Abstract
The theory and practice of Wikipedia has a common heritage with professional history. In spite of the project being very new, the number and variety of its authors and the ambivalence of academia towards it, Wikipedians have created an encyclopedia that upholds high standards of scholarship and encyclopedism. Simultaneously it provides universal easy access to knowledge. The policies and practices enacted by Wikipedia to achieve these standards are rarely unique. Facing the same challenges that encyclopedists, lexicographers, translators, librarians and archivists have before, it does not achieve a uniformly high standard but it is a new chapter in a very old book.
This thesis divides the relevant fields of historiography into three parts. The first discusses how the idea of “free” is related to history production and disseminationthe concept of the “author” over time to argue that it has never been static nor is Wikipedia unique. Rather, it is a new form. Specifically discussed are ideas of readership; of mass authorship; the authority of knowledge; cultures of reading and the universalist ideal. The third part deconstructs “truth” to show that Wikipedia is not undermining the importance of this complex idea. Elements examined are the value of professionalism as opposed to amateurism; the fixity of knowledge; and concepts of verifiability, neutrality and objectivity. by looking at methods by which it is curtailed—through copyright; censorship; destruction; price and language. Wikipedia is the latest in a long line of defenders of the ideal of free knowledge. The second part looks at
Having demonstrated the relationship of Wikipedia’s theory and practice to the discipline of history, the final chapter uses Wikipedia’s articles to highlight practical means by which historians might engage with the project as a historical source and still maintain professional standards. Discussion pages, several associated paratexts and the statistics demonstrating article popularity are considered. Finally, there is a discussion about how historians can be directly involved in the Wikipedia project—by editing it.
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