suckow

Added two sentence halves to the Apollo 1 article. Also made an addition of one paragraph to the Apollo Program article, added the paragraph referencing the CEV.

Reading over the Rosenzweig article on Wikipedia was interesting. Had not had a professional historian’s take on it, most of the critique I have run into is from the geek standpoint. I would agree that Wikipedia’s articles can be somewhat superficial, light on interpretation, from the perspective of a historical narrative. However, it is meant as an encyclopedia, which typically does not have much interpretive heft either. There are exceptions, of course, those tend to be profession or even genre specific. It is useful for the types of things encyclopedias do, provide basic information on a topic (names, dates, etc) or as a quick reference. Wikipedia does have a pronounced advantage, particularly for those with a short attention span. The articles are interlinked, so you can start looking up one thing and wind up somewhere completely different. On the way, there is a chance to pick up a lot of extra knowledge. There are issues with Wikipedia of course, the recent vandalism of some Congresspeople’s biography originating from Congressional offices mentioned another course blog, and the Kennedy assassination hoax mentioned by Rosenzweig, for example. The anarchy of it can be problematic. However, the anarchy of it means that the people who write and edit the articles are those who are really interested in the subject, and who will go the extra mile. This is not a case of entries written for a paycheck. The fact that partisans are writing and editing means there is a bias involved, but there always is in historical writing (sometimes as egregious as in some of the Wikipedia articles!) because historians, like everyone else, write about what fascinates them and write from their particular socio/economic/political viewpoint. The most important thing is to get people to develop the habit of critically analyzing what they read and see rather than to take any source as authoritative.

The history blogs we were to look over were quite interesting. Makes it quite clear that a historian can write for a mixed academic and nonacademic audience. There are some personal factors involved in one’s relative success in this endeavor. Some historians just cannot get out of academic jargon because of a fixed mindset and as a result will find their audience  narrowed and mainly academic. For others, they just tend write clunky prose and people will be less willing to wade through to get at what they are trying to say (guilty as charged, your honor).

For those who can write engagingly and on a set of topics of wide interest among the public, or on life, the universe and everything with history thrown into the mix, there is a definite chance to get people interested in history who would not necessarily run into it outside the blogsphere. It may not be “academic caliber writing,” but one may have the opportunity to provide an entrypoint to it for the reader. Furthermore, writing for a nonacademic audience can force the historian writing the blog to see whether they are clear in their own mind about what they are trying to say. Sometimes, peel away the academic jargon and what is left is fuzzy thinking or a rather obvious point.