Week 8: Wikipedia

In the spirit of my article "Teaching Wikipedia without Apologies," I devote an entire week of this seminar (and a blog assignment) to Wikipedia.

General:

• Let’s develop a list of things that people who use Wikipediashould understand about it.

Roy Rosenzweig, “Can History Be Open Source? Wikipedia and the Future of the Past,” Journal of American History 93, no. 1 (2006): 141-46.

• What factors limit historians’ willingness to contribute to Wikipedia?
• Ten years down the road, which of Rosenzweig’s observations about Wikipedia are still useful and valid?
• What does this line suggest about Wikipedia’s orientation?: “whom Wales knew from their joint participation in online mailing lists and Usenet discussion groups devoted to Ayn Rand and objectivism”
• What do you think of the Wikipedia’s review process? Compared to traditional academic peer review, what advantages and disadvantages does it offer?
• Is it true that encyclopedias do not break new ground intellectually?
• What does NPOV mean? What are its implications for writing content for Wikipedia?
• Who contributes to Wikipedia?
• What is the right word for people who do stuff on Wikipedia? Writers, editors, contributors, Wikipedians?
• What makes for good historical writing? Do you agree that writing is better in professional historical sources than on Wikipedia? Why?
• What precautions should you take before assuming the credibility of any given entry in Wikipedia?
• Should we encourage or discourage students from using Wikipedia?
• What do you think of Rosenzweig’s criticism about good academic sources being locked behind paywalls?
• Do you agree that Wikipedia’s Discussion pages amount to historiographic debate?
• Do you agree that historians should contribute to Wikipedia? Would you contribute on a regular basis? How would you feel about having your “contributions” changed?

"Wikipedia: School and University Projects"

• Given the very small scale of the assignment for this class, do you think I should have observed Wikipedia’s rules for class projects more closely?

Shawn Graham, “The Wikiblitz: A Wikipedia Editing Assignmentin a First-Year Undergraduate Class,” Writing History in the Digital Age

• “Digital media make all history public history (whether we like it or not),[4] and we need to get our research into that positive feedback loop.”
• ‘Understanding how the code forces a particular worldview on the user is a key portion of becoming a “digital historian.”’ How much about coding do you think you need to know? How does coding affect our experience of reading a text or site?
• How does the necessity of “monitoring” changes you make to Wikipedia affect your inclination to be a contributor?
• “Wikipedia is not just the content of a given page but also the network structure of links that connect pages together.”
• What is the role of “bots” in running Wikipedia?
• Why do you think the history majors resisted participating in this class exercise by staying out sick?

Timothy Messer-Kruse, “The ‘Undue Weight’ of Truth onWikipedia,” The Chronicle of Higher Education online, February 12, 2012, 

• Why doesn’t expertise matter on Wikipedia?
• Why does a “majority” determine what gets included on Wikipedia?
• What does the existence (and persistence) of “Wiki-gatekeepers” suggest about the general claim that “just anyone” can edit Wikipedia?
• “"Wikipedia is not 'truth,' Wikipedia is 'verifiability' of reliable sources. Hence, if most secondary sources which are taken as reliable happen to repeat a flawed account or description of something, Wikipedia will echo that."”
• Looking at the entry on "the Haymarket affair" now, it looks to me like Messer-Kruse’s changes got through.

Martha Saxton, “Wikipedia and Women’s History: A ClassroomExperience,” Writing History in the Digital Age

• Why aren’t primary source citations “verifiable”?
• What kind of resistance to incorporating women’s history into Wikipedia did Martha Saxton’s students encounter?

Amanda Seligman, “Teaching Wikipedia without Apologies,” Writing History in the Digital Age

• What attitudes about encyclopedias in general, and Wikipedia in particular, have you encountered in your classes?
• Do you use reference works in your own research?
• Could you detect arguments in the Wikipedia entries that you looked at for this week’s discussion?
• How did you learn about the existence of argument in secondary historical sources? At this point in your education, do you feel comfortable identifying them?
• [Back up and discuss the process of developing the Writing History in the Digital Age project.]

Siobhan Senier, “Indigenizing Wikipedia: StudentAccountability to Native American Authors on the World’s Largest Encyclopedia,” Web Writing: Why & How for Liberal Arts Teaching & Learning 

• What counts as “notable” according to Wikipedia standards?
• [Discuss the differences between the Writing History in the Digital Age and the Web Writing process and formats]
• Does Wikipedia merit the sustained and organized efforts to improve it, such as those organized by feminist scholars?
• ‘But “reliability,” of course, is slippery: even in the academic realm, telling our students that university presses are “better” than “the Internet” isn’t teaching them critical thinking.’
• Should professors grade students’ Wikipedia contributions? How?

Robert S. Wolff, “The Historian’s Craft, Popular Memory, andWikipedia,”Writing History in the Digital Age 

• What does Wolff show us about Wikipedia as a site of popular memory?
• What is Wolff’s research method?
• “More than just an encyclopedia, Wikipedia serves as a people’s museum of knowledge, a living repository of all that matters, where the exhibits are written by ordinary folk, with nary an academic historian in sight.”