How I Use Wiki When I Mean Relationships

 

Since I started my Fulbright application, I’ve needed shorthand to explain what I planned to do in the UK and why I needed to do it in the UK. The simple answer always came out as I want to build wikis for local communities to record oral traditions. Because wikis are hot media, this explanation almost always focused the discussion around either wikis or citizen journalism. I admit that I take the bait because it’s easy; however, I wanted to take the time to get away from my comfort zone and explain 5 reasons why I don’t really work with wikis.

In fact, if I had to do my Fulbright application over again, I’d title it: Why This Project Isn’t Really About Wikis

Do you have a solution or are you simply throwing technology at a problem?

Yesterday my supervisor suggested that humanities has developed an oversimplified approach to technology.  He believes many in politics see people + technology = solution. As if crowd-sourcing alone could wash away all the many power issues of the body public, government, and the public sphere in one fell swoop, if we but could find the right bit of technology to do it. Of course, plenty of other people believe in the equally simplistic people + technology = problem.

Both are critiques I see as valid and vital for those who experiment in technological solutions. It’s quite important that we possess an understanding of how to solve a problem and address it by the best means and to the best ends we can. Digital technology may be the solution, but so might organizations, normative goals, and a common commitment–or, much to the chagrin of many American’s, government involvement.

Oral traditions are about local relationships

The wiki is a tool that means I don’t have to go to thousands of houses and record individual stories, but the wiki isn’t the project. The project is an experiment in capturing community stories on a scale not previously possible, and to test the quality of tradition captured. While I’m using a wiki to create a place for people to express traditions and relationships, it’s the expression of those relationships that matter, not the space I’m using. Plus, there’s the matter of testing.

Frankly, I have no clue as to how much collaboration will occur on stories, how much wider meaning the stories will hold, or how many participants will finally join the project. Part of research is embracing the inevitability of failures to help explain why something works.

Sometimes I feel like I should study anthropology more than communication

Tomorrow I will spend seven hours on a train to and from Bristol. Once there I’ll participate in by far the most rewarding aspect of my research: the community training sessions. The Knowle West community wiki thus far operates primarily once every two weeks. While I track the occasional entry between my bi-weekly visits, thus far over 90% of entries have occurred during my training sessions. This isn’t a success for social media, but the fact that stories are being recorded does mean it’s a success for the project, at least for now.

Physical presence means something to locals, and it isn’t surprising that getting involved matters when you’re asking people to record their personal stories and ideas. Whether this pays dividends in the continued success of the project after I’m gone remains to be seen.

I don’t see eye-to-eye with Wikipedia

I should do a whole other post on this, but not at the moment. I use MediaWiki for my wiki software and I have immense respect for the Wikimedia Foundation and the broad capabilities of Wikipedia. That said, Wikipedia has a loud disconnect between its grand goals and its design. Notability regulations make the website a fantastic source of broad knowledge, but less reliable fount of localized history and tradition. It is also a highly factual space, with little sense of place or community for the objects of its subject matter. It may be the best encyclopedia to date, but its remains an encyclopedia, not a true Aleph–or a space where all textual and literary meaning meld into a single space. It lacks narrative (save for the talkback sections which are often more intriguing than the articles), and that is a severe limitation when it comes to oral traditions and many forms of knowledge preservation and meaning-making.

I also have issue with Wikipedia’s divided stance on collaboration. I believe that preservation of certain details means closing control of a knowledge base not to individuals but certain groups with shared relationships: such as the shared relationship of those living in the same community or even a community of diasporic individuals whose tradition forms a lasting relationship beyond the immediately local. Where Wikipedia has locked editing to celebrity articles to prevent defacing, I’m far more concerned about whether this entry truly represents the history and tradition of Boyd, TX. If you go to the talkback section you’ll see the entry has a low-priority for WikiProject Texas. Knowle West suffers a similar fate on Wikipedia.

I do this because I love writing, history, and community

Community isn’t a social media buzz word for me. I suspect a group of people can care about an aspect of their community strongly enough that if they work hard at telling that story, no one can do it better. This project is about giving the community a chance to define those relationships and provide a space that affords them the ease of collaboration and storage over time to tell their story. Maybe a wiki can give those affordances. Maybe something else can do it better. I’ll keep experimenting until I find a means to allow people to produce the narratives they want to produce, and produce them from the relationships they care about.



One Response to “How I Use Wiki When I Mean Relationships”

1. Communications says:

   June 24, 2010 at 6:42 pm

   Great post. I really appreciate the information. You have done a terrific job communicating your message. Keep up the good work.