Presentation given at the University of Sydney "Wikipedia in Higher Education Symposium" (5 April 2013) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Sydney/5_April_2013

1. Wikipedia: The Endless Palimpsest
Summary of the concluding chapter to my history thesis:
“The academic lineage of Wikipedia”
http://wittylama.com/thesis
Wikipedia in Higher Education Symposium
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Wikipedia:Meetup/Sydney/5_April_2013
University of Sydney
5 April, 2013
Liam Wyatt
@wittylama

2. Palimpsest?
The palimpsest is that most unusual of sources as it shows
not only what was retained but also what was
considered unworthy of retention.
What was once discarded can be reclaimed.

3. enwp.org/
Palimpsest#Famous_examples
Cicero’s De re publica,
Archimedes’ Stomachion
Some double palimpsest
One hyper-palimpsest
(Novgorod)
Wikipedia: the Infinite
palimpsest

4. “Using” Wikipedia
• Read it • Cite it
• Edit it • For Primary
Research

5. There is an increasing literature about how to use
Wikipedia in the classroom and also the specific
circumstances when you could legitimately cite its articles.
This presentation talks about Wikipedia as an historical
record in its own right and therefore how it might be
legitimately used as a primary source.
It is the most controversial of the “four uses”.

6. Three Policy Pillars
• Neutral Point of View
(NPOV)
• Verifiability (V)
• No Original Research
(NOR)

7. Without these three pillars,
Wikipedia would not be of any use to historical research.
With them, Wikipedia is a compendium of information
- created by the world in real time - of primary history.
It is “the people” consciously attempting to write
history in as neutral a way as possible.

8. Four Primary History
Uses of Wikipedia
• Articles • Paratexts
• Discussions • Popularity

9. Digital Archaeology
Given an sufficient amount of server space and the
commitment to maintain it, a resource already exists that
may not only sound the death knell of archaeology but also
the opportunity to enable a greater depth and
sophistication of anthropology than has ever existed
before. So radical an innovation would this new
anthropological methodology represent that it deserves its
own name.
Call it Wikipediology.
- Andrew Updergrove, The Wikipedia and the death of
archaeology 2006

10. Articles

11. Everything is kept.
Everything is available for analysis.
And I mean everything.

13. Long History
“Australasia - natives” - Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1842
“Indigenous Australians” - Encyclopaedia Britannica, present.
It is not the information in these EB articles which
is interesting to historians.
It is that they demonstrate the spirit of the age.
As it is with EB, so too with WP.

14. It’s even possible to visualise “big history”
http://www.ragtag.info/2011/feb/2/history-world-100-seconds/
http://stats.wikimedia.org/

15. Short History
A minute by minute account of the public record of history.
Wikipedia isn’t the eyewitness history,
but compiles the chronology of what was publicly known.
[suffers from Western and popular biases though]
e.g. Timelapse video of first 24 hours of WP
article development: “July 2005 London Bombings”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8O-hv3w-MU

16. Discussions

17. Article

18. Of the associated discussion pages:
I submit that this transcript is valuable in revealing exactly how a war of
ideas is waged... As the primary article about the Muhammad cartoons
evolved, there also arose behind the scenes a fierce debate over whether
or not the cartoons themselves should be included and how they should
be displayed.
The transcript of the debate captures not only the ideas expressed by the
many contributors and readers, but also the tenor of the debates, the
pleas, the acts of vandalism, the argumentative styles, strategies, tactic and
gambits. In other words, the transcript reveals how some contributors won
the debate, how the others lost, and how each side treated the other.
This transcript reveals the mechanics of the clash of civilizations.
John Simmons, Iraq Museum International
www.baghdadmuseum.org/wikipedia

19. This is unmediated debate in the frame
of describing topics for posterity.
Wikipedia discussion pages are not for conversation
but for planning and debating the best way to convey a
topic.

20. Paratexts

21. Vandalism...
“...from the philosophical and the poetic to the lewd and the
obscene.”

22. Vandalism...
“...from the philosophical and the poetic to the lewd and the
obscene.”
Rex Wallace, An Introduction to Wall Inscriptions
from Pompeii and Herculaneum, 2005

24. Their banality becomes their usefulness.
What was once discarded becomes important,
precisely because it was never meant to be kept.
Spelling/grammar mistakes, marginalia, erasures...

25. popularity

26. Quantitative, not just
Qualitative history
How does the historian footnote the following statement:
“In the lead-up to the 2008 US presidential elections, the choice
of Joe Biden
took no one by surprise but the choice of Sarah Palin took her
from relative obscurity to become political phenomenon,
instantly.”

27. Absolute popularity

28. Relative Popularity
How does the historian footnote the following statement:
“In the 2008 US Democratic party primaries, Barack
Obama consistently dominated the popular interest of the
global population, at least those online.”

31. Four Primary History
Uses of Wikipedia
• Articles • Paratexts
• Discussions • Popularity

32. participation?

33. Peace, Love & Metadata
liamwyatt@gmail.com
[[user:witty lama]]
@wittylama
These slides available from
www.wittylama.com/presentations