Historians, Wikipedia & Blogs
I enjoyed reading Roy Rosenzweig’s article on Wikipedia and its implications for professional historians. I agree with him that Wikipedia is an important model for historians to study. We historians could learn a thing or two about the benefits of voluntary, collaborative work. As someone who is also a practicing poet, I have in recent years discovered the benefits of collaborative writing. Writing with another writer, and with that other writer’s habits in mind, not only liberates me from my own idiosyncrasies but also gives me more impetus to write. I imagine voluntary, collaborative effort would have a similar effect on the historical process.
Whether professional historians like it or not, Wikipedia is an incredibly effective tool for providing historical information to a general audience. Even though some of the practices of Wikipedians run counter to those of professional historians, I agree with Rosenzweig that we as historians ought to contribute to Wikipedia in the hope of improving it, rather than denounce it for its flaws.
As an alternative to contributing to Wikipedia, many historians are keeping blogs. I really liked The History Carnival, which mimics the form of a journal; however, instead of including peer-reviewed articles, it contains peer-reviewed blog. One of the most interesting blogs I found on this site was Rob Macdougall’s Superman I: Secret Origins. Although not exactly in a journal form, The History Blogosphere also contains links to several peer-reviewed blogs. One of the most interesting blogs, not only in terms of content but also presentational style, that I found on this site was 1947project.
I was surprised by how many supposedly academic blogs reflect, at leat in part, the same sort of “geek priorties” that Rosenzweig ascribes to Wikipedia. For example, at Easily Distracted, Timothy Burke’s thought-provoking story about his experience as a discussant in an academic seminar is preceded by a discussion of the computer game Oblivion. At Break of Day in the Trenches, Esther McCallum-Stewart devotes as much attention to science fiction and computer games as to her primary academic interest, the impact of World War I on popular culture.
I believe scholars like Burke and McCallum-Stewart have every right to a forum in which they can communicate all their personal interests, academic or otherwise. At the same time, I am left wondering whether the kind of writing they are doing on their blogs is, by purely academic standards, any better than the kind of writing that appears on Wikipedia. Am I betraying my profession by saying that I sometimes prefer the collaborative writing produced by Wikipedia to the geeky blogs of science fiction-reading, computer game-playing historians?
April 4th, 2006 at 3:40 pm
Interesting thought there Phil. As a science-fiction (not computer gameplaying) reading historian I’ll put on my two hats about the issue. To some extent I see keeping the academics and the hobbies seperate in order to maintain credibility–but at the same time I have to recognize that part of what makes the digital world so interesting is that you can meld many interests together to frame a cohsive identity. What I mean is as historians we’ve had consistant discussions on truth and objectivity–but also about the stereotype of the stuffy historian isolated from the world at large…I think by discussing things like reading habits and video games or movies these historians are able to illustrate that they are taped into the world at large…and therefore not stuck in academia (and consequently too intimidating for non-historians to read).
hmm..hope that made sense.