The German WikiWars and the Limits of Objectivism Presentation by Florian Cramer for the Critical Point of View (CPoV) conferece in Amsterdam, 27.03.2010 Cramer started his presentation by pointing out to some fictions about collaborative media. He believes it is mostly a utopia, what leads to a big history of disappointments. On the positive side, Wikipedia, with all its problems, is nevertheless the only large-scale working community of collaborative authorship. The implications of that are not all positive though: If one considers the hypertext/hyperfiction utopia by Nelson, Bolter and Landow in the 1990s, their ideas, especially when applied to literature, have gone almost nowhere. The notion of collective intelligence by Pierre Levy has also failed in most cases, if one considers the huge amount of single authors and single articles. Wikipedia, in this case, is what comes closer to his ideal of collaborative writing. The p2p, another utopia, ended up being used for consumption instead of being a media for cultural production. Finally, the creative commons idea, whose works are rarely re-used. He thinks that these hopes for collaborative media are 'a bit old European', and the one that persists the most is the hope for a CPoV instead of a NPoV. This means, that Wikipedia is founded precisely on the opposite of CPoV. This is a question of what inspired the creation of Wikipedia. He continues his critique by showing the Wikipedia page on Jimmy Wales ('largely edited by himself') and emphasizing his influences, which involve Ayn Rand's Objectivism - which is 'hard core neo-liberalism' and 'capitalist philosophy'. This philosophical stream believes that there is an objective reality and that therefore it is possible to have a NPoV of things. He believes that Wikipedia is the only successful appropriation of the notion of Open Source for works other than software. Free marked and the free flow of ideas were also incorporated (see 1998s the Cathedral and the Bazar). In other words, the NPoV is the translation of Ayn Rand's school of thought and other libertarian influences into the project. Wikipedia, as well as other FLOSS movements, are built on consensus. The main problem is that this consensus is built on fictions. In Wikipedia there are implicit social contracts based on objectiveness, what holds the community of editors in Wikipedia together. However, this fiction/myth of having an objective reality does not scale. Once the project grows and controversies arise, it leads to subsequent disappointments. A further design problem in Wikipedia is that it tries to create its neutrality/consensus/objectivity by the way the article page is designed. It looks like one unitary source of information that does not reflect the actual editing history. Cramer finalizes his presentation by introducing Annemieke van der Hoek, who developed a tool called Epicpedia. EpicPedia (based on the epic theater by Bertold Brecht) is a tool that translates Wikipedia pages into a theatrical kind of way. For more information check:

• Short Bio
• Abstract
• Piet Zwart Institute

Negotiating the Neutral Point of View: Politics and the Moral Economy of Wikipedia Presentation by Andrew Famiglietti for the Critical Point of View (CPoV) conferece in Amsterdam, 27.03.2010 Andrew Famiglietti's presentation was about the concept of moral economy applied to the Wikipedia. He does so by analyzing the article called 'Gaza War' in the period of 2008/2009. He starts by referring to the work of E.P. Thompson and how crowd intervention influenced the way grain prices were regulated in the 18th century. He applies this idea into how Wikipedia regulates its resources around its community. First, how was the crowd regulating resources in times of scarcity? In case of Wikipedia: how do they manage the scarce resource of volunteer labor within the site? This is a matter that Wikipedians have to work out themselves. He believes that they do that in terms of what Thompson called 'Moral Economy'. In the 18th century there were outrages concerning the procedure of regular market forces that was considered illegitimate by the starving population; in the 21st century's Wikipedia there were outrages by the editors, who considered some of the actions by the site owners were illegitimate based on moral values. He presents then a case study of how values that organize the moral economy have particular political effects in the particular case of the Gaza War article. He shows how the particular design of the page influences how debate emerges. Famiglietti starts by pointing out to the title, which is handled as being an important element on debates. Secondly, he points out to the info-box on the right side of the article, which has a central role in structuring information around the article and therefore was an important part of the debate. He continues by calling our attention to the 66 archive pages of the discussion, which are equivalent to about 600 printed pages. The page provides bookmarks to particular important debates, which is necessary due to its sheer volume. There is also a timeline that can be used to see how the debate evolved. He focuses his studies on the heavy editing period while hostilities during the event are going on and the period immediately after that. The volume of information on the discussion page, along with the difficulties of navigating it, makes it difficult for editors to actually keep up with the conversation and understand what is going on. Bots here have also a role, as they archive pages by moving them form the main page. Some editors become increasingly frustrated and others believe that this is done on purpose in order to sabotage them. As the pages become longer and longer, chunks of information are split out into sub-articles. The discussion than shifted into whether this was a POV (point of view) fork. Forking points of view were suggested by some editors (maybe naively, not knowing about Wikipedia's policies) as a kind of a potentially positive direction to Wikipedia to move. This notion of splitting different POVs has been explored by Wikipedia, however it would set up different articles on the same topic, avoiding neutrality. The idea was largely rejected and Famiglietti believes that it has to do with the management of labor as a resource. Forking duplicates effort and splits the labor force. He believes that the containment of forkings is intended to retain scarce labor resources. (I ask myself though; discussing is so much more work, so splitting would be a better option, if it was the case.) Dangers of nationalism to Wikipedia: Administrators have fundamentally played a role in policing the boundaries of the editors' community. The issue was therefore under a particular administrator's scrutiny. The editors were aware of that scrutiny and the fact that they were under surveillance. Neutrality was constantly renegotiated. In several occasions the title of the article was changed depending on who was available to talk to at the moment. This also points out to the fact that it is not possible to represent all POVs in the title, which is another design problem of the platform. Moreover, the process of neutrality involves the three guiding principles: Neutral Point of View , WP:V and WP:OR. Several times it has been enforced that they were after verifiability and not truth. This moves debate from difficult questions about the truth to a debate about reliable sources. This is useful in keeping the editing process moving. However it may privilege certain historical forms of inequality, as there is a large reliance on western, but not in Arabian sources. Famiglietti finishes by emphasizing this was a presentation with the goal to show how the community works and what seems to be valuable for them. Also, he tried to show the community's attempts to organize their scarce labor force. By understanding that, he hopes one can better intervene in this debate more effectively. I do not particularly agree with him, that NPoV has anything to do with managing the 'scarce' volunteer labor force. His presentation was nevertheless very interesting and brought up many important points about the design that were new to me. For more information about him:

• Short Bio
• Abstract
• Blog

Teemu Mikkonen challenges the Neutral Point of View policy haunting Wikipedia when it comes to controversial cases such as the Kosovo War article. In these cases, he argues, it is not possible to achieve complete neutrality. As a Masters student at the Univeristy of Tampere, Mikkonen has studied the Talk page of the Wikipedia article on the Kosovo War. Mikkonen fills his thirty minutes of fame by paying attention to the disputed neutrality of the Kosovo War article on Wikipedia. He attempts to trace the conflict and consensus on this Wikipedia Talk-page. By outlining four paradoxes, he lets us in on the juicy bits of his research. By finding out essentially 'how people talk' about the Kosovo War in the context of wikipedia, he unravels the Foucualdian power structures underlying the famous online encyclopedia. Starting with the title, Mikkonen notes the underlying and inavoidable 'biasses' included in the article. For example by naming it the 'Kosovo war', instead as an non-serbian alternative. On the Talk page, there is a lot of discussion going on about what actually happened during the conflict(s). As we see, more often than not are facts, numbers and words disputed on the talk page. Ever since November 2009, the top of the wiki is decorated by a warning message stating that "the neutrality of this article is disputed. Please see the discussion on the talk page. Please do not remove this message until the dispute is resolved." When looking critically at this Talk page, different discourses are noticeable revealing among others Serbian, Albanian, both pro- and anti-NATO points of view. As one may imagine, because of the many parties involved in any conflict, and in this Yugoslavian conflict in particular, it is factually impossible to achieve a genuine neutral point of view when recollecting the facts. Mikkonen reminds us that the less damaged 'winning' side of a conflict would always have a justification-driven view on matters, not to mention a better infrastructure and more survivors left to recollect. Subsequently the most inflicted party can be fueled by trauma and revenge influencing their memory of accounts. When analyzing the Talk page, Mikkonen abstacts the three most common positions. The edits are either to be grouped as 'extremist', where the contributors see only one real and one-sided truth -mostly that of their own. These individuals place unsigned edits more often than not. Moreover, they are characterized by extreme political (hard-right nationalist) viewspoints. An other common position is that of the gatekeepers. The admins and active wikipedians. They believe that there should be a consensus of truth which should be based on equal, neutral knowledge. Mikkonen lets us know this is a highly problematic virtue. As a third group, the situationists are identified. According to Mikkonen they believe that there is no real unbiased truth at all. Even the gatekeepers' democratic consensus is always biased. In fact, wikipedia is unneutral after all. These three positions brings us to four paradoxes that arise from the Talk page. At this point it is more than clear that Mikkonen is of the opinion that absolute neutrality isn't possible. Mikkonen essentially explains how it would be better to get the wikipedia policies working towards a non-neutral point of view. On a closing note I will include some interesting posts from the Talk page on the Kosovo War to illustrate Mikkonen's point. One edit gives a rare supposedly first-hand witness account of a downed helicopter during the conflict.

Before you get at each other's throats... I was a border scout in the Yugoslav Army at that time. I was there when the helicopter was shot down by a 12.7mm anti aircraft cannon. It presented an easy lateral target, as we were camouflaged. The gunner emptied the thirty round magazine at his target and it exploded. We were not in Albanian territory, although the helicopter was. The cannon was outdated and a permanent fixture at the border base and its use was intended for infantry. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Leeppa 21:19, 23 April 2007.

This raises the question concerning one of the beforementioned paradoxes: The paradox of verifiability. What makes a source reliable and true? Mikkonen puts it as follows: "There is a huge problem how to verify the context of these unique experiences." It is all meaningful information, but is is supposed to be true? verifiable? reliable? What makes this paradox (one of four, on which I dare not touch) is that it also makes us think about the reliability of other written, more static sources and enceclopedia's. Now we all agree that there is no such thing as a genuine Neutral point of view on controversial matters, at least the dialogue is made visible on Wikipedia. The fact is that traditional top-down sources be it news institutions and other encyclopedia's don't have a transparent view on the debate surrounding these issues. In that sense, Wikipedia offers something that does come darn close to a 'neutral' point of view' because she shows exactly the ins and outs of the controversy. Though this conference has given a critical point of view on the Wikipedia institution and thereby revealed the faults and shortcomings of Wikipedia. Mikkonens critique has actually shown an invaluable aspect of this product of collective intelligence in it's transparency. As other speakers in Designing Debate Andrew Famiglietti (UK), Andrew Famiglietti (UK), and Lawrence Liang (IN) have also shown; indeed it is problematic to seek a neutral point of view. Knowing many other visitors of this conference will agree with me, I would say that seeking a neutral point of view is downright pointless. There are simply too many truths to fit into one wiki. For more information about him:

• Short Bio
• Abstract

Unlike the other speakers, such as Reichert (Foucault-inspired), Shapiro said that he is less critical: "The critique is all right, however, it should be a component of a larger view, and the larger view should be pragmatic and constructive". According to Shapiro, Hofmann’s ideology critique is insufficient. Blindness and ignorance are a weak thesis within ideology critique. Shapiro is inspired by the work of Gustave Flaubert: "He shows that knowledge is based in society and as such Wikipedia not only represents knowledge, but also stupidity. And what most people believe in society is based on accepted clichés". We must separate the real knowledge from the clichés and the stupidities. Shapiro says that Wikipedia is about the democratization of knowledge and the promise of popular education (a Gramsci-inspired view). We need balance between the consensus culture such as Wikipedia and respect for the work of the scholar who has dedicated a lot of research on particular issues. A model for balancing these two contributory streams needs to be developed. So, is Wikipedia cool? Shapiro thinks that baseball fans think that Wikipedia is cool. A lot of these articles on baseball are really good because they are based on information in a non-controversial area instead of a mixture of clichés and real knowledge in controversial areas, as in many articles. During his talk, Alan showed some examples in the Baudrillard article at Wikipedia. In this example one of the clichés is that Baudrillard would Be a philosopher; but Baudrillard never considered himself to be a philosopher so you can't describe him that way according to Shapiro. Another example is that Baudrillard also has been described as a sociologist, but he disliked sociology, was skeptical towards the concepts of politics, and did not consider himself to be a sociologist. The Wikipedia article mentions Baudrillard's collaboration with CTHEORY (which really happened, and they published translations of many of his essays), but fails to mention his crucial and essential collaborations with the French journals Utopie and Traverses. During his long enumeration, Shapiro received a question from the audience if ever pushed the submit button. He did , and he is now going to undertake the project of trying to submit step-by-step revisions of the Wikipedia articles on Baudrillard, Star Trek, and Flaubert's novel Bouvard and Pecuchet. Alan Shapiro would also want to address the question of how the structure of the database as technological artifact will be upgraded by the New Computer Science; but unfortunately he was running out of time. What he did say was that Wikipedia is a conventional database whereas what we need is a new logic engine, which applies Derrida's deconstruction in computer science, we need to deal with post-structures instead of structures in the database of Wikipedia. For more information about him:

• Interview with Alan N. Shapiro
• Short Bio
• Abstract

I would like to talk about my research which, I believe, could help us approach some of the questions related to Wikipedia. For this research, I was interested to know, how knowledge is translated/traveled; from people to things. I focused on community healers in rural India and observed the process by which their knowledge recorded, collected and disseminated through larger geographical areas. During its many transformations, the wisdom of the local healer goes through numerous phases and inevitably loses some of its essential characteristics. This observation has lead me to the question;

Can we define databases that makes these different ways of knowing things visible?

I believe this question relates to the equal treatment of different knowledges in technology design, ultimately aiming for a technology that contributes to knowledge diversity. So, with this talk, I am hoping to bring the issue of database design to the forefront concerning Wikipedia.
To illustrate her point on different database desing approaches to varying knowledges, Maja van der Velden then presents the following examples;

• Mukurtu archive (features collective tagging but also implementation of exclusionary login procedures)


• Tami (ontologically flat database - Minimizes Western assumptions on data collection by only categorizing by media type. No tagging, only a list of items listed by picture/sound/video etc. Each object can be connected to each other)


• Storyweaver (focus, again, is creating connectivities. Storytelling is a form of performative mapping. 3 protocols underlying; -Autonomous local knowledge mapping -Local ontology mapping -Merging mapping through making connections; Connections are made through context to context, not object to object in another context)

These databases have the underlying idea that Knowledge can be understood as performance. Implying that the design of a database is not preconfigured, but they emerge through usage over time.

Seen under this light of these examples, Jimmy Wales’s quote regarding the ultimate goal of Wikipedia (Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge.) emerge as a warning. Given this understanding, Wikipedia’s understanding of knowledge becomes hegemonic. Such a definition of knowledge is very singular, other ‘knowledges’ are ignored. Aboriginal knowledge links back to traditional knowledge in English language Wikipedia, which is not recognized as proper knowledge. In this sense, Wikipedia becomes a master narrative about knowledge.

I would propose the creation of a third space, a contact zone where different knowledges not clash, but interact and co-exist. As Donna Haraway calls them; “world-making entanglements”, which is the meaning I want to carry over to Wikipedia. If Wikipedia aims to provide sum of all knowledge to everyone, how can it provide dissenting knowledge claims?

I argue that Wikipedia’s decentralized production system can be taken further as a model for its ontological stance as well, rendering a database that is more respectful to differing knowledge claims.

More information about her:

• Short Bio
  
• Abstract

Triple the number of African elephants, so when they do get extinct we still have ourselves a wikiality. A jolly suggestion coming from Stephen Colbert which got embraced by Wikipedia critics. It was basically what happened on the encyclopedia: vandalization to make a point. But what really happened was the elephant page being protected. It was solely editable by administrators for about two weeks before being given to the public again. Who is in control of Wikipedia? Jimmy wales? Wikilawyers? It's a question based on fear. The idea of a leviathan (he shows this image), a totalitarian ruler, applying body politics. One of severe oppression. But this is not the most interesting, Stuart Geiger argues. He is a researcher at Georgetown University in the Communication, Culture, and Technology program. People are important, he says, but not soly. Because, in addition, technology is important. The technocal structure makes the social possible. With this in mind, the question becomes: what is in control of Wikipedia? Order in Wikipedia is increasingly produced through technical means. There are bots, deployed to ban users, enforce policy and to inform admins on debates. Tools, such as specialised scrits that automate various social actions, like nominating an article for deletion. Code, in the form of wiki-software, with for instance 'flagged revisions'. And analytics, which are being used as arguments in themselves, making judgements of the future. Geiger gives a quick definition of bots: actors who perform repetitive and mundane tasks. But, they are most definitely important. Bots are becoming more and more sophisticated. Checking language use and censorship, moving into the sphere of admins. It has become a quite complex phenomenon, plus, the amount of bots is still growing. Therefore, more research is needed (considering the different languages). His main example, or case study if you will, is HagermanBot. A bot which added the {{unsigned}} template to edits which where not signed. It was ment to let people know that they forgot to sign their comment, which wasn't a contorversial guideline. However, what the bot did was fixing the comments in real time, leading to the point that signatures became one of the most enforced policies. The thing to remember is that bots are not allowed to act by default; they have to be approved. The case of the HagermanBot is interesting, because it seems to be a non-controversial bot, but it nevertheless can show us some of the mechanics of power and policy. Because there is a bot policy, a bot approval group. In order to install a bot, people need to submit a proposal, whereafter it gets approved or declined. HagermanBot got accepted fast. Because new software reveals incosisitencies, a big discussion on Wikipedia commenced. People didn't want to sign their comments. A loose social norm was turned into a very strong law, they said. Geiger shows some of this debate on slides. In the end, the introduction of the HagermanBot triggered a debate of the role of bots in general. The solution to solve these complaints came in the form of an opt-out list. But these solutions to controversies are 'black boxed', Geiger argues. The opt-out mechanism became a standard reply to every objection. It showed the technical structure. So, does society dominate technology? Or does technology dominate society? Determinist narratives are easy, he says. But dialectis of socio-technical systems are hard. Kinds of things people talk about change as technology changes. Beyong "code is law", Geiger notes that social structures and techological system are co-productive. Compromises are forced to happen. The opt-out list as a compromise, for example, turns out to be a standard. What we need to be thinking about then, is how technology and society affect each other. During the Q&A and via Twitter Stuart Geiger notes that he wanted to incorporate Kelty's theory in his speech, proposing it as a more contemporal frame.

With a love for technoculture, a research past in Californian cyberculture, and a present in French critical intelectual new media thought, O' Neil presented a compelling talk on wikipedia user culture or rather "tribal culture".  O' Neil presented his stream of conciousness in tags (projected on a large screen) as he developed his arppoch to on-line triibes. Interested in the hacker habitus and how its production,  his talk opened with a brief discussion of the shortcomings of critical sociology. Despite O' Neil's  pessimism with regard to the conspiratorial and dis-empowering aspects of critical sociology, he went on to focus on the work of Boltanski and the field of justification, which Boltanski understands as "open". Before linking Boltanski with Wikipedia O' Neil was careful to frame his understanding of Wikipedia within the context of new media political economy mentioning that 13% of Wikipedia editors are female, and that this means that certain types of behaviors are more tolerable, that for example aggressive commentary and flaming are accepted as standard practice. Machismo, in other words, frames the wiki habitus. O' Neil proceeded to literally map the different orders of online justification, and how these can possibly come into existence in different tribal formulations in different network cultures. Central to understanding the map was the term "on-line tribal burocracy of social organisations" coined in his book Cyberchiefs Autonomy and Authority in Online Tribes. O' Neil understands charisma, hacking, sovergnity, and the archaic, as central to conceptualizing how on-line user tribes work. Situating Wikipedia in a map showing a sovergnity and charisma in each end of the vertical and horizontal axis,  O' Neil concluded that charisma and soveirgnity are in particular very important in understanding how Wikipedia as tribe works, and that charisma is actually more important. O Neil also discuss ethical issues arising when conducting research with wikipedia editors.

Social Media, Cultural Scaffolds, and Molecular Hegemonies. Musings on Anarchic Media, WIKIs, and De-territorialized Art Presentation by Patrick Lichty for the Critical Point of View (CPoV) conferece in Amsterdam, 26.03.2010 Patrick Lichty, assistant professor of Media Theory at the Columbia College in Chicago and independent curator, walks in with a Lila toy gun, the American way of defence, on the podium and states: "This presentation might get me killed". This sentence will be better understood after his ironical comment, that there seems to be not much consensus in consensual media. He analyses Wikipedia and other community-driven online media as cultural frames and curatorial models that problematize traditional power relations. From a radical perspective, the wiki template can be considered a site for anarchical organization. However, they are anarchic only when used in their most basic forms. These communities create their own power relations. This means, after the formation of the community, participants start to establish themselves a set of rules/social contracts, which are implicit or explicit, and are then enforced. These rules are created to frame for instance the user generated content, the community's mission and several internal governances, all of which are specific to this created community. Each user-generated community has its own agendas of power. He questions whether we can learn something from the relocation of power structures, from the institutional to the communal. Also, is the political structure of Wikipedia superior to the traditional one? Furthermore, are Wikis radical? Do their created social structures and communal cultural production have any effect on the larger society? Is there a potential for art in such a community structure? How does art and curation change when subjected to consensus? In order to answer some of this questions, he presents some user-generated communities as sources of cultural influence: The first one is the Encyclopedia Dramatica, which is a kind of internet counter-culture site. It consists of trolling, low culture (such as lolcats), pop songs, etc. In terms of cultural function, ED is the direct opposite of Wikipedia in its anarchical nature. The similarities of the two wikis seem not to be their form though, but their context. 4chan.org is not a wiki, but one can make an image available for comments. It is frequently the main influence that originates many of the famous internet themes, like the lol cats phenomenon. Also, in opposition to the wiki sites, which have stated missions, the 'Chans' are much more generalized and have lose categories. Discourse arises in a more ad hoc way. They are not completely anarchic, but considering the social structures of Wikipedia, they are much more flexible. However, do communities such as Wikipedia Art or YTMND suggest viable models for community based curating? Wikipedia Art was a further example. He explains that the entry was the art work, and any further editing was considered as continuation of the process. The interesting part was the community interactions surrounding the work. The entrance changed from a strategic art work into a tactical one, as the discussion turned into a sort of battle field and started bridging molecular communities (Wikiart, blogs, Wikipedia, etc.) and their cultures into a larger discourse. During its existence many of the community's rules, unknown to the outsider, revealed themselves into the discussion - eg. Trolls or snowball rules. Another example was the website Art in the Age of DataFlow and its wiki book chapter. Here he points out the wiki-based article on non linear narrative, that even though it was written to be modified, it has been modified only very little. The question that arises is whether authorship is still seen as something sacred, or if the community needs to achieve some critical mass to get conversation going on. Or: "Did no one simply give a ****ing damn?" In short, he examined the structures of these community based media production sites plus Wikipedia in order to verify the differences that emerge due to their local discourses and social protocols. How do they relate to the construction of society?He concludes that community-based media creation sites like Wikis create interesting potentials for curation and creation, however problematic. Will the future of curation be wiki based, or will it have the format of 4Chan, YTMND…? Furthermore, he points out that the emergence of communal media creates hegemonic structures which are not better than the institutions before them. He is neither for nor against either one, but he calls for intentionality. What is necessary is that as cultural production heads towards social media community based models, cultural producers need to maintain a cpov in order to maintain a notion on how culture is being shaped by online platforms and how a tecnocultural society is being build, as well as its culture in general. For more information check:

• Abstract
• Short Bio
• Homepages: patricklichty.com, voyd.com

Jeannette Hofmann focuses on how to represent knowledge. It all starts with life cycles of self-regulations online. The first step is one of high expectations in establishing novelty, boundlessness, autonomy, uniqueness and a certain blindness which are all a part of Wikipedia’s self representation. What follows is the feeling of otherness, it is the experience of deadlocks, contention, concentration of power, frustration, disillusionment and crisis. But how do we interpret these life cycles and what can we learn from them? Hofmann is inspired by the work of Sousa Santos, especially his essay “Toward an Epistemology of Blindness”. Sousa’s main argument is that experience and expectations are not the same and that they are characterized by a certain discrepancy. In modern societies there is a difference between the experience of the past and the expectations of the future. We believe in change, progress and learning. Santos recognizes two pillars; a pillar of regulation and a pillar of emancipation. Regulation is about maintaining social order and stabilizing expectations. Emancipation establishes good order. It expands distance between experience and expectation. When this is achieved there is a new emancipator movement. Even Knowledge recognizes forms of regulation and emancipation but the forms of knowledge are not the same. Regulation is more about the transition from chaos to order, and Knowledge as emancipation is the struggle against the waste of experience for experimentation. But there is neither a general knowledge nor a general ignorance. This is important to Santos because there is always a certain blindness and this is what Hofmann finds important with regards to Wikipedia. Call for a plurality of knowledge and practices All Wikipedia articles must be written from a neutral point of view, representing objectively, proportionately and as far as possible without bias, all significant views that have been published by reliable sources. But what kind of knowledge is assembled in Wikipedia? Reading against the background of Santos, this is problematic. The tension between regulation and emancipation are unavoidable and so there are conflicts related to them. Hoffman argues that we have to change the conflict between “all knowledge” and the Neutral Point of View that allows only “small samples” that are represented at Wikipedia. There is a need to make the debate more constructed. It has to be about social order and change, about regulations and emancipation. However, the NPoV policy on Wikipedia is misleading and evil. It structures the debates around Wikipedia in a nonsensical way. It doesn’t exist. So, our ambition should be to represent knowledge despite the fact that there is no NPoV.

Reagle's presentation can be accessed on his own website.

I want to make sense some of the criticism Wikipedia receives in a historical frame. I want to do this in a very simple proposition, that; reference works embody larger social anxieties. One of the central things about thinking about encyclopedias is through their motives. Because of the Enlightenment, we tend to think of progressiveness as an inherent property of encyclopedias but that has not been always the case (Reagle’s examples can be found in his presentation on the link above). Encyclopedias can combine progressive or conservative elements and their reception can again be perceived as either, regardless of the inherent qualities of the work in question. The same has been true about Wikipedia as well. While some people criticize it for being anti-academia and hostile to expertise, other people blame it for being a servant of peer-review institutions. While Wikipedia aims to represent all claims to knowledge via verifiable sources in a neutral point of view, this creates an inherent bias towards opinions that are more widely represented within verifiable and notable sources. This natural bias for representation according to proportional evidence aggravates fringe opinion holders (Creationists etc.). Yet, even among scholars the meaning of what an encyclopedia should represent is not certain, not only concerning Wikipedia but concerning historical encyclopedias as well.

Based on all these opinions and issues in discussion, we have understand this debate not strictly about encyclopedias but about larger societal issues. That is my approach; To get a sense of what it is that Wikipedia stirs in society.

At the heart of most discussions concerning reference works in general, and Wikipedia in particular, is a question regarding the degree of normativeness a reference work should embody in contrast to being merely descriptive (Telling how things should be instead/in addition to telling just how they are).

Also, Why should even we care? We certainly don’t care as much about Facebook, to the extend of having conferences solely devoted to it.

Two reasons:

I) This is a market construct. Mid-20th century marketing of Britannica; “Send your children to the Britannica.”

II) Questions of material constraints: What do we put it, what do we take out?

Historically, this is why we have so much critical discourse and debate around Wikipedia. When I look at the discourse around Wikipedia, relative to my research about collaborative culture, I saw four themes that are most prevalent:

I) Collaborative Practice- How do we work together? II) Encyclopedic impulse III) Bibliomania IV) Technological Inspiration - To what extend technology facilitate our struggle to reach our encyclopedic goals?

I will be focusing on the last one.

One of the central arguments of the merits of technology relates to hypertext. It has been hailed as a door for more fluid and accessible learning but it has also been accused of destroying the sanctity of authorship and removing us from real knowledge in favor of mere information. I find most such discussions to be ahistorical, the urge behind connecting information like this is not new. Otlet dreamt of connecting knowledge with index cards and loose-leaf binders.

One other point of heated debate is concerned with the hype surrounding Wikipedia. Critics argue Wikipedia’s shortcomings as a general cultural model. Yet, Wikipedians themselves are seldom the ones that believe in this hype. They usually say “Wikipedia is awesome not because it’s perfect, but it’s surprisingly good. We thought it wouldn’t even work but it’s surprisingly good.” While some critics find even this to be not good enough, I think this might be a question of glass half-empty of half-full. However, comparing something to Wikipedia has become the new cliche. Another indicator that Wikipedia is being used as an example in a larger cultural discussion. Such discussions closely reflect larger, and very common, generational issues, maybe not directly related to age but to certain sensitivities (quotes Douglas Adams on the way people’s perceptions change over time regarding technology). Before Wikipedia, there were many books pointing out shortcomings of other encyclopedias.

In closing;

A lot of the discussion about Wikipedia is representative of some of the prevailing attitudes and beliefs, and some of the contradictions of these attitudes and beliefs, as they shift, as facilitated by technology, and therefore (my argument); Reference works do embody and provoke larger social concerns and with respect to this issue of technology and technological inspiration, I think we can see a concern about the integrity of knowledge, the sanctity of the author and the concern about hype, with the background of this generational difference in perception.