Wikipedia & Film Noir: The Sequel
Not long after editing Wikipedia’s article on film noir, I realized that the bibliography still had a glaring omission: Borde and Chaumeton’s A Panorama of American Film Noir was not on the list. A Panorama of American Film Noir was the first book-length work on film noir, and contemporary writers continue to refer to it when they discuss film noir. For these reasons, I added it.
To be honest, when I returned to the Wikipedia article today, I half expected that my previous edits would be gone. When I contribute to Wikipedia, it’s hard to shake the feeling that I am writing in the sand, and that another contributor will erase my efforts. Contributing to Wikipedia seems to require a certain sense of trust, one that I hope to develop.