Sponsoring Committee: Professor Helen Nissenbaum, Chairperson Professor Gabriella Coleman Professor Natalia Levina
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Sponsoring Committee: Professor Helen Nissenbaum, Chairperson Professor Gabriella Coleman Professor Natalia Levina IN GOOD FAITH: WIKIPEDIA COLLABORATION AND THE PURSUIT OF THE UNIVERSAL ENCYCLOPEDIA Joseph M. Reagle Jr. Department of Media, Culture, and Communication Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development New York University 2008 Copyright °c 2008 Joseph M. Reagle Jr. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS In the following pages I observe that building an encyclopedia is a cumulative and interdependent activity, this work is no different. While I might have the occasionally interesting thought and I’ve no doubt make a few errors, this dissertation is a fabric woven from the contributions of many. So much so that it seems impossible to properly acknowledge all those who have influenced and supported this work. But as in any other seemingly impossible task, like creating an encyclopedia, one must start somewhere—and the perfect is the enemy of the good. I extend my thanks to my committee chairperson, Helen Nissenbaum; I am sometimes forced to apologize that “I’m no philosopher,” but Helen is and I’m glad because I think her care and attention has improved this work greatly. Also, since she first encouraged me to share and discuss Michael Sheeran’s Beyond Majority Rule with her, which greatly influenced the substance and method of this work, she afforded me an admirable balance of intellectual freedom and challenge. Gabriella Coleman, also on my committee and fellow researcher of open communities, has been an enthusiastic reviewer and inspiration. Finally, I’m grateful to Natalia Levina, my third committee member, for introducing me to organizational research and recommending key authors who would inform much of this work. Other faculty that merit a “thank you” are JoEllen Fisherkeller, Alex Galloway, Brett Gary, Ted Magder, W. Boyd Rayward, Siva Vaidhyanathan, and Jonathan Zimmerman. And though they didn’t have a direct bearing on the present work, I’d also like to thank Tim Berners-Lee, Colin Burke, Tim Finin, Lawrence iii Lessig, and Lee McKnight for providing support throughout my career: they each helped me get to the point where I could do this project. Colleagues and friends who discussed drafts, sent comments, listened to me talk an idea through, or pointed out a missed connection or useful reference include Melissa Aronczyk, Phoebe Ayers, Samir Chopra, Shay David, Said Hamideh, Sam Howard-Spink, Ian Jacobs, Rob Jones, Jelena Karanovic, Cormac Lawler, Lawrence Liang, Andrew Lih, David Parisi, Devon Powers, Evan Prodromou, Aaron Swartz, Michael Zimmer, and Jakob Voss. Also, members of the comp.text.tex discussion group were kind enough to help me with my LaTeX questions. Nora Schaddelee deserves special thanks for having put up with more of my wiki rambling than anyone else, and she also read the earliest—and cruftiest—draft of most every chapter that follows. Also, thank you to the Wikipedians who spoke to me about their expe- riences. I have only named those people who have influenced or commented upon this work specifically, but the scope of this work includes many other con- versations. Some appear as sources in this work, but most do not. Also, the vast majority of my sources are simply the public discourse of a community from which I have sampled only the tip of the iceberg, and I have portrayed only a fragment of that tip of research in this work. From a methodological perspective it seems odd to thank those who have contributed to a (public) archive and project, but I feel a sense of gratitude nevertheless. Additionally, I’m grateful to my friends and family, including those who had little interest in the particulars of this work but wished me well even so. Indeed, opportunities to talk about things other than school and Wikipedia were a welcome refuge at times. Finally, I want to note a few institutions that in one way or another served as a home to me in the past few years. First, the World Wide Consortium (W3C) provided much of the inspiration for my interest in collaboration as did our iv conversations about consensus. The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School provided me an important opportunity to begin reflecting on online collaboration. The NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development provided me with a pre-doctoral summer research grant, and its Department of Media, Culture, and Communication generously granted me a fellowship for my first three years of Ph.D. course work. Finally, most of this dissertation was written at the Carroll Gardens branch of the Brooklyn Public Library: a hospitable, though often noisy, environment in which I was surprisingly productive up in its little balcony of comics and tax forms. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii I INTRODUCTION 1 A Wikipedia Primer 7 Wikipedia 7 The Core Content Policies 10 A Bibliographic Note 12 HISTORICAL HERITAGE 14 II WIKIPEDIA’S HERITAGE: THE UNIVERSAL ENCYCLOPEDIA 15 The Index Card and Microfilm 17 Paul Otlet and the Universal Bibliographic Repertory 17 H. G. Wells and the World Brain 21 Vannevar Bush and the Memex 25 Digital Computers and Networks 26 Project Gutenberg 26 Interpedia 30 Distributed Encyclopedia 33 Nupedia 34 GNUPedia/GNE 37 The Web and Wikis 38 Wikipedia 40 Conclusion: Predicting the Future, Reading the Past 42 A Timeline of Events 43 III THE PRODUCTION OF REFERENCE WORKS 45 Smart Guys and Wikiholics 46 The Busy Bees of Knowledge Production 52 Wasps, Shoulders, Ladders, and Bees 52 ”The Best Way” 60 Memory and the Deluge of Knowledge 60 The Corporate Production of Reference Works 63 continued vi Wikipedia and “One for All” 67 Conclusion 69 COMMUNITY AND COLLABORATION 70 IV WIKIPEDIA AS AN OPEN CONTENT COMMUNITY 71 The Wikipedia Community 73 Open Products 76 Transparency and Integrity 79 Non-Discrimination 80 Non-Interference 83 Challenges to Wikipedia’s Openness 85 Can Anyone Really Edit? 85 Open Communities and Closed Law 91 Enclaves and Gender 96 Conclusion 101 V COLLABORATIVE GOOD FAITH CULTURE 103 Introduction 104 A Caveat about “Collaborative Culture” 104 Wiki, Practice, and Policy 106 Wikipedia Policy, Guidelines, and the Five Pillars 110 “Neutral Point Of View” and Good Faith: an Example 112 The Epistemic Stance of “Neutral Point Of View” 115 The Intersubjective Stance of Good Faith 121 Assuming the Best of Others 122 Patience 128 Civility 131 Humor 133 Conclusion 135 VI LEADERSHIP: THE BENEVOLENT DICTATOR 137 Leadership in Open Content Communities 138 Leadership and Wikipedia 144 Founders 145 Administrators and the Board 148 Discussing Leadership 151 Dictatorships and Jimbo’s Role 152 Leadership and Good Faith Culture 159 continued vii Authorial Leadership, a Theory 160 Conclusion 163 TODAY AND THE FUTURE 165 VII ENCYCLOPEDIC ANXIETY 166 Progressive and Conservative 167 Webster’s Third at the Center of a Storm 175 Wikipedia Criticism 179 The Normativeness of the Reference Work 181 Web 2.0 183 Wikipedia’s Critics 185 Collaborative Practice 185 Universal Vision 192 Encyclopedic Impulse 197 Technological Inspiration 199 Conclusion 208 VIII CONCLUSION 209 IX POSTSCRIPT: METHODOLOGY 215 Aspiration and Inspiration 215 Research: Time, Sites, and Tags 221 BIBLIOGRAPHY 225 viii CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Wikipedia is not merely an online encyclopedia; although the Web site is useful, popular, and permits nearly anyone to contribute, the site is only the most visible artifact of an active community. Unlike previous reference works which stand on library shelves distanced from the institutions, people, and discussions from which they arose, Wikipedia is a community and the encyclopedia is a snapshot of its continuing conversation. This conversation is frequently exasperating, often humorous, and occasionally profound. Most importantly, it sometimes reveals what I call a “good faith” culture. I believe Wikipedia and its collaborative culture is a realization—even if flawed—of a century’s old pursuit of a universal encyclopedia: a technological inspired vision seeking to wed increased access to information with greater human accord. Elements of this good faith culture can be found in the following conversation about a possible “neo-Nazi attack” upon Wikipedia. In early 2005 members of Stormfront, a “white pride” online forum, focused their sights on Wikipedia. In February, they sought to marshal votes against the deletion of the article “Jewish Ethnocentrism,” an article favored by some “white nationalists” and making use of evolutionary psychologist Kevin MacDonald’s controversial theories of a Jewish people in competition with and subjugating other ethnic groups. Their “alert,” forwarded by Wikipedian AndyL (2005a), was surprisingly sensitive to the culture of Wikipedia by warning “you must give your reason as to why you voted to keep the article - needless to say you should do so in a cordial manner, those wishing to delete the article will latch 1 onto anything they can as an excuse to be hostile towards anybody criticising Jewish culture.” Six months later AndyL (2005b) again noticed that participants of Stormfront, perhaps dissatisfied with their earlier efforts, were considering using the software that runs Wikipedia, or even some of its content, to create their own (“forked”) version more to their liking. The charge of “Nazism” has a long and odd history in the realm of online community. One of the most famous aphorisms from earlier Internet discussion groups is Godwin’s Law: “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one” (Godwin, 1994a).1 Godwin’s Law speaks to a tendency of online participants to think the worst of each other. Yet, throughout the immense Wikipedia discussion threads prompted by a potential “neo-Nazi attack” no one compared anyone else to Hitler. Granted, some Stormfront members are self-identified Nazis for whom the term would not be an insult, but there was also serious disagreement between Wikipedians—and even the white racialists reminded themselves they need be cordial on Wikipedia.