Presentation given at "The Worlds of Wikimedia: communicating and collaborating across languages and cultures" conference. June 2019. https://wow2019.net

1. Wikipedia:
The Infinite Palimpsest
Liam Wyatt / @Wittylama
University of Sydney
June 2019

2. https://w.wiki/4rv
Who are these women;
and why are they important to Wikimedia?

3. Palimpsest?
That which was overwritten is
just as important - if not more
so - than that which is kept.
What was discarded can be
recovered.
Novgorod Codex - the only
known “hyper palimpsest”

4. This is not about how to use [read] Wikipedia in the
classroom; how to be a user [editor]; or how to use
[reference] articles.
This presentation talks about Wikipedia as a historical
record in its own right and therefore how it might be
legitimately used as a primary source.
“Using” Wikipedia

5. NPOV; V; NOR
Without these three pillars,
Wikipedia would not be of any use
to historical research.
With them, Wikipedia is a
compendium of information -
created by the world in real time - of
primary history.
It is “the people” consciously
attempting to dispassionately write
their own story.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Core_content_policies

6. Given an sufficient amount of
server space and the commitment
to maintain it, a resource already
exists that may not only sound the
death knell of archaeology but also
the opportunity to enable a greater
depth and sophistication of
anthropology than has ever existed
before. So radical an innovation
would this new anthropological
methodology represent that it
deserves its own name.
Call it Wikipediology.
- Andrew Updergrove, The
Wikipedia and the death of
archaeology 2006.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dolina-Pano-3.jpg

7. 4 types of primary sources
Articles
Analysis
Paratexts
Discussions

8. 1. Articles

9. “Long” history
More than just “Recentism",
But not quite “historical POV”.

10. The ‘diff’ is more
historiographically
interesting than
the text

11. Encyclopædia Britannica:
“Australasia - Natives: The natives, wherever they have been met
with, are of the very lowest description of human
beings...” Encyclopædia Britannica 1842:208.
“Australia - Aborigines: The origin of the natives of Australia
presents a difficult problem. The chief difficulty in deciding their
ethnical relations is their remarkable physical difference from the
neighbouring peoples…” 1911:954
English Wikipedia:
“Indigenous Australians: The Australian Aborigines are the
indigenous people of Australia. They were a stone age people who
are belived [sic] to have arrived in Australia about 40,000 years
ago.” August 2002
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_Australians

12. “Medium” history
For example:
“ Why the Guardian is changing the language it uses about the
environment: From now, house style guide recommends terms
such as ‘climate crisis’ and ‘global heating’ “ — 17 May, 2019

13. Semantic drift
• English: "Battle of the Macrons" - NZ
• “First Fleet”- Australia/USA
• English: Gdańsk/Gdansk/Danzig
• German: Jänner
• Arabic: ‫وليام‬ ،‫ويليام‬ ،‫وليم‬
• Dutch: Towns in Friesland
• French: Puck/Palet/Rondelle/Disque
• Cantonese: “Common” or “Etymological”
• All: How many continents?
• All: localisation of technical terms…
…and identity politics within/among languages
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endive
Worldwide POV &
Countering Systemic-Bias

14. https://vimeo.com/341168090
“Gender vote” on
De.WP
Geschlechtergerechte
Sprache
Liste von Science-
Fiction-Autoren
See also:
neutrality.wtf

15. https://w.wiki/4rv
Wikipedia can only has one fact at a time, this is the cause
of editorial debate (for better and worse). Wikidata simply
requires you to ask a different question - allowing different
slices of knowledge.

16. •2007 Virgina Tech shooting
• 2014 Sydney hostage
crisis # Debate on status
as a terrorist event
A minute by minute
account of the public
record of history.
Wikipedia isn’t the
eyewitness history, it is a
compilation of the public
chronology.
“Short” history
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:NotreDame20190415QuaideMontebello_(cropped).jpg

17. 2. Discussions
This is unmediated debate in the frame of describing topics for posterity.
Wikipedia discussion pages are not for conversation but for planning and
debating the best way to convey a topic.

18. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jyllands-Posten_Muhammad_cartoons_controversy

19. I submit that this transcript is valuable in revealing exactly how a war of ideas is
waged. Wikipedia uses an online collaboration technology that allows its articles
to be freely edited by any Wikipedia user. As the primary article about the
Muhammad cartoons evolved, there also arose behind the scenes a fierce
debate over whether or not the cartoons themselves should be included and
how they should be displayed.
The transcript of the debate captures not only the ideas expressed by the many
contributors and readers, but also the tenor of the debate, the pleas, the acts of
vandalism, the argumentative styles, strategies, tactics and gambits. In other
words, the transcript reveals how some contributors won the debate, how the
others lost, and how each side treated the other.
This transcript reveals the mechanics of the clash of civilizations.
— John Simmons http://www.baghdadmuseum.org/wikipedia/

20. 3. Paratexts

21. “...from the philosophical and the poetic to the lewd and
the obscene.” Rex Wallace, An Introduction to Wall
Inscriptions from Pompeii and Herculaneum, 2005
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pompeii-Street.jpg

22. Their banality becomes their usefulness. What
was once discarded becomes important,
precisely because it was never meant to be
kept. Spelling/grammar mistakes, marginalia,
erasures, hidden comments, vandalism…
And old headwords… and edit summaries:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Log?type=move&user=&page=Bradley+Manning&wpdate=&tagfilter=&subtype=

23. 4. Analysis
Examples: Editorship, Readership, Content
https://stats.wikimedia.org/

24. The Zeitgeist Or,
“What do Atlas Shrugged and
Baby, It's Cold Outside have in common?”

25. Popular interest

26. http://whgi.wmflabs.org/WikiProject: Women in Red

27. Peace, Love &
Metadata
Liam Wyatt / @Wittylama
University of Sydney
June 2019