shell and WojPob started arguing over the content
of the article in it. A few hours later, Sanger stepped in and suggested – following his
preference of editing over discussion – that WojPob should just change the article "so
that it's more accurate by your lights".
However, before WojPob had a chance to do so, Jimmy Wales did. In an
attempt to solve the controversy, he added the names of anti-capitalist theorists to the
article, and quickly added to the talk page a note
"In an attempt to make the article appear to be less one-sided, I added some anti-capitalist theorists to the list of theorists.
I think that the article is mostly good as it stands right now because it doesn't advocate for or against capitalism, but merely defines the term in a way that a broad spectrum of people can agree is accurate. I say broad spectrum because I don't think that everyone will agree.
138 The list included Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Ludwig von Mises, Freidrich Hayek and Milton Friedman.
130
Perhaps a revised version might acknowledge some other definitions of the term?"
Wales' move offered a new solution to the problem of disagreement: instead of
the fighting parties editing each other's work, or merely debating it on a discussion
page, he suggested a reformulation of the article content by a third party. This defined
the general policy Wales would advocate for with regards to controversial articles: re-
stating them in a way all parties participating in the production conflict can live with.
In this particular case, it proved successful. Wales' authority was strong enough as to
prevent further discussion, and editing on the article wasn't resumed until mid-April.
However, the results of this conflict were confined to the article and talk page, and
only those aware of them knew of it. It was only later, when this sequence of actions
was repacked, justified and presented in a central location on the network through a
conscription device that a larger effective consensus could be achieved and it could
become a general policy. The lesson of this episode, from a pragmatist point of view,
is the importance of the visibility of practices: a solution to a problem will only
surpass the local context of its creation if it is visible enough to be considered relevant
for other contexts. Meanwhile, the building blocks of this policy were still being
gathered. To the discussion on a talk page and rewriting of the original article in a
way both sides could live with another, an additional feature was soon to be added –
the forking of article pages.
5.3.2 Football and the Forking of Article Pages
A third debate that helped shape Wikipedia's policy took place around the
seemingly innocent football article (Wikipedia, 2001ae). While its contents were
uncontroversial, its name posed a problem: on January 24th, Linus Tolke, a European
participant, posted on the article a short description of Association Football,
commonly known in the U.S.A. as soccer139, in a conscious attempt to "stir something
up" as he put it – i.e., to test how Wikipedia deals with issues arising from its global
and multicultural nature. This was a clear challenge against the united-states-centered
139 "Association football" is a somewhat artificial term for the known simply as football in most parts of the world. In U.S.A. and a few other countries, such as Canada and Australia, it is known as soccer.
131
outlook that was already emerging in Wikipedia, due to the fact that its founders and
many of its participants were Americans.
This move triggered a debate, the first of its kind, on the question of how to
practically confront such dilemmas. The general consensus was that the article should
be split in two, but the question remained how these articles should be named. The
European participants rejected the idea of naming the European sport soccer, as it was
an American name rarely used in Europe. The debate, which involved many of
Wikipedia's contributors at the time, was calm, civil and at times humorous, as the
issue was one that most participants had no strong feeling about. However, in contrast
with the heated but very short conflicts presented above, it moved along very slowly,
without resolution in sight for more than two weeks.
The final resolution was reached almost accidently, through uncoordinated
action. On February 8th, WojPob moved the debate from the article page to a talk page
he opened (following the newly created policy to place discussions in such pages),
leaving in it only the original definition referring to Football in the European sense –
as it was the only part of the text that wasn't a debate. Within the hour, Astronomer
extensively rewrote the article so it will refer to both games, opening it with the
statement: "Two teams play against each other to score with a ball in the opponent's
area. The agreements end here." Below it, he added a headline "If you are outside the
United States, football means […]", under which he described the general concept of
Association football. After that, he drew a break line, and under the headline
"However, if you are in the United States, football is something different: […]" went
on to describe American football. A couple of hours later, immediately after his edit
solved the conflict on the capitalism debate, Wales used his authority to conclude this
one as well, as he added to the beginning of the article the sentence "Here at
Wikipedia, in the interest of peace among all the peoples of the Earth, we shall call
this sport American Football". He then went on to start the American Football
(Wikipedia, 2001ag) article and started filling it with content. As none of the other
participants opposed this move, and some of them began to productively edit the
related articles, the suggested compromise became an effective consensus.
This episode set an important precedent, as participants jointly succeeded in
turning a conflict into consensus, without the aid of a mediator. In addition, it resulted
132
in a pattern that could sometimes – though not always - be used to solve conflicts,
namely the "forking" (splitting) of an article to allow for the representation of various
meanings or outlooks. However this pattern was not explicitly acknowledged as a
precedent, as it was a rather unique case that seemingly had little bearing on many of
the ensuing conflicts in the project. Moreover, there was no explicit principle behind
the decision, but rather ad-hoc actions by several editors, and a final arbitrary gesture
by Wales towards un-American editors. Still, by this time all the building blocks that
will be used to formulate the neutral point of view policy were in place. The only
thing missing was a trigger that would force the translation of the practical knowledge
accumulated into a clear and effective policy, disseminated throughout the network
from a privileged passage point. This trigger arrived in the figure of Richard Kulisz,
the first real opposition to Wikipedia's founders.
5.3.3 Anarchy, Conflict and Policy Formation
On February 13th, Wales began to actively partake in a conflict sparked in the
article anarchy (Wikipedia, 2001y) between Tim Shell and Richard Kulisz, a self
proclaimed anarchist that frequented Ward Cunningham's Portland Pattern Repository
Wiki. On February 2nd, Shell wrote the initial content of the anarchy article, again
advocating his libertarian views and claiming that all other types of anarchism oppose
any kind of social order. Kulisz, a professed anarchist, opposed what he saw as a
libertarian cooptation of the term by Shell, as it was traditionally related to the radical
left anarchism to which he affiliated himself. Kulisz' claimed on the talk page that
Shell was reversing his attempts and filling the article with "propaganda".
Subsequently, Sanger and Wales both intervened and attempted to achieve a
consensus between participants, but to no avail. Finally, on February 13th, following
the pattern he devised on the Capitalism article, Wales deleted the article and posted
on it a message stating "I am about to attempt to find a happy middle ground here.
Give me a little while to write..." less than half an hour later he posted a new article,
noting on the edit summary rubric that "We found peace about the term 'football', and
so with 'anarchy'".
133
In his version, he emulated and enhanced Astronomer's tactic in his editing of
the football article and his own attempt at creating a consensus in the capitalism
article. The new article was comprised of four parts: a general preface stating that
"Anarchy is a term used in two different ways, to describe two very different political
views […]"; a short description of the "traditional" use of the term summarizing
Kulisz' position, with a link to a new article called Traditional Anarchism (Wikipedia,
2001z); a short description of Shell's position with a link to a new article called
Anarchocapitalism (Wikipedia, 2001ah); and a final section describing Shell's and
Kulisz's criticism of the opposing view. Minutes later, Sanger hailed that attempt on
the article's talk page (Wikipedia, 2001ai) and attempted to translate it into a general
policy, stating that:
It seems to me Jimbo has shown a way around this dispute, although Richard and Tim may disagree. At least Jimbo has illustrated the general direction that we should move in when we have these sorts of disputes. The aim is to describe the theories in such a way as cannot be objected to by their proponents or their opponents--by attributing the very descriptions of the theories to their proponents and then explaining what the differences and conflicts between competing theories are (rather than ignoring the fact that there is a conflict, or engaging the conflicts on the page itself). It seems to me this is something that anyone here can do with a little practice. Might be good for you, too. :-) – Larry Sanger
As this description stayed in the relatively marginal part of the network, it had
no larger effects. Moreover, it soon proved false, as Wales did not "describe the
theories in such a way as cannot be objected to by their proponents or their
opponents". In contrast with the capitalism article discussion, Wales' move did not
solve the problem, as Kulisz insisted that his views are still misrepresented. Over the
following days, Kulisz, Sanger and Wales conversed and argued on various pages,
attempting to reach some sort of consensus on the content of the various anarchism-
related articles.
These attempts, which were not very successful, exploded on February 16th
when, in the course of editing the traditional anarchism article, Sanger added to the
article an open challenge, in the form of the sentence "A simple and common
objection to anarchism is that any notion of communal control implies something akin
to a State. Anarchists reply..." He copied this sentence to the talk page, and explained
that he was "…hoping someone would supply the reply." This was, of course, an
134
implementation of his "lack of bias" policy, attempting to allow Kulisz to present his
views in a way that would be beneficial to the article. The result, however, was
different from what he hoped for. Kulisz, the implicit addressee, posted his response
on the article page, stating that
"Anarchists reply that the similarity between the power hierarchies of corporations and the layered division of labor in cooperatives is superficial. […] If you compare both organizations using the items on the Psychopathy Checklist as a guide then it becomes clear that cooperatives act like normal humans, humane, warm, feeling and stable while the corporation can only be described as a psychopathic entity that cold-bloodedly uses workers for its own ends and acts on one impulse after another. As an example, one of the items on the PCL-R is "criminal versatility". Corporations have it, Microsoft demonstrates it when it buys companies expert in areas MS knows nothing about.
While the attribution of this position to "anarchists" was supposedly enough to
guard the text from accusations of bias, that was not the case. For Wales, the portrayal
of corporations as psychopathic entities engaging in acts of "criminal versatility" was
the last straw. He promptly deleted the part of the answer equating between
corporations and psychopaths, and posted on the traditional anarchism/Talk page
(Wikipedia, 2001aj) a message stating that "[…] I've gone to the mat trying to help
remove what Richard perceived as bias from Tim's description of anarchy, and I'm
repaid with propaganda? I figure I'm too annoyed right now to make all the changes
that this article now needs."
At this point, the argument rose above the concrete question of how to
represent anarchism and moved to the more general level of content policy. In
response to Wales' post, Kulisz stated that "This convenient definition of propaganda
as 'an argument or viewpoint I strongly disagree with that may be widely convincing
to others' destroys the value of the Wikipedia. Is the purpose of an encyclopedia to
establish facts or is it to promulgate some dominant point of view?" To Kulisz'
distinction between "facts" and "dominant point of view" Wales answered with a
double distinction, conflating representation and morality. Addressing the issue of
representation, he asserted that "We can present facts _about_ bizarre points of view
such as yours, but we must not present your bizarre point of view _as fact_. I'm sure
you can see the difference'' (Underscore in the original). He then translated this
distinction to moral terms, noting that "I helped you make changes to things that you
135
disagreed with, in an effort to achieve consensus. I thought, and argued on your
behalf, that you only wanted to present certain ideas fairly and in a neutral manner.
But I now believe that you only want to put forward your own political agenda.''
In his answers to Kulisz, Wales drew a distinct boundary between good and
bad representation which was intimately linked to the challenges of collaborative
production: good representation both presents disputed opinions as such (rather than
stating them as facts), fairly and in a neutral manner, and is part of an effort to
achieve consensus between participants. Good representation and cooperation are thus
constructed and entangled as elated aspects of a single epistemic virtue (Daston and
Galison, 2007), whereas epistemic vice is constructed as an insistence on promoting
one's own agenda over those of others and resisting effective compromises. This
move set the ground for the actual formation of the new policy.
On February 16th 21:27, less than quarter of an hour after his argument with
Kulisz, Wales started a new page titled neutral point of view (Wikipedia, 2001ak)
where he presented a general policy for preventing and dealing with disputes. To
blackbox it, he used the formulations presented in the dispute with Kulisz. He
incorporated Kulisz’s formulation that Wikipedia should not promote a "Dominant
point of view", his statement that he expected Kulisz to write "fairly and in a neutral
manner" ad Sanger’s attempt to create a general policy out of his refactoring in the
Anarchy/Talk page, and stated that:
A general purpose encyclopedia is a collection of synthesized knowledge presented from a neutral point of view. To whatever extent possible, encyclopedic writing should steer clear of taking any particular stance '''other than''' the stance of the neutral point of view.
The neutral point of view attempts to present ideas and facts in such a fashion that both supporters and opponents can agree. Of course, 100% agreement is not possible; there are ideologues in the world who will not concede to any presentation other than a forceful statement of their own point of view. We can only seek a type of writing that is agreeable to essentially rational people who may differ on particular points.
Some examples may help to drive home the point I am trying to make.
An encyclopedic article should not argue that corporations are criminals, even if the author believes it to be so. It should instead
136
present the fact that _some people_ believe it, and what their reasons are, and then as well it should present what the other side says.
An encyclopedia article should not argue that laissez-faire capitalism is the best social system. (I happen to believe this, by the way.) It should instead present the arguments of the advocates of that point of view, and the arguments of the people who disagree with that point of view.
Perhaps the easiest way to make your writing more encyclopedic, is to write about _what people believe_, rather than _what is so_. If this strikes you as somehow subjectivist or collectivist or imperialist, then ask me about it, because I think that you are just mistaken. What people believe is a matter of objective fact, and we can present _that_ quite easily from the neutral point of view. (Underscore in the original).
Building on the cases of the debates described above, Sanger's formulations
and his experience in Nupedia, Wales rewrote the ineffective "lack of bias" to make it
a cornerstone for the project. In contrast with the "lack of bias" policy, it incorporated
a concrete model of the encyclopedia and a clear justification in terms of knowledge
representation as it portrayed the encyclopedia as "a collection of synthesized
knowledge presented from a neutral point of view". It was worded in a clear,
authoritative and direct manner, and in the first person. It was not a "rule to consider",
with its hesitant undertone and negotiable standpoint, but rather a clear and
commanding directive, leaving room for explanations but not for changes. It built on
concrete examples of debates that Wikipedia's editors were familiar with, and gave
clear directions as to how to follow this policy. In short, Wales built on his
involvement in several attempts to solve concrete problems in the project and on his
authority as the founder of the project in order to portray an ideal image of the
encyclopedia that would justify the standards he promoted. Moreover, Wales
incorporated the possibility of dissent into the policy itself, he anticipated "that there
are ideologues in the world who will not concede to any presentation other than a
forceful statement of their own point of view." By pointing to this option, and limiting
the pretentions of the project to "essentially rational people" he effectively excluded
from its imagined community anyone who could not be made to agree on a
representation of his views.
As anticipated by Wales, Kulisz was not convinced. He answered Wales' post
on the traditional anarchism/Talk page, insisting that his portrayal of corporations as
137
psychopathic was a fact. Wales refused to discuss the issue further, claiming that "I'm
not the least bit interested in debating with you the truth or falsehood of these claims.
I am only interested in seeing that everything gets stated in a neutral, encyclopedic
manner." This refusal kept focusing the discussion on a rather abstract level, slowly
uncovering the rift in the epistemological positions between the sides: Kulisz
presented an inherently political view of knowledge, and saw Wikipedia as a means to
distance knowledge from the academic ethos and to radicalize it. Building on views of
the sixties’ radical left-wing counter culture140, he claimed that "'neutrality' is just a
cover for pushing the mainstream ideology," and that in terms of content it results in
"bland apolitical tripe". As he stated in a reply to Sanger, "if you tell me that
encyclopedias are inherently academic and middle-class artifacts then I am prepared
to accept your judgment on the matter. You would be confirming my suspicions. In
that case, I would limit my participation appropriately." Sanger promptly replied that
this discussion was "more evidence that we should just write articles instead of
engaging in this sort of pointless, sophomoric mental masturbation. If you don't want
to do so, Richard, and you prefer to engage in the above sort of ranting on this wiki, I
would suggest you stop wasting our time and 'limit your participation appropriately.'
Indeed, Kulisz abruptly stopped editing in Wikipedia, and the discussion – as well as
the editing conflicts on the various anarchism related articles – stopped. He was not
missed by other participants, who did not support his position or request him to stay.
To conclude, the result of this episode was the tying together of a number of
prior efforts into one clear and generally accepted policy, and the casting of its major
opponent out of the project and the alternative he sought to advance. The solution
reached in this case was determined, to some extent, by Kulisz' position: his
standpoint was so radical and so unrelated to the actual production practices
performed by most Wikipedians that he found no support whatsoever. This reaction
exemplifies the importance of external cultural factors, as pre-existing models of
representation prevalent among participants in the project failed Kulisz' attempt at
form investment (Thévenot, 1984). These models, characterized by a relative
disassociation between knowledge production and political advocacy had an
important role in selecting the specific solution achieved in this case.
140 For an exploration of the influence of the 60's counter-culture on the internet, see for example (Turner, 2006).
138
Kulisz' pattern of action also played an important part in determining the
outcome: his combative and generally uncooperative attitude made him a problematic
ally, obstructing him from enlisting other participants to his goals. What seems to me
as the most important factor leading to Kulisz' defeat, was the fact that he only posted
his responses in the anarchy related pages, thus leaving the relevant policy pages as
statements that showed no opposition, and enabled them to be viewed as relatively
unproblematic and consensual. When he quit the project he left virtually no signs of
his opposition in central locations such as the rules to consider page, the neutral point
of view page or the project's mailing list.
Thus, the creation of knowledge-related policy involved both a change in the
production process, and a change in the project's social structure – that now remained
less pluralistic with regard to positions about knowledge production, but more
cohesive and uniform. Kulisz's departure uncovers some implicit social results of
policy formation: pragmatic problem solving is not only about enabling cooperation
and coordination (as usually emphasized by members of the pragmatist school and
social interactions such as Joas, Star and Thévenot), but also a mechanism of
exclusion, as it creates boundaries between those participants who support it and those
who don't. As conflicting attempts of translations tried and tested, the losing parties
will often find no place in the transmuted project. Thus, translation changed not only
patterns of social action, but also the identity of the actors themselves, as new actor-
network are shaped and mutated through this process.
5.3.4 "Larry's Big Reply"
In the following months, the neutral point of view policy proved successful as
editors of conflicting views proved capable of discussing their views and achieving a
measure of consensus that allowed them to jointly produce articles. This calm period
was interrupted when a new debate broke on the newly created creationism
(Wikipedia, 2001al) article on April 4th involving Sanger, Lee Daniel Crocker, John
M. Lynch, Aye Spy and Joshua Gross, regarding the question whether the article
should state that the creationist theory is false. This time, the conflict was of a
different nature, as it was not between opposing views; participants were unanimous
139
in their rejection of the theory. However, while Sanger and AyeSpy tried to avoid an
explicit endorsement of evolutionary theory on the article, the other participants stated
that it should be presented as a scientific fact, and that creationism should thus be
presented as false. Soon the debate – continued on the creationism/Talk (Wikipedia,
2001am) page – sprawled to the issue of historical revisionism and holocaust denial,
as supporters of the later position claimed that the result of a strict Neutral point of
view policy would necessitate in presenting such views as legitimate. Finally, Sanger
posted a lengthy reply he titled "Larry's Big Reply" (Wikipedia, 2001an). In it he
elaborated his views on the subject, invoking the neutral point of view and the model
and purpose of the encyclopedia in support of his view. In conclusion, he summarizes
his position
My conclusion:
We should not impose our values on other thinking people. You are all liberal-minded people, I trust--not liberal politically, necessarily, but liberal in the sense that you want to free minds. I enjoin you to think carefully about the best way to achieve this. By failing to take stands on controversial issues, we ''aren't'' demonstrating weakness--in fact, we are demonstrating the strength of our faith in the minds of our fellow human beings. We should let them arrive at their own conclusions. We should trust them to use their own minds--just as ''you'' want to be trusted. More benighted souls than our enlightened selves will appreciate our stance and be more apt to listen when we hand down the truth.
The epistemological stance advocated in this post, while embedded in Wales'
neutral point of view policy, goes far beyond it as it translates it from the realm of
political disputes to that of scientific knowledge. The position adopted by Sanger gave
a wide definition of the "essentially rational people" – much wider than his opponents
wished for – as he opposed the identification of rationality with science and withheld
from scientists and experts their authority over knowledge. It suggested that as this
authority is in itself controversial, adhering to it will only alienate potential readers.
Thus, the role of the encyclopedia itself is changed: it is no longer a way to educate
people with the truth, as found by the various branches of scholarship, but to give
them information about the various views prevalent in society. The nature of truth
itself is transformed here: it stops being a relationship with the world, and becomes a
relationship with culture. The authority of science becomes an empirical question: is
there, on a specific topic an uncontroversial scientific statement available to the
140
project's participants? If so, then it is presumed as the authoritative and legitimate
statement on the subject. If not, statements may be presented as the dominant position,
but not as true.
As the other participants in the discussion began reacting to it, it turned out
that this time Sanger's post succeeded magnificently in convincing them, and the
debate was quickly and clearly settled. This episode widened the extant of the neutral
point of view, now being used to determine how to act in cases of controversies
involving scientific or public conflict, and not just in cases of political conflicts
between editors. "Larry's big reply" also became a major explanation and rationale to
support the policy, and at the same time further distilled the form of the encyclopedia
that Wikipedia strove to achieve.
This episode marked Sanger's prominence and privileged position in the realm of
content policies formation. Even though the original policy in this case was written by
Wales (while Sanger's original attempt failed), it was Sanger who sustained and
promoted it in the following months. During this period, Sanger strongly advocated
for the neutral point of view policy, referring and providing a link to it in various
locations: in policy pages such as rules to consider, Wikipedia policy, and give the
author a chance debate (Wikipedia, 2001df); introductory pages such as how to start a
page (Wikipedia, 2001dg) and welcome, newcomers (Wikipedia, 2001dh); and many
talk pages of articles he felt that failed to meet its standard, or where conflicts were
taking place, such as Abortion/Talk (Wikipedia, 2001di), scientology/Talk
(Wikipedia, 2001dj), racism/Talk (Wikipedia, 2001dk), John Stuart Mill/Talk
(Wikipedia, 2001dl), Unamerican activities/Talk (Wikipedia, 2001dm). This pattern
of action created a network of editors and pages that eventually supported and
promoted the policy independently. Soon, the long and cumbersome "neutral point of
view" was further blackboxed and replaced by many users with the acronym NPOV,
and POV became the parlance for bias. The blackboxing helped solidify the policy as
it changed the everyday language of the original formulation into a technical term that
newcomers encountered as an integral component of the project. The
institutionalization of the neutral point of view policy does not mean that it became an
OPP in the project. It was a very strong PPP, but it was repeatedly and heatedly
debated, as the project's reliance on effective consensus as means of creating policies
meant that it could also, in principle, be changed or abolished. In addition, it was
141
often challenged by infringements, and had no universal enforcement mechanism to
prevent the recurrence of such actions.
5.3.5 Crisis and Resolution – Wales' Statement of Principles
In October, with the influx of unprecedented amounts of new editors,
extensive debates began about the meaning, limits and weight of the policy, centering
on the representation of scientific knowledge, and the treatment of controversial
religious issues such as abortion and scientology. These debates were part of the
larger controversies that traversed the community apart at the time, and a sign of the
waning of Sanger's influence over the project, even though most participants in these
discussions supported his positions.
As part of the attempts to overcome these controversies, Jimmy Wales made
an unprecedented move by making the policy "non-negotiable". The neutral point of
view policy was distinguished from other content related policies in the project. It was
extracted from the realm of consensus and became as close to an OPP as possible,
made into a nodal point that cannot be removed. This was done in a landmark post by
Jimmy Wales on his personal userpage on October 27th (Wales, 2001d). Addressing a
plethora of controversies that shook the community at the time, Wales declared some
principles to be final and absolute in Wikipedia, and himself as the final arbitrator
regarding them, as he stated: "these are my principles, such that I am the final judge of
them. This does not mean that I will not listen to you, but it does mean that at some
ultimate, fundamental level, this is how Wikipedia will be run." The first of these
principles read:
"Wikipedia's success to date is entirely a function of our open community. This community will continue to live and breathe and grow only so long as those of us who participate in it continue to Do The Right Thing. Doing The Right Thing takes many forms, but perhaps most central is the preservation of our shared vision for the NPOV and for a culture of thoughtful, diplomatic honesty."
Thus, the neutral point of view was declared as "a shared vision" exactly at the
moment when it ceased to be one, and the open community aspect of Wikipedia,
underlying the previous effective-consensus based policy formation process, was
hailed at the moment it was undermined by the personalization of authority. This is
142
precisely the function of a nodal point, or OPP: it is a stopping point beyond which
translations and changes of meaning have minimal or no effect, even if they continue.
Discussions from this point on had to take into account that only the interpretation of
the policy was now open for debate, while the policy itself became "non-negotiable".
A second move, made by Sanger, was a reformulation of the policy. After long
months of existence, the neutral point of view page consisted mainly of comments and
discussion appearing below the original formulation. Following the increase in
conflicts around the policy in October, Sanger began summarizing the main points in
the debate, and began formalizing a draft for a new version of the policy. Editors, and
especially those who had reservations with the policy, were asked to contribute and
Sanger presented the various issues that were raised and attempted to explain them
away. After discussions and a second draft, he posted the new formulation on
Wikipedia in the beginning of January, leaving Wales' original formulation at the top
of the page, and linking to a wealth of examples, debates and articles at the bottom.
While this move did not solve all controversies regarding the policy, it did diminish
them considerably. This owes at least in part to Sanger stamina in long and
contentious debates, and to the fact that the policy page and adjacent pages were so
long, that engaging with them became a daunting task. The neutral point of view
policy page thus became the center of a vast network of conscription devices,
including various policy, commentary and talk pages, links to them from various
locations in the network, both from peripheral article pages and central policy pages,
tutorial and FAQ pages.
5.4 Conclusion
The shaping and institutionalization of the neutral point of view policy and the
separation between article and talk pages clearly demonstrate the connection between
social structure, creative practices, forms of knowledge production and technology.
The construction of these policies governing knowledge representation was just as
importantly the construction of policies for governing social interaction in cases of
conflicts. Moreover, it shaped Wikipedia's, both in terms of its authority structure and
in terms of the composition of the networks comprising it. Its complex history, its
143
failed precedents and alternatives and the plurality of types of external cultural
resources drawn together to create it (including previous practical experience, proven
technical solutions, general modes of coordination and forms established of
representation) point to the highly creative work involved in its translations. Its
subsequent expansion to cover issues such as cultural bias and controversies regarding
science and expertise points to the inherently polysemic nature of policies: Never
completely fixed, the continuous process of blackboxing that bundled new meanings
and practices with older ones extended it and made it ever more central as new parts
of the network were linked to it. At the same time, it made it an object of contention, a
resource and prize in social conflicts between rivaling actor-networks. In both cases,
the policies were the result of an effective consensus achieved through the enactment
of power and authority.
However, lacking the technological aid that the separation of article and talk
pages enjoyed, the maintenance of effective consensus on the neutral point of view
policy demanded much more elaborate translations and continued negotiations to
sustain. At the same time, it became institutionalized enough to support a common
ground for participants with highly divergent and often conflicting views, and develop
into an assortment of mechanisms to enable their constructive cooperation. This
fostered the creation of a "culture of critical discourse" (Gouldner, 1979), where
justifications and arguments are openly discussed and judged based on their merits,
while preventing social fragmentation of the project.
As implied above, this culture was not an amorphous idea: it was carved in the
project through the institutionalization of standards and practices that had crucial
effects on Wikipedia's production, content and consumption. A notable example is the
creation of talk pages, which allowed participants to engage in productive discussion
and all readers to view these discussions. This open attitude, constructing every reader
as a potential editor, had important implications on the project's reception, as talk
pages gave its users effective tools to assess the value of the article. Likewise, the
institutionalized practice of leaving comments on the article page pointing to biased,
missing or un-encyclopedic content, both enabled editors to guide one another
through the work necessary to improve the encyclopedia and helped even completely
casual readers to assess the article. such comments, first articulated by editors
144
individually, slowly underwent a process of standardization until the creation of
templates – prefabricated standard comments and warnings that can be conveniently
pasted to the article through a link – made them an integral part of Wikipedia's
technological infrastructure. Such mechanisms thus served as conscription devices
(Henderson, 1991) which enabled Wikipedia's editors to enlist reader to their network,
encouraging them to share the vision of the project as an unfinished one; one that
requires constant care and a critical outlook in engaging it.
The vision of Wikipedia articles as always-in-the-making created a common
denominator between various kinds of contributors, and allowed it to continually
attract gifts of knowledge. While the policies described in this chapter were involved
in the creation of a gift economy which preferred and rewarded certain types of
contributions, this vision left room for other types of giving – most importantly
individual giving (as opposed to group-oriented, see ch.1) – as it was translated in
practice to an absolute insistence on the immediacy of contribution. This insistence on
immediacy was ever-present in Wikipedia, as it took the form of the note under each
article which stated that "you can edit this page right now! It's a free, community
project." It forced Wikipedia's founders and participants to relinquish the possibility
of strict control over content (as was the case in Nupedia). The price they paid for that
strategy was the inability to claim legitimacy for its content. The reward, much more
important at the time, was the ability to cater both individual and group-oriented
contributors at the same time – and the chance of transforming the former into latter.
The decisions described in this chapter precluded the possibility of gaining
legitimacy for Wikipedia based on its production method, in the manner attempted by
Nupedia. In the next chapter, I describe how Wikipedia's founders and participants
attempted to accord their project with some measure of legitimacy immersed in the
form and content of its articles, rather than its production. While the policies
presented in this chapter stabilized and institutionalized many aspects of Wikipedia's
collaborative production process they hardly addressed the content of the
encyclopedia itself. Due to its extremely liberal stance towards content in its early
months, the general issue of which types of texts should be considered encyclopedic
and thus to be included in Wikipedia was still to be determined. Just as the Wiki
145
process had to undergo local translation, so did the encyclopedic model. The next
chapter will thus focus on the image of the encyclopedia as it developed in Wikipedia.
146
Chapter 6: Wikifying the Encyclopedic Form
This chapter picks up the theme of the previous one: how the construction of
content policies in Wikipedia operated as a site for articulation of the production
process and the model of the encyclopedia. While the previous chapter focused on
policies dealing specifically with collaborative production, this chapter describes the
institutionalization of policies establishing standards for the inclusion or exclusion of
content. The translation of the encyclopedic form to Wikipedia, the interpretation and
selection of relevant attributes, was a contentious process, intimately related to
struggle over power and authority in the project. It culminated in the construction of
effective mechanisms for creating, modifying and enforcing content policies and the
articulation of an effective and relevant encyclopedic model. This model, relying on
attributes of the traditional encyclopedic article form but supplementing them with
innovative elements, played a crucial part in enabling Wikipedia's growth and
success.
As noted earlier, there was no clear image of what encyclopedia Wikipedia is
intended to produce in its first months, and almost no conventions and standards
regarding desired content. A reader randomly surfing through Wikipedia in that
period, would scarcely identify it as an encyclopedia141. Its hybrid mixture of content
forms was sustained by a permissive attitude that stemmed from Wikipedia's founders'
wish to accumulate large quantities of content as quickly as possible. Sanger and
Wales' frustration about not being able to promote Nupedia (see above, chapter 3) and
make it viable due to its lack of useful content drove them to construct Wikipedia
content policies as liberally as possible, preferring wide participation over legitimacy
141It contained, for example, a large number of lecture notes from a philosophy course Larry Sanger taught (Wikipedia, 2001b); Tim Shell's extensive description and analysis of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged (Wikipedia, 2001c) - a total of 346 articles comprising around 15% of all Wikipedia pages in its first months; copies of various states' constitutions, parts of the bible. Personal commentary pages on various subjects were also widespread, as well as policy pages, technical pages, and pages dedicated to discussing them. In addition, following a prevalent Wiki custom, participants could – and many did – start a personal page on the Wiki. These pages and all their subpages were considered for quite some time a personal area where users can post whatever content they choose to. Tim shell, for example used the subpages of his user page to keep a personal diary for a while, as well as records of places he's been (Wikipedia, 2001ao). Sanger regularly posted columns and general thoughts on its subpages (Wikipedia, 2001ap).
147
and quantity over quality. While this lack of selectiveness fulfilled its founders' aims,
it soon became obvious that if Wikipedia doesn’t have some measure of selectiveness
regarding content, it would run the risk of atrophying, or becoming just another venue
for endless discussions and unsorted content (see above, Chapter 5).
This problem was intensified by the diversity of Wikipedia's participants: they
lived all over the world, came from very different social and cultural backgrounds,
usually did not know each other beforehand and held very different opinions
regarding the project's content. However, they were generally united in the vision of
creating an encyclopedia. This meant that in order for them to coordinate action
effectively in their evolving global microstructure (Knorr-Cetina, 2005; Knorr-Cetina
and Brugger, 2000) they had to decide what an encyclopedia is, in practical terms, for
a project that was clearly distinct both in its technological infrastructure and its
production method.
Wikipedia's first year thus saw several attempts to formulate such policies,
usually initiated when new networks of participant emerged in the project and
promoted content that founders and veteran participants found problematic. The
pattern of action that emerged to deal with such events had a relatively regular
structure: in the first stage, an editing practice performed was identified as
problematic by one of the veteran users, and an alternative was sought. In the second
stage, the legitimacy of the content was determined in conscription devices such as
policy pages or mailing lists. This stage usually involved the project's founders as
prominent articulators, and the model of the encyclopedia constructed that serves as a
legitimate standard. It also involved blackboxing: using a name, or a small semantic
array, that substituted the description and explanation of policies. In the third stage,
this bundle – the policy – was disseminated and enforced using conscription devices
(Henderson, 1991), mostly in the form of the core network of policy pages.
The attempts of newcomers to reconstruct the form of Wikipedia's articles
were routinely countered by a dominant ideology promoted by the project's founders
(especially by Sanger, who took the leading role in policy formation at the time)
stating that "Wikipedia is an encyclopedia." This formulation represents Sanger's
rejection, and efforts to discourage, competing ideologies in Wikipedia. Such
ideologies, promoted by various users including LDC (Lee Daniel Crocker), LA2
148
(Lars Aronsson) and the Cunctator (who did not disclose his real name), emphasized
the innovative aspects of the project – being digital, hypertextual and collaborative –
and the need to modify the encyclopedia's model to utilize them. The result of these
conflicts was usually a compromise, though one that tended to support the traditional
model of the encyclopedia over more innovative and permissive options. However, it
was permissive enough to prevent dissenters from leaving the project.
Practically, Wikipedia's founders held that content should generally be
complacent with the traditional form of the encyclopedic article as the articulator
constructed it in relevant terms of its style and structure. They held that the concept of
an encyclopedia was clear and unproblematic: As Jimmy Wales stated, "One reason
for the success of the project so far is that it is instantly accessible. We have a concept
which people grasp intuitively: 'encyclopedia'. And we have software that is usable
with virtually no learning of any kind" (Wales, 2001j). Wikipedia's history
undoubtedly supports this statement to some extent, but not entirely, as the attempt to
translate the "intuitive" concept of encyclopedia to concrete policies often involved
disagreements and conflicts. The outcome of these conflicts was, at the time, far from
self evident and their settling demanded an exertion of symbolic power and the
enlistment of allies. Symbolic power was usually manifested in the ability to create
and manipulate conscription devices (Henderson, 1991) and other types of mediators
– texts, links, software code etc. – to effectively coordinate participants to perform
similar chains of actions.
Through such mediators, problematic content went through a process of form
investment (Thévenot, 2002a, 2002b): creating equivalences across time and space
between various practices, objects, persons, in order to stabilize and anchor the
participants' interpretation of this allegedly intuitive concept. This process progressed
whenever conflicts regarding eligible content emerged, and was usually successfully
carried out, mainly by the project's founders. Thus, the construction of content policy
in reaction to concrete practices and problems was simultaneously a construction of
an encyclopedic form. This form had peculiar properties: it was articulated through a
series of binary oppositions between Wikipedia and other forms of content, mainly
ones prevalent in its online environment. It did not rise to the level of a positive
definition, but rather placed Wikipedia in the center of a locally articulated system of
149
differences (Laclau and Mouffe, 1985, p. 132) that allowed it to include unorthodox
elements while retaining the fundamental justifying principle that "Wikipedia is an
encyclopedia."
In what follows, I focus on the construction of two such policies; Wikipedia is
not a Dictionary and What Wikipedia is not. To a large extent, they still function as
the backbone of Wikipedia's content selection policy.
6.1 Phase 1: Wiki is not Paper
The first attempt to programmatically rearticulate the form of the encyclopedia
to accommodate Wikipedia's innovative production model was made by Lee Daniel
Crocker on March 19th, 2001. After the policy formation initiative in February that
resulted in the policies discussed in the previous chapter, the Wikipedia community
stabilized as a set standard practices became an effective consensus within a core of
regular participants that could receive and socialize newcomers. The attempt to
translate the encyclopedic model to this new environment was initiated as a
fundamental discussion of Wikipedia's unique properties as a medium, and
established the notion that Wikipedia should remain first and foremost an
encyclopedia in terms of article format, but could allow itself to be very permissive in
terms of legitimate article topics.
The event the initiated this discussion was the creation of a new page named
Wiki is not an encyclopedia (Wikipedia, 2001aq) Lee Daniel Crocker, one of the
participants most involved in policy discussions during Wikipedia's early years142. In
March 19, he started this page as a place to discuss "[…] how Wiki differs from older
media, and what that implies about how we should use or modify traditions from
those other media." As its title suggests, it attempted to steer it away from the
traditional encyclopedic model. Shell asserted that this model had to be reinterpreted
and adopted to fit the model of a hypertext Wiki.
142 Crocker, who joined the project in February (after being previously involved in Nupedia), was a computer programmer and free software enthusiast, involved in several significant software and internet projects and an avowed techno-utopist.
150
The content of this page was comprised of several sections, each tackling a
different characteristic of the Wiki and illustrating its hypothetical consequences on
the form of the encyclopedia constructed in the project. Among these was a section
titled no size limit, in which Crocker suggested in contrast with traditional paper
encyclopedias' parsimony, Wikipedia could include an unlimited number of pages on
various topics143, as "hard disks are cheap." In another section, titled opinions, he
suggested that while articles should be "as factual as possible", there should be a
subpage titled /opinions for each articles, where participants could voice their
opinions on the subject144. The first of these suggestions was already discussed in
Nupedia, who cited the lack of size limits as a feature that could make it the
"broadest, deepest, and most up-to-date encyclopedia in history." However, Crocker's
version was far more radical, as it suggested writing extensively on subjects whose
very place in the encyclopedia was doubtful, thus expanding its traditional boundaries
by blurring the distinction between high and low culture. However, it was the second
suggestion that generated controversy, as it reopened some of the issues that seemed
closed by the institutionalization of the neutral point of view policy.
An hour after the posting of the page, Wales edited it, adding on the top of the
page the remark "The title of this page is entirely wrong. Wikipedia is an
encyclopedia. If it were to become yet another discussion forum, I would just
shut it down. The vision of yet another discussion forum doesn't motivate me in
the least." This was not a very unusual statement in terms of content: Wales simply
reiterated a primary concern of the projects founders, described in the previous
chapter. In terms of asserting his authority, however, this statement was
unprecedented, as Wales positioned himself for the first time as a final arbitrator
regarding the project's future. On this subject, at least, he posited himself as a
veritable OPP145, as his statement sharply outlined the boundaries of permissible
practices and discourse in Wikipedia.
143 Crocker cited types of poker games and the Simpson's TV series characters as examples. 144 Two other section dealt with style differences, suggesting to replace explanation of abbreviations and jargon with links to articles about them; and ease of editing, suggesting that "There should be less need of weasel words like 'at the time of this writing', 'generally recognized as', 'commonly believed that', etc. Just say it the way you think it is, and if you're proven wrong, come back and edit it later." 145 Wales' prerogative in this case – similar to the one he would later fill when he would declare that the Neutral Point of View is non-negotiable – was as close as he got to being and OPP. However, as later discussions indicated, the time honored "right to fork" in FOSS projects (dictating that participants
151
Wales then went on to post a response to each of the page's sections. In
contrast with the statement above, his specific comments were generally positive in
tone and in agreements with Croker's suggestions, except on the subject of opinions,
where he stated his "strong disagreement," explaining again that "Wikipedia IS an
encyclopedia. The Wikipedia should write neutrally about opinions, but the
Wikipedia should not put forward opinions."146
Responding to Wales' comments, Crocker promptly moved the page's content
to a new page titled Wiki is not paper Wikipedia, 2001ar). In it, he stated that he
agrees with Wales that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and that he shares "his desire
that it not become yet another discussion forum." This move placed the page on the
legitimate side of Wikipedia's discursive boundaries, and allowed the discussion to
continue, as veteran participants such as Larry Sanger and Tim Shell soon posted
responses and suggestions to it. Crocker also added new sections, dealing with the
consequences of timeliness and collaborative authorship, and urged other
participants to add their own sections or comments.
In the discussion which followed, two important suggestions emerged that
would have significant effects on Wikipedia's image. The first of those, discussed
above, is the highly permissive threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia, especially with
regards to popular culture. A second and related suggestion was to focus efforts on
articles related to current events, or news stories, in an attempt to generate traffic to
the website. These decisions broke the traditions of both print and computer
encyclopedias, shaping Wikipedia as it is known today – permissive, writing serious
articles about the most minute and esoteric subjects, and so up to date that it often
function as a news source.
In contrast with this permissive attitude regarding subject selection, the
desired form of specific articles remained subordinated to a traditional form. This
compromise illustrates the co-construction of Wikipedia and the model of the
encyclopedia it generated. Wishing to construct their project to as a new kind of
encyclopedia adapted to its innovative medium and technology, Wikipedia's founders should be allowed to copy all existing materials to a new project if the owner of the old one falls from favor) prevented him that position, as he could not totally control the project's future. 146 The use of the term "the Wikipedia" in Wales' comment is reminiscent of the fact that it was quite some time before a consensual use of the term was achieved.
152
and participants had to select which elements of the encyclopedic model are essential,
and which can be discarded. This decision was not self-evident, as Nupedia, for
example, adhered to the form of the print encyclopedia both in terms of style and of
scope. However, as it forwent Nupedia's emphasis on legitimacy and respectability,
Wikipedia could suffice with a more skeletal image of the encyclopedia, stretching its
form to include such low-culture or ephemeral subjects as popular cultured and
current events. This episode marked the boundaries limiting practices and justification
in the project, and demonstrated that a large degree of innovation can exist within
them.
Wiki is not paper ultimately failed to become a significant site for the
articulation of Wikipedia's form of the encyclopedia. While it played a significant role
in the initial construction of Wikipedia's form, and was temporarily incorporated to
Wikipedia's set of conscription devices (Henderson, 1991)147, it was not declared or
constructed as a policy page, and it never achieved that status. In the following
months, it was moved to the commentary section and later to the meta-wiki (Meta-
Wiki, 2001c) constructed to house the commentary pages when they were moved out
of the Wikipedia Wiki (see below). In contrast with actual policy pages, which stayed
on the main Wiki, it remained outside the core network of policy pages, the
assortment of privileged passage points that was used to standardize methods and
translate the various visions of Wikipedia's participants into an effective consensus.
The actual articulation of Wikipedia's encyclopedic form took place primarily in other
pages and in the context of conflicts over actual practices rather than over
hypothetical possibilities, as was the case here.
6.2 Phase 2: Wikipedia is not a Dictionary
The relatively stable state of Wikipedia's community lasted from February
until May, when it was disrupted by the joining in of new participants who promoted
a new approach to the project. This approach, emphasizing breadth and connectivity
between articles at the expanse of depth, was met with firm opposition by Larry
Sanger, who took it upon himself to establish and enforce production policies in the 147 For example, it was temporarily the first article linked to from the What Wikipedia is not policy page, even though it was not a policy page itself (cf. Wikipedia 2003).
153
project. In order to formulate these policies, Sanger attempted a process of form
investment (Thévenot, 1984) as he aggregated practices, justifications and
articulations from earlier discussions to create a general policy which was
summarized under the title Wikipedia is not a dictionary (Wikipedia, 2012as). In
contrast with previous efforts, this one was met with considerable opposition and had
a relatively lengthy process of institutionalization, as achieving an effective consensus
took considerable time and effort. The conflict, articulated mainly in terms derived of
the traditional encyclopedic form, started a second major policy initiative. While the
former one, in February, produced standard methods for collaborative production, this
one produced standard criteria defining what content is considered legitimate in
Wikipedia.
6.2.1 Encyclopedias vs. Dictionaries
Many of the articles written during Wikipedia's first months were very short,
containing only one or a few sentences, usually comprised of a general description of
the subject. Those so-called "stub" articles were usually considered as a legitimate
way to increase the breadth of the encyclopedia, even at the expanse of its depth. The
reasoning behind it was that such articles would eventually be expanded to become
full length articles. It was only in April 2001, about a month and a half after the
creation of the NPOV policy that concerned were raised that such articles may bring
diminish Wikipedia's legitimacy. It was then that the first attempt was made to
distinguish legitimate encyclopedic articles from illegitimate ones.
The initial trigger to discussing the distinction between encyclopedia and
dictionary was a question raised in Public domain resources (Wikipedia, 2001at), a
page dedicated to listing usable internet resources that could help editors create
articles. On march 28th, an unidentified editor posted on it a suggestion to use the
public domain 1913 Webster's Unabridged Dictionary (which was available online) as
a "basic definition reference." About an hour later, Sanger deleted the suggestion,
noting in the edit summary that "1913 is too old." In response, Wales started a Public
Domain Resources/Talk (Wikipedia, 2001au) page, and objected to Sanger's position,
claiming that "using the public domain 1913 Webster's Unabridged as a basic
154
reference for definitions of words can be very helpful. Of course, it is important for us
to remember that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a dictionary, so the random
copying of entries from that work can be discouraged. But using those entries as a
jumping off point seems like a great idea." In response, Sanger yielded his position,
and stated that
"I have no objection whatsoever to putting a link to a 1913 public domain dictionary on the Public domain resources page. My reservations are about what people will most likely ''do'' with it […]
As you said, we aren't really after dictionary definitions here; encyclopedias are different from dictionaries. We can ''use'' text ''from'' a public domain dictionary, sure. In most cases, though, I don't think it would make much sense simply to ''cut and paste'' a definition from an dictionary into Wikipedia."
Consequently, Wales reposted a link to the dictionary on the Public Domain
Resources page, followed by a warning reading "please use freely but sparingly,
keeping in mind that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a dictionary."
A few weeks later, on April 17th, an unknown editor started a very short article
titled drunk (Wikipedia, 2012av), reading: "Drunk in its most common usage, is
being intoxicated with alcohol," and noting various slang terms for it. Upon reading it,
Sanger started Drunk/Talk (Wikipedia, 2001aw) page, where he stated, building on
Wales' formulation in the former discussion that:
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a dictionary. The only reason, as far as I can tell, for enumerating various senses that a word can have is to direct people to appropriate articles; I don't see how Wikipedia has an interest qua encyclopedia in enumerating senses of a word in the way that a dictionary does. I'm certainly open to debate on this point; perhaps I'm not seeing things quite right.
This invitation invoked three different responses, each defending "dictionary
articles" from a different point of view.
The first, posted by Tim Shell Less than an hour later, was articulated in terms
of cost/benefit, wondering "What is the cost of a dictionary-like entry? Is Wikipedia
worse off for having them?" the second, posted by the author of the original drunk
page, advocated a process oriented approach, seeing such articles as a stage in the
article building process. It stated that "For wiki to be most useful, a dictionary like
stub article giving a short definition of a topic should be at the top of longer articles.
155
New topics may initially manifest as dictionary sized entries and eventually grow into
full articles." The third and most radical response was posted by Lee Daniel Crocker.
In accordance with his far-reaching stance towards innovation in Wikipedia, Crocker
attacked the relevance of the very distinction between encyclopedia and dictionary.
Crocker claimed that
The distinction between "dictionary" and "encyclopedia" is imposed by the limitations of paper. There is no reason we should obey such an arbitrary distinction when it is not useful. Wikipedia is "A place to look up things you may have read but don't understand." Certainly we want descriptive text in much greater detail than a dictionary because we don't suffer the size limitations, but there's no reason at all not to have the dictionary-like information as well, and in fact I think we should have more of it, and a standard way for presenting it.
An hour later, Sanger moved the whole conversation to a new page he titled
Encyclopedia and or versus dictionary (Wikipedia, 2012ax), where he posted his
answer, dealing with all three point of view. In reaction to Tim Shell's rhetorical
question, he claimed that "the cost of having many dictionary-like entries--which list
several senses of a word or phrase and give no further information than the meaning
of the word or phrase--is to give the impression that Wikipedia has no ambitions to
being any more than a dictionary." In reaction to the original author's claim that such
articles are a natural result of Wikipedia's article production process, Sanger agreed,
claiming that" […] there's nothing wrong with 'stub' articles per se, and in fact I think
it's great to have them. I just wish that when you make them, they wouldn't consist
just of lists of definitions of senses of the title word or phrase." Finally, in reaction to
Lee Daniel Crocker's argument, he insisted that there is an essential difference
between dictionaries and encyclopedias:
The purpose of a dictionary is to give the meanings of words and short, common phrases; the purpose of an encyclopedia is to impart knowledge. Dictionaries help us to understand language; encyclopedias go far beyond that […]
Why doesn't someone make http://www.wiktionary.com to make a wiki-based dictionary? That would be interesting, and it could be useful, too.
[…] encyclopedias provide more information than is typically needed when one consults a dictionary. It would be silly to come to Wikipedia if all you wanted to know is the meaning of the word--
156
and usually, when we (as some of us often do) consult a dictionary, that is all we want to know.
[…]
So I think we should say that our sole purpose is to build an encyclopedia, and our habits should be consistent with this purpose. […] we on Wikipedia should focus not on perfecting our lexicography but on increasing and imparting our (a posteriori) knowledge. I do think that we "perfect our lexicography" at the overall expense of our central purpose, of building an encyclopedia.
The discussion continued until April 19th, in both the Encyclopedia and or
versus dictionary/Talk page and on the Wikipedia-l mailing list, using these same
arguments or ones very similar to them, without real consequences or decisions. The
move that set the tone for the discussion, and finally determined its outcome, was
Sanger's suggestion to create a "Wikitionary" – a proposal he simultaneously posted
on the page and to the mailing list (Sanger, 2001e). Whether a conscious attempt of
deflecting dissent or not, it was highly effective in eroding the opposition to Sanger
and Wales' stance. Sanger's suggestion got considerable support on the mailing list
(for example, Wales, 2001h and Rybo, 2001), alongside loud objections (such as
Gérard, 2001, and Parks, 2001) and a lively debate began as to its merits and technical
implementation. While plans of creating it were not carried out at the time148, these
discussions reinforced the distinction between encyclopedia and dictionary without
having to actually articulate it. Soon, the discussion about Wikitionary replaced the
original debate on the form of the Wikipedia, and it quickly died out. Wales' original
statement that Wikipedia is not a dictionary, and the subsequent discussion, didn't
have much effect, as hardly anyone made an effort to disseminate or enforce it - or for
that matter, to breach it149. The Encyclopedia and or versus dictionary page soon
became inactive, and was not incorporated into the core of content policy pages. The
importance of this conflict is mainly in its establishing the relevance of the distinction
between encyclopedia and dictionary, and in blackboxing the relevant position under
the catchy title "Wikipedia is not a dictionary."
148 It was implemented much later, in December 2002, long after Sanger left the project. 149 The only such incident occurred on May 14th when ran into the article traitor, including only a short definition of the term, and started traitor/Talk page where he remarked that "Wikipedia isn't a dictionary" and asked that the article be broadened. However, this action did not produce any reactions or repercussions.
157
6.2.2 Conflicting Strategies of Encyclopedia production
The occasion that brought about the invocation of "Wikipedia is not a
dictionary" as a practical policy occurred in May, as part of a larger confrontation
over Wikipedia's nature and goals. This confrontation happened after a small but
influential wave of (mostly European) new users joined the project in late April and
may, including, among others, KoyaanisQatsi (also known as KQ, joined April 21st),
Paul Robinson (joined May 1st), LA2, Pinkunicorn and Wathiik (all joined May 10th),
Hornlo (joined May 13th) and Sjc (joined May 24th). These new editors were
extremely prolific and played an important role in expanding the project. However,
some of them introduced new, unorthodox and controversial editing practices. Though
they differed in the details of their editing practices, most of them put a prime on the
breadth of Wikipedia and on interconnectivity between articles, often at the expanse
of depth and seriousness. This was exemplified in a tendency to write short articles
containing only a few sentences with very basic information and interlink them to
other articles, and in the creation of pages whose sole purpose was to help navigation,
by massing links connected to specific topics, dates in history, etc.
The user that led these trends and stood at the focus of the conflict was LA2.
A programmer and internet entrepreneur150, he was connected to a group of Swedish
contributors who were involved in the University of Linköping's Lysator computer
club, including also LinusTolke, Mjausson and Pinkunicorn. LA2 assumed a role
Similar to those of the protagonists portrayed by Star and Griesemer (1989),
Functioning as an OPP for a network of allies, and more importantly, for the editing
practices prevalent in it. In this capacity, he attempted to translate these practices into
standard methods (or at least acceptable methods) and redefine Wikipedia's
characteristics as a boundary object in a way compatible with his aims. While the
other members of the network performed similar practices, he was the most prominent
and prolific, and the only one that articulated and actively advocated these practices
using Wikipedia's conscription devices (Henderson, 1991).
LA2 began editing pages in Wikipedia under that nickname on May 10th, and
immediately proved to be extremely productive, contributing an unusual amount of 150 Even though he used a nickname, he didn't conceal his real name, Lars Aronsson. He was the founder of Project Runeberg the Scandinavian version of Project Gutenberg (http://runeberg.org/)
158
144 edits by the end of the day – more than the monthly yield of most veteran
editors151. He wrote about a large variety of subjects he often knew little about, such
as communication, mathematics, history, philosophy, comics, Sweden, Higher
education institutes and German politics. His editing style was unique and easily
recognizable: almost all his edits were very short, containing usually no more than a
sentence or two with very basic information, and links to other articles, one of which
he usually went on to edit next. Some of his articles gave only a short literal
definition152; some were comprised almost completely of links to other articles153;
many others contained mainly links to external websites154. An unusual percentage of
his edits resulted in the creation of new articles155. This pattern was an intentional
strategy, as LA2 later commented that: "My opinion was that different people could
contribute a skeleton of new article headings and hypertext links, while others could
contribute longer texts to each article."
LA2's practices and his vision that emphasized the network aspect of
Wikipedia over the content of its articles strongly contradicted Sanger's view. Sanger
saw the heart of the project as the production of mature or "good enough"
encyclopedia articles, generally devaluating all other kinds of practices, especially if
he saw them as interfering with this goal. This emphasis may have been related to his
vision of using Wikipedia's content in Nupedia, which he still saw as the more
important project. Another cause for friction, at least as important, was LA2's
disregard for established practices and seniority in the project, and the obvious lack of
seriousness expressed in the humorous nature of some of his edits. The outcome of
these contrasting attitudes was a lengthy conflict between LA2 and Sanger, conducted
all over Wikipedia, aided by various scopic media (Knorr-Cetina, 2005) and
conscription devices (Henderson, 1991). Its result was the exclusion of the former
from the project and the formation of a new policy by the later. 151 In his first 106 edits he was not logged in, but the identical IP address in the archive, as well as the similar editing style, indicate that his first edit was made on 9:03 (Wikipedia, 2001ay). 152 For example, the Ship article read: "A big boat. See Sea Transport or transport" (Wikipedia, 2001az). 153 For example, Philosopher (Wikipedia, 2001ba) and Comic-Strip (Wikipedia, 2001bb) were comprised completely of such links. 154 For example, the WIPO article read: "The World Intellectual Property Organization. See intellectual property and http://www.wipo.org/" (Wikipedia, 2001bc). The University of Oxford article read: "The famous university in Oxford, England. *Official website, http://www.oxford.ac.uk/" (Wikipedia, 2001bd). 155 41% percents of his edits resulted in the creation of new articles, in contrast with less than 30% for other editors at the time.
159
On 12:19, May 16th Sanger edited Wikipedia after being away for a couple of
hours156. As a routine practice, he probably scanned the "recent changes" page –a
central scopic medium in Wikipedia, enabling editors to see all the edits made in the
system. Going over it, he could not overlook the new Wikipedian who literally took
over it. LA2 was responsible for almost all the edits made while Sanger was away157.
Even more conspicuous was an edit he made to the Wikipedia article (Wikipedia,
2001be). For a new editor, this was highly unusual, as the Wikipedia page, describing
the project, was rarely edited, and exclusively by the most veteran of editors – Sanger,
Wales, Gross and Shell. Even more unusual was the edit itself – a complaint about
Wikipedia's slowness, linking to a new page LA2 started on the topic. Sanger quickly
moved the edit to the Wikipedia bugs (Wikipedia, 2001bf) page, the usual venue for
such complaints, and responded to it in a practical manner, suggesting that maybe the
issue should also be raised on Wikipedia-l.
After this incident, Sanger naturally checked LA2's user page, and discovered
the following paragraph:
A brave fighter can do with a short sword, for he is not afraid to go close to his enemy. The way to acquire knowledge is by close and intense study of the subject matter. My purpose with contributing to Wikipedia is not to make a lasting and useful encyclopedia, because I think that requires a whole lot more organization than this, but I think that I can learn something from using and contributing to this collaboratively edited hypertext. (Wikipedia, 2001bg)
In this statement, LA2 excluded himself from the Wikipedia community,
doubting that it could achieve it manifested goal. His goals are different: to learn
about collaborative editing of hypertext. Upon reading this, immediately after dealing
with the Wikipedia page edit, Sanger posted a response on LA2's page. Perhaps in an
attempt to diffuse the tension, he wrote: "As an encyclopedia editor, I am now of the
opinion that a lasting and useful encyclopedia must first exist--and the best way to put
it into existence if it's a wholly volunteer project is to get rid of the official
organization wherever self-organization can do. Please see
http://www.nupedia.com. :-)".
156 The following is a reconstruction based primarily on the edit logs of these dates, and to some extent on Sanger's memoir and Wikipedia-l mailing list archive. I took some literary freedoms in writing the narrative – mostly in places where I could not determine the exact chronological order of specific actions - but all assumptions are plausible, and none are critical to the unfolding of the events. 157 44 edits out of a total of 61.
160
A few minutes later, while going over LA2's recent edits, Sanger found
another disturbing edit: LA2 started a new page called Open Source Initiative
(Wikipedia, 2001bh). The text on the page read: "See the website http://www.osi.org/.
(not that it is related, but quite funny)." The article was a joke, made in somewhat
poor taste: While the open source initiative was an organization dedicated to
promoting open source software, the link led to the homepage of a Canadian pig
breeding company that shared the initiative's acronym, called "Ontario Swine
Improvement." Sanger promptly edited removed LA2's content and replaced it with
the text "The Open Source Initiative is... (sorry, I don't know...this is my way of
asking what it is!)." In the edit summary, he wrote "Removed link. Wikipedia is
neither a links collection nor a joke collection." Sanger's initial reaction towards
LA2's edits seemed to work. A day after Sanger commented on LA2's userpage that
"a useful encyclopedia must first exist", he answered that "existence is a necessary but
perhaps not sufficient requirement. But the only way we can find out is to create it."
Subsequently, LA2 began engaging the project somewhat more seriously – an attitude
exemplified both in a sharp decrease in the number of humorous edits, and in posting
policy suggestions on the rules to consider.
While rules to consider, like all Wikipedia pages, was open to editing by
anyone, it was the first time a non-veteran editor added a new rule to it – and in LA2's
case, it was only a week after his joining the project. The main rule he added, titled
"build the web", described what he considered good practices for linking between
articles – a subject not addressed at the time. The rule read:
"Articles in an encyclopedia are nodes in a hypertext system. Don't just write the article, but also consider its place in the link web. Make upward links to categories and contexts (Charles Darwin was a biologist, Sahara is a desert in Africa, enlightenment happened in the 18th century). Make sideways links to neighboring articles (for proton see also electron, Oregon borders on California). Don't build category trees too deep and narrow, or too flat. Writing category directories first (top-down) will help ensure that subcategory articles get useful names (church names are not good now)" (Wikipedia, 2001bi)
LA2's practices and his vision that emphasized the network aspect of
Wikipedia over the content of its articles contradicted Sanger's view, to an extent.
Sanger saw the heart of the project as the production of mature or "good enough"
encyclopedia articles, generally devaluating all other kinds of practices, especially if
161
he saw them as interfering with this goal. This emphasis may have been related to his
vision of using Wikipedia's content in Nupedia, which he still saw as the more
important project. However, there was nothing in this proposed policy, or in most of
LA2's actual edits, that directly conflicted with Sanger's vision and the project's
prevalent practices and policies.
During the following days Sanger monitored LA2's edits, making on topic
comments and minor edits where he felt it was appropriate. During this period,
however, Sanger's comments remained courteous and polite158: LA2 productivity
made him a valuable asset for the project. For a while, at least, it seemed that
Wikipedia's status as a boundary object possessing the ability to accommodate the
tendencies of various networks would prevail. This relative calm, however, did not
last long.
6.2.3 Conflict and Policy Formation
The conflict between Sanger and LA2 erupted after Sanger criticized a number
of LA2's edits in a very short interval on May 20th. Most of his comments were
directed at two editing practices characteristic of LA2's pattern of editing (though not
limited to him): the creation of glossary-type articles explaining the meaning of
computer-related terms and of articles comprised mainly of links to external websites.
As noted above, Sanger feared the prospect of Wikipedia incorporating large amount
of dictionary type articles and the new focus on computer related terms threatened to
do just that. As for the second type of articles, Sanger feared of Wikipedia becoming a
"list of link" should be interpreted, at least in part, as a manifestation of its position in
the field of internet knowledge resources. DMOZ, One of its main sources of
inspiration, was exactly that – an index of links. Thus, in order to establish its place
158 One example was the Trojan horse article (Wikipedia, 2001bj), which initially described only the computer related meaning of the term. Though veteran editors soon added a description of its mythological origins, the computer related definition remained first on the page. Thus, on May 19th Sanger moved this definition to the end of the article, noting on the edit summary that "This isn't an encyclopedia of computerese-and-oh-also-a-little-Western-civ. :-) So, I put the computerese sense second, hope no one minds." Another example was on the hacking article (Wikipedia, 2001bk), where Sanger commented "What are some methods that hackers use? What have (some) hackers done to earn their reputation (unauthorized access)? Have there been some famous hacks? I ask these questions because I'm concerned that the above is just like an entry in a dictionary of usage, and Wikipedia isn't a dictionary of usage, it's an encyclopedia".
162
and identity – and especially considering the ease and practical sensibility of loading
articles with links instead of actual content – Wikipedia had to be steered away from
that option.
The trigger for the conflict was an edit on the Boston article LA2 created,
comprised mainly of links to external websites (Wikipedia, 2001bl). Sanger's edits to
the article itself were few and subtle: he replaced one external link (to the Boston
Globe's website) with one directing to a new Wikipedia article he opened on the
subject, and added the headline "links" above the links to the cities websites, thus
signaling that it was not in itself article content. The important part of this edit,
however, was the edit summary which read "Wikipedia is a not a list of links, it's an
encyclopedia. :-)". The smiley sign at the end of the comment is supposed to create a
feeling of lightness and diffuse any kind of tension it may generate159. Some twenty
minutes later, LA2 posted a comment on Sanger's user page:
Comment on "Wikipedia is a not a list of links, it's an encyclopedia. :-)": There is no way we can input as many facts (about a city such as Boston) into Wikipedia as there are on the city's official website. If Wikipedia is "a way to find information", then links to external websites should be an excellent means to this end. (Wikipedia, 2001bm):
Though LA2 was probably unaware of the meaning of his assertion, he
actually destabilized Wikipedia, sending it into a critical situation (Thévenot, 2002a,
2002b) where it was no longer clear what it is and what regime is governing the
practices in it. While Sanger attempted to model the form of Wikipedia's articles on
that of traditional encyclopedias, LA2's editing practices and justifications suggested
that Wikipedia articles should be viewed as "a way to find information", rather than
an encyclopedia articles per se. The suggestion that Wikipedia should be made to fit
the informational needs of readers as soon and as efficiently as possible was implicitly
an attempt to replace the vision of the project based on the encyclopedic model with
one based on practical usability and relative disregard for its traditional form.
159 In the interval, Sanger made another gesture towards LA2. On 6:36, he added a post on the Wikipedia Announcements page (Wikipedia, 2001a), Reporting the rapid increase in the number of pages in Wikipedia – jumping from 3969 pages containing at least one comma to 4985 in just ten days. Sanger attributed this increase to "a few relatively new hands like KoyaanisQatsi, LA2, Wathiik, Mjausson and others," thus directly and publicly acknowledging LA2's contribution.
163
It took Sanger considerable time to react to LA2's comment, as he did not
make any edits to Wikipedia for more than a day160. When he returned, he started an
all-out attack on LA2. He first answered LA2's comment on his personal userpage
(Larry Sanger), stating that:
I agree with you, but I meant exactly what I said. Wikipedia is not a list of links. I think it is a very, very bad habit to get into, to start just listing links in place of a real encyclopedia entry!
This laconic response, devoid of real justifications other than the invocation of
the encyclopedic form, acknowledged the validity of LA2's suggestion and his
reasoning, but refused to accept it. It was an insistence on the supremacy of the
original vision for the project, based on the model of the encyclopedia, even at the
expanse of efficiency. Sanger felt confident enough in his authority to assert it without
a minimal justification or explanation.
After posting his response, Sanger continued to fix other edits made by LA2.
His pattern of editing uncovers the intentional inspection of LA2's edits, made
possible through Wikipedia's scopic media. The first such edit was on the scheme
(Wikipedia, 2001bn) article. The article originally referred to a programming
language by that name, and LA2 added a general definition of the term. While doing
so, he edited it to resemble a dictionary article, enumerating the divergent meanings
and adding a part of speech in the beginning of each meaning, so it looked thus:
n Plan or catalog over objects in a group. The same objects can be categorized by more than one scheme. See also Wikipedia category schemes.
npr Short for Schemer, a variant of the programming language Lisp, where the available commands have been considerably reduced to make things much easier to work with.
Sanger deleted LA2's contribution, removing the enumeration and the
description of part of speech, and replacing the first definition with the sentence "see
conceptual scheme". He then started a scheme/Talk (Wikipedia, 2001bo) page, and
explained his action, stating:
To create an entry, "scheme," just in order to give a brief definition seems unproductive to me. On my view, articles that simply give a brief, mediocre definition of a word are best left
160 Sanger explained his absence by blaming internet connectivity problems. During this interval, LA2 made over 180 edits.
164
uncreated; the notion of a conceptual scheme is much-studied by philosophy. ''That'' deserves an encyclopedia entry--not a definition, but a discussion of what has been said about conceptual schemes.
Sanger's move invoked again the traditional model o the encyclopedia to
attack LA2's edits. However, this time the problem was not the lack of content, but
rather its type (definition) and quality (mediocre). Moreover, his comment this time
was much less polite, pointing out substantive shortcomings in LA2's edit, not just to
its inconsistency with the encyclopedic form. LA2 answered Sanger's comment on the
same page eight minutes later:
Larry, what are you trying to tell me here? Try to be constructive. An entry for "Scheme" already existed, describing the programming language. I wanted to point out that the word Scheme also has a more general meaning. Anybody is free to add pointers to conceptual schemes or whatever they find relevant. Anybody arriving at the entry for "scheme" (by search, link, or otherwise) should be interested in finding a roadmap of different meanings of the word, or at least I would. -- Should we be silent about the non-programming language meaning of the word? Should I go on to write about conceptual schemes? (Sorry, I hardly have the knowledge.) Or should I simply go away?
In contrast with his previous response to Sanger, LA2's response in this case
was much more defensive. Refusing to accept Sanger's construction of the project as a
traditional encyclopedia in the strict sense, he justified his actions once more in
practical terms: the general meaning of the term was something he as a reader would
be interested in, and hence it merits inclusion. This move transformed his article into a
qualified object within a specific order of worth, based on practical usability.
However, LA2's comment was first and foremost an expression of frustration. Unable
to follow Sanger's instructions, and reluctant to except his articulation of the project,
he first raised the option of leaving the project.
Sanger probably didn't have a chance to read LA2's reaction, as he was already
reacting to his edit on another article page, which was even more problematic from
his point of view. This chronological discrepancy, born from the medium temporal
and spatial properties, prevented the option of reaching an agreement through
negotiation, and resulted in unilateral actions which would have significant results for
both participants and for the project in general.
165
While LA2 replied to Sanger on the scheme article, Sanger edited the article
titled Am (Wikipedia, 2001bp), started by LA2 a few minutes earlier. In it, LA2 listed
5 different meanings of the word, again with enumeration and a description of parts of
speech, so it closely resembled a dictionary article. In contrast with his edit in the
scheme article, Sanger did not alter the content itself, and neither did he start a talk
page. Rather, he added in the bottom of the page a link to a new page titled Wikipedia
is not a dictionary (Wikipedia, 2001as). He then immediately added the same link to
LA2's user page (Wikipedia, 2001bq), in a comment stating "LA2, in my opinion,
Wikipedia is not a dictionary, and it shouldn't be treated as one". Five minutes later,
he created the actual content of Wikipedia is not a dictionary. It read:
Wikipedia is not a dictionary.
Some Wikipedians have had a habit of starting an article, listing several senses of a term, and then stopping working on that article, as though they were interested only in giving the meanings of various terms.
I don't like this habit. It encourages in new Wikipedians the idea that we are, in fact, just developing a dictionary.
While on the one hand I am delighted that Wikipedia is growing in ''breadth,'' I am coming around to the view that breadth ''at the expense'' of the very notion of what we are working on is a bad idea.
As I see it, brief, "stub" articles are to be encouraged--as long as they aren't just definitions. They should contain encyclopedic information of some sort. Not just the meanings of terms.
Moreover, there are plenty of senses of terms that ''aren't'' of interest ''in an encyclopedia.'' They would be ''in a dictionary,'' but Wikipedia isn't a dictionary.
--Larry Sanger
Sanger strategy followed the pattern outlined by former occasions of policy
formation, and especially the one employed by Wales during the creation of the
neutral point of view page: he transmuted a practical rule designed to de-legitimize a
specific practice into a policy, moving from specific cases to a higher level of
abstraction through form investment and blackboxing. It built on the previous
formulation that "Wikipedia is not a dictionary" to establish a new standard for
editing practices which went far beyond the original, literal sense of the statement. In
a move similar to Wales', he gave the policy a page of its own and blackboxed it with
166
a catchy name. He then advanced the page to the core network of Wikipedia's policy
pages by adding it to the rules to consider page, where he gave a shorter formulation
of the policy, leaving out the first person parts and the reference to preexisting cases.
The process of form investment that Sanger performed in this instance placed
Wikipedia articles within one of two categories: dictionary articles comprised of
definitions, or encyclopedic articles containing "encyclopedic information of some
sort." This distinction was constructed as essential to determine the legitimacy of
articles and edits. The issue of practical usability, promoted by LA2, could not be
articulated within that frame, as it was part of a different regime incommensurable
with the one suggested. This move transformed LA2's articles into qualified objects
that should be tested (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006) against the demands of a regime
he himself did not acknowledge as relevant. However, this transformation was only a
byproduct: LA2's articles were not explicitly mentioned in the page, and were related
to it only through links. They functioned as scaffolding that could be removed once
the policy was in place, and moved from the center of the drama to its margins,
demoted from critical moments to mere examples. The importance of the policy lay
mainly in the contrast between typified cases of unwanted editing and an ideal form of
the encyclopedia,, and the specific guidelines it gave as to which types of edits are
considered as legitimate and which do not.
However, the policy's aim went beyond its title: For he did not only target
dictionary-like articles, but the whole strategy of "building the web," which was based
on focusing on Wikipedia's breadth at the expanse of depth. Further collaboration for
this interpretation can be found in Sanger's reply to LA2's insinuation that he might
leave the project. Immediately after posting Wikipedia is not a dictionary, Sanger
found the reply left by LA2 on scheme/Talk and answered it, urging him to stay and
explaining his position:
[…] No, I don't want you to go away! I'd just like you to concentrate your energies on your areas of expertise. What irritated me (I admit it, I was irritated) was that you created a link to an article, called "scheme," on a topic on which there is expert "knowledge" (i.e., what philosophers theorize about conceptual schemes), and yet what you wrote did little more than give a rather mediocre definition of a term that any reasonably well-educated person understands. I don't see what value there is in doing that, other than to create a node in a web of mediocre dictionary
167
definitions. This inspired me to write Wikipedia is not a dictionary. […]
This comment gives a deeper insight into Sanger's actions, rooted in a vision
that demanded that every effort to expand Wikipedia meets a minimal standard of
quality. In contrast with Wikipedia's institutionalized production processes, Sanger
suggested that the way realize this standard is to "concentrate your energies on your
areas of expertise." However, the actual strategy Sanger employed was not based on
insisting that people should write on their areas of expertise, but rather that they
should not write about subject when their knowledge does not exceed that of "any
reasonably well-educated person."
In light of this interpretation, the distinction between encyclopedia and
dictionary thus takes a double meaning: it is both a distinction between different
cultural forms and between different types of producers endowed with different
epistemic virtues. The dictionary is identified with the layman, who may know the
general meaning of a term, while the encyclopedia is identified with the expert, who
should know the "expert knowledge" – that is, what academic experts have to say
about the subject. This distinction does not break away completely from the
immediate context of the discussion: the "mediocre" knowledge of the dictionary is
explicitly linked to the vision of "building the web", which Sanger refers to as an
attempt to create a "web of mediocre dictionary definitions."
By the time Sanger finished formulating the policy and answering LA2 the
latter had already made his move and posted his final say in the matter: on May 21st,
12:54, LA2 added a comment to the Wikipedia is not a dictionary page saying "There
is a very simple solution to your problems. I'm out of here--LA2". Two minutes later
he posted a similar comment on his userpage, and stopped participating in the
project161. In contrast with Richard Kulisz' departure (outlined in the previous
chapter), LA2's disappearance generated considerable uproar and undermined
Sanger's policy initiative. In contrast with Kulisz, LA2 was a highly productive and
integrated member in the community. Moreover, while Kulisz' limited his posts to
article and talk pages, LA2 left his final message on the very policy page that was the
161 While he eventually returned to the project five months later he did not do so as long as Sanger headed it.
168
pretext for his departure. Following his announcement, Sanger and various other
editors posted messages urging him not to leave the project, but to no avail. He never
responded to them, or acknowledged that he read them.
Those messages, while having no effect on LA2, undermined Sanger's new
policy initiative.162 Their presence on the Wikipedia is not a dictionary page meant
that it could by no means be constructed as an effective consensus. While some of the
editors sided with Sanger's position or offered again to build "Wikitionary" (or a
special space in Wikipedia), others directly contradicted Sanger position, as they
presented it as his personal opinion rather than an established policy. For example,
STG (Stefan Gilbert), a veteran editor, posted on the Wikipedia is not a dictionary a
comment urging La2 to "stick around" and adding that "Larry has some opinions
(which weren't directed at anyone personally) that aren't necessarily shared by
everyone. Personally, I don't see a problem with dictionary-style entries". As a result
of this and other comments, Sanger soon conceded his attempt to set a general
enforceable policy such as neutral point of view. He stated that "for the record, I
entirely respect STGs opinion and that smart, honest people can disagree about this,"
and that "I am just giving my opinion. Remember, this is a Wiki."
Sanger's withdrawal closed the subject with a reasonable compromise that all
parties could live with. In the days following LA2's departure, Sanger dropped the
subject of dictionary articles. Thus, the result of the conflict between Sanger and LA
were indecisive: while Sanger articulated Wikipedia is not a dictionary as an
important policy and drove LA2 out of the project, LA2 departure and the support he
subsequently got from various participants forced Sanger to give up any hope of
making it into a binding policy, at least for the time being. However, LA2's departure
severely damaged the "building the web" approach, as it left it without its main
promoter and its most avid implementer. Finally, it is noteworthy that throughout this
controversy Jimmy Wales, Sanger's boss and co founder, remained silent, leaving the
actual fighting to Sanger and LA2 and refusing to take a position on either side.
162 One anonymous editor even started a page called Wikipedia is a dictionary (Wikipedia, 2001br), which Sanger promptly edited to read "No. Wikipedia is not a dictionary. Stop treating it like one. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia."
169
6.2.4 Larry's Policy Columns
While the social drama around LA2 ended rather quickly, it echoed through
the project for some time later, as Sanger felt compelled to reiterate his position on the
subject. On June 10th, almost three weeks after the end of the discussion on Wikipedia
is not a dictionary, Sanger started a new subpage in his userpage, titled Larry
Sanger/Columns (Wikipedia, 2001ap) as a location for presenting his thoughts on
various Wikipedia related subjects. The first of these columns, Why a list of the
senses of a word is not an encyclopedia article (Wikipedia, 2001bs) explained his
reasons for opposing articles such as scheme or Am. His main argument against these
articles was once again based on the distinction between dictionary and encyclopedia.
Sanger began by explaining the need for the column, implicitly referring to the
LA2 controversy: some people disagree with his view, "or simply do not understand"
them. He then went on to state the basic assumption that guided him, invoking the
concept of the encyclopedia: "it is obvious that Wikipedia (like encyclopedias
generally) is not in the business simply of giving dictionary definitions…in order to be
proper encyclopedia articles, they will contain some non-semantic ("synthetic," if you
will) information about the subject of the article." Thus, the problem with listing
senses of words is that "in place of a proper encyclopedia entry, listing out many
different senses of a word has in English, inevitably leads to the listing of very many
definitions that are not topics of encyclopedia entries."
Sanger columns drew some responses, who pointed out that dictionary like
stub articles are important for the creation of more comprehensive articles. Sanger
insisted on that he only resisted "lists of the senses of words, some of which are not
the subjects of encyclopedia articles", as they "won't become articles unless someone
deletes most of them and replaces them with a proper article or two". Both the
responses and Sanger's replies to them were written in a calm and reasoned tone. The
drama, it seems, had died out. By June 12th, when Sanger added a link to Why a list of
the senses of a word is not an encyclopedia article from the older debate Encyclopedia
and or versus dictionary (Wikipedia, 2001ax) the discussion had already died out.
Sanger use of his personal page as a venue for personal columns instead of a
policy page signaled a shift in attitude, as he all but stopped attempting to create or
170
enforce policies but rather chose to set a personal example, and promote his views
through unofficial columns on his private page. In the following month, he slowly and
carefully began modifying content that he considered at odds with it. He added
questions and comments to the pages of very short articles, giving a clear indication
that they were flawed and urging other editors to elaborate them. He placed all the
external links under a sub-title "links," distinguishing them from the article itself and
changed internal links as to leave only those specifically relevant to the context of the
article163. In cases where the editor or editors of an article were known, Sanger
requested they fix what he saw as their shortcomings – though in a much more polite
manner than he did before, and while attempting to avoid direct conflict and
arguments, preferring to do the necessary work himself or noting that it should be
done rather than confronting and reproaching editors that created articles that needed
such work. Sanger deleted content that he considered dictionary-like and with no hope
of becoming encyclopedic only in cases where the writer was anonymous, meaning
that there was no specific user to engage in discussion and at the same time no one
likely to challenge the deletion164. In other such cases, he completely replaced content
he considered as un-encyclopedic with original content of his own creation165.
Sanger's did not meet any opposition, and in some cases other editors even copied his
actions.
On June 29th, Sanger ran into a large amount of very short articles, mainly on
persons related to medical and cultural subjects, started by a single anonymous editor
identifiable through his IP address166. Most of these articles contained only dates of
birth and death, and occupation. While they were very short, they clearly did not fall
into the category of dictionary articles. Upon fixing a layout problem in an article on
Simon Flexner (Wikipedia, 2001bw), containing only his name and dates of birth and
163 As he previously did on LA2's Boston article. For example, on June 8th he added the sub-title "Links:" to the article Disease and explained in the edit summary that "we should not use external links to substitute for info that we ourselves want to include, IMO. So links should go under 'Links:'" (Wikipedia, 2001bt). 164 For example, on June 9th Sanger deleted the content of the article Of, claiming that "[…] this isn't a dictionary...I mean, what encyclopedia-type stuff can you say about 'of'?" (Wikipedia, 2001bu). 165 For example, on June 30th, Sanger edited the basis article, which had two definitions in it, one pertaining to the mathematical meaning and below it other one defining it as "is a set of facts used as a starting point for an argument or larger discussion." Sanger deleted that sentence, noting on the edit summary that he is "removing dictionary definition of 'basis,' which is not ever going to be an encyclopedia article" (Wikipedia, 2001bv). 166 Wikipedia's edit history feature presents the IP of the editor who made a certain edit, unless he chooses a username.
171
death, he wondered in his edit summary "Why create an entry if all you know are the
person's birth and death dates?" in response, Hornlo posted a comment on Sanger's
userpage that tried to justify such articles (which he claimed that he did not create) as
"provocative editing--creating, or changing, a page to get it onto the recent changes
list, hoping it will provoke someone to flesh it out." Sanger, in response, explained
why he saw such "provocative editing" as problematic:
Good point, Larry, but it still annoys me. Yes, it's great to leave things undone, but these wimpy entries do add up and in the short-term and medium-term, make Wikipedia look, well, superficial. That's what I don't like. –Larry
In response, Hornlo suggested it "might be a good topic for a future column167:
'What makes a good /seed/basic/minimal article?', or a follow-on to the 'not a
dictionary' column".
On July 1st, Sanger answered Hornlo's challenge with a new column titled the
perfect stub article (Wikipedia, 2001bx). Sanger began by stressing the openness of
Wikipedia, and the importance of stub articles for it:
Part of what makes Wikipedia work is that we do not require perfection, and I strongly believe we should continue adding as much imperfect stuff to Wikipedia as we possibly can […]
Most of us can agree that stub articles are good things. They help to fill out the breadth of Wikipedia, giving us actual content to work with in our attempts to organize and present all of human knowledge and--important from a practical point of view--giving the search engines more to link to. This means more traffic and therefore more contributors--a virtuous cycle."
However, he reasoned, too many stub articles may hurt Wikipedia's
legitimacy, as they would make it "look frivolous." As a practical solution, Sanger
developed the concept of "the perfect stub article" – one that is productive yet
respectable. Among other qualities168, Sanger offered that such article should include
"a little more" than just a definition. He also specifically noted that editors should
"make sure that your topic (and therefore your definition) is one on which we are
167 Link to Larry Sanger/Columns (Wikipedia, 2001ap). 168 Such as the use of proper English, accuracy, lack of bias and proper links to other articles.
172
going to want an actual encyclopedia article. In other words, bear in mind that
Wikipedia is not a dictionary."169
In his explanation for insisting on "a little more" than just a definition, Sanger
pointed out that the "build the web" attitude may be detrimental to the vision of
Wikipedia eventually becoming a "real" encyclopedia:
Now, why do I keep harping on this? I have a hypothesis, which I think is a very reasonable hypothesis. I think that it is important to the psychology of Wikipedia that we all understand ourselves as not writing articles that simply identify people, events, and concepts, in a very basic way, but that actually give details, "empirical facts," content. That tiny extra bit of content is very important, psychologically speaking, because every time it is written, or read by another contributor, it makes it clear that the project is indeed eventually going to be about going deep into all these subjects.
Finally, Sanger pointed out that "you can always ignore these guidelines
entirely, and someone will probably fix the article for you! That's the beauty of a
wiki."
The perfect stub article summarized Sanger's position regarding the double
tension that permeated Wikipedia at the time: the specific tension between the "build
the web" approach and the "Wikipedia is an encyclopedia" approach, and the broader
and partially overlapping tension between an the freedom of editors to contribute to
the project in any way they see fit, and the enforcement of standards derived from
encyclopedic concept. Sanger's attitude in both cases was one of compromise: he
insisted that there should be a general standard for the evaluation of contributions
based on a vision of Wikipedia's future as a "real" encyclopedia, with in-depth articles
of the type that can be found in traditional paper encyclopedias. However, in contrast
with the initial strict position he took in his conflict with LA2 and with the position
the projects founders took on the issue of the Neutral Point of View policy, he was
much more liberal with regards to edits that are at odds with this standard, preferring a
posteriori editing mechanisms to strict enforcement. This attitude, manifested also in
the movement from policy pages to personal commentary pages, represents the 169 However, Sanger introduced two legitimate exceptions to that rule: first, pages that explain jargon necessary to understand genuine articles; Second, pointer pages "consisting of a list of several divergent senses of a word, each defined on the page, and each definition followed by a pointer to an article where the topic, in that sense, is discussed in more depth". These exceptions, and especially the later, build on the counter arguments Sanger ran across in the previous conflict, which he then co-opted to articulate his position.
173
lessons learned from the Wikipedia is not a dictionary conflict, as Sanger explained
his point of view, sought to make it as liberal and inclusive as possible, and
acknowledged the difficulty of enforcing an unpopular policy in Wikipedia.
Sanger continued acting on his policies, editing dictionary like articles and
deleting articles dealing with subject he considered un-encyclopedic. More
significantly, he added links to the Wikipedia is not a dictionary page on the relevant
talk pages, strengthening its position as a privileged passage point and conscription
device (Henderson, 1991). In addition, he removed brackets170 from terms he
considered unworthy of an article before actual content was added to the resulting
articles, thus preventing in advance the creation of dictionary articles. Sanger was not
alone in this pursuit: other prominent editors such as Hornlo, Lee Daniel Crocker and
Tim Chambers Koyaanis Qatsi (the most industrious editor at the time) explicitly
supported his position and began editing contributions that failed to adhere to it.
This signaled a deeper change in Sanger's position in the project. While
formerly, Sanger took the role of an equal participant in policy discussions, he
emerged from this conflict in a position of leadership by example, albeit one with
limited authority. It was clear from this episode that Sanger could not expect
automatic support when attempting to impose his view of Wikipedia's form, as his
first attempt backfired. On the other hand, though adherence to his approach was not
universal, it was widespread enough to have a lasting impact on Wikipedia's
production practices. Using subtler measures than actual policy formation, Sanger
enlisted support for his views in a case-by case manner, and let them be known on his
columns, appearing only in his personal user-space.
However, this new position did not last long: when of new participants started
swarming the project, Sanger attempted once more to achieve a more substantive
measure of authority in the project. The relative success of this attempt, described in
the next sub-chapter, resulted in the final institutionalization of the "Wikipedia is not
a dictionary" policy.
170 Enclosing and expression in brackets in Wikipedia's user interface created a new page for the terms surrounded by them, if one did not exist previously.
174
6.2.5 Crisis and Resolution – Conscription Devices and Scopic
Mechanisms
Starting on July 25th, unprecedented amounts of traffic followed links from an
article Sanger posted about Wikipedia in Kuro5hin.com (Sanger, 2001g). A day later,
Wales linked to article in a post he published on the highly popular collaborative
content website Slashdot.com (Wales, 2001i), causing another surge in traffic and a
wave on new, and inexperienced participants. Many of these editors immediately
began editing articles without acquainting themselves with Wikipedia's policies and
customs. On the following days Sanger and other editors tried to correct and direct the
new editors, and fix the myriad dictionary articles they started, mostly on computer
and geek-culture related subjects (see more below). Consequently, Sanger began
doing an overhaul of Wikipedia's conscription devices, the core network of pages
directed at informing participants of Wikipedia's policies, such as the homepage,
Welcome, Newcomers (Wikipedia, 2001by), the FAQ (Wikipedia, 2001bz),
Wikipedia Policy (Wikipedia, 2001ca) etc171. On the same occasion, he edited
Wikipedia is not a dictionary to look more like a policy page.
The new version of the policy, edited by Sanger on July 28th (and later
proofread by Koyaanis Qatsi), read less like the semi-personal statement it originally
was and more like a general policy. While the old version was directed at veterans,
the new one was directed at new editors, as the opening sentence was changed from
"Some Wikipedians have had a habit of starting an article, listing several senses of a
term, and then stopping working on that article", to "It's natural, when you see
Wikipedia for the first time, to mistake it for a dictionary." Where the old version
used the first person, the new one used the third. Personal statements like "I am
delighted" or "I am coming around to the view" were deleted. The new version even
addresses Sanger itself in the third person, as it stated that "If you do just give the
meaning of the word, nobody is going to be mad at you (except maybe Larry Sanger,
but then, he gets mad at everybody :-) since he cares about Wikipedia so much)."
However, as this last example shows, the new formulation is also much softer than the 171 A major policy page that Sanger devised in this occasion was what Wikipedia is not (Wikipedia, 2001cb, and see below), which subsequently became a general standard distinguishing between legitimate and illegitimate content. While the first clause of policy page repeated the content of Wikipedia is not a dictionary, Sanger kept the original Wikipedia is not a dictionary as a separate policy page.
175
former. Sanger did not state his position as a rule, but rather as an opinion not held by
everybody, and acknowledged that breaking it is "probably OK, in most cases". This
version of the policy stayed rather stable over the following months. While a few
dissenting views appeared on Wikipedia is not a dictionary/Talk (Wikipedia, 2001g)
which was created in august 17th, Sanger's responses and explanations were ultimately
well received, and with the help of other editors backing his point of view no real
opposition was raised against what has become an effective consensus and a
cornerstone policy in the project172.
In the months following the policy's institutionalization, various conscription
devices (Henderson, 1991) and scopic media (Knorr-Cetina, 2005) were developed in
an effort to enable its enforcement, counter dictionary articles and expand stub
articles. The first to develop such a system was Manning Bartlett, who kept a list of
stubs in his personal page's to-do list, and later moved them to a page titled Wikipedia
Utilities: find or fix a stub (Wikipedia, 2001cd). Wikipedia utilities/Pages needing
attention (Wikipedia, 2001ce), created in an unknown later date (prior to November
8th) had a section named articles that seem to be nothing more than definitions,
directing editors to delete or expand articles listed in it. Similarly, the Requested
articles (Wikipedia, 2001cu) page had a list of articles that were started but remained
as stubs. On November 21st, Sanger moved this list to the already existing but largely
unused Wikipedia Utilities: find or fix a stub. This page became the main location for
handling such articles, spreading the work among a number of veteran editors that
made sure these articles were dealt with.
To conclude, the articulation of the "Wikipedia is not a dictionary" policy,
followed a pattern similar to those preceding it: the arrival of participants with new
editing practices and visions of the project resulted in a conflict; that conflict ended in
172 However, the policy page and its Talk page did, for a time, became involved in conflict, as controversies regarding authority in project and quarrels between Sanger and the Cunctator began intensifying in the beginning of October. On October 4th, an editor known as "the Cunctator" added a note on the page itself, below the statement that dissenting from the policy is "probably ok", noting that "Actually, the 'Wikipedia is not a dictionary' philosophy is, as of September 2001, being used as a justification to delete stub entries". However, this comment, and the a similar allegation he raised in his essay how to destroy Wikipedia (Wikipedia, 2001cc) – a consequential essay which was essentially an attack on Sanger and Wales, part of it dedicated to reproach Sanger's deleting of pages he saw as inconsistent with Wikipedia's policies – were not directed at the policy (which he supported) but on Sanger's deleting of pages he saw as inconsistent with Wikipedia's policies. Thus, this controversy paradoxically reaffirmed the policies effective consensus rather than threaten it.
176
the creation of a new policy based on a practical rules transmuted into policies
through investment in the encyclopedic form, blackboxing and the creation of
conscription devices and scopic media. On the level of policy institutionalization, it
uncovered the limitations of power and policy formation in Wikipedia, as it was the
first one that was met with reasoned and relatively widespread opposition, and had to
be qualified and downplayed. This was, perhaps, a result of the noninvolvement of
Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia co-founder and owner, who had an important role in the
institutionalization of the previous content policies. On the other hand, its subsequent
successful institutionalization demonstrated that Wikipedia is capable of sustaining
policies that are not consensual, on the conditions that it was codified in policy pages,
had reasonable justifications, that sufficient editors pursued it, and that adequate
scopic media were produced to support their efforts.
The Wikipedia is not a dictionary policy was responsible for affixing the
notion that Wikipedia's goal is more specific than producing an innovative reference
work, or a "way to find information", as LDC and LA2 suggested. Wikipedia was
constructed through it as an encyclopedia, first and foremost, with unique
characteristics derived from the history and conventions of the genre. This articulation
paved the way to further policies dealing with types of content not prevalent in
traditional encyclopedias. These policies were grouped to create one of Wikipedia's
most comprehensive and important policy pages What Wikipedia is not.
6.3 Phase 3: What Wikipedia is Not
This sub-chapter describes the institutionalization of one of Wikipedia's most
comprehensive and elaborate policies, What Wikipedia is Not (Wikipedia, 2012g).
This policy had its humble origins in an appendix to one of Sanger's columns, in
which attempted to enlist support for an effort to turn pages containing only lists of
links to traditional prose articles. To it, he appended "a list of things encyclopedia
articles are not". It summarized several content policies and various issues the
founders feared might derail the project. Its subtitle was: "Wikipedia is an
encyclopedia. Here is a list of Things That Encyclopedia Articles Are Not." Below
was a list of cultural forms and types of content related to them that were proclaimed
177
inappropriate for Wikipedia. After every clause, there was an explanation in
parenthesis of the permissible way to engage in similar types of content. Various
types of content labeled as illegitimate by the (un)virtue of their associating with un-
encyclopedic cultural forms, such as discussions (associated with "Discussion forums,
or Everything2 or H2G2 nodes"); Dictionary definitions of common English words,
or lists of such definitions (associated with dictionaries); descriptions of word usage,
and particularly jargon (associated with word usage guides), etc. these types of
content all represented actual issues that Wikipedia had to practically engage in and
come to terms with. As such, they were all subject to controversy. However, these
controversies were transmuted and codified as consensual – even in cases where it
was clearly not the case. Their codification produced a general guide for writing in
Wikipedia articles that functions as such till this very day.
6.3.1 The Controversy over Lists of Links
From Wikipedia's very first days, it contained a considerable amount of pages
comprised only of lists of links to other articles. As the means for creating a new page
was linking to it, lists of links were an important tool for initiation of articles and for
mapping subjects that needed expanding. This was the case with many of Wikipedia's
early articles, especially the ones dealing with general and overarching subjects, such
as Countries of the world (Wikipedia, 2001cf), Philosophy (Wikipedia, 2001cg),
Music (Wikipedia, 2001ch), Sport (Wikipedia, 2001ci), Disease (Wikipedia, 2001bt),
Psychiatry (Wikipedia, 2001cj), etc. Such articles were routinely created by various
users, including Wikipedia's founders, and wasn't considered problematic. The new
"build the web" approach, however, intensified their creation and brought them to the
center of attention, with the new emphasis Sanger put on comprehensive and original
article content.
List of links articles came under scrutiny about the time the LA2 affair was
fading. On June 2nd, Stefan Rybo, one of the very few editors in the German
Wikipedia who also frequented the English Wikipedia, sent a mail to the Wikipedia-l
mailing list (Rybo, 2001) complaining about "huge link lists" that are "often
intermixed with text (content)" and suggested a "separation of content and navigation
178
items (as content being true nodes like in a computer data tree)". The allusion to
"computer data tree" uncovers the attitude behind it: that of a computer programmer
used to working with data arrays and structures. From this point of view, the problem
of lists of links was the mix between link lists and actual content. Sanger (Sanger,
2001f), the only editor who replied to the post, did not see the problem and confessed
that he found the phenomena "delightful". Moreover, he objected the very premises of
Rybo's argument when he claimed that he actually preferred articles that added "some
'content' (i.e., descriptive prose) to a list", and claimed that Wikipedia being
hypertext, the separation between content and navigation is redundant. Contrary to
Rybo's position, Sanger actively endorsed the addition of prose content to pages
comprised of lists of links.
Sanger's position was in line with his general attitude towards Wikipedia,
stressing the creation of article content and downplaying all aspects of the project that
did not contribute to it. From this point of view, the creation of navigational aids was
a waste of time and effort – but the transformation of link lists into prose was
productive activity. Sanger's opportunity to publicly present his view on Wikipedia
presented itself a few days later. On June 9th, when Sanger noticed and answered a
question posted by LA2 to the Naming conventions/Talk (Wikipedia, 2001ck) page
on the latter's very first day in Wikipedia – before he picked up a username, so the
author was not identified. LA2 described his dilemmas while editing the Albert
Einstein article. Loyal to his "build the web" approach, he saw it as "tempting to
create a link to a page listing various physicists through history, and pointing out that
all physicists are also scientists." The main issue that troubled him was
[…] Whether the structure or catalog of professions should be created before we start writing biographies of other scientists, like a coordinate system is drawn before the data points are plotted. Such catalogs could be: professions, academic disciplines, timelines (like the excellent one on geologic ages), families of biological species, types of organic chemic substances, etc. The risk with such an approach is that the catalogs will dominate over the substance contents (Yahoo without the Internet). The risk with not taking such an approach is that a lot of useful links will be missing from entries (the Internet without Yahoo).
While LA2's position, similar to Rybo's, was based on the distinction between
content and navigation, and sought to strike a balance between what he saw as
179
opposing tendencies, Sanger's answer denied the very legitimacy of such distinction
in Wikipedia:
[…] lists of links are great and absolutely necessary in a hypertext encyclopedia, so we gotta have 'em. I just think we should discourage the idea that an adequate article might consist just of the links. E.g., I still think actress should address the phenomena that are actresses, and not just give a list of actresses (as if people visiting the "actress" page were interested only in finding their favorite actress).
In this answer, Sanger re-articulated the problem, posing it in terms of his
"Wikipedia is an encyclopedia" approach, where by every page had to be evaluated in
terms of its adherence to the standard posed by the traditional model of encyclopedic
articles. As the example of the "actress" page indicates, he refused to separate
navigation from content, subsuming the former under the latter.
Per his general pattern of action in this period, Sanger stated his position in a
much more careful and polite tone than he did in the previous conflict173 and
immediately began implementing it himself, as he added short introductory text on
pages comprised solely of a list of links, such as the Dewey Decimal System
(Wikipedia, 2001cl) page. However, the most notable effort Sanger made on the issue
took place on his home territory: philosophy articles. On June 20th, Sanger to engage
in a major edit of the philosophy article comprised of a long list of links to various
sub-disciplines, famous philosophers, etc. He wrote a general introduction, and added
text around the various lists to make them into prose sentences dense with links. Over
the following days, Sanger turned the huge link lists in many of the philosophy pages
articles to prose articles, and opened new ones based on the prose section he wrote on
the philosophy article.
In addition to acting on his new initiative, Sanger urged other editors to follow
his example. He first attempted to enlist them by placing comments on pages
comprised of list of links, but as these pages were generally in the periphery of the
network, this strategy had limited success174. Thus, he began making attempts to
173 In the end of his answer, he wrote that "My conclusion is that unless there's a really striking problem (as, ''in my opinion,'' the existence of many mere-dictionary type entries was becoming), it's not worth it to discourage ''anyone'' from doing ''anything.'' The beauty of Wikipedia is that, by being open to all manner of contributions, everyone wants to contribute. It's great that way". 174 One such attempt almost ended in open conflict: as he stumbled upon an article on VIM (a popular UNIX and Linux text editor) comprised mainly of a list of its features, Sanger asked its editors if they could "please take a minute or two and render some of the above list into full prose sentences? Have
180
promote his new initiative through Wikipedia's conscription devices (Henderson,
1991), attempting to reach a larger audience and convince participants to join his
efforts. On June 21st, Sanger posted a comment on Wikipedia NEWS (Wikipedia,
2001cm), a page used to publicize new entries and developments on Wikipedia. In it,
he stated that
The Philosophy main page has been updated, with new content and a new organizational scheme. Larry Sanger is immodestly proud of this work, or so he says, and thinks that it shows how other top-level pages could be rendered into a prose format. Biology is another top-level example that uses prose sentences intermixed with link lists to both introduce biology and to point the reader to specialized topics within the subject of biology.
However, as Wikipedia NEWS was neither a popular arena for debates nor a
policy page, and as his attempt of enlistment was very subtle, this announcement
didn't have much impact on the project. Another attempt was made on June 29th,
when, Sanger posed a question on the Wikipedia help desk (Wikipedia, 2001cn) on
June 29th. This page, started as a place to host requests for general information, was
yet another conscription device, albeit not a central one. His question read:
How do the different parts of a computer (processor, memory, etc.) work together with software to create a functioning desktop computer? I imagine this should be answered on computer, which now has a paltry line, "programmable machine that processes data," and a link to computing, which page consists just of a list of links. Even computer hardware consists of a list of links. All I wanna know is how a computer works. :-)
This effort had no immediate consequences, as no one bothered answering
Sanger's question or fixing the articles. Thus, in another attempt to enlist other
participants to join his efforts, Sanger posted another column on July 5th, that would
prove to be of immense consequences, even though it carried the somewhat awkward
name List-o-links (Wikipedia, 2001co).
fun!" A day later, an anonymous editor erased his message, and he restored it a few hours later. The following day, after another editor added a list of internal links, he rephrased his message, stating that "The above paragraph isn't really what we should expect in an encyclopedia article--i.e., it shouldn't be a list, it should be ordinary English prose sentences." Finally, on June 21st, the anonymous editor wrote a couple of text paragraphs, which Sanger edited a day later to his satisfaction.
181
6.3.2 Things That Encyclopedia Articles Are Not
Sanger opened the column with a meek attitude, calling its subject one of his
"pet Peeves", warning the reader not to misconstrue it as an attempt to "bury
Wikipedia in negativism" and stating that "Almost everyone should read this and then
go right back to doing whatever it was that they were doing before they read it--I only
need a few, good people to read, agree, and act." Only after these concessions, he
turned to the actual subject of the column: "certain pages, such as sport, music, some
of the film-related pages, and some of the computing-related pages, that consist of--
ugh--lists of internal links." After describing his personal fondness of the concept of
lists, he explained what he sees as the problem with such pages: "Now, I would like to
gently point out that a list is, well, not an encyclopedia article." His concern was that
articles dealing with the most general topics have no prose describing their subject,
and readers can learn nothing about them from mere lists. He offered as a
counterexample the philosophy article he edited, and suggested making a similar
effort on other such articles. Once again, he finished the column with an
acknowledgement of his inability to enforce his opinion, as he states: "I know. Go
thou and do whatever thou wilt. But, as Spinoza said, 'All excellent things are as
difficult as they are rare.' Inversely, all mediocre things are as easy as they are
common."
What turned this column into a critical moment in Wikipedia's history came as
an afterthought to the column itself. After the end of the actual column, Sanger wrote:
"I just felt inspired to make a list. Here is a list of Things That Encyclopedia
Articles Are Not." what followed was a list of almost all the conflicts Sanger was
involved in during the previous weeks, articulated and edited as to become a manual
of style and a standard against which to measure the adequacy of article content. In
each case, Sanger presented both a general rule he already set forwards in conflicts
with other editors or in previous columns, and reservations and alternative that
emerged from such interactions. This close connection between actual practices,
conflicts and general policies, reiterates the notion that form investment and
production of rules stem first and foremost from concrete social problems that emerge
when there is no clear standard for the coordination of action, on a bottom up rather
182
than top down process. In what follows, I'll present these clauses, following each of
them with a short genealogy and interpretation.
Dictionary definitions of common English words that, in the sense in question, name no subject that any respectable encyclopedist would ever think of making the topic of an encyclopedia article. (But an article can and should always ''begin with'' a good175 definition or a clear description of the topic, as in the case of biographies.)
It is clear why this clause is the first on the list, given the events of the
previous months. It summarizes Sanger's Wikipedia is not a dictionary (Wikipedia,
2001as) policy, specifically addressing such articles as of (Wikipedia, 2001bu) and
drunk (Wikipedia, 2001av), that he made a point of deleting or preventing their
creation in preceding weeks.
Lists of such definitions. (But an article can certain consist of a pointer to other pages, where a word is too general to have any one topic associated with it; see freedom and Columbus for examples.)
This clause is a summary of Sanger's column Why a list of the senses of a
word is not an encyclopedia article (Wikipedia, 2001bs). The counter-examples are
disambiguation pages, listing several meanings of the word, all of which have related
articles in Wikipedia. Such pages were (and still) considered vital navigational aids,
and this justification was repeatedly used in related conflicts concerning such pages.
Sanger, who acknowledged the importance of "pointer pages" in the column and in
various other remarks, co-opted this justification, preempting any attempt to use this
justification for practices he rejected.
Propaganda or advocacy of any kind. (But an article can of course ''report objectively'' on what advocates ''say,'' as long as this is done from the Neutral Point of View. Go to Usenet if you want to convince people of the merits of your favorite views--and good luck.)
This clause is, as it makes explicit, a summary of the Neutral Point Of View
(Wikipedia, 2001ak) policy. Specifically, it echoes a number of incidents Sanger had
on this issue in the in the preceding days. The first of them, with an editor named
Philip2 who insisted on debating his opinions regarding the McCarthy period on the
Unamerican activities talk page (Wikipedia, 2001cp), took place on June 26th. It
ended only when Sanger answered to one of his replies by stating "Beyond this I
won't reply, because I am not interested in using Wikipedia as a debate forum. If I 175 Link to the fallacies of definition article.
183
want to debate, I'll use another wiki, or else a mailing list or a newsgroup." Another
such incident took place less than three hours before Sanger published List-o-links,
when Sanger came across what he conceived as a biased edit of the Abortion article,
to which he responded: "This is a perfect example of text that fails to adhere to a
Neutral Point of View. If you want to contribute to Wikipedia, you must make a very
strong effort to write from a neutral point of view. If you think this is impossible or a
bad idea, please see Neutral Point of View, where all is made clear and plausible.
Wikipedia is not a platform for advocacy of any kind, period" (Wikipedia, 2001cq).
Mere lists of quotations and aphorisms. (But some such lists might be very nice to have to supplement encyclopedia articles, sure.)
This clause echoes a debate Sanger had with several other editors, mainly SJC,
Kpjas, and KQ on Literary quotations/Talk (Wikipedia, 2001cr) page on July 3rd.
Sanger objected the existence of this page (and similar page) on the basis that they
were "distracting attention from our main brief, which is to write an encyclopedia."
Similar to his strategy in earlier conflicts regarding dictionary articles, he suggested
that "Perhaps someone could start a quotations wiki. That might be fun." This clause
represented an attempt for a compromise on the subject, as it suggested incorporating
them into relevant encyclopedic articles, an innovative feature that traditional
encyclopedia lacked. By virtue of articulating the relevant attributes of the
encyclopedic article, Sanger was thus able to legitimize variations on it.
Mere collections of external links. (But of course there's nothing wrong with adding both lists of links and lists of on-line references you used in writing an article).
This clause targets two separate issues: articles comprised of lists of external
links (such as LA2's Boston article), and link sections in legitimate prose articles.
While the former was de-legitimized by pointing to its inconsistency with the
encyclopedic form, the latter was constructed as complacent with that form. Even
though the legitimate use links in article pages was still being worked out at the time,
it became a common practice to concentrate them on the bottom of the page. This was
the result of two separate practices: Sanger's demarcation of external links to a
separate section during his conflict with LA2, and the courteous habit of linking to
online resources used to create articles (especially when large quantities of content
were copied from public domain websites). This practice was added by Sanger to the
184
Rules to Consider page176 about a week earlier (Wikipedia, 2001cs), and was now
further institutionalized by virtue of its contrast with an illegitimate practice.
Mere collections of internal links. (But of course, there's nothing with pointer pages when a word is too general for any one topic to be associated with it; and of course, it's very important to make collections of relevant internal links, as this conveys useful information and helps navigation.)
Finally, the last clause restated the subject of the column that led to the
creation of this policy, i.e. list-o-links.
Below the list, Sanger added a note stating: "I will continue to add to this list
as we discover interesting new ways of not writing encyclopedia articles. :-)", thus
attempting to affix his position as a leader and articulator of standards, though he did
not have real authority in the project. The list was a hybrid: it was written in a style
reminiscent of policy pages, yet constructed through its location in the network and on
the page (an afterthought to a column) as an expression of Sanger's personal opinions.
It was an attempt to find a compromise between leading by example and through
personal interactions on the one hand, and attempts to usurp authority using policy on
the other.
The list of thing encyclopedia articles are not represented a significant and
sophisticated work of articulation. It may seem, at first glance, as distinctly modern
(or traditional, in another sense), as its clauses encapsulate the logic of the modern
encyclopedia, thus implicitly accepting its basic premises regarding the adequate
summary and representation of knowledge. In another sense, however, it is a
postmodern document, as it constructs the encyclopedic model as a system of
differences, rather than essential characteristics. As each clause, or sign, distinguishes
the encyclopedia from a distinct type of text, it is constructed as a part of a binary
opposition. The combination of all the clauses does not rise to the level of a positive
definition, but rather places Wikipedia in the center of a system of differences (Laclau
176 Sanger added to the rules to consider page on June 29th, suggesting "Don't use external links where we'll want Wikipedia links: Don't put in links, like this [here appeared a link to http://www.Wikipedia.com, L.G.], to external URLs linking text that we will want articles on Nupedia about. Put external links in a 'links' section at the end of the article." The trigger for the creation of this rule was a number of edits Sanger made on the same day while fixing and editing articles concerning statistics (almost exclusively written by the same author, Dick Beldin, during February and March 2001), where he replaced links to external sites in the body of the text to internal links, and moved them to a separate links section in the bottom of the page.
185
and Mouffe, 1985, p. 132). This construction liquefies the reference, to use
Baudrillard's (1994) terms, as it replaces the original idea of the encyclopedia as a
summary of current expert knowledge with a list of signs whose justification is not
substantive or meaningful, but rather symptomatic. This allows for a much more
concrete and productive setting of standards, as systems of signs are "more ductile
material than meaning, in that it lends itself to all systems of equivalence, all binary
oppositions and all combinatory algebra". (Baudrillard, 1994, p.2)
Thus, Sanger's list did not just address current critical moments in the project,
but also created a generative structure that can help solve future ones. The binary
opposition formula stood at the basis of its clauses could be permutated to de-
legitimize a very wide variety of contents, based on their alleged incompatibility with
the encyclopedic form, and assemble a coherent image of the encyclopedia articles the
project sought to produce. It did not preclude, however, variations from the modern
encyclopedic form, as it did not present a totalizing definition of the encyclopedia.
In terms of its immediate effect, Sanger's column was more successful in
enlisting support than the measures he tried previously, but less than actual policy
pages. Three hours after its original publication, an anonymous editor transformed the
list of links on the computer page into a preliminary version of an article (Wikipedia,
2001ct). A day later, on July 6th, Gareth Owen began adding prose descriptions to the
music article. However, these were the only practical reaction to the columns. For a
few weeks, it seemed that it would be the columns only significance. The long lists of
links articles were all created in the very first weeks of Wikipedia existence, and new
ones were not being created anyway. The "list of Things That Encyclopedia Articles
Are Not" was comprised of guidelines and policies mostly already accepted by
veteran editors, and its location, on a subpage of Larry Sanger personal page, made it
into a personal commentary rather than a policy and placed it on the margins of the
network. This marginal position was sustained by the fact that Sanger did not place
links to it on places other than his personal userpage.
This relative neglect came to an end on July 24th, when Sanger finally began
advancing his column to the core network of policy pages. As Sanger came across the
Nazi Germany (Wikipedia, 2001cv) article after some edits were made to it, he
discovered a large subpage named Nazi Germany/related terms (Wikipedia, 2001cw)
186
that contained a list of terms from the period and their meaning. In the discussion on
the Nazi Germany/Talk page, Sanger joined a dialogue between WojPob and SoniC,
two veteran users who discussed a suggestion LA2 made on the main article page a
month earlier to create a more general page listing various words originating in
foreign languages. Sanger objected this idea, reproducing his formula of binary
negative and claiming that "[…] Wikipedia is not a dictionary. It isn't a style guide, it
isn't a collection of foreign borrowings, etc., etc. It is an encyclopedia.[…]" about ten
minutes later, Sanger edited the Wikipedia is not a dictionary article, adding a link to
it on the bottom, embedded in the sentence "Have a look at this personal essay177 for
further reflections on what Wikipedia is not" (Wikipedia, 2001cx). This action had
two important implications: first, it brought the list much closer to Wikipedia's
conscription devices, placing it two links away from the rules to consider page.
Second, and no less important, the headline originally referring to a list of Things
That Encyclopedia Articles Are Not was changed to a description of what
Wikipedia is not. This seemingly minute change in wording is actually an important
transformation, as it reduced Wikipedia as a whole to an encyclopedia, and not just
concrete article pages, rejecting any alternative formulation of it. In the following
weeks, this articulation became the basis for a major new policy initiative.
6.3.3 "The Big Slashdotting"
The emphasis on the idea that Wikipedia is first and foremost an encyclopedia
proved very timely, as it happened merely two days prior to "the big slashdotting".
Starting on July 25th, unprecedented amounts of traffic followed links from an article
Sanger posted about Wikipedia in Kuro5hin.com (Sanger, 2001g), and was later
promoted by Wales on Slashdot.com (Wales, 2001i) linked to from the highly popular
Slashdot.com. The result, as Sanger phrased it, was that there were "many eager, but
clueless newbies about" (Wikipedia, 2001a). Some of these editors immediately
began editing articles without acquainting themselves with Wikipedia's policies and
customs. This proved a problematic moment for the project, as many of them shared
common interests in topics that challenged the traditional encyclopedic form, such as
hacker culture, conspiracy theories and popular culture fandom, with its emphasis on
177 Link to Larry Sanger/List-o-links (Wikipedia, 2001co).
187
the minute details of said works. Moreover, as many hacker culture devotees were
familiar with the Jargon File (Raymond, 2012), a highly popular glossary of hacker
terms, many of them modeled their production on its standards.
On the following days Sanger and other editors tried to correct and direct the
new editors, and fix the myriad articles they started, as many of their edits
contradicted Wikipedia's policies and traditions. To sustain this effort, Sanger began
doing an overhaul of Wikipedia's conscription devices, the core network of pages
directed at informing participants of Wikipedia's policies and standards, such as the
homepage, Welcome, Newcomers (Wikipedia, 2001by), the FAQ (Wikipedia,
2001bz), Wikipedia Policy (Wikipedia, 2001ca) etc. The wording, layout and
interlinking in the various pages were standardized and improved, enabling quicker
orientation and allowing them to function as resources for veteran participants in their
attempts to discipline new ones.
This process also resulted in the emergence of what Wikipedia is not
(Wikipedia, 2001cb) as an independent page and a general guide pointing out to
various types of unwanted content, generally accepted as an authoritative document
and a privileged passage point in the project. The "list of things that encyclopedia
articles are not" was a readymade tool for an orientation of new editors on content
policies, and was quickly adapted to answer this need. The trigger for making "the list
of things that encyclopedia articles are not" into a Wikipedia policy was an article
named w00t (Wikipedia, 2001cy). This article, describing a geek slang term for
happiness or excitement associated primarily with young gamers, was itself laden
with geek terms. On July 28, Sanger started w00t/Talk page where he posted the
following remark:
Among the things that Wikipedia is not178 is a usage guide. Much less is it a usage guide for teenage slang--allowing that is to permit Wikipedia to degenerate into something resembling H2G2 and Everything2, which, as Zeus is my witness, I will never allow to happen. If you want to write entries about that, please start a dictionary wiki. We still don't know why no one has started one. (Wikipedia, 2001cz)
Similar his post on the Nazi Germany/Talk page, this remark presented the list
of things encyclopedia articles are not as a list of things Wikipedia is not. However, 178Link to Larry Sanger/List-o-links (Wikipedia, 2001co).
188
the fact that this comment was directed at editors who were new to the project made
the linking to list-o-links problematic. The list was titled of Things That
Encyclopedia Articles Are Not and moreover was at the bottom of a column
discussing a very specific issue, so new editors may very well misunderstand Sanger's
intention. Thus, two minutes after posting his comment, Sanger moved the list to a
new page, replacing it with a link to it. This new page, What Wikipedia is not, was
not a subpage of Sanger's user page but an independent policy page, and similar to
neutral point of view or Wikipedia is not a dictionary. After pasting the list of Things
That Encyclopedia Articles Are Not to it, Sanger began editing and supplementing
it for its new role as a rapid orientation guide for new editors.
Sanger made both stylistic and substantive changes. Edits of the first type
made the policy more general and removed the former personal style. Thus, the
description of the page, appearing above the list itself was changed from the
colloquial "I just felt inspired to make a list" to "Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. Here
is a list of Things That Encyclopedia Articles Are Not". The postscript was also
translated from first to third person, editing the sentence "I will continue to add to this
list etc." to "We should." Finally, Sanger added a link to Wikipedia is not a dictionary
on the first clause, dealing with dictionary definitions, not needed in the former
version directed at veteran editors who presumably were familiar with it.
The substantive changes to the list included the addition of two new clauses;
both of them developed the themes raised by Sanger in his comment on w00t/Talk
page, making the page a post-factum substantiation of Sanger's position. The first,
inserted after the first two clauses dealing with dictionary definitions, stated that
Wikipedia articles are not "a usage guide":
Wikipedia is not in the business of saying how idioms, etc., are used. (But, of course, it's often very, very important ''in the context of an encyclopedia article'' to say just how a word is used. E.g., the article on freedom will, if doesn't already, have a long discussion about this.)
The second clause, added at the end of the list, stated that Wikipedia articles
are not "Everything2 or H2G2 nodes":
Wikipedia is not a discussion forum or chat room. (But you can chat with folks on their own pages, and you can resolve article problems on the relevant /Talk pages).
189
After Sanger finished creating and modifying the page, he immediately
proceeded to change the link on the w00t/Talk so it will direct to it, and then added a
link to it from the Welcome, newcomers page. Three minutes later, he put a link to it
on the Wikipedia policy page, describing it as "an attempt to say what Wikipedia is,
by saying what it isn't". The link was placed on the second row of the page, a most
prominent place – second only to the links pertaining to page creation (i.e. Naming
conventions and Topic creation). Finally, he redirected the link on Wikipedia is not a
dictionary from list-o-link to the new page, and deleted the list itself from the former.
After he finished promoting what Wikipedia is not to the core network of
policy pages, Sanger continued editing it and adding new categories to it. His
additions continued to reflect his encounters with edits – and editors – he objected.
The first addition, inserted on the same day, stated that Wikipedia articles are not
"Personal essays, that state your idiosyncratic opinions about a topic":
We're reporting on what is in the canon of human knowledge; unless you're unusual, your idiosyncratic opinions aren't part of this canon. (But you can put your essays in Wikipedia commentary.)
This clause reflects Sanger fear of new editors will employ such practices – a
fear rooted in the fact that he already found such essay (Wikipedia, 2001da, titled
Two Main Theories of History) the day before and moved it to Wikipedia
commentary (Wikipedia, 2001dc).
Three days later, on July 31, Sanger added another clause. Right after the one
stating that Wikipedia isn't a usage guide, he added a similar one, targeting directly to
the issue of hacker slang.
By a simple extension of the latter, a hacker/computer usage guide. We aren't teaching people how to talk like a hacker; we're writing an encyclopedia. (But see jargon file; also, articles, even extremely in-depth articles, on hacker culture are very welcome, ''and'' insofar as guides to some particularly essential piece of hacker slang is necessary to understand those articles, of course articles on that slang would be great to have.)
This addition reflected Sanger's growing concern over the proliferation of such
articles. The trigger for its inception was probably an article he edited immediately
before, titled Yet Another (Wikipedia, 2001dd), defined as "A hacker meme, the use
of 'Yet Another' as a way of padding out their acronym is fairly common", but it was
190
only one of many such articles Sanger came across and edited around this time. This
clause, clearly directed at the new Slashdot editors, was subsequently edited by one of
the most productive and vocal newcomers known only as the Cunctator on November
6th (Wikipedia, 2001de) to make it, as he put it, "a little more general". In order to
achieve this goal, he expanded it to refer not only to "a hacker/computer usage guide"
but also to "other slang and idiom guide", and added a second example, that of
Cockney chimney-sweep to the statement "We aren't teaching people how to talk like
a hacker".
Over the following months the policy page slowly changed and evolved. After
Sanger left the project in the beginning of 2002, other editors took on his role as an
articulator of policies, and began updating the policy pages. New types of content
were gradually added to what Wikipedia is not, usually after some discussion between
participants, as new forms of content surfaced as problematic and were de-legitimized
as anti encyclopedic179. The page's layout was also changed, highlighting the most
frequently used clauses in the introduction and indicating these clauses that merited
close attention by new participants. During these and subsequent changes, the core of
the list remained very close to the way it was when Sanger first formulated it180, as
very few existing clauses were modified, and they usually remained at the top of the
list, ensuring their visibility. Though the page had undergone considerable changes in
the last decade, these policies still stand at its core.
The use of what Wikipedia is not as a guide to what Wikipedia is allowed
Wikipedia's participants to avoid a positive, unequivocal definition of the project they
were engaged in, even though its general parameters remained relatively stable. This
route had some very positive unintended consequences: it enhanced its flexibility and
gave allowed it to experiment and change over time. As there was no clear definition
of what knowledge is desirable in Wikipedia, contents were not selected beforehand
on the basis of its adherence to an established model. Rather, they were first added to
Wikipedia and only then, if participants saw it as problematic, was brought up to
179 For example, Mere collections of public domain source material was added by Mav (Daniel Mayer) on February 25th 2002, news report was added on August 9th by Stephen Gilbert, a vehicle for advertising was added by DW on September 23rd, and original research added by AxelBoldt on January 26th, 2003. See Wikipedia (2012h) 180 Perhaps surprisingly, though the page had undergone considerable changes, these core policies are still visible today.
191
notice, discussed and transmuted into a policy decision. And even then, the
fragmented nature of what Wikipedia is not allowed for changes and variation much
more than a positive definition would. While creating standards and practices that
shape the bulk of Wikipedia's articles and the "rates and gates" of its gift-economy, it
allows Wikipedia to be inclusive enough to sustain immediate, individual giving
which does not demand anticipatory socialization. Moreover, such definition would
almost necessarily demand some sort of theorization or a symbolic universe to justify
it, and therefore limit its flexibility and the ability of participants with divergent
visions of the project to cooperate. It is precisely this under-theorized, even
untheorized nature which underlies Wikipedia's strength as a global micro-structure.
6.4 Conclusion
The events described in this chapter set the tone for dealing with content
conflicts in the project over the following years. As new forms of content appeared in
the project (and were then reintroduced numerous times by new individualized users
unaware of the project's policy) the core network of policy pages and the conscription
devices (Henderson, 1991) and scopic media (Knorr-Cetina, 2005) built to debate,
inform and enforce their content proved vital in maintaining coordination between
various individuals and groups. While policies changed and evolved considerably
over time, those described here not only remained essential to the project, but also set
the precedents that later policy formation initiatives would follow.
This episode's implications are thus apparent in Wikipedia till this very day. It
generated patterns of action for dealing with problematic editing and resources to be
used in them. It shaped Wikipedia's volatile but effective authority structure based
primarily on effective consensus and ongoing discussions, allowing it to
accommodate new participants and their visions. In modeling the form of Wikipedia's
content on a symptomatic model of the traditional encyclopedias, the policies
described above created a stable but flexible standard that contents could be tested
against, but also allowed for variations, especially on the issue of legitimate article
topics. This standard allowed Wikipedia it to successfully strive towards practical
legitimacy: a balance acceptable for both participants and readers that constructed
192
their expectations in a way favorable to the project, based on practices rather than
theorization.
In terms of governance, the pattern of action developed in this episode became
standard method for content disputes: problematic contents were usually identified
and debated in the periphery of the network initially, in one or few article pages;
references, quotations and links were then used to connect them to the core network
of policy pages181, where they were further articulated and contrasted with the
encyclopedic model established beforehand; finally, an effective consensus would
emerge as to the contents' legitimacy and a policy would be declared and
implemented through conscription devices or software features. Within this pattern of
action, Wikipedia's policy pages became privileged passage points in the project: not
completely fixed, but generally stable; not absolutely compelling, but generally
effective. Giving the community of editors a concrete, familiar and justifiable model
that its editors could usually "grasp intuitively", as Wales (Wales, 2001j) claimed, the
reliance on the traditional model of the encyclopedia helped reach decisions in cases
of contested edits without reducing the conflict to one of status, seniority or personal
preference.
Policy pages – and specifically what Wikipedia is not – function as resources,
mediators for the encyclopedic form, translating it into a series of relatively stable
concrete standards. While what Wikipedia is not was periodically changed to reflect
changes in the project's effective consensus, its main clauses were already
institutionalized. This kind of ongoing but limited re-articulation was made possible
by virtue of the policy page's original structure: failing to produce a positive form of
the encyclopedia, it traced it contours through a series of binary oppositions
constructed against other cultural forms. This allowed the project to balance between
the imposition of form (cf. Bourdieu, 1991, PP. 137-159) and its innovation.
The procedures whose development was described in this chapter enabled
participants to coordinate their actions in a highly unstable and fragmented social
environment. As literature shows, scientific knowledge production projects usually
181 Scopic media in Wikipedia changed over time, including at various times mailing lists, other Wikis such as meatballwiki.org and meta-Wiki and IRC channels. However, the policy pages remained the final arena where the policies were set.
193
achieve a high degree stability, whether by virtue of norms (Merton, 1973; Gieryn,
1982a), a common epistemic culture (Knorr-Cetina, 1999), a work of translation and
the production of OPP's (Callon, 1986; Latour, 1988) or shared boundary objects and
standard methods (Star and Griesemer, 1989; Bowker and Star, 1999, Star, 2010).
Wikipedia's turbulent social environment precluded the viability of a stable,
unchallenged consensus or hegemony determining the project's aims and methods.
Wikipedia kept re-articulating itself as new editors continually joined the project, each
bringing with him a somewhat different form of the encyclopedic model and a
different vision for the project. This constant destabilization, however, was contained:
the standard methods devised in this chapter generally succeeded in incorporating
such visions (while excluding others) into the project. This flexible and reflexive form
of coordination marks a distinct mode of translation, different from the one performed
in scientific arenas, which is based on larger flexibility and adjustable standard
methods. The extant and variations of this mode of translation merits further study,
not only in collaborative knowledge production projects in the strict sense, but also in
phenomena such as the contemporary global protest movement that seems to employ
similar methods.
I would like to extend the story to the content policies prevalent in Wikipedia
today, even if only by touching their surface. The policies described in this chapter
and the previous one were intensively changed and edited, but their essence remained
very similar to the content described above. What Wikipedia is not policy remained
prominent in the project, and new clauses were periodically added to it. The neutral
point of view policy, on the other hand, evolved over time into three "core content
policies"182 (Wikipedia, 2012k). First and foremost, the Neutral Point of View policy,
dictating that Wikipedia articles should represent their subjects "fairly,
proportionately, and as far as possible without bias, all significant views that have
been published by reliable sources" (Wikipedia, 2012f). Second, the Verifiability
policy, dictating that the threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is "verifiability, not
truth" – that is, "[i]t must be possible to attribute all information in Wikipedia to
reliable, published sources that are appropriate for the content in question"
(Wikipedia, 2012i, bold in the original). Finally, the No Original Research policy
182 While other content policies exert significant influence, most notably the "what Wikipedia is not" policy discussed above, those policies are considered the most important and general.
194
dictates that "Wikipedia articles must not contain original research. The term
"original research" (OR) is used on Wikipedia to refer to material—such as facts,
allegations, and ideas—for which no reliable, published sources exist" (Wikipedia,
2012j, bold in the original). These policies are presented as complementary, and are
tightly interlinked, both through multiple occurrences in their text and through their
existence as a distinct, formally acknowledged category of policies regulating the type
and quality of Wikipedia article edits (Wikipedia, 2012k).
While still lacking an articulated theoretical underpinning, these policies
represent a coherent epistemological strategy present in embryonic state in the
policies described above183. In contrast with modern encyclopedias, Wikipedia does
not claim to the truth about the world, but rather the truth about human culture, or the
opinions prevalent in it about the world. It does not try to function as an arbitrator
regarding truth, but rather trace the networks of agreement and controversies and
document the power-relations between various cultural standpoints regarding the
truth. Wikipedia thus splits the world in to two parts: the world of things, inherently
inaccessible within the confines of Wikipedia (as it does not allow original research),
and the world of texts, which is Wikipedia's domain. Encyclopedic knowledge,
according to this view, is only legitimate when applied to the world of texts, which is
accessible through Wikipedia's only legitimate bearer of authority: the textual
reference through which one may achieve a textual truth.
This standpoint is very close to some trends in postmodernism which uncover
the dominance of signifier over the signified in contemporary culture. However,
Wikipedia does not break away with the modern culture: expert systems – a
cornerstone of modernity according to Giddens (1990) – and especially academic
ones are given a monopoly over knowledge of the world of things. Wikipedia's
standards construct academic review and acknowledgement as the main forms of
legitimation for information: Wikipedia's guidelines regarding hierarchy of
information sources state that "academic and peer-reviewed publications, scholarly
monographs, and textbooks are usually the most reliable sources" (Wikipedia, 2012l).
However, that authority is limited to the world of things, and is denied in the context
of the world of texts, as expertise remains unacknowledged inside Wikipedia's
183 This interpretation is solely my own, and is not based on an articulation present in Wikipedia itself.
195
production system. In this system, every editor is considered equal to all others in
terms of their critical capacities and their ability to assess or generate knowledge and
information, and real life identity is not recognized as a bearer of legitimacy. In this,
Wikipedia peculiarly retraces the footsteps of early encyclopedists, those who were
involved with the manuscript culture (and later, with early print culture) of the high
middle ages and the renaissance. These encyclopedists regarded authoritative texts as
auctores which confer the necessary legitimacy on their compositions, rather than
their immediate knowledge or the counseling of contemporary experts. As Ribemont
(1996) argues, the style of medieval encyclopedias, "is that of assertion, in a discourse
in the present tense, made up of a juxtaposition of elements presented in an objectivity
justified by the authority [i.e. auctoritas, L.G.] from which encyclopedic thought
derives a large part of its origins".
Wikipedia's commitment to the traditional form of the encyclopedia also
shaped Wikipedia's consumption, as it enabled it to achieve a substantive enough
measure of legitimacy to attract readers. While Wikipedia's credibility and legitimacy
are still lively debated, I would propose that relying on the model of the encyclopedia
allowed it to achieve practical legitimacy – an attitude of relative trust that takes into
account and encapsulates its usability, its dangers and its lack of formal legitimacy.
As Wikipedia's production processes were incommensurable with the legitimating
discourse of expertise which supported traditional encyclopedic projects, it had to
develop alternative means to demonstrate its legitimacy, both internally and
externally. Wikipedia's reliance on this model and its success in enlisting participants
to sustain it generally succeeded in filtering out various types of problematic content
that would have made it less likely that the reader finds what he was expecting for. It
helped distinguish it among other internet information resources that were less
organized and uniform, and convey a measure of trust and credibility as it shaped
editors and readers' expectations. Paradoxically, it was the very commitment to the
traditional encyclopedic form that allowed Wikipedia to achieve its status as an
innovative and dominant reference work.
196
At the same time, the relative disregard for certain aspects of the traditional
encyclopedia184 (such as the reliance on a predetermined category scheme; the
hierarchical arrangement of topics; the attempt to strike a balance between different
subjects in terms of size; the emphasis on stable or static types of knowledge, the
western curriculum and high-brow subjects), enabled Wikipedia to be more relevant
to web surfers than any other contemporary encyclopedia. The eagerness to engage in
articles relating to contemporary news and popular cultural events (in the broadest
sense of the term) appealed to a large crowd interested in a relatively dry
encyclopedia style articles on such subjects. Other innovative features, such as the
existence of talk pages; a full and accessible archive of articles' former versions; the
inclusion of bibliographies and external links sections and the use of standardized
warning labels in cases of disputed content, also increased its usability – all without
threatening the traditional form of the encyclopedia article and the project's practical
legitimacy.
Wikipedia's usability and the notion of practical legitimacy in general, will be
the subject of the next chapter. While in the last chapters I described the production of
Wikipedia's general model and some of its main standards, in the following chapter I
examine how they affect Wikipedia's audience. Models and standards, by their
natures, mold the cultural product in their shape. They are inscribed in them. It is now
common wisdom in the sociology of culture and in cultural studies that the
interpretation of cultural products should be supplemented and triangulated by
studying the way they are constructed by their consumers. Thus, in the following
chapter I examine the way a specific group of highly information oriented workers –
namely journalists – use Wikipedia, and how their construction of its form and
legitimacy are embedded in the patterns of its consumption.
184 such as the reliance on a predetermined category scheme; the hierarchical arrangement of topics; the attempt to strike a balance between different subjects in terms of size; the emphasis on stable or static types of knowledge, the western curriculum and high-brow subjects.
197
Chapter 7: Wikipedia in the Field of Israeli
journalism
"Wikipedia is like porn – no one talks about it, but everybody does it" (Eyal, Freelance journalist, previously deputy editor of a weekend supplement)
In the previous chapters, I described the production of Wikipedia, and
examined the practical ways in which participants tried to connect and articulate the
Wiki technology and non-professional, volunteer-based editing with the traditional
model of the encyclopedia that would buttress its legitimacy. The results of these
efforts are not unambiguous: as noted in the introduction, Wikipedia is one of the
most popular websites in the world, and by far the most popular reference work in
existence, but its legitimacy is still controverted (Reagle, 2010a, 137-168). In this
chapter, I shall demonstrate how this attempt failed and succeeded at the same time,
as Wikipedia developed into a universally used but unacknowledged resource. I shall
try to better understand this strange, paradoxical pattern by examining the pragmatics
of its reception and consumption in one context specifically, that of journalism.
While some work have been done which attempts to describe how users asses
the credibility of Wikipedia’s articles, no studies had been made about the practical,
everyday use of Wikipedia by experts. Both Metzger et al. (2010) and Yaari et al
(2011) studied under-graduate students’ use of Wikipedia, and Yaari et al. used an
experimental setting where participants were asked to assess specific articles chosen
by the authors. A similar method was employed by Chesney (2006), who asked
experts to assess the credibility of articles either in their area of expertise or outside it,
as in both conditions the articles were chosen by the researcher, and there was no
attempt to understand the process of assessment in a natural setting.
To understand Wikipedia's success and its effects on society, it is crucial to
examine how it is used in practice, in the everyday life of its users and not in a
controlled experimental setting. Moreover, focusing on students and academics use of
Wikipedia may give a distorted view of how Wikipedia articles' credibility is
assessed, and the meaning accorded to the information appearing in it by its users.
198
Thus, in line with this work's pragmatist approach, I decided to study how specific
knowledge experts – namely journalists – use it in the course of their work.
Weinberger (2011) noted that expertise itself is changed in several significant
ways once it is embedded in digital networks. First, it seizes to be topic based, and
defies conventional disciplinary boundaries. Second, where its value used to lie in the
certainty of its conclusions, it now lies in its ability to open various direction and
opportunities unthought-of of by layman. Third, expert's knowledge used to be
opaque – it was a stopping point beyond which the knowledge seeker could go no
further; now it is networked – that is, includes links to various sources which allow
the consumer to contextualize it. Four, divorced from its traditional print medium,
expertise is now interactive, allowing for more interactive forms of knowledge
seeking. Five, expertise are no longer a distinct class – "on On the Net, everyone is
potentially an expert in something" (p. 67). Finally, while expertise used to demand
speaking in a single voice, current consistency is now polyphonic.
The original idea for starting interviewing journalists was that they are a
population uniquely posited for examining the relation between the use of Wikipedia,
the way in which it is perceived, and conceptions of knowledge and knowledge-
giving in general. Journalism is a field where general knowledge is a crucial,
necessary tool of the trade, and information is the goal and prize, making Wikipedia
an especially valuable resource for professionals in that field. At the same time, the
cautious and suspicious ethos towards sources of information, and the extreme
visibility of journalists' products, might make them wary of using it. This tension, I
hypothesized, would enable me to examine the connection between perceptions and
evaluations of Wikipedia, and its actual use. Specifically, I expected to find some sort
of correlation between journalists' use of Wikipedia, their readiness to quote or refer
readers to it, and their perception of it. Another pattern I was expecting was a
variation between the perception and practical utilization of Wikipedia by journalists
working in print and online venues.
However, when I began interviewing journalists about the way they use
Wikipedia, I quickly realized my assumptions were wrong. While the interviewees
indeed demonstrated a variety of attitudes towards Wikipedia, ranging from a rooted
distrust of the website to much admiration for its reliability and usability, their use of
199
Wikipedia seemed to be almost completely unrelated to their perception of it. The
journalists I interviewed reported that their use of Wikipedia is not influenced by the
fact that knowledge is given to it by unpaid contributors, or by the fact that anyone
can edit it. In general, they dissociate their consumption of Wikipedia from their
views of its production. This dissociation is directly connected to the way Wikipedia's
role in the world of journalism was institutionalized185: all the journalists I
interviewed, without exception use Wikipedia regularly, usually on a daily basis and
almost never less than a few times per week. Moreover, all interviewees reported that
this practice was habitual in the venues they worked in However, while the use of
Wikipedia in journalism seems to be a universal practice, leaving evidence of having
made use of it – such as reproducing text passages from it, citing it or acknowledging
using it in articles – is a taboo, strictly kept even by those who personally advocate for
its use.
These seemingly paradoxical findings – a universal and routine utilization
coupled with the absence, even denial of public acknowledgment – will serve as the
backbone of this chapter. In its first part, I detail these findings, and the structural and
cultural conditions underlying them. In the second part, I portray the practices and
patterns of operation entailed in journalists' professional use of Wikipedia, involving
an apparently smooth and effortless movement between contexts and websites that
hides a range of valuations and decisions. I also specifically address the importance of
paratextual, para-informational and intertextual elements in this process. Paratext, a
term coined by Genette (1997), relates to "verbal or other productions, such as the
author's name, a title, a preface, illustrations" that enfold the text and shape its
interpretation by the reader. Similarly, para-information relates to verbal or other
productions that shape it interpretation by the reader. These obviously include the
paratext, but also textual elements such as style, wording, references, equivocations,
etc, and intertextual elements imbuing it with the legitimacy of other texts. In the
context discussed here, I demonstrate the importance of such elements for journalists
using Wikipedia in what is a fast-pace, highly time bound pattern of operation, and
the peculiar interchangeability of texts and paratexts in its confines, which blurs the
information's source and renders it ambiguous and contingent. Another issue I address
185 At least in the Israeli context. There are indications that this is also true for journalism in the United States, at least (Shaw, 2008).
200
in this section is the importance of scopic elements, which supply readers with a view
from afar of texts and information encapsulated in summaries, links, etc, thus
enabling them to avoid actually accessing those texts. Before concluding, I stop to
discuss issues that may limit the findings of this study, arising from the fact that my
interviewees are all Israelis working in Hebrew written languages. In the final section,
I try to explain the apparent contradictions discovered in this study, and asses the
perception of knowledge encapsulated in journalists use and attitudes.
7.1 Wikipedia in the Journalistic Environment
From the interviews conducted, it appears that Wikipedia had become an
intrinsic part of the professional toolkit of journalists, and is seamlessly integrated
into their work process. All the journalists interviewed, without exception, stated that
they use Wikipedia regularly in the course of their everyday work. In addition,
interviewees reported that using Wikipedia is a standard procedure used by others in
their field. For example, when asked how often Wikipedia is used in the newsroom of
his print newspaper, David, a news editor in a daily paper responded
All the time. Literally all the time. Every evening, everyone. Reporters, Editors, proofreaders… it surprised me when I first found out that Wikipedia is a routine work tool for what is called fact checkers (English in the original, L.G), that are supposed to be the authority. They're supposed to check the facts. And usually they check them using Wikipedia.
Moreover, there are some indications that Wikipedia is being institutionalized
and using it is becoming a part of the socialization process of journalists. Matan,
senior editor of the foreign new section in a print venue, stated that he actively
encourages his subordinates to use it on certain occasions:
I try very hard to infuse the practice of using it in my department. For example, the other day a translator made an error in translating a name […] so in such cases I always say, if you have a name to translate, always check it up in Google, in Wikipedia. Often we get translated names, and it's not sure what the source is, I always refer whoever is doing it to Wikipedia, look it up, it has a pronunciation spelling […]
The frequency of use differed between interviewees, as the most avid users
confessed consulting it more than once an hour on a workday, while the most sporadic
201
users admitted using it at least once or twice a week. Fifteen of the twenty
interviewees stated they use it at least once in every workday. While the relatively
small number of journalists interviewed (20) precludes any quantification, it seems
that the frequency of using Wikipedia is generally correlated with the frequency of
article submissions, and the distribution of use is generally correlated with the
temporal demands of deadlines. For example, Tal, a proofreader in a weekly culture
supplement, said she mostly uses Wikipedia on Mondays, the day the supplement is
"closed" (i.e. is ready to be published): "Monday, which is the day '7 nights' is closed,
it's a very long day, from the morning to the middle of the night, I'm with Wikipedia
all the time."
As a means to assess the extent to which Wikipedia is woven into the
everyday practices of journalists, interviewees were asked how their work would be
affected if Wikipedia ceased to exist. All agreed that while it won't be an
insurmountable obstacle, it may seriously slow down their work pace – a state of
affairs which in some cases might be extremely problematic. Thus, the extent to
which that option was perceived as inhibiting was related to the perceived importance
of the fast paced rhythm of their work. David, for example, who is responsible for the
news section meeting the publishing deadline, thought that it may have severe
consequences:
Q. How do you imagine your work would be like without Wikipedia?
A. Nasty, brutish, and short (laughter). How would I imagine my life without Wikipedia? More or less like living without Google. It would force me… it would expand the workload enormously. I imagine I wouldn't know how to manage today without Google and Wikipedia. I mean, I would manage eventually, I'd get used to it, like I've gotten used to Wikipedia, there's nothing holy in it in that sense. It just makes the work so much quicker and easier. But a life without Wikipedia… (groans)
On the other hand, Noa, an editor in the high-tech news section of a financial,
took a similar but much more lenient position:
A. Look, there's always Google. If you know how to search with Google, you'll find what you want. But Wikipedia makes it easier. To be honest, it would slow down my pace.
Q. Slow down your pace? That's all? Because two other journalists I interviewed…
202
A. Said they couldn't work without it? Oh, no. I don't work like that. It's only… always the starting point, but never the end point. Really, only in extreme cases of like, the editor is sitting here (points to her neck, L.G.), and it's quarter past four (very near the close of the newspaper, L.G.) or something like that that could be the end point. But I’ll try to avoid it. And deny it later on.
These quotes uncover some of the most recurrent themes journalists addressed
while talking about Wikipedia: its incorporation into the journalistic work process, its
connection with issues of speed and time pressure, its inextricable ties to Google, the
objection to using it as an exclusive single source of information – and the denial that
so often accompanies its use.
As the quote equating Wikipedia to porn with which I started this chapter
indicates, the use of Wikipedia is as embarrassing as it is widespread. While
Wikipedia was presented by all interviewees as vital to contemporary journalistic
work (if to a varying degrees), it was just as strongly presented as illegitimate, as it
must never, as a rule, be named as a source for information appearing in the article.
As Noa noted,
"You can't quote Wikipedia. You just don't do that. We're not really big on citing sources anyway, but quoting Wikipedia is forbidden. You don't name it as a source. I remember I searched for some data on something once, and they [Wilkipedia, L.G.] brought an assemblage of data that was exactly what I needed, and I didn't see any problem with using it as a source because I said… it's all taken from sources and websites we work with and know, and we would use them as a source, so it's silly like, in this case not to use it as a source, but no. there's a taboo against it.
Q. Taboo?
A. Forbidden.
Q. Is it something writ… talked about?
A. Not written, nothing is written.
Q. Talked about?
A. Yes. Forbidden. Big no no [English in the original, L.G.].
Similarly, leaving in the text of the article evidence that Wikipedia was used is
considered an indication of bad journalism. As Matan said,
203
Sadly, I often see leftovers of Wikipedia texts in articles. And I always preach my reporters to be extremely careful with it. The idea is to read, understand the story and articulate it in your own words, not to copy materials and get into this kind of stuff. But in this age, where journalists, all over the world, have to do, to work much more for the same money, or even less, you see a lot of cutting corners and fudging. People who don't have time, who are stressed, who need to produce results quickly, forgo going in depth.
These taboos uncover a deep ambivalence towards Wikipedia: it is almost as
universally suspected as it is used, as almost all the interviewees raised concerns
regarding Wikipedia's reliability and credibility. There was a consensus that
Wikipedia includes at least some errors and omissions186, and that using it should be
done with caution. Moreover, there was general agreement that Wikipedia must not be
used as a definite single source and that information originating from it should be
triangulated with other resources.
How can this paradox be explained? How can journalists hail the use of
Wikipedia as a resource and denounce it at the same time? How can they incorporate
it into their professional toolbox and at the same time demand that its use be hidden?
A simple answer would be that they are hypocrites: they use Wikipedia as a means to
make their works easier even though they know it is wrong, and thus they have to
hide it. However, this interpretation, with all its plausibility, falls short of explaining
the fact that the interviewees did not see themselves as lazy or unprofessional, and
neither did they see the use of Wikipedia as a breach of their professional “epistemic
virtue” (Daston and Galison, 2007). Rather, Wikipedia was constructed as a legitimate
and highly useful tool – as long as it is used appropriately and correctly. As a way to
solve this seeming paradox, I suggest that at least in the context of journalistic work,
Wikipedia enjoys a practical legitimacy (as distinct from a theoretical legitimacy, or
one immersed in a symbolic universe. See Berger and Luckmann, 1967, p. 95),
embedded in a pattern of action that takes into account and encapsulates its usability,
its dangers and its lack of formal legitimacy. As a means of demonstrating this claim,
I will now describe an ideal typical pattern of action reconstructed using the
interviewees’ description of their use of Wikipedia, using an ethnomethodological
approach that requires a description of the minute practices journalists use when
186 However, when asked about problems or mistakes that they ran across, none of the interviewees could remember concrete examples.
204
searching for information in the course of their work. While these details may seem
mundane, it is precisely only through such details that Wikipedia's specific mode of
practical legitimacy can be uncovered.
7.2 Wikipedia in Journalistic Practice
Almost without exception, interviewees reported a similar pattern of action
that occurred when they consulted Wikipedia during the course of their work. This
pattern, included the following stages, and can be schematized as the following:
Problem Google search Consulting Wikipedia Triangulation Re-
articulation
The fact that this pattern of action may seem familiar or even obvious to the
reader, is an indication of the extent to which it is incorporated with our own everyday
lives, as well as those of journalists If the valuations and practical choices made
during information seeking on the internet appear smooth and effortless it is because
they are incorporated into an institutionalized pattern of action, a routine, where the
methods of knowledge acquisition itself become habitual. However, as I'll try to
demonstrate, this seamless veneer hides a plethora of supporting conditions and
complex considerations worn smooth by habit. Before describing this pattern,
however, I would like to quickly survey the structural conditions of the journalistic
workflow which support and sustain it, namely its spatial and temporal organization.
The first important aspect regarding this pattern of action is that Wikipedia's
seamless integration with the journalistic workflow is made possible by the physical
organization of the journalistic work. Knowledge acquisition, especially when
conducted through the act of reading, is often thought of as somewhat of an abstract,
cognitive process, happening between the reader and the text. This is even more so
when addressing interaction with the internet, still very often thought of as a non-
place, an un-physical and in some senses anti-physical cyberspace. However, the
physical setting is of the utmost importance when attempting to place knowledge
acquisition within a sequence of action. This assertion is quite obvious in the case
discussed in this chapter: journalists relations with Wikipedia are first and foremost
205
determined by the fact that the bulk of their actual work is done in front of a computer
connected to the internet. The work of journalists is very often a desk job, especially
in the process of writing the final product. Information acquisition, communication
with peers and the actual production and editing of articles are done on personal
computers, usually in the offices of newspapers.
A second important aspect conditioning journalists' use of Wikipedia is the
temporal arrangement of the journalistic workflow. Journalists' work is highly time-
bound, in both print and internet venues. In traditional newspapers, the workflow is
bound by the pressure of deadlines. As the quotes above demonstrate, the actual
works practices of journalists are highly dependent on the time pressure they work in,
as closer deadlines tends to result in more condensed work and shorter chains of
action (i.e. "cutting corners"). The workflow in internet venues is just as time-bound,
as that of print venues, if not more. While internet venues don't have deadlines in the
traditional sense, they are bound by the competition with other websites and the need
to stay in pace with the news. As Alon, a sports section reporter, noted, "When an
editor tells a reporter to go make an obituary, the first thing he does is to open
Wikipedia. No doubt. However, it's always important to triangulate it with another
source. Well, it's problematic with internet venues, because it’s a medium that is…
immediate. The competition between venues is, people are unaware of it, only those
inside it, but the competition between internet venues, Ynet, Walla, NRG, Ha'aretz…
it's mostly over speed. Who goes up first with an item."
These spatial and temporal conditions make Wikipedia a highly valuable asset
for journalists, and facilitate its incorporation into their workflow. In what follows, I'll
outline the typical stages of the chain of action that take place when journalists use
Wikipedia.
7.2.1 Problem
As the journalist is writing or editing an article, she encounters a Problem in
the work process, manifested as a certain piece of information necessary for the article
that she is not confident about. According to the interviews, this insecurity is never
about the main storyline of the article – as building an article on Wikipedia was
206
unanimously declared as bad journalism, but rather about some information needed to
support it. The usual causes for this insecurity are either the novelty of a piece of
information, the information, a memory lapse, or a precaution. While deep
background knowledge needed to understand a subject in general is considered a very
positive thing, the scope of information journalists usually cite as reasons for
consulting Wikipedia, at least in this most dominant pattern of action, is of a much
more limited and specific nature, such as a chronology of a rolling event, a quick
overview of a person, a company, a technological or cultural product, etc. Indeed, all
interviewees stressed that the most prevalent reason for using Wikipedia was to find
some concrete and minute details, or "mini-facts". Notable details which
systematically reoccurred in interviews were the spelling of persons' and places'
names, dates (and especially dates of birth and deaths), sums of money (such as
revenues of culture commodities, financial worth of firms), etc.
The nature of relevant information often changed according to the journalists'
specialty. For example, Tal stated that "anything (in an article, L.G) I don't recognize,
I check with Google and Wikipedia. Sometimes I use IMDB (Internet Movie Data
Base, L.G.) too. Names of songs, movies, books, people…years of publication too. I
say 'wait a minute', and go look it up". On the other hand, Alon stated that he uses
Wikipedia "For getting details on obscure foreign football players who come to play
here (in the Israeli football league, L.G.)… mostly things that have to do with foreign
events, like, if I write on something I generally know about but need to fill in the
blanks, let's say I'm writing on, the African football cup, and I'm writing about a
player who scored a goal, and I'm not sure which club he plays for right now, I'll
search for it. […] or when there's some Bosnian midfielder that I don't know how to
spell his name. It's a great tool for the sports section, especially for details you're not
sure about, or don't know. Ages, heights and the likes."
The use of Wikipedia in cases of memory lapses is also usually connected to
this kind of "mini-facts". As Or, a newsroom editor in a news website noted:
Sometimes I just forget something, like a name, or… just the other day, I wrote an article about [names an Israeli politician], and I just couldn't remember what was his former position in the IDF. I knew I knew it, but I just couldn't remember. So I found his page in Wikipedia, and it was there, and I went, "yeah, that's what it was ".
207
Q. why didn't you just ask someone?
A. it was just easier. And quicker too. Alt-Tab, Ctrl-T, Ctrl-E, write his name and press enter. And click on the link. It takes two seconds, and I know I'll get the answer. Also, I didn't have to bother anyone.
Another contingency of a similar kind, and closely related to memory lapses,
was usually designated by the term "to make sure." That is, the problem in this case
wasn't a lack of information at all, but rather an insecurity regarding its accuracy.
Events such as this highlight Wikipedia role not only as a source of information, but
also as a mnemonic instrument. Information isn't a dichotomous variable you either
have or you don't. There are also fuzzy middle positions, where one is not sure of
one's knowledge. In these cases, perhaps even more than in the former, Wikipedia's
accessibility and rapid response makes it a ready extension of the journalist's
cognition, mobilized quickly and effortlessly as he sits and works on a computer
connected to the internet and equipped with an open browser.
7.2.2 Google Search
As evident from the quotes above, the result of such insecurity is an internet
search – that is, almost without exception, a Google search. Only two of the
interviewees searched for information using the search function embedded in
Wikipedia. In that respect, Google takes precedence over Wikipedia in the journalistic
workflow187. This is also evident from the fact that some of the journalists admitted
that when they encounter the information they need on the preview presented on
Google results page, they will suffice with it. In any case, all interviewees observed
that almost in all their searches, a page from Wikipedia will appear as the first result,
or very close to it – and that they expect to find it when searching.
As noted above, the use of Google is inseparable from the physical and
temporal work conditions of journalists. Several of the older interviewees, versed in
older ways of information retrieval, such as the venue's internal archive, information
specialists or purchased databases, contrasted the use of Google to such methods,
187 This is also evident from the fact that some of them stated that they sometimes use results from other relevant websites, such as the internet movie database (IMDB.com).
208
stressing their slowness or physical remoteness. As Tzvi, a domestic news reporter
remarked,
"we used to use LexisNexis, all sorts of information databases, which are in fact much more reliable, but we're living in a different age, much quicker, more instant [English in the original, L.G.], much easier. Who needs LexisNexis? It still exists, these premium databases that hardly anyone uses anymore. It's a shame, don't get me wrong, but it's just too slow and complicated. You need a degree to get what you want from it. Google is just so much quicker, who can resist it?"
Similarly, Eyal, an editor in a major website and formerly a reporter in a daily
newspaper, claimed that
"The old procedure was to check the newspaper archive. Yediot scanned all their archive, so you can search it directly from the computer. So did Ha'aretz. But Maariv didn't have the money, so they still use envelopes. They are in the basement, and you have to ask someone to go and get them, they are catalogued in books, and you have these levers and pulleys to get them. It's just like modern times, this story. And the more esoteric the subject, the worse it is covered. It's just impractical for most purposes."
Iddo, who worked in a venue with a digitized archive, didn't have a much
better view of it, noting that
"If I look for a subject in the archive, let's say the Iranian nuclear program. You have a page on the subject, a tag. Let's say I'm looking for something very specific, the archive can have ten articles just from the previous month…it's going to take a lot of time to find what I want. In Wikipedia, because it's a relatively short encyclopedic article… it's faster to look in it, and get from there to the original news article in the original website if I need to."
The combination of Google and Wikipedia thus replaces, at least partially,
older ways of finding information. These findings raise the fact that Wikipedia, from
the point of view of a journalist seeking information, is practically inseparable from
Google – as Amir, a former sports reporter and current culture section editor of a
major website noted, "Wikipedia, for me, is another section in Google." And as Eyal
stated, "I wouldn't even say 'Wikipedia', you can't disconnect Wikipedia from Google
in this respect. The placing Google gives it, and the fact that it presents it alongside
the most authoritative resources makes it what it is.… so I use Google, in the first
stage. It is my regular starting point from which I enter Wikipedia. The only starting
point, absolutely." As this quote illustrates, Wikipedia's usability and legitimacy is
209
inseparable from the ranking it receives from Google, and its dominant status in the
realm of online information retrieval is inseparable from Google's monopoly in that
realm, as it bestows Wikipedia with its dominant status as a source of knowledge.
This legitimacy, it needs be stressed, is articulated in a practical, rather than
formal or epistemological terms. It is rooted in the socialization and previous
experiences of the journalist, who learns over time that Google brings her quicker and
better results than alternatives, considering the constraints of her time and work
frame. The fact that Wikipedia articles continuously occupy the top positions in
Google pages, and are usually found useful to journalists, frames and shapes the way
it is perceived by them. Google thus functions as a sort of paratextual or intertextual
element, shaping Wikipedia's reception and determining the way it is received and
read.
However, the reverse is also true up to a point, as Wikipedia also shapes
journalists' expectations of Google. As noted above, journalists often search Google
with a clear intention to find a Wikipedia result. Thus, the relation between Google
and Wikipedia seems to be more symbiotic than parasitical, as Google benefits from
their expectation to find results from Wikipedia. In a very important sense, Wikipedia
transcends Google's framing, as is evident from the fact that most of the journalists
stated they will click on a link to a Wikipedia article when one shows up in the results
page even if other websites rank higher than it. Moreover, five of the interviewees
stated that they occasionally add the terms "Wikipedia" or "Wiki" to the search form
to ensure they get a result from Wikipedia.
7.2.3 Consulting and Evaluating Wikipedia Articles
While in some cases journalists extract the information they need from the
preview presented on a Google results page, in most cases they will click on the link
leading to the relevant Wikipedia article. Following links from Google to specific
Wikipedia articles has an important role in shaping journalists’ perception of
Wikipedia. According to the interviews, journalists consulting Wikipedia during the
course of their work usually encounter just the single page linked to from Google.
210
They seldom, if ever, frequent its homepage188. They hardly ever use such
navigational aids as portals and category schemes in the course of their work, and
neither do they consult help or community pages. Furthermore, while twelve of the
twenty interviewees were aware of the existence of History and talk pages, only one
of them actually stated they use them on a regular basis. As evident from the previous
section, they almost always enter a specific article Wikipedia from a Google link that
functions as its paratext, frames it and bestows it with legitimacy. Thus, Wikipedia as
a totality, a website with an internal structure and readily available, transparent
sustaining mechanisms, is kept near-invisible, in this habitual pattern of action.
Wikipedia's reception is thus, to an extent, fragmented. While texts appearing
in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Associated Press or Bloomberg News are more or
less uniformly endowed with a legitimacy stemming from their venue of publication,
the fact that a certain page appears in Wikipedia frames its reception to a much
smaller extent. This fragmentation is inseparable from the heterogeneity of
Wikipedia's articles themselves. While all journalists noted that they regarded
Wikipedia as a source of information superior to most other websites, they also,
without exceptions, noted the great differences in quality to be found among articles.
As Orly, a proofreader in a daily newspaper noted:
There are huge differences between articles, really very huge. There are articles that look amazing, incredible. Well structured, with a good introduction, with these little squares on the side that give you all the information you need (i.e. infoboxes, L.G.), good links... Other articles look like they were written by a 12 years old kid. And in some cases, they're so short you can't get anything at all out of them.
This heterogeneity may partly explain the attitude journalists exhibit towards
the information they find in Wikipedia (to be discussed at greater length below), as
they usually stress the fact that they judge it on an ad hoc, "case-by-case" basis. What
this actually means is that the main measure for the reliability of a looked-for detail is
the perceived reliability of the article page it appears in.
Thus, while journalists are searching for information on an article page, they
are also forced to make some evaluation of its quality. This process is so habitual that
it is done almost unconsciously, and in any case it is not temporarily differentiated 188 One major exception, the use of the "on this day…" section, will be discussed below.
211
from the search itself, allowing it to smoothly blend into the pattern of action. When
asked to explain how they assess the reliability of information in Wikipedia,
journalists named several elements, all highly visible, appearing within the confines
of the accessed page and external to the information itself. While in cases of memory
lapse it is possible to assess the validity of information based on recollection, in the
case of new information the evaluation process is assisted, to a large extent, by
paratextual and par-informational elements. In the absence of such traditional
elements such as a respectable publisher, an author's name or a leather binding,
journalists have to draw on signs appearing on the web pages themselves to evaluate
specific Wikipedia articles. In a paradoxical dialectic similar to the kind outlined by
Goffman (1971), the need to assess the accuracy of the information they seek forces
journalists to focus more on the signs external to it, and at least partly irrelevant to it.
Such signs can be generally divided into two categories: framing elements and
hypertextual elements.
Framing elements are signs journalists use to evaluate the information they
seek, they are those visible elements on the page which indicate to the reader the
amount of trust that should be accorded to the article can be trusted. These elements
can be broadly divided into paratextual and textual elements. Paratextual elements, in
this context, are usually devices and trappings of traditional print works translated
into Wikipedia's digital realm, such as infoboxes, headlines, illustrations, footnotes
and a table of contents189. Textual elements are aspects of the text itself, such as a
good introduction, correct grammar, length etc. These are para-informational but not
para-textual elements, as they are incorporated in the text of the article itself.
The elements noted above all have two important characteristics in common:
first, they are highly visible and can be identified with a quick glance that does not
have to be differentiated from the action of seeking the relevant information on the
page; second, they serve as a measure for the amount of attention and work invested
in the article. Transcending the basic work needed to generate a simple presentation of
information, these elaborate elements are important exactly because they are
peripheral to the information itself. They indicate that enough extra work was done on
189 The fact that these paratextual elements have that effect may lead one to speculate about the legitimating effect print culture still enjoys in digitally mediated texts. However, most journalists noted that it is rather the feeling that time and effort has been invested in the article that makes them trust it.
212
the article that its basic elements were already taken care of.190As Ronen noted, "a
good article is always written better articulated. There's no mess. The text is orderly,
you have references, footnotes, the text is usually well written, I mean, it gives you an
impression that…you know, it’s the difference between three and three hundred
people creating it".
Another important type of paratextual elements occupying a unique position in
comparison to the ones noted above, in that it diminishes rather than enhances trust,
are warning templates, noted by more than half of the interviewees as modifying their
judgment. Such templates are prefabricated standard comments and warnings that can
be conveniently pasted by Wikipedia's editors to an article as indications of
problematic or insufficient information, in the form of standardized warning
templates. Over the years, many such templates were developed to indicate certain
problems in an article as a whole, or in certain parts of it. Notable among those are the
stub template, indicating a very short and insufficient article, disputed content
template indicating that the factual accuracy of an article, a section or a sentence is
disputed, NPOV template indicating the neutrality of an article, a section or a sentence
is disputed, and reference necessary (or as it is more often referred to, citation
needed) template, indicating that information appearing in the article is unreferenced.
Such elements differ from the ones described above as they are at once an indication
of investment (of the editor placing the waning) and lack of it (as it warns against a
text that may otherwise seem perfectly sound). All interviewees addressing it noted
that they are more suspicious of information flagged with such templates.
A second type of signs used to evaluate the quality of article pages are
intertextual elements. Intertextual elements that connect Wikipedia pages to external
textual resources usually appear in the form of hyperlinks to external websites but can
also manifest themselves as references to offline sources. Such elements have a
unique position in journalists' pattern of action and valuation process. The majority of
the journalists interviewed stated that external links are the most important measure
for the reliability of a Wikipedia page. Such elements include references, footnotes, 190 An important paratextual element occupying a unique position in this respect is the "citation needed" template, noted by almost half the interviewees as modifying their judgment. This element is at once an indication of investment and lack of it (as it warns against a text that may otherwise seem perfectly sound). All interviewees addressing it noted that they are more suspicious of information flagged with this template.
213
bibliographies, "further reading" sections, and most importantly, "external links"
sections, etc. These elements are obviously also a part of the article's framing, as they
are evidence of the work invested in it. However, they have a more important and
more radical meaning that justifies placing them in a category of their own.
More than just an indication to measure the work invested in an article,
journalists' reliance on hypertextual elements is usually shaped by their confidence
that they are lead to the sources from which the information in the article was
produced. As Noa noted, "Generally, I asses the reliability of an article just like I
would that of any other text. What sources do they use, like…some time they have
references there, so if they rely on obscure stuff, like blogs, for example, I won’t
perceive it as very reliable. When they rely on newspapers I consider reliable, that’s
another thing." Hypertextual elements thus function as a unique kind of sign, imbuing
the article with the legitimacy attached to the source they lead to.
Similar to the relation between Wikipedia and Google, the relations between
Wikipedia and the sources it points to are at least partially reciprocal, as Wikipedia
also shapes journalists' expectations of its external resources. As I show below,
journalists often incorporate Wikipedia into their pattern of action as a path or proxy
for its external links, which they use as the actual source of information. Thus,
Wikipedia often functions within this pattern of action as an intertextual element
shaping the reception of the sources it links to (who are the actual text they seek), just
as Google functions as an intertextual element for Wikipedia. Wikipedia's status is
thus ambiguous: it is sometimes text, sometime paratext, sometimes hypertext and
sometimes hypotext, sometimes the means and some time the end. Google, the
Wikipedia article and the external links cited in it are thus all entangled in this pattern
of action, framing each other and reinforcing each other's legitimacy and usability.
Within this chain, Wikipedia functions as a synecdoche, a blackbox encapsulating all
other objects, representing them and focusing their respective characteristics191. The
191 This entanglement, it should be stressed, is not present in the text itself, or "objective" in any way, as it is constructed through this specific pattern of action and absent in other ones. However, while this is beyond the scope of the current study, I would like to suggest that the possible existence of chains positing similar relations will tend to strengthen this entanglement. Google engineers, Wikipedia editors and owners of websites linked to Wikipedia seem to be aware of the synergetic connections between the objects they nurture, and actively foster it. An interesting indication supporting this hypothesis came from Alon, who commented that his editor in the culture section of a news website occasionally tries to add links in Wikipedia articles to relevant projects in the website.
214
decision when to stop searching – whether to use the information from the preview in
Google's results page, the Wikipedia page, or the sources Wikipedia links to – is
contingent on the concrete conditions of the search and it is what ultimately stabilizes
the relative status of the various objects in the given case.
After locating the relevant information and assessing its reliability based on
the signs surrounding it, the pattern of action surveyed here forks, as journalists face
an alternative: whether to use the information they found on Wikipedia immediately,
or to try validating it using triangulation. In the following section I'll describe
journalists' generic triangulation practices when using information from Wikipedia.
7.2.4 Triangulation
While in many cases the search for information ends when it is located in the
Wikipedia page, sixteen of the interviewees stressed, with varying degrees of passion,
that they usually do not content themselves with this information, and attempt to
verify it through triangulation with other sources. In this narrative, Wikipedia is
constructed, to cite Amir, as "just another source, one of the many that I routinely
use." While triangulation is constructed as an integral part of the journalist's epistemic
virtue, and as especially important in the case of Wikipedia, the actual use of this
practice is a modular part of the discussed pattern of action, as its existence is
contingent upon the concrete circumstances of the search and in particular, time
pressure. Moreover, the concrete actions involved in it confound, to a certain extent,
the usual meaning of the term triangulation, as they usually stay within the confines of
the series of objects discussed above.
The process of triangulation is constructed by journalists as an essential
feature of the journalistic epistemic virtue (Daston and Galison, 2007) – that is, it is
essential to their construction as professionals. Regardless of the extent of their actual
engagement in this practice, all interviewees associated it with proficient and serious
journalism, and the use of Wikipedia without triangulating was often presented as an
example of the superficiality and lack of professionalism in contemporary journalism.
In some cases, this association was used to contrast between the interviewees' virtues,
215
and the prevalent vices she is surrounded by. For example, Yael, vice editor of a
weekly culture and entertainment supplement, stated that
"Whenever I use Wikipedia – and I do it all the time, obviously – but it's always in parallel with other sources. If it is to get facts, which is the most critical thing in my view, it was never the only source. I always cross-referenced it with other places, two or three places. It was always to make sure. But that's also because I'm old-fashioned… old-fashioned, and also, I say this objectively, more thorough."
However, even while hailing the virtues of triangulation, only five
interviewees insisted that they never use information from Wikipedia without
triangulating it. Most journalists held a more flexible position, stressing the
importance of triangulation in principle while admitting that in some cases they avoid
doing so, mainly due to time pressure. As Amir noted,
I never… not never, but almost never finish my research with Wikipedia.
Wikipedia is not a dead end (English in the original), the end of the road in terms of an investigation. It's a launching pad perhaps, or a junction from which I can go somewhere.
Q. don't you have cases where you say, "actually, that's ok, that's enough for me?
A. no, there are cases; it depends on the level of… how deep I need to go. To be honest, it depends on how much time I have."
As noted above, the constraints of time pressure and deadlines are essential to
the work of most journalists. Under these circumstances, it is often difficult or
impractical to triangulate information. Thus, triangulation functions as a justification
for action as much as it does as a pattern of action. The ideal pattern of action
including Wikipedia as well as its triangulation was essential to many interviewees
construction of it as a legitimate tool in journalism, even when they themselves
admitted they don't always do so. This gap between justification and action is
especially important when addressing the concrete ways in which journalists actually
triangulate information, as the actual enactment of triangulation is done in a way that
often confounds the usual meaning of the word.
When asked to specify what practices they use when triangulating the
information they got from Wikipedia, interviewees usually referred to one of three
216
options: using Wikipedia pages in other languages, using other Google results or
trusted websites, or using external links from the Wikipedia article. All these sources
are pragmatically interlinked, as they are – some to larger extent than others – part of
the same environment and setting as Wikipedia, demanding only a handful of mouse
gestures or keyboard typing to arrive at. While triangulation is often constructed as a
digression from one context of action to another, in our case it is more an extension of
a preexisting context. To triangulate information using these sources, all a journalist
has to do is move back or forward in our familiar pattern of action, sidestepping and
then backtracking to the routine course with minimum effort.
This may explain why the most popular means of triangulation, by far, was the
use of external links from the Wikipedia article, an action almost all the interviewees
declared they engage in regularly. The construction of this action as triangulation is
problematic, as the consulted sources are clearly not independent. Obviously, the links
placed in Wikipedia article will, as a rule, support the text and information appearing
in the article itself. This is a direct result of Wikipedia's policies and practices, which
stipulate that claims should be backed by external resources (see chapter 3).
Relying on an alternative description appearing in the interviewees, this action
may be better understood as the tracing of a chain of references (Latour, 1999), a
continuation of the pattern of action starting with Google, continuing in Wikipedia
and ending in the websites it links to. This chain of references represents information
in various levels of processing and proximity that the journalist can decide to follow
through – in principle, indefinitely, if she decides to use the links or references in the
websites that Wikipedia links to – until she is satisfied with its measure of validity.
Obviously, as she faces a deadline the question of the information's "ultimate source"
usually remains beyond the scope of the journalist's actual actions. What she requires
is a practical means to make sure that she is not totally confounded – that is, that a
source is credible enough so that she may be sure that the chain leading from it
onwards is unbroken, or at least that such hypothesis in that regard is plausible and
can later be justified192. The assurance that such a source exits somewhere down the
192 This of course echoes Berger and Luckmann's discussion of plausibility structures, the "social base for the particular suspension of doubt without which the definition of reality in question cannot be maintained in consciousness" (Berger and Luckmann, 1967, p. 175), and their reliance on a generally
217
chain of references is the foundational hypothesis that allows journalists to decide, at
any given level, that she can suffice with the measure of proximity she achieved, but
it is not necessary, and usually not practical, to actually access it.
The decision when to stop along the chain of references is mainly determined
by the contingencies of time, already addressed above. In the competitive world of
internet venues, as well as the strict deadline regime in newspapers, information
delivered too late is of no use. Thus, journalists have to use signs and indices to
replace the actual reading of the material present on the next link in the chain of texts
(which is not actually read) as means to decide when to stop the chain of action. Such
signs are scopic elements that enable the journalist to peek into the next link on the
chain, helping them to determine the necessity of actually engaging it beforehand.
Wikipedia articles are usually rich with such elements, in the form of references and
external links and their description in the text. As noted above, these elements are
essential to Wikipedia's ability to become a trusted and privileged passage point. This
quality is enhanced by Wikipedia's hierarchy of resources, which shows a preference
towards conservative and respectable sources.
Thus, in many of the interviews appeared an alternative definition of
Wikipedia, which constructed it not as an encyclopedia, but rather as an index. Iddo,
for example, when equating Wikipedia to newspaper archives, noted that "In
Wikipedia, because it's a relatively short encyclopedic article, you get only the basic
information. And it's easier to use, because it's really a sort of index, it's faster to look
in it, and get from there to the original news article in the original website if I need to.
Wikipedia is a lot of people going over a lot of information, summarizing it and
giving you references."
These features do more than make Wikipedia a privileged passage point:
under conditions of time pressure, they also make Wikipedia increasingly a privileged
end point, allowing journalists to stop the chain of references being relatively
reassured about its following links. The richness and adequacy of scopic elements in
Wikipedia articles very often allows the journalist to determine that it is trustworthy
enough, and if the article itself looks reliable he can neglect actually checking the next accessible typology of experts which legitimize them, while their own expertise remains inaccessible (ibid, pp. 95-96). See below in chapter 8.
218
level. As such episodes reoccur, Wikipedia turns more and more into a privileged end
point in the chain. As David noted,
Wikipedia created, at least for me, eh… some sort of authority, Otorita, in a sense that using it so often in a sense dulled the... the tendency to check, I mean the more you use it the more you become entangled in it, institutionalized into the Wikipedia, it increasingly becomes your main tool for work.
The duality of Wikipedia, existing both as a privileged passage point and as an
end point in the search of information, is vital to its functioning in the journalistic
workflow. As discussed above, Wikipedia is illegitimate as a final or single source of
information. Thus, its usefulness and legitimacy as a privileged passage point is vital
to its slow and gradual construction as a privileged – though illegitimate – end point,
and enable journalists to use it while denying its status as an actual source of
information. However, this situation also means that journalists who use Wikipedia as
a source of information cannot publicly acknowledge its use, and sometimes have to
actively cover their track. Indeed, such actions are an integral part of the next and
final stage in the pattern of action – the re-articulation of the information gathered and
its incorporation into the article.
7.2.5 Re-Articulation
After the journalist returns from her journey, she now has to translate the
information gathered to the context of the article she works on. The main actions
journalists engage in at this stage are the re-articulation and translation of the
information to fit it to the new context, and the erasure of any traces that can lead the
readers back to Wikipedia as a source of information. The re-articulation of
information is considered an integral part of the process, vital to the epistemic virtue
of the journalist.
The pattern described above, it should be remembered, is embedded in a
longer and more elaborate pattern of action – that of writing an article. In this last
stage of the pattern, the problem described in the first phase of the pattern is
overcome, and the lack of confidence regarding the information needed to complete
the article is overcome. The journalist, now in firm possession of the information,
219
goes back to her word processor, where the article draft is located, and inserts the
information into the article. The extent of re-articulation needed is dependent, for the
most part, on the size of information: The smaller it is, the closer it is to a "mini-fact",
the less adaptation it needs. Information like spelling of names, or dates, need no
adaptation at all, and is usually imported using a "copy-paste" method, while larger
chunks of information probably warrant a larger measure of adaptation to the concrete
narrative of the article.
In any case, the journalist attempts to strip all the parainformational elements
still present in the original text as a part of this process. The erasure of
parainformational elements has both practical and emblematic reasons: from the
practical point of view, old para-informational elements need to make room to those
specifically relevant to the article. However, the emblematic point of view is just as
important, as it severs the link between the new article and the chain of objects
implicated in the journalist's search – and especially Wikipedia. As noted above, all
the interviewees, without exception, reported that the text of completed articles should
be purged from any sign that the information contained in it originated from
Wikipedia. This imperative is obviously relevant mainly to sizable and composite
chunks of information (manifested as larger blocks of text), as details such as spelling,
dates and amounts are almost pure information and warrants little translation, if any.
In addition, such details, in contrast with larger blocks of text, can rarely function as
traces leading with any kind of certainty back to the original source in Wikipedia.
The dual nature of re-articulation enables journalists to engage in it without
feeling they are cheating, or performing a professional vice. Where credit has to be
given, when an important part of the story is arrived to through Wikipedia, it is not
withheld, at least not in principle. It is simply transposed, moved from Wikipedia to
the next link in the chain of texts, just as it is transposed from Google. And when no
credit is due, the severing of the information's link to Wikipedia is folded inside the
more obvious task of writing the article in the journalist’s own words. In this sense,
copying from Wikipedia is not very different from copying from any other source –
except that neglecting to do the necessary work of “translation”, or transposition may
have more embarrassing repercussions, as Wikipedia's style is easy to trace and
equate. In this last stage of the pattern, than, the formal illegitimacy of Wikipedia as a
220
source of information is neutralized by incorporating it and negating it into the very
pattern of action through which it is used. The epistemic virtue of the journalist using
Wikipedia remains intact precisely because her ideal use of it is indistinguishable
from the act of erasing the traces of using it – while she justifies that action in terms
seemingly unrelated to it. While this action may be seen as hypocritical, it is
indistinguishable from the general practices of journalism.
7.3 Using Israeli Journalists as Interviewees
As noted in the methodology chapter, my interviewees were all Israelis
working in Hebrew written venues. This may limit the generalizability of the findings
presented above, both with regards to other fields and cultures, and to other language
versions of Wikipedia. Quick generalization of the practices presented here to other
institutional and cultural contexts will be irresponsible: they may be the result of a
local epistemic culture, different from ones to be found in other context. As Nicholas
Johns' (2011a, 2011b) studies about the diffusion of the internet to Israel during the
eighties and early nineties suggest, the institutionalization of new media is highly
dependent on individual and state level machinations. This means that further research
is needed to understand the differences between the ways journalists in different
countries use Wikipedia.
However, I would like to suggest that a situation similar to that described
above may exist in other professional fields – namely, that of higher education. From
a few exploratory interviews, numerous discussions with fellow academics, and
indeed from my own experience, it seems that very similar patterns of use may be
found in this field too – more so with regard to teaching, but to some extent also with
regard to research and writing. In any case, further studies are needed to assess the
extent to which Wikipedia is used in various fields, and how patterns of action which
incorporate it differ between fields.
A second problem may steam from the fact that the most relevant version of
Wikipedia for the needs of my interviewees was the Hebrew one, while this study's
assessment of Wikipedia is mainly based on the dominant English language version.
This problem is compounded by the fact that Wikipedias in different languages do not
221
comply to the same polices (with a few exceptions, including the Neutral point of
view policy, considered binding in all Wikipedias), and there is a large degree of
variance in the way they operate. However all interviewees, without exception, noted
that they frequently use the English Wikipedia, some of them more often than they
did the Hebrew one. Their reports of their experience with both language versions
indicate that they consider them a part of a whole, alternating between them according
to their needs and the quality of the information found in them. While they do
differentiate between them, journalists perform identical patterns of use and
evaluation in both Wikipedias, and more often than not use the English version as a
higher authority than the Hebrew one. Thus, I believe that their reports may be used to
construct a pattern of action generalizable to audiences of various language versions
of Wikipedia. This belief is supported by the fact that several of my interviewees who
used Wikipedias in various other languages – such as German, Russian, and French –
reported performing identical patterns of action and evaluation when using these
versions.
7.4 Conclusion
This chapter started with a puzzle: how is it that the use of Wikipedia among
journalists is widespread, habitual and institutionalized, but so is the taboo against
citing it or leaving traces leading to it in an article? How come journalists
acknowledge this taboo and usually view it as justified, while at the same time they
deny that using Wikipedia is an offense against epistemic virtue? I attempted to
demonstrate how these seemingly contradicting attitudes are possible by describing
the actual pattern of action journalists use while consulting Wikipedia. This pattern of
action includes, in each of its stages and in their cumulative existence as a pattern,
various elements that enable journalists to use Wikipedia while denying it a status of a
source of information warranting a reference, and to facilitate the reconstruction of
the para-information engulfing it.
The problem that drives journalists to consult Wikipedia is constructed as a
lack of confidence regarding pieces of information that are peripheral to the main
story of the article, are usually rather small, and often either previously known but
222
forgotten or in need of verification. The search for the information is usually done
using Google and not Wikipedia itself, constructing the former as a more critical link
on the way to the information. This construction then is strengthened by the fact that
journalists sometimes use other resources appearing in the Google results page, and
on other occasions make do with the information appearing on the results page itself.
When journalists actually use the Wikipedia page, they do not take the information
presented in it at face value, but rather use various signs to verify its quality, making
their expertise at assessing the information an integral part of the process. Moreover,
Wikipedia is often constructed as a sort of index or threshold leading to information
whose "actual" location can be traced through the external links appearing in the
article. Following these links to their origin, or using some other method of
triangulation is constructed as obligatory in the process, thus making Wikipedia – in
principle, if not in practice – just one of several sources and defusing the
responsibility over the information. Finally, the actual utilization of the information
includes a transposition of credit from Wikipedia to a text further down the chain, and
a process of purging the information from exterior textual elements and paraphrasing
it, which is universally acknowledged as a legitimate journalistic practice.
While those elements all facilitate the ability to use Wikipedia and at the same
time deny its role as a source for the article, the most important element facilitating
such a pattern probably resides in the relation between these stages, in the very
structure of this pattern of action. As demonstrated above, the journalist using this
pattern traces a chunk of information through a number of interlinked texts
(corresponding to the stages of the pattern), searching for a source that he considers
good enough to substantiate those preceding it or for a reference193 that points to the
existence of such a text even if it is not actually accessed. In this pattern, Wikipedia
serves as a privileged passage point – not obligatory, but highly useful and usable –
summarizing the content of such texts, and even more importantly, giving trustworthy
links pointing to such texts, and making superfluous the need to actually access them,
making it thus often – and increasingly - the eligible, privileged end point of the
search. The information found in it is thus perceived as simultaneously present in all
the texts that lie beyond it, whether they are actually accessed in during the enactment
of the pattern or not. It remains “floating,” as it were, between various texts, either 193 Thus functioning as a scopic tool or paratext.
223
one of which can be arbitrarily named as its source, enabling the use of Wikipedia as
a source of information while denying its status as such.
This pattern bears an interesting resemblance to Weinberger's (2011, ch. 4)
notion of networked expertise – the term he uses to explain how expert knowledge –
and indeed, expertise itself – is changed once it is embedded in digital networks. A
central difference between networked expertise and traditional expertise lies in the
fact that expert's knowledge used to be opaque – it was a stopping point beyond
which the knowledge seeker could go no further; networked expertise, however,
includes links to various sources which allow the consumer to contextualize it.
Moreover, divorced from its traditional print medium, expertise is now interactive,
allowing for more interactive forms of knowledge seeking. While Weinberger's
argument is quite compelling, it lacks examples and evidence. Journalists' use of
Wikipedia and the notion of privileged passage point both serve as concrete
manifestations of this concept.
The fact the last part of the habitual process for using Wikipedia includes an
erasure of any evidence to its existence indicates that the process in its entirety
encapsulates both the practical utility and the threat Wikipedia poses to the status of
journalistic practice. The taboo on referencing to it or leaving parts of its text in
journalistic articles is incorporated into the very same pattern of action that organizes
its use, and is a condition for its successful performance as a practice. This pattern
thus incorporates both the seamless integration of Wikipedia search in the journalistic
practice, and the prevalent suspicions regarding its use, thanks to the multiplicity of
information sources and the floating and inherently unfixed nature of that information.
As this description demonstrates, the action of using Wikipedia for
professional purposes in journalism is infused with the tension arising from the
universality of the taboo against citing or acknowledging its use. However, it is
important to stress that while the interviewees all acknowledged – and by and large
approved – the taboo against leaving evidence to the use of Wikipedia in the text, they
did not see their use of Wikipedia as unprofessional or unethical. Wikipedia thus
enjoys a status of practical legitimacy within the field of journalism: it is embedded in
224
a routinized and institutionalized pattern of action that takes into account and
encapsulates its usability, its dangers and its lack of formal legitimacy. This type of
legitimacy allows journalists to use Wikipedia as a crucial tool for locating
information, and at the same time retain their sense of epistemic virtue.
However, it must be remembered that practical legitimacy, by its very nature,
presumes a lack of formal legitimacy. This ambivalence is often present in the way
interviewees addressed it. While most of them viewed it as inherently positive, it is
nevertheless constructed as problematic. As Iddo, an internet and technology reporter
in a major website noted,
The problem, one of the problems with Wikipedia is that it has no substitute. Its accessibility…its availability, its ease of use, and the fact that it has most of the information you need, and the fact that it has no substitute makes it a thing journalists are bound to use.
The construction of Wikipedia as a "problem" in a quote hailing its advantages
is highly symptomatic in this regard.
This attitude makes Wikipedia's usability an open secret; one that great
caution is needed in repeating or publicizing. Returning to the quotation with which I
opened this chapter, this type of practical legitimacy leaves Wikipedia in the socially
ambivalent position that porn is located in: highly popular, at times – mostly in
private – discussed in positive terms, but always somewhat obscene, never achieving
the status of formal legitimacy. This attitude may of course change over time – and
my personal impression is that it is changing - but paradoxically, a very important
factor in such a change, i.e. the support of the press, is confounded by the very fact
that journalists use Wikipedia so very often, and yet cannot openly admit it. The
following years may be a crucial time to research the development of this type of
legitimacy, as it may evolve into formal legitimacy, remain as it is, or acquire new
forms and articulation.
225
Chapter 8: Conclusion and Discussion
This work delineated the ways through which Wikipedia cemented its position
and practices of knowledge production over time, and how it is used by one class of
professionals, journalists. In this concluding chapter, I sum up the main arguments
and draw out their theoretical significance. The first part recapitulates the main steps
whereby, a peculiar epistemic culture which "only works in practice" evolved in
Wikipedia. In the second part, I elaborate on two theoretical concepts which I found
helpful in accounting for this culture and its development, namely the idea of
privileged passage points and that of practical legitimacy. Finally, I try to assess: to
what extent is Wikipedia symptomatic of the current emergence of a new, perhaps
global epistemic culture?
While previous explanations of Wikipedia's success were predominantly a-
historical, this work traced its origins in locally situated processes which led to the
emergence of Wikipedia's peculiar “unstructured structure.” As this study
demonstrated, to understand Wikipedia's success before it became a dominant actor in
its field, we need to look at the intertwining of diverse networks. The coordination
and enlistment of these networks constructed Wikipedia's articles as effective
boundary objects, mediating between different actors and social worlds (Star and
Griesemer, 1989; Bowker and Star, 1999; Star, 2010). Through negotiation and
translation, Wikipedia's founders articulated some minimal standards crucial for
Wikipedia’s operation and development, and constructed mechanisms that allowed for
its relatively smooth coordination in the future. While often described in hindsight as
predetermined and shaped by broader cultural and technological phenomena, such as
its underlying technology (Bruns, 2008; Tapscott and Williams, 2006), the open
source tradition (Mulgan, Salem and Steinberg, 2005) or contemporary "cult of the
amateur" (Keen, 2007), Wikipedia was shown to be, in fact, the contingent product of
negotiations and interactions which gradually amassed local solutions to concrete
problems, translated them into culturally justifiable and technologically feasible
patterns of action, and covered up their own traces in the end product.
226
One of the main goals of this work was precisely to recover these traces.
While such Reconstruction is a common goal in STS, this work offers a unique focus
on an arena that lies outside the more usual purview of science and technology
studies, and extends its implications to a situation in which central actors are cultural
models, rather than physical objects and/or persons. Wikipedia incorporated several
historical epistemic models, such as the Socratic dialogue, the encyclopedia and the
philosophy of Enlightenment, just as it did the innovative Wiki technology, the FOSS
movement ideological creed and groups of computer programmers and internet
enthusiasts. They all combined in shaping Wikipedia – and were, in turn, shaped by it.
Cultural models are extremely evasive entities: they often operate in an unarticulated
manner, operating through the practices of actors with various previously unrelated
interests. They are not "norms" which govern behavior, but rather assemblages of
meanings and practices that other actors can mobilize to forge stronger networks.
They function as relatively fixed entities, which help orchestrate more mobile
elements around them.
However, as the case of Nupedia demonstrated, relying too heavily on
established cultural models may prevent innovative knowledge production projects
from acquiring the flexibility necessary to succeed. Nupedia, Wikipedia's failed
predecessor adhered to culturally sanctioned models of knowledge production: its
form and contents were based on the Britannica's print encyclopedia, its production
process and gift-repertoire on academic practices, and its governance on the authority
of experts with academic credentials. While it did include some innovative elements –
such as a public review process for article content – those were subjected to the
dominance of the principle of expertise. However, the project's slow rate of
production triggered a movement that attempted to reshape the project in a more open
and inclusive direction. In this attempt, the Britannica Online was used as a qualified
object (Thévenot, 2001a), generating a standard for article quality. This move enlisted
it to the project, and by ensuring that the quality of articles would remain high even if
they were produced by non-experts, allowed for the incorporation of less orthodox
methods.
While these attempts did have some effect, they did not change Nupedia's
basic problems: its inability to sustain a viable gift economy attractive to the experts
227
needed to maintain it. However, as this change proved insufficient in accelerating the
rate of production, its founders decided to start a new project, more open than
Nupedia could ever be. Thus emerged Wikipedia.
Wikipedia stood, from the start, in a complex relation with Nupedia. In some
ways, it was shaped as a complete opposite of its predecessor, relinquishing its
models of knowledge production and suggesting a new one, based to a large extent on
the practices developed in other Wiki communities which focused on knowledge
production. It abandoned expertise as a model for knowledge production, replacing it
with a model of radical participation and collaboration, in which everyone could write
on any topic they felt they knew something about and each participant could alter,
erase or comment on the work of any other participant. Nupedia's standards for
articles and content policies were discarded, and it took some time and effort to form
new ones. However, highly important schemas and resources originally developed in
Nupedia were transferred to Wikipedia by participants in the former who also took
part in the new venture. These included an insistence on a traditional encyclopedic
image; a strong and elaborate stance on issues of bias in article content; key actors
who were already committed to the idea of producing a FOSS encyclopedia, and
funding from Bomis, Jimmy Wales' and Tim Shell's company.
As soon became evident, controversies rising in the midst of the radically open
and collaborative writing of article contents, reviewed in chapters 5 and 6, were
endemic features of this production process. Wikipedia's founders and participants
thus had to quickly develop conscription devices (Henderson, 1991) and scopic media
(Knorr-Cetina, 2005) that could prevent or resolve such controversies. As these were
the first controversies to emerge in the project, their resolution was accompanied by
the institutionalization of elements that still sustain Wikipedia's standard practices,
policies and governance mechanisms. Through this process of institutionalization, a
number of key principles of coordination emerged: the primacy of the traditional
encyclopedic image as a "standard for standards"; the legitimacy of the Wiki process
as a complementary resource for schemas and practices; a proactive and
improvisational attitude in matters of production and technology; the reliance on
effective consensus between editors to establish policy; the dialogical nature of
228
knowledge construction; and the reliance on references to other texts rather than on
expertise and original research to establish knowledge.
The initial major controversies (reviewed in chapter 5) emerged from
production problems stemming from the reliance on radical, transparent,
collaboration. In the first of these controversies, the problem emerged from
discussions between editors appearing in article pages. This practice, an integral part
of the prevalent Wiki culture, stood in opposition to the traditional form of
encyclopedic articles. Thus, participants had to decide which had primacy in the
project. After an intense discussion, the controversy was forcefully resolved by the
institutionalization of a new socially constructed category of "talk" pages. This
resolution was later inscribed in the software of the website, solidifying it by
translating it into the very technological fabric of the project. In the second major
controversy, the problem of mediating conflicting opinions regarding article content
was forcefully resolved by Wales's articulation of the “Neutral Point of View” policy,
dictating that disputed content would be declared as such and that all sides of the
disputes should be fairly represented.
The resolution of these controversies formed a general pattern for
disagreement resolution that was later repeated in other conflict-situations in
Wikipedia: the creation of a solution for a particular problem; the generalization of
this solution, orchestrated through policy pages or mailing lists; its effective
translation to a legitimate practice through "form investment", to use Thévenot's
(2001a) term, 194 in previously sanctioned modes of coordination (such as the
traditional encyclopedic form, Wiki culture, etc.); and its technological or social
inscription. These steps thus became what I termed "privileged passage points"
(PPPs), coordinating action in most cases while allowing for some variations and
modifications. While some of these PPPs later emerged as fully-fledged Obligatory
Passage Points (Callon, 1986; Latour, 1988; Bijker and Law, 1992) – for example,
the neutral point of view policy and the separation of article pages from talk pages –
others remained a more voluntary or flexible mode of coordination. This semi-flexible
194 Form investment is the creation of equivalences across time and space between various practices, objects, and persons, in order to stabilize and anchor the participants' interpretation of an allegedly intuitive concept (Thévenot, 2001).
229
organization allowed Wikipedia to change and develop over time to react to new
challenges and – at least until now – to face them successfully.
Just as crucial as facilitating radically collaborative production, another key
problem was the need to decide on the image of the encyclopedia, and set standards
for article content. The translation of the encyclopedic model to Wikipedia (described
in chapter 6), through interpretation and selection of relevant attributes, was a
contentious process, intimately related to struggle over power and authority in the
project. It also gave rise to some of Wikipedia's central governance mechanisms, still
active at the present time. It culminated in the construction of effective mechanisms
for creating, modifying and enforcing content policies and in the articulation of an
effective and relevant encyclopedic model. This model relied on attributes of the
traditional encyclopedic article form, but supplemented them with innovative
elements. These included talk pages, the introduction of links and online references as
means of backing any potentially controversial claim, the availability of previous
versions of articles, and warnings in cases of bias, partial or unsourced information, or
otherwise problematic content.
These elements, all developed to assist Wikipedia's production, played a
crucial part in enabling Wikipedia's growth and success, as they encouraged and
helped casual readers in forming the stance needed to make it relevant to their various
lifeworlds. Relying on the model of the encyclopedia, and supplementing it with
features designed to help assess the quality of articles, allowed Wikipedia to achieve
what I term practical legitimacy195 for its producers and consumers alike (see below).
Chapter 7 sets to explore the everyday manifestations of this mode of
consumption and usage through interviews with Israeli journalists about their use of
Wikipedia. Based on these interviews, I constructed a model of journalistic use of
Wikipedia comprised of five stages: Problem Google search Consulting
Wikipedia Triangulation Re-articulation. In this process, the journalist moves
from her immediate practical needs and environmental constraints following a chain
of references (Latour, 1999) leading to a hypothesized origin of information, until she
195 Practical Legitimacy is a specific mode of action that is based on an attitude of relative trust that takes into account and encapsulates the action's utility, risk and lack of formal legitimacy (see more below).
230
reaches a point where following further references becomes impossible or unpractical.
In this process, Wikipedia serves as a privileged passage point – a practical shortcut to
knowledge that originated elsewhere. Over time, however, It gradually tends to
develops into a practical end-point in this process, as users tend more and more to rely
on the validity of the information it contains, based on evidence found in its articles
that further valid references were involved in their compilation. As users increasingly
tend to suffice with information found in Wikipedia articles, they are forced to
perform their validation processes exclusively vis-à-vis those articles. Thus,
consuming them increasingly involve judgmental and critical practices meant to
establish the validity of the sought after information.
This critical and selective mode of consumption is actively encouraged by
elements appearing in Wikipedia's articles, which give readers indications of its
quality. First, a range of framing elements – such as infoboxes, headlines,
illustrations, footnotes and a table of contents – were found to help journalists
estimate the amount of attention given to the article, which in turn serves as an
estimate for its worth. Second, intertextual elements, most often in the form of
hyperlinks to external websites,196 allow journalists to assess the sources through
which the article was (allegedly) assembled, thus imbuing it with the legitimacy
attached to the source they lead to. Finally, warning templates indicate certain
problems in an article as a whole, or in certain parts of it.197 In addition, other
elements of Wikipedia that appear outside the actual article-page encourage their
evaluation by readers. These include mainly highly visible article histories (previous
versions), which allow readers to view the actual composition of the article; and talk
pages, which enable them to access previous discussions about the articles' content.
The re-articulation of information obtained from Wikipedia brings up a
curious finding: while consulting it emerged as a routine and universal feature of
journalistic work processes, mentioning it as a source was a strict taboo. The 196 Such elements can be found in Wikipedia in the form of references, footnotes, bibliographies, "further reading" sections, and most importantly, "external links" sections. 197 Warning templates are indications of problematic or insufficient information, in the form of conspicuous standardized hypertextual elements and banners. Over the years, many such templates were developed to notable among those are the stub template, indicating a very short and insufficient article, disputed content template indicating that the factual accuracy of an article, a section or a sentence is disputed, NPOV template indicating the neutrality of an article, a section or a sentence is disputed, and reference necessary (or as it is more often referred to, citation needed) template, indicating that information appearing in the article is unreferenced.
231
journalist must cover up her use of Wikipedia as she re-articulates the information she
obtained, attributing it (if necessary) to the farthest link in the chain – and in any case,
not to Wikipedia. This attests to Wikipedia's limited success in endowing its model of
knowledge production with universally acknowledged legitimacy. It cannot be
considered legitimate as a whole, and each article has to be assured piecemeal and
assessed individually, and its use has to be kept hidden. This implicit contract
between producers and consumers – problematic and secretive as it is - stands at the
heart of Wikipedia's success.
8.1 Theoretical Implications
While the narrative I construct concerning the institutionalization of
collaboration and production practices in Wikipedia and its use shed a pragmatist light
on the emergence of one of the major cultural product in the beginning of the 21st
century198 (as it accounts for Wikipedia's success by describing the practices
performed by individuals and groups who partook in producing and using it), this
work also aims to contribute to a better understanding of the formation of epistemic
cultures more generally. Conceptually, I submit, the institutionalization and
dissemination of Wikipedia's epistemic culture is better understood in light of two
concepts: the notion of privileged passing points (PPP) and that of practical
legitimacy.
8.1.1 The Strength of “Weak” Passage Points
The notion of privileged passage point emerged when I tried to understand
how standards and policies function in Wikipedia: they are clearly not Obligatory
Passage Points (OPPs), in the sense given to this term by Actor-Network theorists
198 Pragmatist theory proved highly useful in explaining Wikipedia's temporal trajectory. As I show throughout this work, Wikipedia's history follows a very similar trail, by which the object of knowledge and the means to construct it are gradually articulated and co-constructed, and habit and creativity alternated as problems led to re-articulations of both the project and its goals. This approach is also highly relevant to understanding how Wikipedia is incorporated into knowledge production practices of users, as its use is conditioned upon and conditions the concrete environments in which it operates. Moreover, this view helps redirect the focus from Wikipedia's legitimacy as a knowledge production institution to the actual practices and procedures it generates and which attempt to construct it as legitimate.
232
(Callon, 1986; Latour, 1988, p. 43, 2005, p.31), as they can be changed,
circumvented, or even, at times, ignored.199 In contrast with the construction of OPPs
as a “single locus that could shape and mobilize the local network” and “have control
over all transactions between the local and the global networks" (Bijker and Law,
1992, p. 31), Wikipedia policy pages (with few exceptions) were far less omnipotent:
most of them could not shape and mobilize the entire local network (of Wikipedia
editors, technological apparatus, etc.) as some actors did not enforce or even adhere to
them. Likewise, these passage points do not control all transactions between local and
global networks, as evident from the fact that problematic or controversial content
was regularly added to the website.200
However, as demonstrated in this study, PPPs did cause a major realignment
of the networks involved in Wikipedia, and quite effectively directed the actions of
actors in the project. Moreover, I observed a recurrent pattern in which practices were
transformed by PPPs, through routinization and institutionalization, into habits. Some
habits were transformed into PPPs through the intensification of links to other
practices and actors enlisted to sustain and disseminate them; some PPPs (such as the
Neutral Point of View Policy) were transformed into OPPs, when they became highly
effective and immutable parts of the project.
PPPs, as I theorize them here, are somewhat closer to boundary objects (Star
and Griesemer, 1989; Bowker and Star, 1999; Star, 2010) or conscription devices
(Henderson, 1991), but differ from them in their limited impact on the arrangement of
the arena. Both boundary objects and conscription devices, with all their flexibility,
are means of generating a structured totality: a well-coordinated social arena, its
different parts re-aligned to contribute to a joint task. PPPs do not go as far, since they
afford a greater measure of variability and reversibility, allowing the social space to
remain more fluid and dynamic. They themselves are not completely fixed, though
generally stable; not absolutely compelling, but generally effective. Moreover, while
boundary objects are, first and foremost, objects they form a narrower concept than
199 A major formal policy, named "Ignore all rules" (Wikipedia, 2012a) even encourages them to do so, under certain circumstances. 200 Though it is often erased quite quickly, it does exist on the website for long periods of time, at time because it remains unnoticed, but more often because its debated between editors with conflicting views about what should be done with it.
233
PPPs who may function as actors, actively reshaping and redefining the actions and
identities of others.
This difference became clearer when I started applying the concept, and soon
realized its usefulness in understanding not only policy pages, but also the actions of
other actors in the field: Wikipedia's founders, for example, who held (at different
times) similar positions as leaders of the project in its institutionalization period. They
too had a directing role, but were usually unable – and seldom tried – to forcefully
dictate behavior against participants' will or to enforce their positions. Rather, they
developed alliances with other actors that allowed them to steer certain aspects of the
project against opposition. With the assistance of allies – some human and others non-
humans, some contingent and others more stable – they could win most major
challenges, although they did lose some, and had to modify or give up their positions
in specific cases I describe.
These two instances are related: the flexibility and leniency of leadership (see
Reagle, 2010a, chapter 6) is mirrored in the flexibility of policies.201 Thus, it may be
claimed that the term PPP is relevant not only to this specific network, but to a wide
range of networks that are more open or flexible than institutionalized ones built
around scientific projects. Indeed, many virtual communities, and most of the global
information networks Manuel Castells (1996, 1997, 1998) describes, seem to fall
within these parameters. Checking the applicability of this hypothesis is one possible
way to extend this work (see below).
The usefulness of this conceptualization is apparent when we move from
production to consumption – the analysis of the patterns of action enacted by
journalists when searching for information online. In this context, Wikipedia appeared
as itself a PPP: not obligatory, but highly useful and usable. Its privileged position
stems from the fact that it helps selecting and articulating relevant chunks from the
endless text fields of the internet. While it is seldom completely trusted, it quickly
becomes an integral part of journalists' habitual tool-kit in attempting to look for
information. Once using Wikipedia was transformed into a routine practice, distrust
towards it remained mostly in the background, while in practice it significantly 201 However, the reverse is also true: Wikipedia's leadership patterns were shaped alongside the institutionalization of project policies, and in reaction to controversies about them.
234
reshaped journalistic information seeking practices – thus making it more than just
another mere "resource" among others.
I would like to propose that structural links exist between journalists’ use of
Wikipedia, and its construction. Both the production of Wikipedia and the search for
information online involve highly individualized trajectories and patterns of action in
an extremely open space. While stabilization and closure are, to a large extent, the
goals of technoscientific projects (Pinch and Bijker, 1987), it had already been noted
that openness and instability are inherent both to the internet as a whole and to Wikis
in particular (see above, chapter 1). Thus, there is no clear entrance and exit points
and no fixed borders, trajectories are contingent upon the inclinations of divergent
actors, and it itself can change significantly as a result of their actions. These features,
embedded in technology, prevent any attempt to structure them completely. But, at
the same time, they make the reduction of complexity and the creation of roadmaps
and shortcuts highly effective for large numbers of actors, which in turn helps in
enlisting them – although only partially.
However, as Nupedia's example illustrates, closed and stable structures fare
worse, not better, than open ones in enlisting allies in the context described here. They
operate much better in stable social environments, where strong and steady ties can be
formed and institutionalized and become integrated with their surrounding structures.
More open environments, such as the internet, are more welcoming to more open and
dynamic structures. Closed systems are slower in adapting to the quickly changing
environment of the internet, as their OPPs limit their flexibility. They are less
inclusive, and thus fare worse in attempting to mediate the needs, interests and
attitudes of those multiple and shifting social worlds of which the internet is
comprised. And finally, flexible systems fare better when insufficient legitimation
prevents projects from becoming stable and taken for granted.
The concept of PPP provides opportunities for further research. First, what are
general conditions under which PPPs evolve into OPPs? Second, the relationship
between PPPs and open technology needs to be further examined: are PPPs
technology/environment specific, or can they be found in other social arenas, even
inside the realm of science? It may also be relevant to the sociology of cultural
production. In contemporary consumer society, where few symbols have universal
235
appeal, the flows in the global mediascape (Appaduari, 1986, 1990) are a perfect
arena for the emergence of such nexuses of action. Similarly, this concept can help
develop the ideas put forward by Antoine Hennion in his study of popular music
producers. Hennion describes the sound studio as "impermeable to systems; it
dissolves obligatory associations; it undoes rationalizations. Inversely, all connections
are permitted, whether or not they are specified in the user’s manuals. The studio is an
apparatus for capturing raw material by extracting it from the structured networks
along which it circulates in 'normal' life" (Hennion, 1989, p.410). This description
may be made more theoretically cogent by pointing to the seemingly weak privileged
passage points and actor-network connections that, nonetheless, give its patterns of
action some privileged structure.
8.1.2 Practical Legitimacy
A complementary conceptual question which this study emphasizes is the
issue of Wikipedia's peculiar mode of legitimacy. This issue became especially salient
when trying to make sense of the paradoxical way journalists engage Wikipedia,
using it routinely yet at the same time constructing it as an unreliable source and
erasing all evidence for having used it from their texts. As journalists claimed that
Wikipedia cannot be trusted, and that divulging its use to readers conflicted with their
sense of duty, this pattern certainly falls short of Weber’s canonical definition of a
legitimate order as one in which actors' actions are guided by a sense of duty, are
viewed as "obligatory" or "exemplary," and create relations of domination and
obedience (Weber 1978: 31). Wikipedia is thus not endowed with legitimacy in the
full sense of the word, whether traditional, rational-legal or charismatic202. However,
Wikipedia certainly had some measure of legitimacy, as its use seems to have become
part of journalists' standard socialization process, and just as important – in that most
interviewees explicitly declared that it is a legitimate journalistic tool.
Thus, for journalists, Wikipedia occupies an intermediary position between
legitimacy and illegitimacy, which I call practical legitimacy. This concept designates
202 As Weber's types of legitimacy are ideal types, it is not surprising that Wikipedia does not neatly conform to one of them (see Weber, 1978, p. 216). However, I suggest that the case of Wikipedia manifests a type of legitimacy which warrants independent conceptualization (see below).
236
a form of legitimation which grants actions (or objects, knowledge, persons etc.) a
limited yet observable measure of authority, as it takes into account and encapsulates
both its usability and its liabilities, both its de-facto legitimacy—in the sense that
"everybody does that," (Johnson, Dowd and Ridgeway, 2006) and lack of de-jure
legitimacy (manifest in repeated expressions of doubts and criticism).203
Wikipedia stands out in its ability to sustain an extremely large and diverse
readership despite – or perhaps even because of – this tension-ridden and
contradictory form of legitimacy. Wikipedia plays a central role in shaping the very
conditions of its consumption, as manifest in several of its salient features: First, the
use of the culturally prevalent and previously-legitimated model of encyclopedic
articles helps in shaping editors and readers' expectations of Wikipedia, as it generates
a certain measure of trust, credibility and legitimacy that distinguish it from other
internet information resources, and serve as a standard for determining article
quality204. Second, mechanisms such as talk pages and warning templates, originally
built for the benefit of Wikipedia's editors, construct Wikipedia as an unfinished
project and its ideal reader as a knowledge producer, interested in engaging tools and
mechanisms designed to construct and assess the articles she reads.
Wikipedia's legitimacy thus remains inherently contextual, and can only be
determined on a case-by-case manner. The price of this limited authority is
manifested in restricted public recognition and acknowledgement of its use.
Weber's definition of legitimacy, ultimately rooted in political ideas of
totalistic duty and order (Weber, 1978, pp. 212-215), is ill-suited to conceptualize
such a notion of legitimacy. Neither is the influential idea of regimes of justification
developed in the context of the new French pragmatic sociology or as it is also called, 203 This concept obviously has some affinities with Webber's Practical Rationality, as its name attests. However, while Weber's concept designated a way of life which "accepts given realities and calculates the most expedient means of dealing with the difficulties they present," (Kalberg, 1980) practical legitimacy nonetheless is preoccupied with the legitimacy of the act as much as it is preoccupied with its consequences. Moreover, it is not distinctly rational, as it relies on habituation and socialization processes. 204 However, as demonstrated in chapter 6, Wikipedia did diverge from the traditional encyclopedic model in important aspects which helped shape its perception and increase its usability at the price of limiting its ability to construct itself as legitimate. Perhaps the most notable exception was the inclusion of topics usually not found in traditional encyclopedias, such as popular culture, sports and current events. The willingness to engage topics related to contemporary news and popular cultural events (in the broadest sense of the term) appealed to a large crowd interested in a relatively dry encyclopedia style articles on such subjects.
237
sociology of criticism (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006). As Silber (2003) noted, theirs
has affinities with a form of strong cultural sociology program, aimed at going beyond
repertoire theory and providing a general order or structure to the cultural "tool-kit"
(Swidler, 1986), in the form of regimes of justification or orders of worth. However,
the justifications and legitimations found in the context of this study do not fit well
any of the regimes they describe. Moreover, as they focus on the articulation of
universal modes of justification, their theory it is less attuned to Wikipedia's local and
contingent form of legitimation, rooted in specific practical-epistemic concerns205.
Moreover, Thévenot’s later distinction between regimes of engagement (Thévenot,
2001a) falls short of accounting for phenomena which precisely challenge the
separation between familiarity, regular planned action and justification. Practical
legitimacy, emphasizing the rapid alternation between personal habits, conventional
precepts and general notions of knowledge, does exactly that.
A more flexible approach may be found in Berger and Luckmann's (1967)
treatise in the sociology of knowledge, which moved the focus away from the binary
oppositions of “particular vs. universal” and “duty vs. free will” to a continuum of
possible measures of institutionalization and legitimation. They see legitimation as an
indispensible part of the ongoing process of institutionalization that gradually
transforms social practices into objectified and culturally legitimized institutions.
Berger and Luckmann differentiate between four levels of legitimation: incipient
legitimation, implicit in every utterance which objectifies the social world; theoretical
propositions, i.e. various maxims, proverbs and explanatory schemes which explain
and justify the institutional world; explicit theories, which appear when a
differentiated body of knowledge is erected to provide legitimacy, usually becoming
the domain of experts; and symbolic universes, which "integrate different provinces of
meaning and encompass the institutional order of a symbolic totality" (ibid, p. 95).
It should be noted that Berger and Luckmann view this process as gradual and
incremental. This is evident both from their naming these forms of legitimation
"levels" – suggesting a hierarchy between them – and in their nested deployment,
where each level assumes and incorporate the level "below him." There seems to be
205 However, I find their notions of "tests" and form investment very helpful, and indeed used it in various parts of this work.
238
here a logic that sees institutionalization as completed only after adequate theorization
has taken place. Similarly, Johnson et al. (2006) claim that the legitimation of new
objects goes through four stages: innovation, local validation, diffusion and general
validation, suggesting that it only becomes truly legitimate when it is perceived as
inevitable. While this may seems as a very different criterion, it is similar to Berger
and Luckmann's conceptualization in that it assumes a universally sanctioned status as
the natural end point of an incremental process of institutionalization.
The notion of practical legitimacy, on the other hand, focuses the gaze on
intermediary phenomena, which do not yet have—and, indeed, may never have—
theoretical justifications or the veneer of inevitability. Whether such phenomena are
inherently temporary or not, bound to end in full legitimation, dissolve or simply
remain suspended between the practical and the epistemic, they warrant research in
their own right. Such research may improve our understanding of institutionalization
processes, tracing concrete trajectories of legitimation and constructing more refined
analytic structures to capture their similarities and variations.
Starting with practices rather than with fully fleshed out legitimations, the
question of whether practical legitimacy is a general characteristic of under-theorized
legitimacy formations, or a locally bounded form of legitimation whose features are
determined by its social, cultural and technological environment, is inherently an
empirical one. Two research strategies may stem from it: the first attempting to
identify similar modes of legitimacy in innovative projects whose features and
environment are very different from those of Wikipedia, and to establish whether
practical legitimacy is a mode of legitimation endemic in to such projects; the second
attempting to identify similar modes of legitimacy in digital, widely distributed
knowledge production projects, to assess whether Wikipedia takes part in a wider
epistemic culture endemic to such environments. Taking the first route means looking
at historically removed knowledge production projects, at real life (rather than online)
environments, and at institutions that that deal with processes other than knowledge
production; taking the second means looking at start-up ventures, at FOSS projects,
and at internet environments such as Youtube or file-sharing networks. In any case,
both routes are similar in their attempt to uncover the practical tools and objects
which may engender and sustain this distinctive type of legitimacy.
239
To summarize this section, I wish to describe the relations between PPPs and
pragmatic legitimacy. Both relate to a situation in which some actors are able to direct
the actions of others in a limited yet effective manner and retain their trust and
compliance, though not unconditionally and without reservations. While this is merely
a hypothesis in this stage, I suggest that while they are analytically distinct
phenomena – one preoccupied with knowledge production and the other with its
consumption or use - they tend to go hand in hand. They both share a logic of
flexibility which defies, at least temporarily and partially, the traditional logic of
institutionalization and legitimation, and emphasize agency to a much larger extent.
While many (if not most) knowledge production projects, and especially scientific
ones, tend to be fully institutionalized, immersed in expert-systems, theorizations and
symbolic universes, projects that do not entail these features will be more likely to
adopt mechanisms and practices which manifest both the formation of PPPs and a
reliance on practical legitimacy (or other alternatives to it), and thus enhance their
flexibility and reflexivity at the expanse of their stability and legitimacy. In the
following section, I discuss the implications of these differences on such projects'
utilization of gifts of knowledge, as reflected by the differences between Nupedia and
Wikipedia.
8.2 The Gift of Knowledge
The review of the literature regarding the gift focused on a salient trend in
contemporary conceptualizations of it, namely the heightened awareness to the
diversity of gifts and gift practices. A major strategy in dealing with this diversity
involves attempts to construct analytic typologies of types or dimensions of gift-
giving practices (Vandevelde, 2000; Caille, 2001; Graeber, 2001; Hénaff, 2010b).
Following Silber (2007, 2013), however, I preferred to use the notion of a gift
repertoire, which emphasizes the need to contextualize different types of gifts, their
coexistence and competition, in specific historical and cultural circumstances. Closer
to the pragmatic orientation which guided my research, this approach emphasizes the
importance of creative agency in selecting from existing repertoires, and in
broadening them. Thus, I tried to demonstrate how attempts at creating a free online
encyclopedia took into account and at the same time shaped such a repertoire of acts
240
of knowledge giving. The findings of this research highlight the substantive
contribution of the gift repertoire approach: rather than generally specifying types of
knowledge, it allows for a more nuanced understanding of gift practices which helps
in explaining the varying success of projects attempting to solicit gifts and
contributions of knowledge in specific social and cultural contexts.
This contribution was most apparent in my attempts to explain why Wikipedia
succeeded while its predecessor, Nupedia, failed. Both Wikipedia and its predecessor
Nupedia incorporated existing modes of giving and attempted to adjust them to their
needs. However, they drew gift-practices from different cultural contexts with distinct
gift-repertoires and different tolerance to changes and adjustments. The flexibility of
these repertoires and their congruence with Nupedia and Wikipedia's social and
technological environments had important effect on their success.
Nupedia's production relied predominantly on the repertoire of practices
prevalent in the world of higher education, with which both founders were familiar.
Imitating the model of peer-reviewed scholarly publications (which rely on unpaid
contributions of knowledge), they attempted to construct a viable gift economy
attractive to credentialed experts. However, this attempt to translate academic
practices into a voluntary online context failed, due to the discrepancies between the
imported repertoire and its new setting, which obstructed both reciprocity-based,
group-oriented and individual giving.
In contrast with the bulk of online based gift-economies, in which contribution
builds reputation in a "virtual community", Nupedia attempted to harness the real life
reputation of its contributors by offering them to further enhance it. However, being
affiliated with a start-up business venture rather than established academic institutions
Nupedia lacked the symbolic capital needed to create and sustain an attractive, viable
gift-economy. This problem was further complicated by the fact that most of the tasks
needed to build Nupedia – such as writing, editing and peer-reviewing articles – were
disturbingly similar to academic chores. Offering a lot less recognition and symbolic
capital for a task very similar to one's daily chores made it very hard for Nupedia to
compete for experts' spare time. In addition, recognition and acknowledgement
(manifested in the form of bylines, personal biography pages etc.) was not
proportional to the amount of work done, but rather to the credentials of the
contributors. Severing the connection between gift and retribution may have
undermined enthusiasm for reciprocity based giving.
241
The reliance on the academic hierarchy and disciplinary divisions inherent to
its gift repertoire also prevented Nupedia from creating a more generic online-
communitarian context for giving, based on interest in intra-community reputation.
This problem was manifested in its sociotechnical structure, based on many
specialized disciplinary-defined mailing lists206 and lacking a central location for
social integration. Thus, it failed to form a global microstructure207 (Knorr-Cetina,
2005) that could transcend its nature as a formal organization, and generate the feeling
of communal participation and engagement needed to encourage group-oriented
giving and generalized exchange.
Nupedia's attempts to sustain a viable gift economy also hampered its ability
to attract individual giving. Giving knowledge to Nupedia usually demanded
participants to undergo a rather lengthy identification process, divulge their real life
identity, and become incorporated in its formal structure and task-designation
mechanism before beginning to contribute to it. These demands posed a barrier
between the willingness to give and its fulfillment, which may have deterred potential
contributors interested in free, immediate and unconstrained giving of knowledge.
Last but not least, Nupedia failed to abide by one of the most essential aspects
of the gift process: the obligation to receive (Mauss, 1990 [1925]). Knowledge given
to Nupedia was not accepted as is, but rather had to undergo a rigorous review process
by experts. This method of operation may very well have damaged individual givers'
enthusiasm towards giving knowledge – especially since it made their act of giving
even more similar to academic chores.
Wikipedia's founders' decision to abandon Nupedia's constraining process
had a dramatic effect on the gift-related aspects of the project. Free from Nupedia's
need to reciprocate the serious work of its contributors with substantial symbolic
capital, it could become a much more flexible, playful and fun project, enhancing its
potential contributors' sense of freedom in the very act of giving. This move instilled
in Wikipedia a pluralistic and liberal approach which encouraged a variety of giving
practices that Wikipedia's founders themselves often did not foresee.
However, this does not mean that extant gift-repertoires did not play an 206 Nupedia did have a general mailing list, but it failed to attract a large following as it seldom included significant discussions. 207 Global microstructures, based on features characteristic to face to face interactions such as trust and acquaintance, rather than on clear structure and hierarchy, seem more supportive of gift relations than formal organizations.
242
important part in Wikipedia. A significant factor explaining its success is the
congruity between the gift-repertoire it appropriated and its environmental context,
reflected in expectations of its potential contributors. In contrast with Nupedia
reliance on academic-like practices, Wikipedia attempted (and evidently succeeded)
to reproduce if also reconstruct gift-practices prevalent in the online environment it
operated in. Specifically, it borrowed heavily from the repertoire associated with so-
called "virtual communities". As the literature indicates, there is an institutionalized
gift-repertoire which developed in such context over the nineties: acts of giving in
such contexts are justified through a "gift giving-culture," which constructs of sharing
and openness as virtues (Kollock, 1999); they are sustained through social
acknowledgement and prestige (Bruns, 2008; Raymond, 1998; Tapscott and Williams,
2006), and are reciprocated through generalized exchange, where each participant
contribute to the community rather than to a specific beneficiary (Bauwens, 2005;
Bergquist and Ljungberg, 2001; Giesler, 2006; Jenkins, 2006; Kollock, 1999;
Rheingold, 2000). This repertoire was familiar to the Wikipedia's potential
contributors, who used similar (though not identical) practices in their contribution to
mailing lists and internet forums.
Transforming the skeletal Wiki technology Wikipedia utilized in its early
days to the locus of a virtual community demanded constructing mechanisms for
informal appreciation and retribution. Thanks to the flexibility of the Wiki platform,
such mechanisms, including informal discussion pages, talk pages, and individual
userpages were promptly built, supplementing the central mailing list (rather than
Nupedia's many lists), opened by Wikipedia's founders. Such mechanisms, which
provided spaces for dialogue, community building and reputation accumulation, aided
in securing the participation of contributors by embedding their gifts of knowledge in
a concrete social context.
However, the most conspicuous change in the gift practices signified by the
transition from Nupedia to Wikipedia was encouraging immediate, instant individual
giving. Doing away with Nupedia's cumbersome registration procedure and lengthy
review process, Wikipedia allowed new potential participants to try and contribute
without any constraints or delays. New or occasional users had ample evidence for the
project's openness to such giving: first, the standard text at the bottom of each page
243
reading "you can edit this page right now! It's a free, community project"; second, the
lack of named credit in article pages prevented the feeling of interfering with someone
else's work; third, the unfinished and in-process appearance of Wikipedia's contents,
which invited readers to fix and expand them; and finally, the intuitive and simple edit
mechanism and instant publication which allowed its participants to experience the
immediate joy of giving one's knowledge and watching it get published – a joy that is
so often delayed, frustrated or denied in professional or academic lifestyle. While this
unorthodox mode of knowledge giving did not provide the lion's share of contents
added to Wikipedia, it was crucial as an initial phase on the path to a more sustained
group-oriented giving.
As time passed, the formation of mechanisms sustaining group-oriented
giving and their institutionalization gradually laid more constraints on individual
giving. The formation of standards and policies which determining the relative value
of different contributions, inextricably connected to group-oriented giving, narrowed
the range of possibilities open to potential individual contributors. As rules became
more restrictive, more initial socialization was needed to give knowledge
successfully. However, as my discussion of PPP's suggests, this institutionalization
process consistently left room for individual, unconstrained contributions. As
Wikipedia's founders insisted on the availability and importance of immediate
contribution, its standards and policies functioned as PPP's rather than strict rules,
allowing for a measure of variability and reversibility. Keeping Wikipedia's gift-
repertoire open to individual gifts, and to many forms of acceptable content, was
crucial to its success just as its institutionalization was. Indeed, the comparison
between Wikipedia and Nupedia illustrates of the importance of flexibility and of
balancing freedom and obligation in the construction of a gift-repertoire.
However, in the long run, this relatively inclusive approach seems to have
waned – and along with it, some of Wikipedia's success. As a recent study (Halfaker
et al., 2013) found, the number of active editors208 in Wikipedia peaked around the
beginning of 2007 with more than 50,000, and has gradually been declining ever
since. According to this study, the main reason for this decline is its growing
restrictiveness: to deal with the massive inflow of traffic brought about by its growing
popularity, Wikipedia gradually became more rigid and less welcoming. It began 208 Active editors are ones who made at least 5 edits per month.
244
incorporating technological tools to prevent possibly harmful edits which took the
place of deliberation. Moreover, its standards and policies also became increasingly
institutionalized, and suggestions for changes to them are usually rejected – especially
when they come from newcomers. These steps, which prevent immediate individual
giving, distance new editors that could have become part of Wikipedia's core
community of active contributors. Losing its balance which allows for various types
of giving, Wikipedia is increasingly having trouble replacing editors to replace ones
that leave the project.
This study further affirms the conclusions described above, as it highlights
the crucial importance of flexibility and the coexistence of various modes of giving,
even at the price of diminished control. However, it should be noted that Wikipedia is
still very live and active, and that there are still a great number of participants who are
willing to contribute to it. This willingness, essential to Wikipedia's functioning both
in the past and in the present, relies in an understanding of knowledge giving as a
virtuous act and on the attribution of value to the specific knowledge given209. Thus,
understanding Wikipedia's success demands not only understanding the particular
mechanisms of knowledge giving it was built with, but also the larger social and
cultural context in which it was embedded and which was and still is essential to its
ability to attract and retain contributors. The nature of this context will be discussed in
the next, final section of this chapter.
8.3 Wikipedia and Contemporary Epistemic Culture
In the introduction to this work, I noted the widespread consensus that
contemporary society is increasingly becoming an information (or knowledge) society
– a society in which economic, political and cultural structures and processes are
increasingly related to, and dependent upon the production and dissemination of
knowledge and information. At the same time, highly contentious disagreements
remain regarding the viability of the concept of modernity in this context, at least if
used to connote an existence of a common cultural center, a sense of historical
continuity with the vision of enlightenment, and the centrality of rationality, science 209 For a discussion of the ethical context of online knowledge giving in terms of virtue ethics see Benkler and Nissenbaum (2006).
245
and expertise. While some claim that contemporary knowledge society is a
continuation or even intensification of modernity in that sense (cf. Giddens, 1991;
Beck, 2000), resulting in so-called late or second modernity, others maintain that it
represents a break from it, with new and dissenting knowledge production structures,
processes and legitimation principles challenging and replacing those prevalent in
modernity (cf. Best and Kellner, 1997; Featherstone, 1989, 1991; Latour, 1993). Yet
others claim that a cultural center based on the vision described above remains
dominant, while various subcultures flourish at its margins, fostering immanent
standards, practices and justifications but failing to achieve widely acknowledged
legitimacy (Laermans, 1992; Lash, 1994).
This work seems at first glance to buttress this last assertion, as the internal
standards whose it has internal standards that are not generally acknowledged as
legitimate, and is similar in many of its aspects to other subcultures flourishing in the
context of the new media, whether appearing in the shape of networks210, reflexive
communities (Lash, 1994) or global microstructures (Knorr-Cetina 2005; Knorr-
Cetina and Brugger, 2000). Still, and as opposed to marginal subcultures, it has come
to occupy a consistent, relatively stable and highly influential position to the side of
modernistic knowledge production arenas such as the academic field, the medical
field and the field of journalism, feeding on them and at the same time supplying them
with usable information. This position, I contend, would not have been achievable if
Wikipedia's unorthodox practices and structures were not constructed and articulated
in a way that kept intact, as much as possible, the modern ethos of expertise and the
established hierarchies of knowledge (see chapter 6, especially its conclusion).
In such terms, Wikipedia touches right to the heart of the debate concerning
modernity and postmodernity, in a way that posits yet another paradox: defining
Wikipedia's epistemic culture as either a modern or a postmodern phenomenon will
not do it justice, as some of its elements will stay unaccounted for. Thus, the question
of modernity may be better addressed if we avoid attempting to reach a "clear and
distinct" concept of modernity, whether relevant or irrelevant in current knowledge
society. Rather, it may be better to see modernity as a potent, dynamic and relatively
210 In the meaning Castells (1996, 1997, 1998) uses – i.e., as a distinct form of social structure – and in contrast with Latour's view of it as it as the universal social structure.
246
unstructured mix of practices and justifications, often conflicting with one another211.
Modernity should thus be read as a cultural repertoire (Lamont and Thévenot, 2000;
Silber, 2003) or configuration so huge, historically layered and wrought with inner
tensions, contradictions and controversies that its contours and concrete
manifestations can only be assessed partially and locally.
So how does Wikipedia's epistemic culture relate to this configuration or
repertoire? In some senses, it challenges major components related to it, as it is based
on the decoupling of knowledge and expertise and of theoretical and practical
legitimation, two amalgams standing at the core of modern theories and
methodologies. However, it does so in a way that assumes the legitimacy of modern
epistemologies, rather than confronts or undermines them, as it leaves the final
judgment of reality in the hands of experts and scientists. Moreover, it is both
explicitly and implicitly committed to the Enlightenment's critical and empiricist
ethos, as it demands of its readers to function as autonomous judges of the authority
of its contents. Thus, while Wikipedia represents a new epistemic culture, it does not
reject but rather builds on, incorporates and extends central elements of the modern
vision of knowledge.
This approach has some close affinities with those of a number of theorists
who insist on the prevalence of modernity in contemporary culture, yet at the same
conceptualize it as multifarious, problematic, and prone to reconceptualization or
opposition, such as S.N. Eisenstadt (2001), Peter Wagner (2008), Bjorn Wittrock
(2000) or – from a very different perspective, but perhaps all the more relevant –
Nissim Mizrachi (Mizrachi, Drori and Anspach, 2007). The Latter's characterization
of modernity as an "awareness of the loss of the markers of certainty and of a
continuous search for them, while conscious of the impossibility to attain such
certainty" (Delanty, 2004: 395–396) seems especially relevant in this respect.
Wikipedia's struggles to find an epistemic foothold are direct heirs to modern
211 While Latour (1993) gave a compelling and provocative description of the modern Constitution as a series of conflicting principles and paradoxical statements, his scheme is ultimately to symmetrical and ordered, constructed to address solely the issue of separation between humans and non humans and avoiding the complexities stemming from the plethora of concepts and practices associated with modernity. In doing so, he violates the very logic of networks he himself advocates in different contexts.
247
knowledge production projects' search for certainty, as well as their doubts towards its
attainability.
However, even as it holds on to the categories and justifications of modernity
– an attitude most apparent in Jimmy Wales assertion that "what people believe is a
matter of objective fact, and we can present that quite easily" (Wikipedia, 2001ak) -
Wikipedia advances a new epistemic culture and challenges major modern
institutions. In doing so, it changes our very definition of ourselves as knowledge
acquiring subjects as well as our everyday practices, and brings about new sorts of
epistemic virtues, gradually gaining public recognition and use. This rapidly growing
culture should be understood in its own terms, rather than in terms of a simple
Modern/Postmodern dichotomy.
The reconstruction of contemporary popular, voluntary epistemic arenas is of
vital concern to the sociology of knowledge, if the latter is to remain relevant. It is in
this context that the social construction of knowledge takes place on a huge, global
scale, possibly larger and more pervasive than research done by experts in
laboratories and scientific institutions212. Rather than judged as ephemeral or
inadequate (cf. Sanger, 2009, Wray, 2009), the popular online production of
knowledge should be understood as the frontier of contemporary information society,
where new insights into the nature of knowledge and its production may be gained, if
we engage in reconstruction, rather than (mis)judgment. As Daston and Galison
(2007, p. 41) noted, "new epistemic virtues come into being; old ones do not
necessarily pass away... but the older ones are inevitably modified by the very
existence of newer ones, even if they are not replaced by it…the very multiplicity of
epistemic virtues can cause confusion or even accusation, if adherents of ones are
judged by the standards of the other."
212 In some areas, there is already a growing awareness to the importance of knowledge produced by "unqualified" persons (c.f. Indyk and Rier, 1993; Rier and Indyk, 2006; Wynne, 1996; Yearley, 2000).
248
Bibliography Abercrombie, Nicholas, and Brian Longhurst. 1998. Audiences: A Sociological
Theory of Performance and Imagination. London: Sage.
Alexa, the Web Information Company (2011). "Top 500 Sites on the Web." Alexa. (http://www.alexa.com/topsites, retrieved September 10, 2011).
Almeida, Rodrigo B., Barzan Mozafari, and Junghoo Cho. 2007. "On the Evolution of Wikipedia." In Proceedings of the International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media. (http://oak.cs.ucla.edu/~cho/papers/almeida-icwsm07.pdf, retrieved January 18, 2011).
Alvesson, Mats. 2003. "Beyond Neopositivists, Romantics, and Localists: a Reflexive Approach to Interviews in Organizational Research." Academy of Management Review, 28(1): 13-33.
Anthony Denise, Sean W. Smith and Tim Williamson. 2007. "Explaining Quality in Internet Collective Goods: Zealots and Good Samaritans in the Case of Wikipedia." Hanover : Dartmouth College. (web.mit.edu/iandeseminar/Papers/Fall2005/anthony.pdf, retrieved September 17, 2011)
Appadurai, Arjun. 1986. “Introduction: Commodities and the Politics of Value," in Arjun Appadurai (ed.) The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 3-63.
Appadurai, Arjuan. 1990. "Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy." Theory,Culture and Society. 7: 295-310.
Arazy, Ofer, Wayne Morgan and Raymond Patterson. 2006. "Wisdom of the Crowds: Decentralized Knowledge Construction in Wikipedia." Paper presented at 16th Annual Workshop on Information Technologies and Systems (WITS) Paper. (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1025624, retrieved September 17, 2011)
Baker, Daniel. 2009. "Citations to Wikipedia in Law Reviews." University of Houston Law Center No. 2009-A-42. (http://ssrn.com/abstract=1525619, retrieved December 11, 2011)
Barbrook, Richard. 1998. "The Hi-Tech Gift Economy." First Monday 3(12).
Barbrook, Richard. 2000. "Cyber-Communism: How the Americans are Superseding Capitalism in Cyberspace." Science as Culture 9.1: 5-40.
Barbrook, Richard, and Andy Cameron. 1996. "The Californian Ideology." Science as Culture 6(1): 44-72.
249
Barnes, Barry, David Bloor and John Henry. 1996. Scientific Knowledge: A sociological Analysis, London: Athlone Press, Ch. 7. Pp. 169-199.
Barton, Matt. (2005). "The Future of Rational-Critical Debate in Online Public Spheres." Computers and Composition 22(2): 177–190.
Baudrillard, Jean. 1983. In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities. New York: Semiotext(e).
Baudrillard, Jean. 1994. Simulacra and Simulation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan.
Bauwens, Michel. 2005. "The Political Economy of Peer Production." CTheory. (http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=499, retrieved June 9, 2011).
Beck, Ulrich and Natan Sznaider. 2010. "Self-Limitation of Modernity? The Theory of Reflexive Taboos." Theory and Society 40(4): Pp. 417-436
Beck, Ulrich, Anthony Giddens, and Scott Lash. 1994. Reflexive Modernization: Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Beck, Ulrich. 2000. "The Cosmopolitan Perspective: Sociology of the Second Age of Modernity." British Journal of Sociology 51(1): 79—105.
Bell, Daniel. 1973. The Coming of Post-Industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting. New York: Basic Press.
Bell, Mark. 2007. "The Transformation of the Encyclopedia: A Textual Analysis and Comparison of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and Wikipedia." Unpublished master’s thesis, Ball State University, Muncie, IN. (http://jwchesebro.iweb.bsu.edu/digitalstorytelling/Theses/Bell_Final_Version_Thesis_April_4_2007.pdf, retrieved June 7, 2011).
Bellomi, Francesco and Roberto Bonato. 2005. "Network Analysis for Wikipedia." Paper presented in Wikimania 2005, Frankfurt, Germany. (http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.178.2233, retrieved June 9, 2011).
Benjamin, Walter. 1968. "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction", pp. 214–218 in Hannah Arendt (ed.) Illuminations. London: Fontana.
Benkler, Yochai. 2006. The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Benkler, Yochai. 2010. "Law, Policy, and Cooperation," pp. 299-332 in Edward Balleisen and David Moss (eds.) Government and Markets: Toward a New Theory of Regulation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Benkler, Yochai. 2011. The penguin and the leviathan: How cooperation triumphs over self-interest. Random House LLC.
250
Benkler, Yochai and Helen Nissenbaum. 2006. "Commons-based Peer Production and Virtue." The Journal of Political Philosophy 14, (4): 394–419.
Berg, Bruce. 1998. Qualitative Research Methods for The Social Sciences (3rd ed). Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
Berger, Peter L., and Thomas Luckmann. 1967. The Social Construction of Reality; a Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.
Bergquist, Magnus and Jan Ljungberg. 2001. "The Power of Gifts: Organizing Social Relationships in Open Source Communities." Information Systems Journal 11, Pp. 305–320.
Berthoin-Antal, Ariane and Richebé, Nathalie. 2009. "A Passion for Giving, a Passion for Sharing. Understanding Knowledge Sharing as Gift Exchange in Academia." Journal of Management Inquiry, Vol. 18, No. 1, 78-95.
Best, Steven and Douglas Kellner. 1997. The Postmodern Turn. New York: Guilford Press.
Bijker, Wiebe. 1993. “Do not Despair: There is Life after Constructivism.” Science, Technology and Human Values 18 (1): 113-138.
Bijker, Wiebe. 1995a. “Sociohistorical Technology Studies” in Sheila Jasanoff, Gerald E. Markle, James C. Peterson, Trevor J. Pinch (eds.) Handbook of Science and Technology Studies. London: Sage Publication.
Bijker, Wiebe. 1995b. Of Bicycles, Bakelites, and Bulbs: Toward a Theory of Sociotechnical Change. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Bijker, Wiebe and John Law. 1992. Shaping Technology/Building Society Studies in Sociotechnical Change. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Blau, Peter. 1964. Exchange and Power in Social Life. New York: John Wiley and Sons.
Bloor, David. 1976. Knowledge and Social Imagery. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Bloor, David. 1986. "Wittgenstein and Mannheim on the Sociology of Mathematics.” Stuart Shanker (ed.) Ludwig Wittgenstein: Critical Assessments, Vol. 3. Pp. 378-394.
Blumer, Herbert. 1969. Symbolic Interactionism; Perspective and Method. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall inc.
Bo hme, Gernot, and Nico Stehr. 1986. The Knowledge Society: The Growing Impact of Scientific Knowledge on Social Relations. Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company.
251
Boltanski, Luc and Ève Chiapello. 2005. The New Spirit of Capitalism. London: Verso.
Boltanski, Luc and Laurent Thévenot. 2006. On Justification: Economies of Worth. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of The Judgment of Taste. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1991. Language and Symbolic Power. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1998. Practical Reason: On the Theory of Action. Stanford University Press.
Bowker, Geoffrey C., and Susan Leigh Star. 1999. Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Breslau, Daniel, and Yuval Yonay. 1999. "Beyond metaphor: Mathematical models in economics as empirical research." Science in Context 12(2): 317-332.
Brown, Adam R. 2011. "Wikipedia as a Data Source for Political Scientists: Accuracy and Completeness of Coverage." PS: Political Science and Politics, 44: 339-343.
Bruns, Axel. 2008. Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life and Beyond: From Production to Produsage. New York: Peter Lang.
Bryant, Susan L., Andrea Forte and Amy Bruckman. 2005. "Becoming Wikipedian: Transformation of Participation in a Collaborative Online Encyclopedia." In Proceedings of the 2005 International ACM SIGGROUP Conference on Supporting Group Work. New York: ACM. (http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.62.5337&rep=rep1&type=pdf&BryantForteBruckBecomingWikipedian.pdf, retrieved February 08, 2007).
Buriol, Luciana, Carlos Castillo, Debora Donato, Stafano Leonardi and Stefano Millozzi. 2006. "Temporal Analysis of the Wikigraph." In WI '06: Proceedings of the 2006 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Web Intelligence): 45-51.
Caille, Alain. 2001. "The double inconceivability of the pure gift." Angelaki 6. 2):23 – 39.
Callon, Michel. 1986. "Some Elements of a Sociology of Translation: Domestication of the Scallops and the Fishermen of St. Brieuc Bay." Pp. 196-233 in John Law (ed.) Power, Action, Belief: A New Sociology of Knowledge?. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
252
Capocci, Andre, Vito D. P. Servedio, Francesca Colaiori, Luciana Buriol, Debora Donato, Stafano Leonardi and Guido Caldarelli. 2006. "Preferential Attachment in The Growth of Social Networks: The Internet Encyclopedia Wikipedia." Physical Review E, 74(3).
Castells, Manuel. 1996. The Rise of Network Society, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture Vol. I. Oxford: Blackwell.
Castells, Manuel. 1997. The Power of Identity, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture Vol. II. Cambridge, Oxford: Blackwell.
Castells, Manuel. 1998. End of Millennium, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture Vol. III. Cambridge, Oxford: Blackwell.
Castells, Manuel. 2001. The Internet Galaxy: Reflections on the Internet, Business, and Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Caverly, David C. and Ward, Anne. 2008. "Techtalk: Wikis and Collaborative Knowledge Construction." Journal of Developmental Education, 32(2): 36-37.
Chandler, Cullen J. and Alison S, Gregory. 2010. "Sleeping with the Enemy: Wikipedia in the College Classroom." History Teacher, 43(2): 247-257.
Chandler-Olcott, Kelly. 2009. "A Tale of Two Tasks: Editing in the Era of Digital Literacies." Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 53(1): 71-74.
Ciffolilli, Andrea. 2003. "Phantom Authority, Self-Selective Recruitment and Retention of Members in Virtual Communities: The Case of Wikipedia." First Monday 8(12).
Clarke, Adele E. and Susan Leigh Star. 2003. "Symbolic Interactionist Studies of Science, Technology and Medicine." Pp. 539-574 in Handbook of Symbolic Interactionism, edited by Larry Reynolds and Nancy Herman. Walnut Creek: Alta Mira Press.
Clauson, K.A., Polen H.H., Boulos M.N.K., Dzenowagis J.H. 2008. "Scope, Completeness, and Accuracy of Drug Information in Wikipedia." Ann Pharmacother, 42(12):1814–21.
Cohen, Eyal. 2007. "The Latest on Virginia Tech, from Wikipedia." New York Times. (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/23/world/americas/23iht-wiki.1.5405005.html, retrieved April 9, 2011).
Cohen, Eyal. 2011. "Wikipedia." New York Times. (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/Wikipedia/, retrieved May 25, 2011).
Collins, Harry. M. 1982. "Knowledge, Norms and Rules in the Sociology of Science." Social Studies of Science, Vol 12. Pp. 299-30.
Collins, Jim. 1989. Uncommon Cultures: Popular Culture and Post-Modernism. New-York: Routledge.
253
Comor, Edward. 2011. "Contextualizing and Critiquing The Fantastic Prosumer: Power, Alienation and Hegemony" Critical Sociology, 37 (3), pp. 309-327.
Cronin, Blaise. 1995.The Scholar's Courtesy. London: Taylor Grahm.
Daston, Lorraine and Peter Galison. 2007. Objectivity. New York: Zone.
Delanty, Gerard. 2004. "An Interview with S.N. Eisenstadt: Pluralism and the Multiple Forms of Modernity." European Journal of Social Theory 7(3): 391-404.
Denning, Peter, Jim Horning, David Parnas and Lauren Weinstein. 2005. "Wikipedia Risks." Communications of the ACM, 48(12): 152.
Denzin, Norman K. 2007. "Analytic Induction." in George Ritzer (ed.) Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology. Blackwell Publishing.
Dewey, John. 1941. "Propositions, Warranted Assertibility, and Truth." The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 38, No. 7.
Dewey, John. 1944 [1916]. Democracy and Education: an Introduction to the Philosophy of Education. New York: The Free Press.
Drucker, Peter F. 1993. Post-Capitalist Society. New York: HarperBusiness.
Durkheim, Émile. 1995 [1912] The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. New York: Free, 1995.
Durkheim, Emill and Marcel Mauss. 2010 [1903]. Primitive Classification. London: Routledge.
Eijkman, Henk. 2010. "Academics and Wikipedia: Reframing Web 2.0+ as a disruptor of traditional academic power-knowledge arrangements." Campus-Wide Information Systems, Vol. 27(3) pp.173 - 185
Eisenstadt, Shmuel N. 2001. "The Civilizational Dimension of Modernity: Modernity as a Distinct Civilization." International Sociology 16(3): 320-340.
Elia, Antonella. 2006. "An Analysis of Wikipedia Digital Writing." In Proceedings of the EACL 2006 Workshop on New Text - Wikis and blogs and other dynamic text sources, Trento, Italy, 3-7 of April 2006.
Emigh, William and Susan C. Herring. 2005. "Collaborative Authoring on the Web: A Genre Analysis of Online Encyclopedias." Pp. 99 in Proceedings of the 38th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. Vol. 4. Los Halamatos: IEEE Press.
Emirbayer, Mustafa and Douglas Maynard. 2011. "Pragmatism and Ethnomethodology." Qualitative Sociology, Volume 34, Number 1. Pp. 221-261.
254
Encyclopaedia Britannica. 2006. "Fatally flawed: Refuting the recent study on encyclopedic accuracy by the journal Nature." Encyclopaedia Britannica (http://corporate.britannica.com/britannica_nature_response.pdf, retrieved November 15, 2011).
Farrell, Henry and Melissa Schwartzberg. 2008. "Norms, Minorities, and Collective Choice Online." Ethics and International Affairs, 22(4): 357-367.
Featherstone, Mike. 1989. "Towards a Sociology of Postmodern Culture." Pp. 147-172 in Hans Hoferkamp (ed.) Social Structure and Culture. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
Featherstone, Mike. 1991. Consumer Culture and Postmodernism. London: Sage.
Flichy, Patrice. 2007a. The Internet Imaginaire. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Flichy, Patrice. 2007b. Understanding Technological Innovation: a Socio-technical Approach. Cheltenham, Glos, UK: Edward Elgar.
Forte, Andrea and Amy Bruckman. 2008. "Scaling Consensus: Increasing Decentralization in Wikipedia Governance." Pp.157–166 in proceedings of HICCS 2008.
Forte, Andrea, Vanessa Larco and Amy Bruckman. 2009. “Decentralization in Wikipedia Governance.” Journal of Management Information Systems. 26(1): 49-72.
Foucault, Michel. 2001. The Order of Things: an Archaeology of the Human Sciences. New York: Routledge.
Fuchs, Christian. 2008. Internet and Society: Social Theory in the Information Age. New York: Routledge
Fujimura, Joan H. 1992. "Crafting Science: Standardized Packages, Boundary Objects, and 'Translation'." Pp 168-211 in Andrew Pickering (Ed.), Science as Practice and Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Galloway, Alexander. 2004. Protocol: How Control Exists after Decentralization. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Geertz, Clifford. 1973. "Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture." Pp. 3-30 in The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. New York: Basic Books.
Genette, Gérard. 1997. Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Giddens, Anthony. 1990. The Consequences of Modernity. Stanford: Stanford University press.
Giddens, Anthony. 1991. Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Cambridge: Polity.
255
Giddens, Anthony. 1994. “Living in a Post-Traditional Society.” In Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens and Scot Lash, Reflexive Modernization. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Gieryn, Thomas F. 1982a. "Relativist/Constructivist Programs in the Sociology of Science: Redundancy and Retreat." Social Studies of Science, vol. 12: 279-297.
Gieryn, Thomas F. 1982b. "Not-Last Words: Worn-Out Dichotomies in the Sociology of Science (Reply)." Social Studies of Science Vol. 12: 329-335.
Giesler, Markus. 2006. "Consumer Gift Systems." Journal of Consumer Research Vol. 33, No. 2, pp. 283-290.
Giles, Jim. 2005. "Internet Encyclopaedias Go Head To Head." Nature, no. 438. Pp. 900–901.
Godelier, Maurice. 1999. The Enigma of the Gift. Chicago: University of Chicago.
Goffman, Erving. 1971. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Gouldner, Alvin Ward. 1979. The Future of Intellectuals and the Rise of the New Class: a Frame of Reference, Theses, Conjectures, Arguments, and an Historical Perspective on the Role of Intellectuals and Intelligentsia in the International Class Contest of the Modern Era. New York: Seabury.
Graeber, David. 2001. Towards an Anthropological Theory of Value: The False Coin of our own Dreams. New York: Palgrave.
Gross, Neil. 2007. “Pragmatism and Phenomenology in 20th-Century American Sociology.” Pp. 183–224 in Craing Calhoun (ed.) Sociology in America: A History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Gross, Neil. 2009. "A Pragmatist Theory of Social Mechanisms." American Sociological Review, Vol. 74, No. 3. Pp. 358-379.
Guimares Mario J. Jr. 2005. "Doing Anthropology in Cyberspace: Fieldwork Boundaries and Social Environments." Pp.141-156 in Hine, C. (Ed.) Virtual Methods: Issues in Social Research on the Internet. Oxford. Berg.
Habermas, Ju rgen. 1984. The Theory of Communicative Action. Boston: Beacon.
Hafner, Katie and Matthew Lyon. 1996. Where Wizards Stay up Late: The Origins of the Internet. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Hagstrom, Warren. 1982. "Gift-Giving as anOrganizing Principle in Science." Pp. 21-34 in Barry Barnes and David O. Edge (eds.) Science in Context. Cambridge, Mass.: Mit Press.
Halavais, Alexander and Derek Lackaff. 2008. "An Analysis of Topical Coverage of Wikipedia." Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(2), 429-440.
256
Halfaker, Aaron, R. Stuart Geiger, Jonathan Morgan and John Riedl. 2013. "The Rise and Decline of an Open Collaboration System: How Wikipedia’s Reaction to Popularity Is Causing Its Decline." American Behavioral Scientist. 57: 664-688.
Harwood, Jonathan. 1993. Styles of Scientific Thought: The German Genetics Community, 1900-1933. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Hayden, Patrick. 2009. Globalization and Utopia: Critical Essays. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Head, Alison J. 2007. "Beyond Google: How Do Students Conduct Academic Research?" First Monday 12(8. (http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/1998/1873, retrieved December 11, 2011).
Head, Alison J. and Michael Eisenberg. 2010. "How Today’s College Students Use Wikipedia for Course-Related Research" First Monday 15(3).
Heath, Christian, Hubert Knoblauch and Paul Luff. 2000. "Technology and Social Interaction: The Emergence of ‘Workplace Studies’." The British Journal of Sociology, 51: 299–320.
Hebdige, Dick. 1991. Subculture: The Meaning of Style. London: Routledge.
Hénaff, Marcel. 2010a. The Price of Truth: Gift, Money, and Philosophy. Stanford, CA: Stanford UP.
Hénaff, Marcel. 2010b. "On the Norm of Reciprocity." Teoria e Critica della Regolazione sociale. (http://www.lex.unict.it/tcrs/temi/henaff.pdf, retrieved September 8, 2012)
Henderson, Kathryn. 1991. "Flexible Sketches and Inflexible Data Bases: Visual Communication, Conscription Devices, and Boundary Objects in Design Engineering." Science, Technology, and Human Values, 16: 448-47.
Hennion, Antoine. 1989. "An Intermediary between Production and Consumption: the Producer of Popular Music", Science, Technology and Human Values 14 (4): 400-424.
Hine, Christine. 2000. Virtual Ethnography. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Holloway, Todd, Miran Božicevic and Katy Börner. 2007." Analyzing and Visualizing the Semantic Coverage of Wikipedia and Its Authors." Complexity, 12(3): 30-40.
Homans, George. 1958. "Social Behavior as Exchange." American Journal of Sociology 63:597-606.
Indyk, Debbie, and David A. Rier. 1993. "Grassroots AIDS Knowledge Implications for the Boundaries of Science and Collective Action." Science Communication 15(1): 3-43.
257
James, William. 2008 [1907]. Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking. Rockville: Arc Manor.
Jameson, Fredric. 1991. Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke University Press.
Jenkins, Henry. 1992. Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture. New York: Routledge.
Jenkins, Henry. 2006. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York UP.
Jesus, Rut. 2010. "What Cognition does for Wikis." In Proceedings of the 6th International Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration (WikiSym '10. ACM, New York, Article 12. (http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1832772.1832789, retrieved April 15, 2011).
Joas, Hans. 1993. Pragmatism and Social Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Joas, Hans. 1996. The Creativity of Action. Trans. by J.Gaines and P. Keast. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
John, Nicholas A. 2011b. "The diffusion of the Internet to Israel: the first 10 years." Israel Affairs, 17(3), 327-340.
John, Nicholas A. 2011a. "Representing the Israeli Internet: The Press, the Pioneers, and the Practitioners." International Journal of Communication (19328036) 5.
Johnson, Cathryn, Timothy J. Dowd. and Cecilia L. Ridgeway. 2006. "Legitimacy as a Social Process." Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 32(1); 53-78.
Judd, Terry and Gregor Kennedy. 2010. "A Five-Year Study of On-Campus Internet Use by Undergraduate Biomedical Students." Computers and Education, Volume 55, Issue 4: 1564-1571.
Kalberg, Stephen. 1980. "Max Weber’s Types of Rationality: Cornerstones for the Analysis of Rationalization Processes in History." The American Journal of Sociology 85(5): 1145–1179.
Keen, Andrew. 2007. The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet Is Killing Our Culture. New York: Doubleday/Currency.
Kelly, Kevin. 2008. "What Have You Changed Your Mind About?" New York Times. (http://www.edge.org/q2008/q08_6.html#kelly, retrieved April 9, 2011).
Kittur, Aniket and Robert E. Kraut. 2008. "Harnessing the Wisdom of Crowds in Wikipedia: Quality Through Coordination." In Proceedings of the ACM 2008 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work. New York: ACM. Pp. 37–46.
258
Kittur, Aniket, Ed Chi, Bryan A. Pendleton, Bongwon Sun and Todd Mytkowicz. 2008. "Power of the Few Vs Wisdom of the Crowd: Wikipedia and the Rise of the Bourgeoisie." Paper presented at ‘CHI 2007’, San Jose, 28 April–3 May, 2007.
Knorr-Cetina, Karin. 1981. The Manufacture of Knowledge - an Essay on the Constructivist and Contextual Nature of Science. Oxford: Pergamon Press.
Knorr-Cetina, Karin. 1982. "The Constructivist Programme in the Sociology of Science: Retreats or Advances?" Social Studies of Science Vol. 12: 320-324.
Knorr-Cetina, Karin. 1999. Epistemic Cultures. How the Science Make Knowledge. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Knorr-Cetina, Karin. 2005. "Complex Micro Structures- the New Terrorist Societies." Theory, Culture and Society, 22(5): 213-34.
Knorr-cetina, Karin and Urs Brugger. 2000. "The Market as an Object of Attachment: Exploring Postsocial Relations in Financial Markets." In Canadian Journal of Sociology, 25(2): 141-168.
Knorr-Centina, Karin and Michael Mulkay (eds.). 1983. Science Observed. Beverly Hills: Sage.
Kolbitsch, Josef and Hermann Maurer. 2005. "Community Building around Encyclopaedic Knowledge." In Journal of Computing and Information Technology, 14(3): 175–190.
Kolbitsch, Josef and Hermann Maurer. 2006. "The Transformation of the Web: How Emerging Communities Shape the Information we Consume." In Journal of Universal Computer Science, 12(2): 187–213.
Kollock, Peter. 1999. "The Economics of on Line Cooperation: Gift and Public Goods in Cyberspace." Pp. 220–246 in M. Smith and P. Kollock (Eds.), Communities in cyberspace. London: Routledge.
Konieczny, Piotr. 2009. "Governance, organization, and democracy on the Internet: The iron law and the evolution of Wikipedia." Sociological Forum, 24(1): 162–192.
Konieczny, Piotr. 2010. "Adhocratic Governance in the Internet Age: A Case of Wikipedia." in Journal of Information Technology and Politics, 7(4): 263-283.
Korfiatis, Nikolaos, Marios Poulos and George Bokos. 2006. "Evaluating Authoritative Sources using Social Network: an Insight from Wikipedia." Online Information Review 29(3): 252–262.
Krohn, Roger. 1982. "On Gieryn on the `Relativist/Constructivist' Programme in the Sociology of Science: Naïveté and Reaction." Social Studies of Science 12: 325-328.
259
Kuznetsov, Stacey. 2006. "Motivations of contributors to Wikipedia." SIGCAS Computer Society., 36(2): 1.
Kvale, Steinar. 2007. Doing Interviews. London: SAGE Publications.
Laclau, Ernesto and Chantal Mouffe. 1985. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. London: Verso.
Laermans, Rudi. 1992. "The Relative Rightness of Pierre Bourdieu: Some Sociological Comments on the Legitimacy of Postmodern Art, Literature and Culture." Cultural Studies vol. 6(2): 248-260.
Laidlaw, James. 2000. “A Free Gift Makes No Friends.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 6, 4: 1467-96.
Lamont, Michel and Lurent Thévenot. 2000. Rethinking Comparative Cultural Sociology: Repertoires of Evaluation in France and the United States. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lanier, Jaron. 2006. "Digital Maoism: The hazards of the new online collectivism." The Edge 183.
Lash, Scot. 1990. Sociology of Postmodernism. London: Routledge.
Lash, Scot. 1994. “Reflexivity and its Doubles: Structure, Aesthetics, Community.” In Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens and Scot Lash, Reflexive Modernization. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Lash, Scott and John Urry. 1994. Economies of signs and space. London: Sage.
Latour, Bruno, and Steve Woolgar. 1986. Laboratory Life. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Latour, Bruno. 1986. “The Powers of Association.” Pp. 264-280 In John Law (ed.) Power, Action and Belief. A new sociology of knowledge? Sociological Review monograph 32. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Latour, Bruno. 1987. Science in Action: How To Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Latour, Bruno. 1988. The Pasteurization of France. Harvard: Harvard University Press.
Latour, Bruno. 1992. “Where are the Missing Masses? The sociology of a few mundane artifacts.” Pp. 225-258 in Wiebe Bijker and John Law (eds.) Shaping Technology/ Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Latour, Bruno. 1993. We Have Never Been Modern. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
260
Latour, Bruno. 1999. Pandora's Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Latour, Bruno. 2004. “On Using ANT for Studying Information Systems: A (Somewhat) Socratic Dialogue.” Pp. 62–76 in Chrisanthi Avgerou, Claudio Ciborra and Frank Land (eds.) The Social Study of Information and Communication Technology: Innovations, Actors and Contexts. New York: Oxford University Press.
Latour, Bruno. 2005. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction To Actor-Network-Theory. New York: Oxford University Press.
Lave, Jean and Etienne Wenger. 1991. Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Law, John. 1991. "Introduction: Monsters, Machines and Sociotechnical Relations." Pp. 1-23. in J. Law (Ed.) A Sociology of Monsters? Essays on Power, Technology and Domination. London, Routledge.
Lee, Kiljae K. and Gilbert G. Karuga. 2010. "The Role of Cognitive Conflict in Open-Content Collaboration." AMCIS 2010 Proceedings, Paper 486. (http://aisel.aisnet.org/amcis2010/486, retrieved April 15, 2011).
Leithner, Andreas., Maurer-Erti Werner, Mathias Glehr, Joerg Friesenbichler, Katharina Leithner and Reinhard Windhager. 2010. "Wikipedia and Osteosarcoma: A Trustworthy Patients' Information?" In Journal of the Medical Informatics Association, 17(4): 373-374.
Lessig, Lawrence. 1999. Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace. New York: Basic Books.
Leuf, Bo and Ward Cunningham. 2001. The Wiki Way: Quick Collaboration on the Web. Boston: Addison-Wesley.
Lueg, Christopher and Danyel Fisher. 2003. From Usenet to CoWebs: Interacting with Social Information Spaces. London: Springer.
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1987. Introduction to the Work of Marcel Mauss. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Lévy, Pierre. 1997. Collective Intelligence: Mankind's Emerging World in Cyberspace. New York: Plenum Trade.
Lih, Andrew 2004a. "The Foundations of Participatory Journalism and the Wikipedia Project." In Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC), AEJMC Convention, Toronto, Canada
Lih, Andrew (2004b). "Wikipedia as Participatory Journalism: Reliable Sources? Metrics for evaluating collaborative media as a news resource." In 5th International Symposium on Online Journalism, Austin, Texas. (http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.117.9104, Retrived November 1, 2011).
261
Lih, Andrew (2004c). "Participatory Journalism and Asia: From Web Logs to Wikipedia." In Asian Media Information & Communications Centre, 13th Asian Media Information & Communications Centre Annual Conference: ICT & Media Inputs & Development Outcomes, Bangkok, Thailand, juillet 2004. (http://jmsc.hku.hk/faculty/alih/publications/amic-2004-Wikipedia-rc2-wtitle.pdf, Retrived November 1, 2011).
Lih, Andrew. 2009. The Wikipedia Revolution. New York: Hyperion.
Lim, Sook. 2009. "How and Why Do College Students Use Wikipedia?" In Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 60(11): 2189-2202.
Logan, Robert K. 2010. Understanding New Media: Extending Marshall McLuhan. New York: Peter Lang.
Long, Tony. 2007. "March 10, 2000: Pop!" Wired Online (http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2007/03/72804, Retrived November 1, 2011).
Lorenzen, Michel. 2006. "Vandals, Administrators, and Sockpuppets, Oh My! An Ethnographic Study of Wikipedia's Handling of Problem Behavior." MLA Forum, 5(2, http://www.mlaforum.org/volumeV/issue2/article2.html, retrieved February 14, 2011)
Lynch, Michael. 1985. Art and Artifact in Laboratory Science: A Study of Shop Work and Shop Talk in a Research Laboratory. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Lyotard, Jean-Francois. 1984. The Post-modern Condition: a Report on Knowledge. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press.
MacKenzie, Donald. 1981. Statistics in Britain, 1865-1930: The Social Construction of Scientific Knowledge, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
MacKenzie, Donald. 1990. Inventing Accuracy: A Historical Sociology of Nuclear Missile Guidance. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Maehre, Jeff. 2009. "What It Means to Ban Wikipedia." College Teaching, 57(4): 229-236.
Mallard, Grégoire, Michèle Lamont and Joshua Guetzkow. 2009. “Fairness as Appropriateness: Epistemological Pluralism and Peer Review in the Social Sciences and the Humanities.” Science, Technology and Human Values, 34(5): 573-606.
Mannheim, Karl. 1936. Ideology and Utopia; an Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge. London: Routledge and Paul.
Markham, Annette N. 1998. Life Online. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press.
Marx, Karl. 1913. A Contribution To the Critique of Political Economy. Chicago: Kerr.
262
Mauss, Marcel. 1990. The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies. New York: W.W. Norton
Mckiernan, Gerry. 2005. "WikimediaWorlds Part I: Wikipedia." Library Hi Tech News 22(8), Pp. 46–54.
McPherson, Keith. 2006. "Wikis and Literacy Development." Teacher Librarian, 34(1): 67-69.
Mead, George Herbert. 1967 [1934]. Mind, Self and Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Mercer, Jean. 2007. "Wikipedia and 'Open Source' Mental Health Information." Scientific Review of Mental Health Practice, 5(1): 88-92.
Merton, Robert K. 1973. The Sociology of Science: Theoretical and Empirical Investigations. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Meyers, Peter. 2001. "Fact-Driven? Collegial? This Site Wants You." New York Times. (http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/20/technology/fact-driven-collegial-this-site-wants-you.html, retrieved April 9, 2011).
Mills, C. Wright. 1940. “Situated Actions and Vocabularies of Motive,” in American Sociological Review, V (December): 904-9 13.
Mizrachi, Nissim, Israel Drori, and Renee R. Anspach. 2007. "Repertoires of trust: The practice of trust in a multinational organization amid political conflict." American Sociological Review 72(1): 143-165.
Mulgan Geoff, Omar Salem and Tom Steinberg. 2005. Wide Open : Open Source Methods and Their Future Potential. London : Demos.
Mulkay, Michael. 1976. "Norms and Ideology in Science." Social Science Information 15(4): 637 -56.
Mulkay, Michael and Gilbert, G. Nigel. 1982. "What is the Ultimate Question? Some Remarks in Defence of the Analysis of Scientific Discourse." Social Studies of Science Vol. 12: 309-319
Murray, Hannah B. and Jason C. Miller. 2010. "Wikipedia in Court: When and How Citing Wikipedia and Other Consensus Websites is Appropriate." St. John's Law Review, Vol. 84(2). (http://ssrn.com/abstract=1502759, retrieved December 11, 2011).
Nature. 2006. "Encyclopaedia Britannica and Nature: a response." Nature Press release. (http://www.nature.com/nature/britannica/eb_advert_response_final.pdf, retrieved November 21, 2011).
Niederer, Sabine and José van Dijck. 2010. "Wisdom of the Crowd or Technicity of Content? Wikipedia as a Sociotechnical System." New Media and Society 12(8): 1368–1387.
263
Nix, Elizabeth M. 2010. "Wikipedia: How it Works and How it Can Work for You." History Teacher, 43(2): 259-264.
Nov, Oded. 2007. "What Motivates Wikipedians?" Communications of the ACM, 50(11): 60-64.
Okoli, Chitu and Wonseok Oh. 2007. "Investigating Recognition-Based Performance in an Open Content Community: A Social Capital Perspective." Information and Management, 44(3): 240-252.
Oreg, Shaul and Oded Nov. 2008. "Exploring Motivations for Contributing to Open Source Initiatives: The Roles of Contribution Context and Personal Values." Computers in Human Behavior 24 (5): 2055-2073.
O'reilly, Tim. (2007). "What is Web 2.0: Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software." Communications & Strategies 1: 17.
Ortega, Felipa. 2009. Wikipedia: a Quantitative Analysis. Ph.D. Dissertation. Móstole: Universidad Rey Juan Carlos.
Ortega, Felipe, and Jesus Gonzalez-Barahona. 2008. “On the Inequality of Contributions to Wikipedia." In Proceedings of the 41st Hawaiian International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS 2008. (http://docencia.etsit.urjc.es/moodle/file.php/40/Slides/S4_S5_Intro_WKP_Companies/Ineq_Wikipedia.pdf, retrieved November 8, 2011).
O'Sullivan, Dan. 2009. Wikipedia: A New Community of Practice? Farnham, England: Ashgate.
Panciera, Katherine, Aaron Halfaker and Loren Terveen. 2009. "Wikipedians are Born, Not Made: A Study of Power Editors in Wikipedia." Proceedings of GROUP 2009: 51-60.
Parry, Jonathan. 1986. "The Gift, the Indian Gift and the 'Indian Gift'." Man (N.S.), 21: 453-473.
Patton, Michael. Q. 2002. Qualitative Research and Evaluation Methods, 3rd edn. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Pechacek, Ann. 2007. "I Can't Live without My …: Teens' Top Ten High-Tech Gadgets and Web Sites." Young Adult Library Services, 5(2): 9-16.
Pentzold, Christian. 2011. "Imagining the Wikipedia Community. What do Wikipedia authors mean when they write about their community?" New Media and Society, 13(5): 704-721.
Peoples, Lee. F. 2009. "The Citation of Wikipedia in Judicial Opinions." Yale Journal of Law and Technology, 12(1). (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1272437, retrieved December 11, 2011).
264
Pickering, Andrew. 1984. Constructing Quarks: A Sociological History of Particle Physics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Pierce, Charles. 2012 [1878]. How to Make Our Ideas Clear. (http://www.peirce.org/writings/p119.html, retrieved December 4, 2011)
Pinch, Trevor J. 1986. Confronting Nature: The Sociology of Solar-Neutrino Detection. Dordrecht: Reidel.
Pinch, Trevor J. and Wiebe E. Bijker. 1987. “The Social Construction of Facts and Artifacts: Or How the Sociology of Science and the Sociology of Technology Might Benefit Each Other.” Pp. 17-50 in Wiebe E. Bijker, Thomas P. Hughes and Trevor J. Pinch (eds.) The Social Construction of Technological Systems. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Pollard, Elizabeth A. 2008. "Raising the Stakes: Writing about Witchcraft on Wikipedia." History Teacher, 42(1): 9-24.
Poster, Mark. 1997. "Cyberdemocracy: the Internet and the Public Sphere." Pp. 212-28 In Mark Holmes (ed.) Virtual Politics: Identity and Community in Cyberspace. London: Sage Publications.
Priedhorsky, Reid, Jilin Chen, Shyong Lam, Kathering Panciera, Loren Terveen, and John Riedl. 2007. “Creating, Destroying, and Restoring Value in Wikipedia.” Pp. 259–268 in Proceedings of GROUP 2007. New York: ACM. (http://www.cs.umn.edu/~reid/papers/group282-priedhorsky.pdf, retrieved September 15, 2011).
Rafaeli, Sheizaf and Yaron Ariel. 2008. "Online Motivational Factors: Incentives for Participation and Contribution In Wikipedia." Pp. 243-267 in Azy Barak (Ed.) Psychological Aspects of Cyberspace: Theory, Research, Applications. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Rafaeli, Sheizaf, Yaron Ariel and Tsahi Hayat. 2007. "Virtual Knowledge-Building Communities." Pp. 1792-1796 in G. D. Putnik and M. M. Cunha (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Networked and Virtual Organizations (Volume 3). Hershey: Idea Group.
Rafaeli, Sheizaf, Tsahi Hayat and Yaron Ariel. 2009. "Knowledge building and motivations in Wikipedia: Participation as Ba” Pp. 51-69 in Francisco J. Ricardo. (Ed.) Cyberculture and New Media. Amsterdam: Rodopi Press.
Rainie, Harrison, and Barry Wellman. 2012. Networked: The new social operating system. MIT press.
Raymond, Eric. 1998. Homesteading the Noosphere. (http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/homesteading/homesteading, retrieved January 18, 2011).
Raymond, Eric. 2012. The Jargon File, Version 4.4.8. (http://www.catb.org/jargon/, retrieved March 10, 2012)
265
Reagle, Joseph M. 2006. "Open Codex Historical Entry: Nupedia-l Archives." Open Communities, Media, Source, and Standards. (http://reagle.org/joseph/blog/method/nupedia-l-archives, retrieved April 11, 2011).
Reagle, Joseph M. 2010a. Good Faith Collaboration: the Culture of Wikipedia. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Reagle, Joseph M. 2010b. "'Be Nice': Wikipedia Norms for Supportive Communication." New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia 16: 161-180.
Reavley, N. J., Mackinnon, A. J., Morgan, A. J., Alvarez-Jimenez, M., Hetrick, S. E., Killackey, E., Nelson, B., Purcell, R., Yap, M. B. H., and A. F. Jorm. 2011. "Quality of Information Sources about Mental Disorders: A Comparison of Wikipedia with Centrally Controlled Web and Printed Sources." Psychological Medicine 42(8): 1-10.
Reinhardt, Christian. 2003. Collaborative Knowledge Creation In Virtual Communities of Practice. A dissertation towards a Masters degree in social and economic sciences. Department of Value-Prcoess Management, Marketing. Innsbruck: University of Innsbruck.
Rheingold, Howard. 2000. The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier. London: MIT Press.
Rheingold, Howard. 2003. Smart mobs. No. 1. De Boeck Supérieur.
Ribemont, Bernard. 1996. "On the Definition of an Encyclopaedic Genre in the Middle Ages." Pp. 47-61 in Peter Binkley (ed.) Pre-modern Encyclopaedic Texts. Leiden: Brill.
Rier, David A., and Debbie Indyk. 2006. "Flexible rigidity: Supporting HIV treatment adherence in a rapidly-changing treatment environment." Social work in health care 42(3-4): 133-150.
Robinson, William Sidney. 1951. "The Logical Structure of Analytic Induction." American Sociological Review 16: 812-818.
Rosenberg, Daniel. 2001. "An Eighteenth-Century Time Machine: The Encyclopedia of Diderot." In Postmodernism and the Enlightenment. New York: Routledge.
Rosenzweig, Roy. 2006. "Can History be Open Source? Wikipedia and the Future of the Past." Journal of American History, 93(1): 117–146.
Rutter, Jason and Gregory W. H. Smith. 2005. "Ethnographic Presence in a Nebulous Setting." Pp. 81-92 in Hine, C. (Ed.) Virtual Methods: Issues in Social Research on the Internet. Oxford: Berg.
Sanger, Lawrence. 2009. "The Fate of Expertise after Wikipedia." Episteme, Vol. 6, No. 1. pp. 52-73.
266
Savolainen, Reijo. 1999. "Academic Capital and Information Seeking Career." Swedish Library Research 3: 5-19.
Schaffer, Simon. 1996. "Where Experiments End: Tabletop Trials in Victorian Astronomy." Pp. 257-99 in J.Z. Buchwald (ed.) Scientific Practice: Theories and Stories of Doing Physics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Schroer, Joachim and Guido Hertel. 2009. "Voluntary Engagement in an Open Web-Based Encyclopedia: Wikipedians and Why They Do It." Media Psychology, 12(1): 96-120.
Schweitzer, Nick. 2008. "Wikipedia and Psychology: Coverage of Concepts and Its Use by Undergraduate Students." Teaching of Psychology, 35(2): 81-85.
Segal, Howard P. 1985. Technological Utopianism in American Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago.
Sewell, William H. Jr. 1992. "A Theory of Structure: Duality, Agency and Transformation." American Journal of Sociology, 98(1): 1-29.
Shalin, Dmitri. 1986. "Pragmatism and Social Interactionism." American Sociological Review 51: 9–29.
Shapin, Steven and Simon Schaffer. 1985. Leviathan and the Air Pump: Hobbes, Boyle and the Experimental Life. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Shapin, Steven. 1994. A Social History of Truth: Gentility, Credibility, and Scientific Knowledge in Seventeenth-Century England. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.
Shapin, Steven. 1995. "Here and Everywhere – Sociology of Scientific Knowledge", Annual Review of Sociology 21: 289-321.
Shapin, Steven. 1996. The Scientific Revolution, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Shirky, Clay. 2008. Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations. New York: Penguin.
Shirky, Clay. 2010. Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age. New York: Penguin.
Shaw, Danna. 2008. "Wikipedia in the Newsroom." American Journalism Review. 30(1): 40-45.
Silber, Ilana F. 1995. “Gift-Giving in the Great Traditions: The Case of Donations to Monasteries in the Medieval West.” European Journal of Sociology 36(2): 209-243.
Silber, Ilana F. 2000 “Beyond Purity and Danger: Gift-Giving in the Monotheistic Religions,” pp. 115-132in T. Vandevelde (ed.) Gifts and Interests. Louvain: Peeters.
267
Silber, Ilana F. 2003. “Pragmatic Sociology as Cultural Sociology: Beyond Repertoire Theory?” European Journal of Social Theory, 6, 4: 427-449.
Silber, Ilana. F. 2007. “Registres et Répertoires du Don: Avec Mais Aussi Après Mauss?” pp.124-144 in Eliana Magnani (ed.) Don et Sciences Sociales. Théories et Pratiques Croisées. Dijon: Editions de l’Université de Dijon.
Silber, Ilana. F. 2011. "Deciphering Transcendence and the Open Code of Modernity: S.N. Eisenstadt’s Comparative Hermeneutics of Civilizations." Journal of Classical Sociology 11(3): 269-28.
Silber, Ilana. F. 2013. “Neither Mauss, nor Veyne? Peter Brown’s Interpretative Path to the Gift.” pp. 202-220 M. Satlow (ed.) The Gift in Antiquity. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell.
Spence, Des. 2009. "A Wicked Encyclopaedia." BMJ: British Medical Journal 339: b3814.
Spoerri, Anselm. 2007. "What is Popular on Wikipedia and Why?" First Monday 4(2). (http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/1765/1645, retrieved April 10, 2011)
Star, Susan Leigh. 2010. "This is Not a Boundary Object: Reflections on the Origin of a Concept." Science, Technology and Human Values 35: 601-617
Star, Susan Leigh and James Griesemer. 1989. “Institutional Ecology, Translations and Boundary-Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907–1939.” Social Studies of Science 19(3): 387-420.
Starling, Tim. 2010. "Old Wikipedia Backups Discovered." Foundation-l Mailing List (http://wikimedia.7.n6.nabble.com/Old-Wikipedia-backups-discovered-td906781.html, retrieved December 12, 2011).
Strauss, Anselm L. 1978. "A Social Worlds Perspective." Studies in Symbolic Interaction 1: 119-128.
Sunstein, Cass R. 2006. Infotopia: How Many Minds Produce Knowledge. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Surowiecki, James. 2004. The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations. USA : Doubleday.
Swartz, Aaron. 2006. "Who Writes Wikipedia?" Raw Thought Blog. (http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/whowritesWikipedia, retrieved December 3, 2011).
Swidler, Ann. 1986. "Culture in Action: Symbols and Strategies." American Sociological Review, 51(2): 273-286.
268
Tapscott, Don. and Anthony D. Williams. 2006. Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything. New York: Portfolio.
Tarasiuk, Tracy J. 2010. "Combining Traditional and Contemporary Texts: Moving My English Class to the Computer Lab." Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 53(7): 543-552.
Tarot, Camille. 2000. “Gift and Grace: A Family to be Recomposed?” pp. 133-156 in T. Vandevelde (ed.) Gifts and Interests. Louvain: Peeters.
Tenner, Edward. 1996. Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences. New York: Knopf.
Thévenot, Laurent. 1984. "Rules and Implements: Investments in Form." Social Sciences Information, 23(1): 1-45.
Thévenot, Laurent. 2001a. "Pragmatic Regimes Governing the Engagement with the World." Pp. 56-73 in Theodore R. Schatzki, Karin Knorr-Cetina and Eike Von Savigny (eds.) The Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory. London: Routledge.
Thévenot, Laurent. 2001b. "Organized Complexity: Conventions of Coordination and the Composition of Economic Arrangements." Eurpea Journal of Social Theory 4(4): 405-425.
Thévenot, Laurent. 2002a. "Conventions of Co-Ordination and the Framing of Uncertainty." Pp.181-197 in Edward Fullbrook (ed.) Intersubjectivity in Economics. London: Routledge.
Thévenot, Laurent. 2002b. "Which Road to Follow? The Moral Complexity of an ‘Equipped' Humanity." Pp. 53-87 in Law, John and Mol Annemarie (eds) Complexities: Social Studies of Knowledge Practices. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
Titmuss, Richard M. 1971. The Gift Relationship : From Human Blood to Social Policy. New York: the New York Press.
Tkacz, Nathaniel. 2011. "The Spanish Fork: Wikipedia's Ad-Fuelled Mutiny." Wired.co.uk. (http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-01/20/Wikipedia-spanish-fork?page=all, retrieved April 9, 2011).
Toffler, Alvin. 1980. The Third Wave. New York: Morrow.
Touraine, Alain. 1971. The Post-Industrial Society. Tomorrow's Social History: Classes, Conflicts and Culture in the Programmed Society. New York: Random House.
Traweek, Sharon. 1988. Beamtimes and Lifetimes: The World of High Energy Physicists. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Turkle, Sherry. 1995. Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. NY: Simon and Schuster.
269
Turkle, Sherry. 1996. "Parallel Lives: Working on Identity in Virtual Space." Pp. 156-175 in Debra Grodin and Thomas Lindlof (Eds.), Constructing the Self in a Mediated World. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Turner, Fred. 2006. From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism. Chicago: University of Chicago.
Turner, Victor. 1967. "Carnival, Ritual, and play in Rio de Janeiro." Pp. 74- 92 in Alessandro Falassi (Ed.) Time Out of Time: Essays on the Festival. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
Turner, Victor. 1968. Schism and Continuity in an African Society. Manchester University Press.
Turner, Victor. 1974. Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society. Ithaca/London: Cornell University Press.
Vandevelde, Antoon. 2000. ”Conceptual Map of Gift Practices.” pp. 1-20 in A. Vandevelde (ed.) Gifts and Interests. Louvain: Peeters.
Venturini, Tommaso. 2009. "Diving in Magma: How To Explore Controversies with Actor-Network Theory." Public Understanding of Science 19(3): 258-273.
Viégas, Fernanda B., Martin Wattenberg, and Matthew M. McKeon. 2007. "The Hidden Order of Wikipedia." in D. Schuler (Ed.) Online Communities and Social Computing, 234: 445-454. (http://www.research.ibm.com/visual/papers/hidden_order_Wikipedia.pdf, retrieved September 15, 2011).
Voss, Jakob. 2005. "Measuring Wikipedia." In Proceedings of 10th International Conference of the International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics, Stockholm: Juillet.
Wagner, Christian. 2006. "Breaking the Knowledge Acquisition Bottleneck Through Conversational Knowledge Management." Information Resources Management Journal, 19(1): 70-83.
Wagner, Peter. 2008. Modernity as Experience and Interpretation: A New Sociology of Modernity. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
Warwick, Andrew. 1993. "Cambridge Mathematics and Cavendish Physics – Cunningham, Campbell and Einstein's Relativity, 1905-1911. Comparing Traditions in Cambridge Physics." Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 24: 1-25.
Weber, Max. 1930. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. London: Allen and Unwin.
Weber, Max. 1978. Economy and Society. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
270
Weinberger, David. 2007. Everything is miscellaneous: The power of the new digital disorder. Macmillan.
Weinberger, David. 2011. Too big to know: Rethinking knowledge now that the facts aren't the facts, experts are everywhere, and the smartest person in the room is the room. Basic Books.
Wellman, Barry and Caroline Haythornthwaite. 2002. The Internet in Everyday Life. Cambridge: Blackwell.
Wenger, Etienne. 1998. Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wilcox, Bryce. 1994. "Patronage of #AynRand Doesn't Equal Agreement (was: Of IRC Channels and Picnic Tables)." alt.philosophy.objectivism Usenet group (https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt.philosophy.objectivism/-smgN1GbY3w/OTgH1pJLwB8J, Rerieved June 7 2011)
Wilson, Chris. 2008. "The Wisdom of the Chaperones: Digg, Wikipedia, and the Myth of Web 2.0 Democracy." Slate. (http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2008/02/the_wisdom_of_the_chaperones.html, retrieved August 6 2011).
Wilson, Samuel M., and Leighton C. Peterson. 2002. "The Anthropology of Online Communities." Annual Review of Anthropology 31(1): 449-67.
Wittrock, Bjorn. 2000. "Modernity: One, None, or Many? European Origins and Modernity as a Global Condition" Daedalus: Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 129(1): 31-60. Reprinted in Shmuel N. Eisenstadt (ed), Multiple Modernities. New Brunswick, N.J.: 2002, pp. 31-60.
Wood, W. Jay. 1998. Epistemology: Becoming Intellectually Virtuous. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press.
Wray, Brad K. 2009. "The Epistemic Cultures of Science and Wikipedia: A Comparison." Episteme 6(1): 38-51.
Wuthnow, Robert. 1989. Communities of Discourse: Ideology and Social Structure in the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and European Socialism. Cambridge: Harvard UP.
Yonay, Yuval. 1994. "When black boxes clash: competing ideas of what science is in economics, 1924-39." Social Studies of Science 24(1):39-80.
Yonay, Yuval and Daniel Breslau. 2006. "Marketing Models: The Culture of Mathematical Economics." Sociological Forum 21(3):345-385.
Zickuhr, Kathryn and Lee Rainie. 2011. "Wikipedia, Past and Present." Pew Internet and American Life Project. (http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2011/Wikipedia.aspx, retrieved August 6, 2011).
271
Zlatic, Vinko, Miran Bozicevic, Hrvoje Stefancic and Mirjana Domazet. 2006. "Wikipedias: Collaborative Web-Based Encyclopedias as Complex Networks." Physical Review E, 74(1): Pp. 6–11.
Zuckerman, Harriet and Robert K. Merton. 1971. "Patterns of Evaluation in Science: Institutionalization, Structure and Functions of the Referee System." Minerva 9: 66-100.
272
Appendix: Primary Resources
Banerjee, Robin. 2000. "Reading Level/S and Hypertext." Nupedia-L Mailing List
(http://web.archive.org/web/20030328165619, retrieved April 9, 2011).
Bomis. 2006. "Bomis in Its 10th Year." Bomis. (http://web.archive.org/web/20080723231711/http://www.bomis.com/about/bomis10year.html, retrieved June 9, 2011).
Campeu, Elizabeth. 2000. "T-Shirts." Nupedia-l. (http://web.archive.org/web/20030516083921/http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/nupedia-l/2000-August/000560.html, retrieved June 7, 2011).
Cunctator. 2001. "No Subpages. Is That Your Final Answer?" Wikipedia-l Mailing List. (http://markmail.org/message/6qbkpjqldgl4tp34, retrieved April 9, 2011).
Gérard, Olivier. 2001. "Wiktionary." Wikipedia-l Mailing List (http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/Wikipedia-l/2001-April/thread.html, retrieved April 9, 2011).
Gouthro, Liane. 2000. "Building the World’s Biggest Encyclopedia." PC World Online Magazin. (www.pcworld.com/article/id,15676-c,techindustrytrends/article.html, retrieved May 8, 2008).
Kissane, Simon J. 2001. "Admins (I Suspect LMS) Permanently Deleting Things without Reason." Wikipedia-l Mailing List. (http://marc.info/?l=Wikipedia-&m=104216623606505&w=2, retrieved April 9, 2011).
Lamb, Brian. 2005. "Q and A: Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia Founder." C-SPAN (http://www.q-and-a.org/Transcript/?ProgramID=1042, retrieved April 15, 2011).
Manske, Magnus. 2001. "PHP Wikipedia, Part 2." Wikipedia-l Mailing List. (http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/Wikipedia-l/2001-August/thread.html, retrieved April 9, 2011).
Meta-Wiki. 2001a. "Is Wikipedia anExperiment in Anarchy?" Meta-Wiki (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Is_Wikipedia_an_experiment_in_anarchy, retrieved April 11, 2011).
Meta-Wiki. 2001b. "Is Wikipedia anExperiment in Anarchy/Talk." Meta-Wiki (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Is Wikipedia an experiment in anarchy, retrieved April 11, 2011).
Meta-Wiki. 2001c. "Main Page." Meta-Wiki (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main Page, retrieved April 11, 2011).
Nostalgia Wikipedia. 2012. "Home Page." Nostalgia Wikipedia (http://nostalgia.Wikipedia.org, retrieved April 11, 2011).
273
Nupedia. 2000a. "Nupedia News." Nupedia (http://web.archive.org/web/20000817023708/http://www.nupedia.com/news.shtml, retrieved June 1, 2012).
Nupedia. 2000b. "Nupedia News." Nupedia (http://web.archive.org/web/20010607072300/www.nupedia.com/news.shtml, retrieved June 1, 2012).
Nupedia. 2000c. "Nupedia.Com Editorial Policy Guidelines, Version 2.1 (May 10, 2000)." Nupedia (http://web.archive.org/web/20000619165525/http://www.nupedia.com/policyprint.html, retrieved June 1, 2012).
Nupedia. 2000d. "Nupedia.Com Editorial Policy Guidelines, Version 3.2 (June 23, 2000)." Nupedia (http://web.archive.org/web/20000829075115/http://www.nupedia.com/policyprint.html, retrieved June 1, 2012).
Nupedia. 2000e. "About Nupedia." Nupedia (http://web.archive.org/web/200012031738/http://www.nupedia.com/about.shtml, retrieved June 1, 2012).
Nupedia. 2000f. "Join Us!" Nupedia. (http://web.archive.org/web/200012040154/http://www.nupedia.com/join.shtml, retrieved June 1, 2012).
Nupedia. 2000g. "Other Frequently Asked Questions about Nupedia" Nupedia. (http://web.archive.org/web/20000829075108/http://www.nupedia.com/faq.shtml, retrieved June 1, 2012).
Nupedia. 2001a. "Nupedia: Newest Articles." Nupedia (http://web.archive.org/web/20010804024346/http://www.nupedia.com/newest.phtml, retrieved June 1, 2012)
Nupedia. 2001b. "Nupedia's Proposed Category Scheme." Nupedia. (http://web.archive.org/web/200101050928/http://www.nupedia.com/category.shtml, retrieved June 1, 2012).
Nupedia. 2001c. "Nupedia.Com Editorial Policy Guidelines, Version 4 (June 23, 2000)." Nupedia (http://web.archive.org/web/20010607080354/http://www.nupedia.com/policy.shtml, retrieved June 1, 2012).
Nupedia. 2003. "Nupedia: Newest Articles." Nupedia. (http://web.archive.org/web/20030810153103/http://www.nupedia.com/newest.phtml, retrieved June 1, 2012).
Parks, Rose. 2001. "Wiktionary." Wikipedia-l Mailing List. (http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/Wikipedia-l/2001-April/thread.html, retrieved April 9, 2011).
274
Rybo, Stefan. 2001. "Policy Content and Its Navigation." Wikipedia-l Mailing List (http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/Wikipedia-l/2001-June/thread.html, retrieved April 9, 2011).
Sanger, Larry. 2000a. "Visula Arts....What about Photography, Drawing etc?" Nupedia-l Mailing List (http://web.archive.org/web/20030325121343/http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/nupedia-l/2000-June/000526.html, retrieved June 7, 2011).
Sanger, Larry. 2000b. "Please Post This Flyer." Nupedia-l Mailing List (http://web.archive.org/web/20030515104119/http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/nupedia-l/2000-May/000303.html, retrieved June 7, 2011).
Sanger, Larry. 2000c. "Two Big Changes." Nupedia-l Mailing List (http://web.archive.org/web/20030325114458/http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/nupedia-l/2000-August/000558.html, retrieved June 7, 2011).
Sanger, Larry. 2000d. "Changes Summarized." Nupedia-l Mailing List (http://web.archive.org/web/20030325115949/http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/nupedia-l/2000-August/000561.html, retrieved June 7, 2011).
Sanger, Larry. 2000e. "A New Nupedia Project." Nupedia-l Mailing List (http://web.archive.org/web/20030325122718/http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/nupedia-l/2000-December/000646.html, retrieved June 7, 2011).
Sanger, Larry. 2000f. "Let's Make a Wiki!" Nupedia-l Mailing List (http://web.archive.org/web/20030414014355/http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/nupedia-l/2001-January/000676.html, retrieved June 7, 2011).
Sanger, Larry. 2000g. "Need Help with These Topics." General-l Mailing List (http://web.archive.org/web/20020129183408/http://nupedia.com/pipermail/general-l/2000-November/000001.html, retrieved June 7, 2011).
Sanger, Larry. 2001a. "The Nupedia Chalkboard is up--Two Important Requests." Nupedia-l Mailing List (http://web.archive.org/web/20030518145848/http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/nupedia-l/2001-July/000936.html, retrieved June 7, 2011).
Sanger, Larry. 2001b. "Peer Review Project for Wikipedia." Nupedia-l Mailing List (http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/Wikipedia-l/2001-January/thread.htm, retrieved June 7, 2011).
Sanger, Larry. 2001c. "A Few Comments about Wikipedia." Wikipedia-l Mailing List (http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/Wikipedia-l/2001-January/thread.html, retrieved April 9, 2011).
Sanger, Larry. 2001d. "Web Links Subpage." Wikipedia-l Mailing List (http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/Wikipedia-l/2001-May/thread.html. retrieved April 9, 2011.
275
Sanger, Larry. 2001e. "Wiktionary." Wikipedia-l Mailing List (http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/Wikipedia-l/2001-April/thread.html, retrieved April 9, 2011).
Sanger, Larry. 2001f. "Policy Content and Its Navigation." Wikipedial-l (http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/Wikipedia-l/2001-June/thread.html, retrieved April 9, 2011).
Sanger, Larry. 2001g. "Wikipedia Is Wide Open. Why Is It Growing So Fast? Why Isn't It Full of Nonsense?" Kuro5hin.com. (http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/9/24/43858/2479, retrieved April 9, 2011).
Sanger, Larry. 2002a. "Announcement about My Involvement in Wikipedia and Nupedia—Larry Sanger." Meta-Wiki (http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Announcement_about_my_involvement_in_Wikipedia_and_Nupedia--Larry_Sanger&oldid=1173, retrieved April 9, 2011).
Sanger, Larry. 2002b. "My Resignation--Larry Sanger." Meta-Wiki (http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=My_resignation--Larry Sanger&oldid=23899, retrieved April 9, 2011).
Sanger, Larry. 2005. "The Early History of Nupedia and Wikipedia: A Memoir." Slashdot. (http://features.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/18/164213, retrieved January 15, 2008).
Shell, Tim. 2001. "A Few Comments about Wikipedia." Wikipedia-l Mailing List (http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/Wikipedia-l/2001-January/thread.html, retrieved April 9, 2011).
Wales, Jimmy. 2000a. "Reading Level/s and Hypertext." Nupedia-l Mailing List (http://web.archive.org/web/20030328164222/http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/nupedia-l/2000-May/000172.html. (retrieved April 9, 2011).
Wales, Jimmy. 2000b. "Two Big Changes." Nupedia-l Mailing List (http://web.archive.org/web/20030325115114/http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/nupedia-l/2000-August/000559.html. (retrieved April 9, 2011).
Wales, Jimmy. 2001a. "A Question." Wikipedia-l Mailing List (http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/Wikipedia-l/2001-October/000657.html. (retrieved April 9, 2011).
Wales, Jimmy. 2001b. "Re: [Wikipedia-l] A Proposal for the New Software." Wikipedia-l Mailing List (http://marc.info/?l=Wikipedia-l&m=104216623606384&w=2. (retrieved April 9, 2011).
Wales, Jimmy. 2001c. "Admins (I suspect LMS) Permanently Deleting Things without Reason." Wikipedia-l Mailing List. (http://marc.info/?l=Wikipedia-&m=104216623606508&w=2, retrieved April 9, 2011).
276
Wales, Jimmy. 2001d. "Statement of Principles." Wikipedia (http://nostalgia.Wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jimbo_Wales/Statement_of_principles&oldid=75340, retrieved April 9, 2011).
Wales, Jimmy. 2001e. "Refactoring Policy." Wikipedia Backups Archive Edit of january 30 by user 111, timestamp: 980815498.
Wales, Jimmy. 2001f. "What's This List For." Wikipedia-l Mailing List. (http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/Wikipedia-l/2001-January/thread.html, retrieved April 9, 2011).
Wales, Jimmy. 2001g. "A Few Comments about Wikipedia." Wikipedia-l Mailing List (http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/Wikipedia-l/2001-January/thread.html, retrieved April 9, 2011).
Wales, Jimmy. 2001h. "Wiktionary." Wikipedia-l Mailing List. (http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/Wikipedia-l/2001-April/thread.html, retrieved April 9, 2011).
Wales, Jimmy. 2001i. "Britannica and Free Content." Slashdot. (http://slashdot.org/story/01/07/26/0312258/britannica-and-free-content, retrieved April 9, 2011).
Wales, Jimmy. 2001j. "Human Vs. Animal." Wikipedia-l Mailing List (http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/Wikipedia-l/2001-April/000097.html, retrieved April 9, 2011).
Wales, Jimmy. 2005a. "Re: Wikipedia, Emergence, and the Wisdom of Crowds." Wikipedia-l Mailing List. (http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/Wikipedia-l/2005-May/021764.html, retrieved April 20, 2011).
Wales, Jimmy. 2005b. "Re: Sanger's Memoirs." Wikipedia-I Mailing List. (http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/Wikipedia-l/2005-April/021463.html, Retrived November 1, 2011).
Wayback machine. 2011a. Nuepedia, (http://wayback.archive.org/web/*/http:/nupedia.com, retrieved April 11, 2011).
Wayback machine. 2011b. Wikipedia (http://wayback.archive.org/web/*/http:/Wikipedia.com, retrieved April 11, 2011).
Wikimedia. 2005. "April 2005 Archives by Thread." Wikipedia-I Mailing List. (http://lists.Wikimedia.org/pipermail/Wikipedia-l/2005-April/thread.html, Retrived November 1, 2011).
Wikimedia. 2009. "Licensing Update/Result." Wikimedia Wiki. (http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Licensing_update/Result&oldid=1776040, retrieved November 10, 2011).
277
Wikimedia. 2011."Wikimedia Report Card." Wikimedia Wiki. (http://stats.wikimedia.org/reportcard/RC 2011 09 synopsis.html, Retrived November 1, 2011).
Wikimedia. 2012. "Wikipedia Statistics." Wikimedia wiki. (http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/Sitemap.htm, retrieved June 1, 2012)
Wikipedia. 2001a. "Wikipedia Announcements." Wikipedia. (http://en.Wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Milestones 2001&oldid=357968644, retrieved April 11, 2011).
Wikipedia. 2001b. "Larry's Text." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of March 6, timestamp: 983919610).
Wikipedia. 2001c. "Atlas Shrugged." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of February 27, timestamp: 983243272).
Wikipedia. 2001d. "September 11 Attacks." Wikipedia. (http://en.Wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=September 11 attacks&oldid=331585895, retrieved April 9 2012).
Wikipedia. 2001e. "The Wikipedia Militia/Talk." Wikipedia. (http://nostalgia.Wikipedia.org/wiki/The Wikipedia Militia/Talk, retrieved January 18 2012).
Wikipedia. 2001f. "Neutral Point of View/Talk." Wikipedia. (http://nostalgia.Wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Neutral_point_of_view&oldid=32469, retrieved April 11, 2011).
Wikipedia. 2001g. "Wikipedia is not a Dictionary/Talk." Wikipedia. (http://en.Wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Wikipedia_is_not_a_dictionary/Archive_1, retrieved April 11, 2011).
Wikipedia. 2001h. "Homepage." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of January 17, timestamp: 979692991).
Wikipedia. 2001i. "Wikipedia Process." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of January 21, timestamp: 980068786.)
Wikipedia. 2001j. "Patent Nonsense." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of January 21, timestamp: 980532222).
Wikipedia. 2001k. "Bad Jokes and Other Deleted Nonsense." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of January 21, timestamp: 9805321).
Wikipedia. 2001l. "Be Bold in Updating Articles." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of January 17, timestamp: 979691400).
Wikipedia. 2001m. "Chiristianity." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of January 26, timestamp: 980547425).
278
Wikipedia. 2001n. "Chiristianity/Talk." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of January 26, timestamp: 980549300).
Wikipedia. 2001o. "Refactoring Policy." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of January 26, timestamp: 981229327).
Wikipedia. 2001p. "Wikipedia Policy." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of March 8, timestamp: 984017596).
Wikipedia. 2001q. "Bush talk." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of February 4, timestamp: 980623844).
Wikipedia. 2001r. "History of United States Talk." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of January 30, timestamp: 980815498).
Wikipedia. 2001s. "Partake in Discussion/Talk." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of February 12, timestamp: 982022383).
Wikipedia. 2001t. "History of United States Discussion." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of January 30, timestamp: 980815181).
Wikipedia. 2001u. "Altruism/Talk." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of March 2, timestamp: 983567914).
Wikipedia. 2001v. "Altruism." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of March 2, timestamp: 980118691).
Wikipedia. 2001w. "History of United States." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of january 29, timestamp: 980754765).
Wikipedia. 2001x. "Libertarianism." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of january 27, timestamp: 980555271).
Wikipedia. 2001y. "Anarchy." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of February 2, timestamp: 981082841).
Wikipedia. 2001z. "Traditional Anarchism." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of February 13, timestamp: 982045929).
Wikipedia. 2001aa. "Democracy." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of February 11, timestamp: 981909946).
Wikipedia. 2001ab. "George W. Bush." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of January 21, timestamp: 980371261).
Wikipedia. 2001ac. "History of United States." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of january 29, timestamp: 980888645).
Wikipedia. 2001ad. "Rules to Consider." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of February 4, timestamp: 981308293).
279
Wikipedia. 2001ae. "Football." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of January 24, timestamp: 980355564).
Wikipedia. 2001af. "Capitalism." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of February 2, timestamp: 981084054).
Wikipedia. 2001ag. "American Football." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of February 8, timestamp: 981674606).
Wikipedia. 2001ah. "Anarchocapitalism." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of February 13, timestamp: 982045747).
Wikipedia. 2001ai. "Anarchy/Talk." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of February 13, timestamp: 982046534).
Wikipedia. 2001aj. "Traditional Anarchism/Talk." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of February 15, timestamp: 982280760).
Wikipedia. 2001ak. "Neutral Point of View." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of February 16, timestamp: 982358834).
Wikipedia. 2001al. "Creationism." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of April 4 16, timestamp: 986411388).
Wikipedia. 2001am. "Creationism/Talk." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of April 4, timestamp: 986426281).
Wikipedia. 2001an. "Creationism/Talk." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of April 5, timestamp: 986513055).
Wikipedia. 2001ao. "Tim Sehll." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of January 28, timestamp: 980653562).
Wikipedia. 2001ap. "Larry Sanger/Columns." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of June 10, timestamp: 992171611).
Wikipedia. 2001aq. "Wiki is not an Encyclopedia." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of March 19, timestamp: 985033332).
Wikipedia. 2001ar. "Wiki is not Paper." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of March 3, timestamp: 985041337).
Wikipedia. 2001as. "Wikipedia is not a Dictionary." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of May 21, timestamp: 990449593).
Wikipedia. 2001at. "Public Domain Resources." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of March 28, timestamp: 985793997).
Wikipedia. 2001au. "Public Domain Resources/Talk." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of March 28, timestamp: 985801520).
280
Wikipedia. 2001av. "Drunk." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of April 17, timestamp: 987467255).
Wikipedia. 2001aw. "Drunk/Talk." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of April 17, timestamp: 987488749).
Wikipedia. 2001ax. "Encyclopedia and or Versus Dictionary." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of April 17, timestamp: 987531878)
Wikipedia. 2001ay. "Monarch." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of May 10, timestamp: 989485414).
Wikipedia. 2001az. "Ship." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of May 10, timestamp: 989511423).
Wikipedia. 2001ba. "Philosopher." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of May 10, timestamp: 989515365).
Wikipedia. 2001bb. "Comic-strip." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of May 21, timestamp: 990438237).
Wikipedia. 2001bc. "WIPO." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of May 17, timestamp: 990119789).
Wikipedia. 2001bd. "University of Oxford." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of May 19, timestamp: 990313235).
Wikipedia. 2001be. "Wikipedia." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of May 16, timestamp: 990012645).
Wikipedia. 2001bf. "Wikipedia Bugs." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of May 16, timestamp: 990015686).
Wikipedia. 2001bg. "LA2." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of May 10, timestamp: 989510096).
Wikipedia. 2001bh. "Open Source Initiative." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of May 16, timestamp: 990014026).
Wikipedia. 2001bi. "Rules to Consider." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of May 17, timestamp: 990096406).
Wikipedia. 2001bj. "Trojan Horse." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of May 18, timestamp: 990214042).
Wikipedia. 2001bk. "Hacking." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of May 20, timestamp: 990333626).
Wikipedia. 2001bl. "Boston." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of May 20, timestamp: 990334165).
281
Wikipedia. 2001bm. "Larry Sanger." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of May 20, timestamp: 990335720).
Wikipedia. 2001bn. "Scheme." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of May 21, timestamp: 990443645).
Wikipedia. 2001bo. "Scheme/Talk." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of May 21, timestamp: 990449079).
Wikipedia. 2001bp. "Am." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of May 21, timestamp: 990448977).
Wikipedia. 2001bq. "LA2." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of May 21, timestamp: 990449323).
Wikipedia. 2001br. "Wikipedia is a Dictionary." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of May 21, timestamp: 990450747).
Wikipedia. 2001bs. "Larry Sanger/Why a List of the Senses of a Word Is Not anEncyclopedia Article." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of June 10, timestamp: 992171922).
Wikipedia. 2001bt. "Disease." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of June 8, timestamp: 992003426).
Wikipedia. 2001bu. "Of." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of June 9, timestamp: 992107877).
Wikipedia. 2001bv. "Basis." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of June 30, timestamp: 993921669).
Wikipedia. 2001bw. "Simon Flexner." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of June 29, timestamp: 993807262).
Wikipedia. 2001bx. "Larry Sanger/The Perfect Stub Article." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of July 2, timestamp: 994057581).
Wikipedia. 2001by. "Welcome, Newcomers." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of July 28, timestamp: 996306037).
Wikipedia. 2001bz. "Wikipedia FAQ." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of July 26, timestamp: 996121421).
Wikipedia. 2001ca. "Wikipedia Policy." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of July 28, timestamp: 996307590).
Wikipedia. 2001cb. "What Wikipedia is not." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of July 28, timestamp: 996307233).
Wikipedia. 2001cc. "How To Destroy Wikipedia." Wikipedia (http://en.Wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:The_Cunctator/How_to_destroy_Wikipedia&oldid=471104385, Retrived April 9, 2011).
282
Wikipedia. 2001cd. "Wikipedia Utilities: find or fix a stub." Wikipedia (http://nostalgia.Wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_utilities/find_or_fix_a_stub, retrieved January 18 2012).
Wikipedia. 2001ce. "Wikipedia Utilities/Pages Needing Attention." Wikipedia (http://nostalgia.Wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_utilities/Pages_needing_attention, retrieved January 18 2012).
Wikipedia. 2001cf. "Countries of the World." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of June 5, timestamp: 991701864).
Wikipedia. 2001cg. "Philosophy." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of June 4, timestamp: 991617660).
Wikipedia. 2001ch. "Music." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of June 7, timestamp: 991940145).
Wikipedia. 2001ci. "Sport." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of June 6, timestamp: 991833397).
Wikipedia. 2001cj. "Psychiatry." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of June 11, timestamp: 992254064).
Wikipedia. 2001ck. "Naming Conventions/Talk." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of June 9, timestamp: 992107672).
Wikipedia. 2001cl. "Dewey Decimal System." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of June 14, timestamp: 992505188).
Wikipedia. 2001cm. "Wikipedia NEWS." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of June 22, timestamp: 993181960).
Wikipedia. 2001cn. "Wikipedia Help Desk." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of June 29, timestamp: 993806785).
Wikipedia. 2001co. "Larry Sanger/List-o-Links." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of July 7, timestamp: 994328588).
Wikipedia. 2001cp. "Unamerican Activities/Talk." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of July 21, timestamp: 993136172).
Wikipedia. 2001cq. "Abortion/Talk." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of July 5, timestamp: 994318498).
Wikipedia. 2001cr. "Literary Quotations/Talk." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of July 3, timestamp: 994163741).
Wikipedia. 2001cs. "Rules to Consider." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of June 29, timestamp: 993814566).
Wikipedia. 2001ct. "Computer." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of July 7, timestamp: 994340062).
283
Wikipedia. 2001cu. "Requested Articles." Wikipedia (http://nostalgia.Wikipedia.org/wiki/Requested_articles, retrieved January 18 2012).
Wikipedia. 2001cv. "Nazi Germany." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of June 1, timestamp: 991434648).
Wikipedia. 2001cw. "Nazi Germany/Related Terms." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of July 23, timestamp: 995915052).
Wikipedia. 2001cx. "Nazi Germany/Talk." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of July 24, timestamp: 995961275).
Wikipedia. 2001cy. "W00t." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of July 28, timestamp: 996306649).
Wikipedia. 2001cz. "Woot/Talk." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of July 28, timestamp: 996306898).
Wikipedia. 2001da. "Two Main Theories of History." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of July 27, timestamp: 996236645).
Wikipedia. 2001db. "Wikipedia Commentary." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of March 26, timestamp: 985633655).
Wikipedia. 2001dc. "Wikipedia Commentary." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of July 27, timestamp: 996236953).
Wikipedia. 2001dd. "Yet Another." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of July 30, timestamp: 996529973).
Wikipedia. 2001de. "What WIkipedia is not." Wikipedia. (http://nostalgia.Wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=What_Wikipedia_is_not&oldid=55404, retrieved January 18 2012).
Wikipedia. 2001df. "Give the Author a Chance Debate." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of February 16, timestamp: 982367290).
Wikipedia. 2001dg. "How to Start a Page." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of April 12, timestamp: 987117723).
Wikipedia. 2001dh. "Welcome, Newcomers." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of February 16, timestamp: 992408267).
Wikipedia. 2001di. "Abortion/Talk." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of July 5, timestamp: 994318498).
Wikipedia. 2001dj. "Scientology/Talk." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of April 5, timestamp: 986490351).
Wikipedia. 2001dk. "Racism/Talk." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of May 21, timestamp: 990433597).
284
Wikipedia. 2001dl. "John Stuart Mill/Talk." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of June 10, timestamp: 992174329).
Wikipedia. 2001dm. "Unamerican Activities/Talk." Wikipedia Backups Archive (edit of June 21, timestamp: 993136093).
Wikipedia. 2002a. "Wikipedia Announcements." Wikipedia. (http://en.Wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Milestones 2002&oldid=277387993, retrieved April 11, 2011).
Wikipedia. 2002b. "Wikipedia:Traffic." Wikipedia. (http://en.Wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Traffic&oldid=192123, retrieved April 15, 2011).
Wikipedia. 2003. "Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not: Difference Between Revisions." Wikipedia. (http://en.Wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not&diff=next&oldid=715637, retrieved April 9, 2011).
Wikipedia. 2006. "User:Raul654/Raul's Laws." Wikipedia. (http://en.Wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Raul654/Raul%27s laws&oldid=44834502, Retrived April 9, 2011).
Wikipedia. 2012a. "Ignore all Rules." Wikipedia. (http://en.Wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Ignore all rules&oldid=467661261, Retrived January 18, 2012).
Wikpedia. 2012b. "Wikipedia: Editing Policy." Wikipedia. (http://en.Wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:IMPERFECT, Retrived January 18, 2012).
Wikipedia. 2012c. "Arbitration Committee (English Wikipedia)." Wikipedia. (http://en.Wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Arbitration Committee %28English Wikipedia%29&oldid=445392876, retrieved January 18 2012).
Wikipedia. 2012d. "History of Wikipedia." Wikipedia. (http://en.Wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=History_of_Wikipedia&oldid=471890325, retrieved January 18 2012).
Wikipedia. 2012e. "Ben Kovitz." Wikipedia. (http://en.Wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:BenKovitz&oldid=456195834, Retrived January 18, 2012).
Wikipedia. 2012f. "Wikipedia: Neutral Point of View." Wikipedia. (http://en.Wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Neutral point of view&oldid=481531601, retrieved April 9, 2012).
Wikipedia. 2012g. "Wikipedia: What Wikipedia is not." Wikipedia. (http://en.Wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not&oldid=485526418, retrieved April 9, 2012).
285
Wikipedia. 2012h. "Wikipedia: What Wikipedia is not: Revision History." Wikipedia. (http://en.Wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not&dir=prev&limit=500&action=history, retrieved April 9, 2012).
Wikipedia. 2012i. "Wikipedia:Verifiability." Wikipedia. (http://en.Wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Verifiability&oldid=479894582, retrieved April 9, 2012).
Wikipedia. 2012j. "Wikipedia: No Original Research." Wikipedia. (http://en.Wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:No_original_research&oldid=483422922, retrieved April 9, 2012).
Wikipedia. 2012k. "Wikipedia: Core Content Policies." Wikipedia. (http://en.Wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Core_content_policies&oldid=466952275, retrieved April 9, 2012).
Wikipedia. 2012l. "Wikipedia: Identifying Reliable Sources." Wikipedia. (http://en.Wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Identifying_reliable_sources&oldid=480005796, retrieved April 9, 2012).
א
תקציר
מחקר זה עוסק בתהליכי התהוות וההתמסדות של ויקיפדיה כזירה מרכזית שבה מתכוננות
ויקיפדיה היא אנציקלופדיה מקוונת . של ידע בתקופתנופרקטיקות ואמות מידה ליצירה והערכה
וניתן להשתמש בהם או , לשונית שתכניה מיוצרים על ידי המוני מתנדבים מכל רחבי העולם-רב
מתנדבים אלו צברו וארגנו כמויות , במהלך העשור האחרון. לערוך אותם כמעט ללא מגבלות
יה למקור ידע מרכזי בחברת המידע חסרות תקדים של תוכן אנציקלופדי והפכו את ויקיפד
, הסתמכותה על עבודה התנדבותית וחובבנית ללא בקרה מקדימה, יחד עם זאת. הגלובאלית
במסגרת עבודה זו אציע ניתוח . מוסיפה לעורר ספקות רחבים לגבי מהימנותה והלגיטימיות שלה
דיה פיתחו על מנת היסטורי ופרגמטי של המנגנונים והפרקטיקות שעורכיה ומשתמשיה של ויקיפ
.להתמודד עם בעיה זו של לגיטימציה
מחקר זה בוחן את מיסודה והתקבלותה של ויקיפדיה כצורה ייחודית וחדשנית של
כמערך של פרקטיקות ואמות מידה העומדות בבסיס היצירה , כלומר –תרבות אפיסטמית
היא מהווה מקרה , אתככז). Knorr-Cetina, 1999(והלגיטימציה של ידע בהקשר חברתי מסוים
נידונות וממוסדות , אסטרטגי המאפשר לנו לבחון כיצד תרבויות אפיסטמיות חדשות מכוננות
תרומתו העיקרית של מחקר זה טמונה ביכולתו לפצות על שתי חולשות בולטות בגוף . בפועל
ה הראשונה מביניהן היא הנטיה להסביר את הצלחת. המחקר המתפתח במהירות אודות ויקיפדיה
, כגון הבסיס הטכנולוגי שלה(הנתפשים כמהותיים לויקיפדיה , כתוצאה ממאפיינים מסוימים
תוך הזנחת היבטיהם , )ארגונה החברתי או צורת הממשל שלה, ההנחות התרבותיות שבבסיסה
השניה היא . שיש להסבירם הישגים והתעלמות מכך שהם מהווים, ההיסטוריים והדינמיים
הגורמת להתעלמות , ודרכי השימוש בהם תכניה ן ההתקבלות שלאופ ההזנחה היחסית של
.מהאופן שבו בעיית הלגיטימציה שלה משפיעה על צריכתה בפועל
מחקר זה מפנה את תשומת הלב , היסטורית השוררת במחקר הקיים- בניגוד לנטיה הא
המאפיינים אשר ליוו את יצירתם של מנגנונים וקווי מדיניות המותנים ותלויי ההקשר לתהליכים
מחקר זה מוסיף על הספרות הקיימת על ידי בחינת האופן שבו , בנוסף. את ויקיפדיה עד היום
שופטים את התוצרים של תהליכים אלו ומשתמשים , עיתונאים, קבוצה מסוימת של מומחי ידע
.בהם בפועל
ה את המדגיש, הפרגמטיסטית עבודה זו נסמכת בראש ובראשונה על המסורת, ברמה התיאורטית
החשיבות של ניתוח פרקטיקות ואובייקטים בזמן ובמרחב קונקרטיים על חשבון אמונות או
ב
את האופן שבו אובייקט הידע והכלים המשמשים לחקירתו מעוצבים בהדרגה ; ערכים מופשטים
אשר לעתים מונחות , ואת הקיום של פאזות פעולה שונות; תוך שהם משנים זה את אופיו של זה
ם ממוסדים ולעתים על ידי הצורך למצוא פתרונות יצירתיים לבעיות קונקרטיות על ידי הרגלי
)Joas, 1993, 1996; Gross, 2007 .(ובפרט הגותו של אנסלם , גישת האינטראקציה הסימבולית
מפנים את תשומת הלב , הקרובה ברוחה למסורת הפרגמטיסטית (Strauss, 1978) שטראוס
דיון ועימות : עבודת גבול דורש זירות מפגש במסגרת של תייםעולמות חבר לאופן שבו מפגש בין
, אשר כרוך במאבקים על כוח, סביב נושאים במחלוקת בין נציגים של עולמות חברתיים שונים
הקשר תיאורטי רלוונטי נוסף הינו התחום של לימודי מדע . סמכות ולגיטימיות
וגיים השואפים להסביר תהליכים של שם כולל למחקרים היסטוריים וסוציול, )(STS וטכנולוגיה
תוך מעקב מדוקדק אחר פרקטיקות ייצור הידע באתרים בהם הוא , כלומר –" מבפנים"ייצור ידע
-Knorr( תרבות אפיסטמית המושג: הבאים חשוב במיוחד בהקשר זה הדיון במושגים. נוצר
Cetina, 1999( , אתרי ייצור ידעשממקד את תשומת הלב בהיבטים המקומיים והייחודיים של ;
המתייחס לצמתים ) Obligatory Passage Points, Callon, 1986( נקודות מעבר הכרחיותהמושג
Boundary(חפצי גבול - ו; המהווים אמצעים לייצור סמכות ולגיטימציה באתרים של ייצור ידע
objects ,ראו Star and Griesemer, 1989( ,המידע של אמצעים לתיאום בין צרכי מושג שמציין
הסוציולוגיה הפרגמטית הצרפתית, לבסוף. עולמות חברתיים שונים בנקודות המפגש ביניהם
)Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006; Thévenot, 2001a( מוסיפה על הגישות שנסקרו את
בהם אין עקרון מארגן ברור מצבים קריטייםהחשיבות של היבטים תרבותיים ומוסריים ב
גורמים אלו באים לידי ביטוי בתהליכים של . ט הפעולות של שחקניםומוסכם מראש לשיפו
, כלומר יצירת הקבלות בין אובייקטים –) form investment, Thévenot, 1984( השקעה צורנית
תהליכים אשר ,לבין אחרים המרוחקים ממנו בזמן ובמרחב, פרקטיקות ואנשים המעורבים במצב
.שחקנים במצבים שאינם מוגדרים באופן ברורמאפשרים תיאום ושיתוף פעולה בין ה
הסוציולוגיה של הנתינה ושאלת יחסה של : המחקר נוגע לשני נושאים תיאורטיים נוספים, בנוסף
בעוד חלק : הספרות על ויקיפדיה מעלה מתח בלתי פתור, בהקשר הראשון. ויקיפדיה למודרניות
נתרם ללא ציפייה לתמורה או מהחוקרים מדגישים את ההסתמכות של ויקיפדיה על תוכן ש
חוקרים אחרים מדגישים את החשיבות של מערכת המוניטין הקהילתית המבוססת על , להכרה
סקירת הספרות בנושא מראה כי מתח זה משקף מחלוקות . הכרה הדדית בנתינה לפרוייקט
ג
שונים רחבות יותר בספרות אודות נתינה ומעלה את הצורך לבחון כיצד העירוב בין סוגי נתינה
אני מנסה לבחון כיצד ניתן למקם את התרבות האפיסטמית , בהקשר השני. משפיע על ויקיפדיה
המדגישות את ההמשכיות בין תפיסות , מודרניות מאוחרת של ויקיפדיה במתח בין תיאוריות של
המדגישות את הנתק פוסטמודרניות ובין תיאוריות, הידע העכשוויות לבין אלו המודרניות
.ביניהם
שנאספו , עבודה זו נסמכת על שני בסיסי נתונים מובחנים. בפרק השני מתוארות שיטות המחקר
הראשון מבניהם שימש כדי לבחון את תהליכי היווצרותם ומיסודם של : 2009-2011בשנים
והשני כדי לבחון , מאפייניה של ויקיפדיה ושל קוי המדיניות המרכזיים שלה בהקשרם ההיסטורי
, אפיסטמית שנוצרה במסגרתה משתלבת במסגרת חיי היומיום של צרכניהכיצד התרבות ה
בסיס הנתונים הראשון נבנה על ידי בחינה של . ולאמוד את מידת ואופן השפעתה החברתית
ושל כלל העריכות שנעשו ) ראו להלן –ניופדיה , וקודמתה(ארכיבי רשימות התפוצה של ויקיפדיה
גם עריכות נבחרות מתקופות מאוחרות יותר וכן תכנים כמו , בה בחודשים הראשונים לקיומה
בסיס הנתונים השני כלל עשרים . אינטרנטיים נוספים שנקשרו לתהליכי המיסוד הרלוונטיים
ראיונות מובנים למחצה עם עיתונאים אודות יחסם לוויקיפדיה והאופן בו הם משתמשים בה
.בחיי היומיום ובעבודה שלהם
cartography of"" (מיפוי המחלוקות"שון נעשה בעיקר בשיטת ניתוח בסיס הנתונים הרא
controversies", Venturini, 2009( , הקשורה לגישתANT .על החוקר למפות את , על פי שיטה זו
מדע וטכנולוגיה בטרם נושא , העמדות ורשתות השחקנים המעורבות במחלוקות בדבר ידע
בטרם , פעה הנחקרת בתהליך ההיווצרות שלהעל מנת לבחון את התו, המחלוקת מתייצב ונסגר
גישה זו מדגישה את הפרקטיקות ואת האובייקטים , כמו כן. היא הופכת למובנת מאליה
בהתאם . המעורבים בתהליכים אלו על פני הפנומנולוגיה של השחקנים האנושיים המעורבים בהם
רשראות ההפניות בדמות ש) Latour, 1993, 121" (חוט אריאדנה"לשיטה זו עקבתי אחרי
)chains of references( ,דבר שדרש את שילובם של היבטים ומודלים , קדימה ואחורה בזמן
.בתיאור תהליך ההתמסדות של ויקיפדיה היסטוריים
בסיס הנתונים השני שימש כדי לשחזר את הדרכים שבהן עיתונאים מחפשים אחר מידע
ברוחם של מחקרים איכותניים אודות . יך זהבאינטרנט ואת האופן שבו ויקיפדיה משתלבת בתהל
, עיתונאים(ממצאי הראיונות נותחו על מנת להבין כיצד אנשים , מחשב/האינטראקציה אדם
מבנים את הטכנולוגיות בהן הם משתמשים באמצעות הפרקטיקות היומיומיות ) במקרה זה
ד
והזהות שלהם את הפרקטיקות באופן שמשנה הן, שלהם וכיצד הם באים באינטראקציה איתן
כבר בשלבי איסוף המידע . עצמם והן את הטכנולוגיה הרלוונטית באופנים יצירתיים ובלתי צפויים
ולא נמצאו , המוקדמים התברר שישנו דמיון גדול מאוד בין התיאורים שסיפקו המרואיינים
,Robinson(נעשה שימוש בתהליך של אינדוקציה אנליטית , לפיכך. הבדלים שיטתיים ביניהם
1951; Denzin, 2007 ( על מנת לבנות מודל מותנה בזמן)time-bound ( של דפוס הפעולות
שעודן ככל שהתוסף מידע מראיונות , האופייני המתרחש בזמן השימוש של עיתונאים בוויקיפדיה
.נוספים
בוחן את מקורותיה של ויקיפדיה בפרויקט אנציקלופדי ) 3פרק (הפרק האמפירי הראשון
ימי ויילס 'וג) Larry Sanger(לארי סאנגר , שהוקם על ידי אותם המייסדים, ניופדיהקודם בשם
)Jimmy Wales( ,והאופן שבו , אופן ייצור הידע הנהוג בה: תוך התמקדות בשני נושאים מרכזיים
ניופדיה תוכננה כאנציקלופדיית אינטרנט פתוחה אך . הומשג בה תוכן אנציקלופדי ראוי לפרסום
מייסדיה ניסו באופן . שהיו אמורים לערוך ולשפוט את תכניה, קחת על ידי מומחיםמנוהלת ומפו
מודע ומכוון להעניק לגיטימציה לפרויקט על ידי ארגונו באופן המבוסס על צורות תרבותיות
צורתם של תכניה והמבנה שלה התבססו : ממוסדות ועל מנגנונים מוכרים חברתית לייצור ידע
התרומה לה הותנתה בחשיפת ,האנציקלופדיה בריטניקה הדפוס שלבאופן ישיר על מהדורת
- תהליך שיפוט עלבעיקרו במסגרתה התבסס ייצור הידע, הזהות האמיתית של המשתתפים
ומדרג הסמכות , למאמרים הדומה מאוד לזה הנהוג בכתבי עת אקדמיים) peer-review(עמיתים
מכיוון שלאחר שנה , יון זה נכשל בעיקרונס. בה התבסס ככלל על היררכיה של תארים אקדמיים
כישלון זה . של פעילות ייצרו משתתפיה של ניופדיה רק תריסר ערכים שנמצאו ראויים לפרסום
לשמרנות של ההנחות האפיסטמיות ושיטות ) ימי ויילס'ובעיקר על ידי ג(יוחס על ידי מייסדיה
ש שיטות אלו ולהאיץ את קצב לאחר מספר נסיונות כושלים להגמי, לפיכך. ייצור הידע שלה
. החליטו סאנגר וויילס ליצור פרויקט אנציקלופדי משלים השונה באופיו במידה קיצונית, הייצור
אשר באותה , "ויקי"הבסיס הטכנולוגי של פרויקט זה היה מערכת ניהול תוכן אינטרנטית בשם
רדיקאליים התקופה זכתה לפופולאריות מסוימת בחוגים החברתיים של מומחי מחשבים
")extreme programmers ("אותו , "ויקיפדיה"סאנגר העניק לו את השם , לפיכך. בחוף המערבי
".שם מטופש למה שהיה בראשיתו פרויקט מטופש מאוד"הגדיר מאוחר יותר כ
כרקע , מתאר בקצרה את ההיסטוריה של ויקיפדיה בשנתה הראשונה) 4פרק (הפרק הבא
בפרק מתוארים התהליכים שהובילו להחלטה . בינה ובין ניופדיה ואת הקשרים, לפרקים הבאים
ה
העלייה הדרמטית במספר המשתתפים בה בעקבות מספר כתבות ; על הקמתה של ויקיפדיה
בכלים , בקוי המדיניות, ושינויים במבנה הסמכות; שהתפרסמו באתרי אינטרנט בולטים
ויקיפדיה , כפי שעולה מתיאור זה .הטכנולוגיים ובתהליך ייצור התוכן שהתרחשו בתקופה זאת
היא התעצבה , בהקשרים מסויימים. עמדה בראשית דרכה במערכת יחסים מורכבת מול ניופדיה
יוצריה הציעו אופן ייצור : בניגוד מוחלט לשאיפות למכובדות וללגיטימציה שאפיינו את ניופדיה
אחד יכול לכתוב על כל שבו כל, חדש המבוסס על מודל של השתתפות ושיתוף פעולה רדיקאליים
הסטנדרטים וקוי המדיניות של . וכל משתתף יכול לערוך את עבודתם של משתתפים אחרים, נושא
סכמות ומשאבים , יחד עם זאת. ונדרשו זמן ומאמץ ניכרים על מנת לעצב חדשים, ניופדיה נזנחו
קשות על דמותה התע, בין השאר, אלו כללו. חשובים ביותר שפותחו בניופדיה עברו לויקיפדיה
משתתפים בעלי ; עמדה חזקה ביחס להטיות בתכני ערכים; המסורתית של האנציקלופדיה
ומימון הפרויקט בעיקרו על ידי ; משאבים המחויבים ליצירת אנציקלופדיה אינטרנטית פתוחה
).חברה בבעלותו, באמצעות בומיס(ימי ויילס 'ג
פן שבו קוי המדיניות ואמות מתארים בהרחבה את האו, )5-6(שני הפרקים הבאים
הראשון . המידה של ויקיפדיה נוצרו והתמסדו בתקופה זו תוך כדי סדרה של עימותים ומחלוקות
ואילו השני בוחן את האופן שבו , מביניהם מתאר את מיסודו של אופן ייצור התוכן בויקיפדיה
.םנוצרו והתמסדו במסגרתה סטנדרטים להבחנה בין תכנים ראויים ולא ראויי
קוי המדיניות והמנגנונים הקשורים לאופן ייצור התוכן בויקיפדיה התפתחו כתגובה
כבר בימים הראשונים . לבעיות שנבעו מכך שתוכן זה נכתב על ידי מתנדבים באופן שיתופי
לקיומה נאלצו משתתפיה ליצור עקרונות וקוים מנחים שיאפשרו שיתוף פעולה במצבי מחלוקת
המחלוקת הראשונה נגעה . קורי של הגבלה מינימאלית על תרומה לפרויקטמבלי לפגוע ברעיון המ
דיונים וויכוחים בין , בימיה הראשונים: למיקומם של דיונים אודות ערכי האנציקלופדיה
פרקטיקה זאת . משתתפים אודות תכניו של ערך מסוים נכתבו בראשו או בתחתיתו של דף הערך
אולם עמדה בניגוד , קובל באתרי ויקי באותו הזמןהיתה חלק בלתי נפרד מאופן השימוש המ
המשתתפים בפרויקט נאלצו להכריע האם , לפיכך. לצורתם המסורתית של ערכי אנציקלופדיה
להעדיף את צורתו המקורית של הערך האנציקלופדי או את אופן השימוש המקובל בפלטפורמה
, ברשימת התפוצה של הפרויקט שהתקיים בתחילה, הדיון בנושא. הטכנולוגית שבבסיס הפרויקט
ליבה של דפי מדיניות שממקדת -עבר לאחר מכן לדפי דיון מיוחדים בויקי עצמו שהיוו בסיס לרשת
על ידי קבוצת צדדי-חד המחלוקת עצמה הוכרעה לבסוף באופן. עד היום את הפעילות בפרויקט
, "דפי הערכים"מ המופרדים" דפי שיחה"אשר חבריה יצרו –ובראשה לארי סנגר –משתתפים
ו
הכרעה זו . למרות שלא הושגה הסכמה לדפוס פעולה זה, והעבירו את תכני הדיונים אליהם
ושולבה מאוחר יותר בתוכנה שמפעילה את , למרות ההתנגדות הראשונית, התמסדה עם הזמן
בכך הפכה ממוסד חברתי הדורש תהליכי חברות ואכיפה מתמידים על מנת . אתר ויקיפדיה
.ק בלתי נפרד מהמרקם הטכנולוגי של הפרויקטלשמרו לחל
המחלוקת השניה עסקה באופן שבו יש לייצג חילוקי דעות ועמדות מנוגדות במסגרת ערכי
מהרגע שבו החלו משתתפי הפרויקט ליצור במשותף ערכים בנושאים שנויים . האנציקלופדיה
ת הדדיות בדבר יצירת החלו להופיע מחלוקות וקונפליקטים עזים המלווים בהאשמו, במחלוקת
ימי ויילס מדיניות בשם 'יצר ג, לאחר שנוצרו פתרונות מקומיים לבעיות מסוג זה. תוכן מוטה
אשר איגדה חלק מהפתרונות שפותחו בעבר ונתנה להם ניסוחים , "נקודת מבט נייטראלית"
ת ככזה שקבעה שיש להצהיר על כל תוכן שנוי במחלוק, תוכנה של מדיניות זו. כלליים והצדקות
התפתח עם הזמן על מנת לכלול סוגים שונים של , ולייצג בהגינות את כל הצדדים בעימות
סביב מדיניות זו נבנו מנגנונים חברתיים שמטרתם . מחלוקות ולפתור או להכיל התנגדויות
.ולאפשר דיון והכרעה במצבי קונפליקט, להתריע על קיומם של ערכים בעייתיים
סדות הסטנדרטים המסדירים את ההכלה או ההדרה של הפרק השישי מתמקד בהתמ
כבר בימים הראשונים נקבע שלכל אחד ממשתתפי הפרויקט שמורה הזכות . תכנים ויקיפדיה
אולם ההגדרה של תוכן מסוג זה היתה –למחוק תוכן לא מועיל שאחרים כתבו ) והחובה(
ך שלפחות בחודשים כ, )patent nonsense" (שטויות מוחלטות"מצמצמת מאוד וכללה רק
הראשונים לקיומה של ויקיפדיה היא הכילה תכנים מגוונים ביותר שחלקם לא אנציקלופדי
לאחר מיסודם של קוי המדיניות שנסקרו בפרק הקודם , רק בשלב מאוחר יותר. בעליל
התעורר הצורך לתרגם את המודל האנציקלופדי כך שיתאים , והתייצבותו היחסית של הפרויקט
היה , שדמה בצורתו לאלו שתוארו בפרק הקודם, תהליך זה. ויקיפדיה ה הייחודיים שללמאפייני
.קונפליקטואלי ביסודו ונכרך במאבקים על כוח וסמכות בפרויקט
המחלוקת הראשונה שהובילה לעיבוד ופרשנות של המודל האנציקלופדי ולברירה של
מות סביב השאלה האם ויקיפדיה נבעה מעי, מאפיינים רלוונטיים להקשר החדשני של ויקיפדיה
ויקיפדיה אינה בעקבות עימות זה התמסדה מדיניות הקובעת ש. צריכה להכיל ערכים מילוניים
המניח מאפיינים , ושמטרתה היא יצירת אנציקלופדיה במובן מצומצם של המילה, מילון
ל את ניסוח זה סל. מסויימים שמקורם בהיסטוריה ובמוסכמות של האנציקלופדיה המודפסת
הדרך ליצירת סטנדרטים נוספים אשר נועדו להתמודד עם סוגי תוכן שונים שאינם רווחים
אוגדו שקבעו איזה תוכן אינו ראוי לויקיפדיה, סטנדרטים מסוג זה. באנציקלופדיות מסורתיות
ז
עמוד זה הפך לכלי מרכזי בהדרכת עורכים ". מה ויקיפדיה אינה"בעמוד מדיניות אחד שכותרתו
סוגי תוכן נוספים הלכו והתוספו , עם הזמן. ולא מנוסים בדבר מדיניות התוכן בויקיפדיהחדשים
לאחר שתכנים קונקרטיים בעלי מעמד מפוקפק שנוספו לויקיפדיה העלו את השאלה בדבר , אליו
.לגיטימיות שלהם
הדיונים וההכרעות במחלוקות שנסקרו בפרקים החמישי והשישי הובילו לגיבושם של
כגון הדגשת האופי הדיאלוגי , רונות של קואורדינציה שמלווים את ויקיפדיה עד היוםמספר עק
הסתמכות על הפניות וקישורים לטקסטים חיצוניים כערובה ; של ייצור הידע המשותף בפרויקט
השאיפה לחקות את הצורה המסורתית של ; ולא על מומחיות או מחקר מקורי, לידע לגיטימי
עמדה ליבראלית ביחס ; י שהיא באה לידי ביטוי באנציקלופדיות דפוסערכים אנציקלופדיים כפ
זניחת האידיאל של ייצור תוכן מקורי ; לטכנולוגיה וייצור תוכן המעודדת יזמות ואלתור
בין " קונסנזוס בפועל"והסתמכות על ; והסתמכות נרחבת על העתקה או עיבוד של תוכן קיים
פרקים אלו מתעכבים על האופן שבו נוצרו בתקופה זו ,בנוסף. המשתתפים ככלי לקביעת מדיניות
טכנולוגיים ) scopic mechanisms" (מנגנונים סקופיים"ו) conscription devices" (אמצעי גיוס"
שרבים מהם , בין מנגנונים אלו. וחברתיים כאחד כדי לתמוך בעקרונות אלו ולפקח על יישומם
דפי מעקב אחרי עריכות , דפי המדיניות של ויקיפדיה ניתן למנות את, קיימים בויקיפדיה עד היום
כגון הפרדה בין סוגי , ותכונות שנוספו לתוכנת הויקי שעומדת בבסיס הפרויקט, מסוגים שונים
.רשימות מעקב ועוד, תבניות אזהרה, עמודים
בוחן כיצד מומחי ידע משתמשים בויקיפדיה ומעריכים ) 7פרק (הפרק האמפירי האחרון
בהתבסס על ראיונות מובנים למחצה עם עשרים עיתונאים , ת הידע המופיע בהאת מהימנו
ממצאים חשובים שעלו מראיונות אלה הינם השימוש השגרתי בויקיפדיה בעברית . ישראלים
ותהליך החיברות אותו עוברים , )תוך העדפה של הגרסה האנגלית(ובאנגלית כאחד בידי עיתונאים
ממצאים אלו מעידים על כך . אותם כיצד להשתמש בה כהלכה עיתונאים חדשים הנועד להדריך
שימוש זה . אכן הפכה למקור ידע מרכזי בחברת המידע העכשווית, לפחות בהקשר זה, שויקיפדיה
ובפרט אילוצי הזמן , מותנה ומעוצב על ידי הסביבה והפרקטיקות המקובלות בעולם העיתונאי
ם נראה כי הוא חלק בלתי נפרד משגרת העבודה אול, הפרקטיים בהם נתונים השחקנים במסגרתו
ועיתונאים נדרשים , ישנו טאבו חמור האוסר על אזכורה כמקור, יחד עם זאת. העיתונאית כיום
.למחוק כל עדות לשימוש שלהם בויקיפדיה מהטקסט אותו הם מייצרים
שבו על מנת לבחון כיצד עיתונאים מתמודדים עם מתח זה בפועל בניתי מודל של האופן
היוועצות בערך ← חיפוש גוגל ← בעיה :הכולל חמישה שלבים, עיתונאים משתמשים בויקיפדיה
ח
העיתונאית עוקבת אחר , בתהליך זה. ניסוח מחדש ← חיפוש אחר מקורות נוספים ← ויקיפדיה
ומהאילוצים אותם מפעילה עליה (שרשרת הפניות המובילה מהצורך הפרקטי המיידי שלה
או לא , עד אשר המשך המעקב הופך לבלתי אפשרי, ל מקור מידע משוערלכיוונו ש) סביבתה
. פרקטי או שהיא בטוחה מספיק בכך ששרשרת ההפניות מוצקה דיה וראויה לאמון גם בהמשך
ויקיפדיה מתפקדת כקיצור דרך מועיל אל ידע אשר מיוצר ומתוקף במקום , במסגרת התהליך
ת הולכת וגבוהה לנקודת הסיום המעשית של ויקיפדיה נוטה להפוך בסבירו, עם זאת. אחר
, מכיוון שמשתמשיה נוטים להסתמך יותר ויותר על תוקפו של המידע הנמצא בה, שרשרת החיפוש
השימוש של עיתונאים , לפיכך. ולשפוט אותו רק באמצעות עדויות מתקפות הנמצאות בערך עצמו
רתיות שמטרתן לבסס את תוקפו בויקיפדיה נוטה יותר ויותר לערב פרקטיקות שיפוטיות וביקו
. ולסייע להם להחליט האם להשתמש בו בפועל או לחפש מקור אחר, של המידע הנמצא בה
מהראיונות עולה כי העיתונאים משתמשים באלמנטים בויקיפדיה המעודדים צריכה סלקטיבית
ת אזהרה הפניות למקורות שבאמצעותם נכתב הערך ותבניו, כגון דפי שיחה, וביקורתית מסוג זה
.המתריעות בפני המשתמשים על בעיות בו
פרק הסיכום מוקדש לדיון בשאלות שעומדות בבסיס עבודה זו לאור הניתוח שהוצע
וכיצד היא מתקבלת על ידי , כיצד התמסדה התרבות האפיסטמית של ויקיפדיה: בפרקי המחקר
.וט והערכה של ידעקטגוריה ייחודית של משתמשים שעיסוקם המקצועי כרוך בשיפ, עיתונאים
בניגוד לנטיה הרווחת לראות את מאפייניה של ויקיפדיה כנגזרים ישירות ובאופן בלתי
כגון הפתיחות של טכנולוגיית (בעייתי מתופעות טכנולוגיות או תרבותיות רחבות הקשורות בה
מהמחקר , ")הערצת החובבן"השיתופיות של תנועת הקוד הפתוח או השטחיות של , האינטרנט
תוך תגובה לבעיות , עולה כי אלו נוצרו באופן יצירתי והדרגתי על ידי מייסדיה ומשתתפיה
בתקופה בה מתמקד המחקר נוצרו דפוסים כלליים של מיסוד . ולכישלונות עבר קונקרטיות
יצירת פתרונות מקומיים לבעיות שבבסיס )1: והכרעת סכסוכים שעיצבו במידה רבה את אופייה
תרגום של פתרונות אלו לדפוסי פעולה ) 2; תתפים בעלי השפעה ויוקרההמחלוקות בידי מש
לעתים תוך צירוף של פתרונות שונים לבעיות שונות ממספר הקשרים , שגרתיים ומסגור שלהם
דפוסי הפעולה השגרתיים תרגום) 3; שונים והיטשטשות של מקורותיהם הפרוביזוריים
באובייקטים ומודלים ) Thévenot, 1984( השקעה צורניתלפרקטיקות לגיטימיות באמצעות
שזירתן של ) 4; )'תרבות ויקי וכו, כגון הצורה האנציקלופדית המסורתית(תרבותיים מוכרים
תוך , או טכנולוגיים/הפרויקט באמצעות מנגנונים חברתיים ו מרקם פרקטיקות אלו אל תוך
.התגברות על אפשרויות פעולה אחרות
ט
נקודות מעבר מחייבותנוצרו כך הפכו לאחר מכן לבעוד חלק מקווי המדיניות ש
)Obligatory Passage Points, Callon, 1986 (המתנות את הפעילות של כל המשתתפים
. נראה שחלקם שומרים על אופיים כאמצעי קואורדינציה וולונטריים או גמישים יותר, בפרויקט
המתאמות , )Privileged Passage Points( נקודות מעבר מועדפות קווי מדיניות אלו כיניתי בשם
את הפעילות החברתית ברוב המקרים אך משאירות מרווח וחופש פעולה להבדלים בין מקרה
אלו הינן פחות יציבות ודומיננטיות נקודות מעבר מועדפות .למקרה וניתנות לשינוי בעצמן
ית יותר גמישות אך הן בו זמנ, ויש להן שליטה חלשה יותר בסביבתן, מנקודות מעבר הכרחיות
, מכיוון שויקיפדיה נסמכת על תרומה וולונטרית של ידע בידי עורכים אנונימיים. וסתגלניות
גם אם במחיר של הגבלת , גמישות כזו מאפשרת לה לשמר את הזרימה של מתנות הידע שלהם
Boundary( גמישות זו גם תורמת ליכולתה של ויקיפדיה לתפקד כאובייקט גבול. הפיקוח עליהן
objects ,ראו Star and Griesemer, 1989 :( אובייקט המאפשר לתורמים בעלי תפיסות שונות של
.לשתף פעולה, ולעתים עוינים, ידע ושל אמת המגיעים מעולמות חברתיים שונים מאוד
הגמישות והשליטה , כפי שמדגים אופן השימוש של עיתונאים בויקיפדיה, יחד עם זאת
ניות לתרבות האפיסטמית של ויקיפדיה יוצרות חוסר ודאות לגבי בתכנים האופיי המוגבלת
מהראיונות עולה כי המתח בין חוסר הודאות ביחס לידע המופיע . מעמדו של הידע המופיע בה
סוג , בויקיפדיה לבין השימושיות של תכניה מתבטא ביחס אותו כיניתי לגיטימציה פרקטית
ולא בהצדקות , שוקע בפרקטיקות של המשתמשיםהקשר המ- ייחודי וחלקי של לגיטימציה תלוית
המותנית בקשירתו למקורות ידע , לגיטימציה מסוג זה מעניקה לידע סמכות מוגבלת. עקרוניות
סוג זה של לגיטימציה . ובכך מבטאת את מגבלות האמון בו, נוספים על ידי רצף מובנה של פעולות
את הלגיטימיות שלה בפועל , ת סכנותיהזמנית את שימושיותה של ויקיפדיה וא-מביא בחשבון בו
למרות שסוג מוגבל זה של לגיטימציה מספיק על מנת . ואת היעדר הלגיטימיות העקרונית שלה
הוא מונע ממנה את ההכרה , להפוך את ויקיפדיה לחלק בלתי נפרד מארגז הכלים של עיתונאים
.מהשימוש הנרחב בה הציבורית המתבקשת
מגבלה . אני מצביע על מספר מגבלות וכיווני מחקר עתידיים, על בסיס הממצאים שתוארו
מרכזית של המחקר נובעת מהתמקדותו בתקופת זמן מוגבלת למדי שבה התמסדו מאפיינים
נקודות המעבר גמישותן שלכיצד ועד כמה מחקר המשך יאפשר לבחון . מרכזיים שלה
לבחון האם ניתן וץ גם כדימחקר נוסף נח, בהקשר זה. אובדת עם הזמןבויקיפדיה המועדפות
או בייצור של מוצרי , לאתר תופעות דומות לאלו שתוארו בעבודה זו גם בפרויקטים מדעיים
י
ולמפות את התנאים בהם הן יטו להופיע כאמצעי תיאום , תרבות שאינם קשורים ישירות לידע
שתמשים מגבלה מרכזית נוספת נוגעת לאוכלוסייה המתוחמת מאוד של מ. או להיעלם, חברתי
של ויקיפדיה יש צורך הלגיטימציה הפרקטיתעל מנת לאשש את הרעיון בדבר . אותם חקרתי
רצוי לבחון האם , בנוסף. להשוות בין משתמשים ברמות מומחיות ובתחומי עיסוק נוספים
ובכך מרמזת על תופעה , לגיטימציה פרקטית מאפיינת פרויקטים דיגיטאליים מבוזרים נוספים
וכן האם תופעות דומות קיימות בפרויקטים חדשניים אשר הסביבה , יותרעכשווית רחבה
.והטכנולוגיה שלהם שונות מאוד מאלו של ויקיפדיה
וכן באופן שבו , אני דן בהשלכות האפשריות של עבודה זו על חקר הנתינה, לבסוף
שר בהק. במודרניות התרבות האפיסטמית של ויקיפדיה מתייחסת לקישור בין ידע ומומחיות
נראה כי ויקיפדיה ממשיכה את המסורת המערבית בכלל והמודרנית בפרט הקושרת בין , הראשון
היא מסתמכת על רפרטואר של , יחד עם זאת. או חיפוש האמת ובין נתינה ללא כוונת רווח/ידע ו
- נתינה הכולל סוגי נתינה שונים המתקיימים במקביל ומנגנונים חדשניים התומכים בקיומם הבו
נראה כי למרות שויקיפדיה יוצרת תרבות אפיסטמית חדשה וקוראת תגר על , בהקשר השני .זמני
היא משלבת אלמנטים של תפיסה זו יותר מאשר היא , מרכיבים חשובים בתפיסת הידע המודרנית
בכך היא מצביעה על הצורך בהמשגות מורכבות ורבות רבדים יותר של השינויים . דוחה אותם
,Latour(המשגות מסוג זה אינן דורשות את הביטול של מושג המודרניות . ביחס לידע בתקופתנו
אני מציע לוותר על , במקום זאת). Lyotard, 1984(או את הבנתו כמיושן ולא רלוונטי ) 1993
הניסיונות להמשיג את המודרניות באופן כוללני וחד משמעי ולהתייחס אליה כאל רפרטואר
–או נדחים במפורש –היבטים שונים שלו באים לידי ביטוי תרבותי מורכב ורווי מתחים אשר
.באופן מקומי ותלוי הקשר
תוכן העניינים
i תקציר 1 ...................................................................................................... מבוא: 1פרק
4 ........................................................................ עלייתה של ויקיפדיה 1.1 10 ....................................................................... סקירת הספרות 1.2 29 ......................................................................... המסגרת התיאורטית 1.3 49 ............................................................................. מטרות המחקר 1.4 53 ............................................................................................ מתודולוגיה: 2פרק
57 ..................................................... ארכיונים אינטרנטיים: בסיס נתונים ראשון 2.1 61 ..................................................................... ראיונות: בסיס נתונים שני2.2 66 ................................................................................................. ניופדיה : 3פרק
67 .......................................................................... רקע היסטורי 3.1 71 ....................................................................... המודל האנציקלופדי 3.2 77 ........................................................................ אופן הייצור 3.3 85 ................................. רושינויים בשיטות הייצ: מחלוקת 3.4 90 ......................................................................................... סיכום 3.5 95 .................................................................. התקופה המכוננת של ויקיפדיה: 4פרק 104 ............................................................................... לאנציקלופדיהמויקי : 5פרק
109 ....................................................... יצירת כללי בסיס: 1שלב 5.1 116 ..................... הטיהור של דפי ערכים: 2שלב 5.2 124 ...................................................... נקודת המבט הנייטראלית: 3שלב 5.3 142 ....................................................................................... סיכום 5.4 146 ........................................................................ מאנציקלופדיה לויקיפדיה : 6פרק
149 .................................................................. ויקי אינו נייר: 1שלב 6.1 152 ................................................. ויקיפדיה אינה מילון: 2שלב 6.2 176 .......................................................... מה ויקיפדיה איננה: 3שלב 6.3 191 ....................................................................................... סיכום 6.4 197 .......................................................... ויקיפדיה בשדה העיתונות הישראלי: 7פרק
200 ........................................... סביבת העבודה העיתונאיתויקיפדיה ב 7.1 204 ......................................................... ויקיפדיה בפרקטיקה העיתונאית 7.2 220 ............................................... השימוש בעיתונאים ישראלים כמרואיינים 7.3 221 ........................................................................................ סיכום 7.4 225 ........................................................................................... סיכום ודיון: 8פרק
231 ...................................................................... השלכות תיאורטיות 8.1 239 ....................................................................... מתנת הידע 8.2 244 .................................... ויקיפדיה והתרבות האפיסטמית העכשווית 8.3
248 ....................................................................................................ביבליוגרפיה 272 ................................................................................... מקורות ראשוניים: נספח
א ................................................................................................... בעברית תקציר
אילנה סילבר' עבודה זו נעשתה בהדרכתה של פרופ .אילן- וניברסיטת ברא, המחלקה לסוציולוגיה ואנתרופולוגיהמ
? תרבות אפיסטמית חדשה ויקפדיה כאתר של ייצור ידע במודרניות המאוחרת
"דוקטור לפילוסופיה"חיבור לשם קבלת התואר :מאת
ליאור גלרנטר המחלקה לסוציולוגיה ואנתרופולוגיה
אילן-הוגש לסנט של אוניברסיטת בר
ג"עתש אייר רמת גן
Related Documents
