On Wikipedia, Cultural Patrimony, and Historiography

[mouser]

Here's a really nice blog entry about looking at how the current moments is memorialized into a kind of accepted cultural history,

This particular book—or rather, set of books—is every edit made to a single Wikipedia article, The Iraq War, during the five years between the article’s inception in December 2004 and November 2009, a total of 12,000 changes and almost 7,000 pages.  It amounts to twelve volumes: the size of a single old-style encyclopaedia. It contains arguments over numbers, differences of opinion on relevance and political standpoints, and frequent moments when someone erases the whole thing and just writes “Saddam Hussein was a dickhead”.

This is historiography. This is what culture actually looks like: a process of argument, of dissenting and accreting opinion, of gradual and not always correct codification.  And for the first time in history, we’re building a system that, perhaps only for a brief time but certainly for the moment, is capable of recording every single one of those infinitely valuable pieces of information. Everything should have a history button. We need to talk about historiography, to surface this process, to challenge absolutist narratives of the past, and thus, those of the present and our future.

http://booktwo.org/n...edia-historiography/

from http://www.balloon-juice.com/

[Deozaan]

Very interesting.

[tomos]

one of the catch22's with wikipedia is that any info in there requires a 'reliable' source.
This is understandable (I dont have a better solution) but it's abused a lot by people with agendas. Well it was abused in my brief personal experience discussing a wikipedia page:
"That source isnt good enough", "you need more sources", "more reputable sources" etc etc. It's very odd to be in a situation where you know something is true but people wont accept it.... (I gave up)

my emphasis:

The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth—whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true.

http://en.wikipedia....ipedia:Verifiability

[Renegade]

Very interesting.

-Deozaan (September 08, 2010, 02:18 AM)

+1~!

[rxantos]

History is created by the victor.

Government only purpose is to protect the Government. Church only purpose is to protect the Church. The press only purpose is to protect their money. All organizations care about themselves more than of the truth.

Lets face it, in todays words a "reliable source" is a fallacy. You can never be sure of a source.

[Deozaan]

Those are some broad stereotypes which of course are not true, rxantos.

[tomos]

Those are some broad stereotypes which of course are not true, rxantos.

-Deozaan (September 16, 2010, 03:33 PM)

I believe what he says (below) is often the case - well, if you leave out the word only from his statements and add sometimes or often. Oups, are we getting into taboo territory here

Government only purpose is to protect the Government. Church only purpose is to protect the Church. The press only purpose is to protect their money. All organizations care about themselves more than of the truth.

-rxantos (September 13, 2010, 01:59 AM)

[JavaJones]

What's really interesting about this is the following line "to challenge absolutist narratives of the past". *That* is a cool idea, and a cool interpretation of the value of the wiki system. The very recording of edits over time as part of Wikipedia's system is itself a challenge to singular views of at least historical events. That's really pretty profound...

- Oshyan