History on Wikipedia: A Non-neutral World

La storia su Wikipedia: un mondo non neutrale | L’histoire dans Wikipédia: un monde qui n’est pas neutre

Abstract:
Over the course of the past twenty years, Wikipedia has developed into the most widely used online encyclopedia. Written and maintained through a model of open collaboration, the platform therefore plays an important role in the collective production and popularization of knowledge. While this development gives rise to promising opportunities for historians, for example for a digital public history, it also entails a number of challenges. The article argues for a differentiated, critical discussion on the potential pitfalls and benefits.
DOI: dx.doi.org/10.1515/phw-2022-19332.
Languages: Italian, English, French

Nel 2006 Roy Rosenzweig invitava gli storici a confrontarsi con Wikipedia anche solo per l’unica ragione che i loro stessi studenti la usavano. Oggi, a 15 anni di distanza, non si conosce la partecipazione degli studiosi di storia alla più grande e capillare piattaforma di collaborazione per la produzione collettiva di sapere.  Il rapporto tra ricerca storica e Wikipedia continua a essere controverso a causa dei “cinque pilastri” e delle difficoltà nell‘analisi delle voci.

Inevitabile confronto

A vent’anni dalla sua nascita, nel 2021 su Wikipedia e la sua storia esiste ormai una letteratura assai ampia; eppure ancora abbiamo qualche difficoltà nel capire quanta attenzione ci sia fra gli storici verso questa enciclopedia on line libera e collaborativa che, come si legge sulla pagina di presentazione, “is a free content, multilingual online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers through a model of open collaboration, using a wiki-based editing system. Individual contributors, also called editors, are known as Wikipedians. It is the largest and most-read reference work in history, and consistently one of the 15 most popular websites ranked by Alexa; as of 2021, Wikipedia was ranked the 13th most popular site”.

Difficile dire esattamente quanti e chi siano gli universitari che partecipano attivamente alla redazione di voci storiche, oppure se ricercatori e docenti siano prevalentemente consumatori dell’enciclopedia o contribuiscano anche alla sua realizzazione e in quale misura. In Italia negli ultimi anni sono stati pubblicati molti lavori sul tema, anche se fu con un certo ritardo che in sede scientifica si iniziò a dedicare attenzione al fenomeno; in ambito internazionale da tempo si parla di Wikipedia studies e va ricordato che già una quindicina di anni

Roy Rosenzweig sottolineava che gli storici non possono sottrarsi al confronto con Wikipedia, “one reason professional historians need to pay attention to Wikipedia is because our students do”, per quanto una storiografia anonima, collettiva e non sottoposta al giudizio tra pari fosse “unimaginable in our professional culture”.

Tra studiosi, docenti e ricercatori permangono atteggiamenti variegati, da chi mette al bando Wikipedia perché ritenuta instabile per natura e scritta in modo amatoriale a chi invita a operare scelte interventiste con appelli alla partecipazione o addirittura alla scrittura militante. Sta di fatto che oramai è impossibile non prendere atto della sfida lanciata da questa realtà operante, affermata e giunta a una fase di solidificazione del confuso magma che l’aveva caratterizzata nei suoi primi anni di vita, come già aveva rilevato Andrew Lih.

Storicizzazione del presente

Wikipedia è la principale fonte di informazione per un numero enorme di lettori, con i suoi 55 milioni di voci, 6,4 delle quali in lingua inglese (con oltre mille amministratori e 27 milioni di utenti registrati) e 1,7 in lingua italiana (al nono posto in termini quantitativi nell’ottobre 2021, con una crescita media mensile di circa 10.000 voci per quasi 2,2 milioni di utenti registrati e 117 amministratori), per un totale di 312 edizioni linguistiche attive: un numero ampiamente superiore a quello dei 193 Stati membri delle Nazioni Unite. Una decina di anni fa «the online encyclopedia was nominated for the UNESCO World Heritage List, underscoring its status as a global cultural phenomenon», come osservò José van Dijck, e nel frattempo la Wikipedia Foundation è diventata anche un soggetto economico non irrilevante che nel 2017 dichiarava un bilancio di circa 120 milioni di dollari. Nel marzo 2021 è stato annunciato il lancio di Wikimedia Enterprise “a commercial product designed to sell and deliver Wikipedia’s content directly to Big Tech companies”, come si legge sul sito.

Questo uso massiccio dell’enciclopedia per gli usi più disparati, e non solo per la ricerca di informazioni di tipo strettamente storico, contribuisce a immettere nella cultura diffusa i contenuti e le modalità di comunicazione di matrice wikipediana, nonostante il noto disclaimer “Wikipedia makes no guarantee of validity” collocato nella pagina di apertura. All’interno del “nuovo Vangelo apocrifo della generazione telematica di inizio millennio” (la definizione è di Miguel Gotor) troviamo centinaia di migliaia di pagine su temi storici, ma la ratio storica presiede a tutte le voci in virtù della loro notability: il concetto che orienta l’attribuzione di un contenuto di “enciclopedicità”, perché si presume che un argomento sia notabile se è già stato significativamente trattato da fonti attendibili e indipendenti dal soggetto; in altre parole se è già stato in qualche modo “storicizzato”. L’idea di tempestività, di “presa diretta” di Wikipedia sul reale, opera inoltre una forte pressione sulla storicizzazione del tempo presente. Al contempo, questo spazio pubblico costituisce oramai una modalità innovativa di produzione di storia in rete che ricalca alcuni principi della digital public history.

Lo ha richiamato recentemente Deborah Paci: mai come prima di adesso, e non solo in termini quantitativi, un numero sterminato di “non addetti ai lavori” può produrre e diffondere contenuti storici in uno spazio regolato dai Cinque pilastri di Wikipedia, che vanno costantemente sottoposti a verifica e che si prestano a discussioni non ancora chiuse.

La fede nel Npov

Per esaminare la presenza della storia su Wikipedia possiamo seguire i percorsi offerti dai diversi Portali tematici e cronologici, con le loro numerose ramificazioni per ogni edizione linguistica diversa. Di fatto, però, la catena di associazioni tra voci determina un effetto di priorità, definendo confini e pertinenze di un tema più generale, il che può essere significativo per chi approccia l’enciclopedia in vista di una esercitazione o di un discorso pubblico, ma l’articolazione stessa di categorie e sottocategorie è priva di orientamenti solidi e resta affidata alla sensibilità associativa del singolo utente. È quindi necessario richiamare rapidamente l’ideologia e la pratica di funzionamento del mondo wikipediano a partire dal Punto di vista neutrale (neutral point of view, Npov: principio incluso tra i Cinque pilastri e definito non negoziabile), dal divieto di riversare nelle voci contenuti di ricerca originali (no original research, Nor: perché Wikipedia si propone tertiary source) e dal principio di verificabilità (verificability, V) con indicazione delle fonti.

Il Npov distilla in un acronimo, fatto di prescrizioni semplificate, secoli di riflessione storica e filosofica sui nessi tra soggetto e oggetto nell’atto della conoscenza, senza mai richiamarli in alcun modo. Wikipedia fa del principio di neutralità, più che di quello dell’obiettività, il suo mito fondante, finendo per aderire a una concezione della storia fattualista e consensuale, datata e tradizionale. Le cronologie e discussioni delle singole voci forniscono prove sterminate dell’“atto di fede” degli utenti verso l’ideologia del Npov, senza la quale l’intero progetto non avrebbe basi su cui reggersi. Se nella comunità sembrano convivere tanto una consolidata fede nei fatti “nudi e crudi” e l’utopia di un mondo in cui la conoscenza è prodotta da tutti e accessibile a tutti, lo stesso Larry Sanger nel 2011 prese le distanze dalla creatura che a suo tempo aveva fondato con Jimmy Wales. A suo parere Wikipedia ha contribuito al consolidamento di un antintellettualismo pervasivo che ha completamente delegittimato il ruolo del sapere esperto e l’importanza dell’apprendimento come memorizzazione. È evidente che si tratta di temi discussi anche altrove e che hanno segnato il modo di fare e studiare storia nel passaggio dal XX al XXI secolo.

Anche per questo in vari saggi e interventi è stata esaminata attentamente la storia di singole voci di Wikipedia, filologicamente, provando a gettare uno sguardo nello sconfinato retrotesto che presiede ogni pagina dell’enciclopedia, di questa piazza virtuale frutto del lavoro dei membri reali di una consistente comunità intellettuale, innervata da ideali e capace di rigenerarsi, per quanto sempre attraversata da tensioni, segnata da edit wars e punteggiata da conflitti politici o ideologici di vario tipo.

Studiare Wikipedia

Come mostrano vari esempi, un’analisi sistematica di tutte le voci storiche dell’enciclopedia – ovvero del retrotesto da cui emergono le negoziazioni che hanno portato a una stesura finale e comunque sempre provvisoria – sarebbe un compito impossibile e forse addirittura insensato. L’unico modo di procedere è per carotaggi, monitorando singole voci “calde” o su cui si disponga di un quadro di riferimento relativo a eventi, letteratura, usi pubblici.

Un altro modo di procedere nell’analisi di Wikipedia è la comparazione tra diverse edizioni linguistiche delle pagine di inquadramento generale su grandi temi. Lo abbiamo fatto sulle voci dedicate alla Prima guerra mondiale per varie edizioni linguistiche, notando un significativo processo di convergenza progressiva delle voci con l’approssimarsi del centenario dell’evento. Va comunque ricordato che l’enciclopedia continua in larga misura a essere scritta soprattutto da europei e statunitensi.

Per concludere, si deve ricordare che qualsiasi ipotesi di ricerca deve comunque fare i conti con una fonte del tutto anomala per gli storici, perché perennemente cangiante: le voci non sono mai definitive e stabili, ma costantemente aperte alla riscrittura e alla modifica. Il processo di sviluppo dei temi per aggiunte e glosse è molto distante da un’idea della storia come disciplina del contesto. Eppure è auspicabile un impegno diretto da parte di studiosi e ricercatori nella scrittura e riscrittura di Wikipedia, o quantomeno un loro sforzo per conoscere le sue regole e la sua ideologia, in modo da formare i lettori-consumatori a un uso consapevole dell’enciclopedia online, critico ma non prevenuto, magari capace anche di riconoscere le creative commons emergenti e il loro potenziale politico.

_____________________

Per approfondire

  • Bianchi, Roberto, and Gilda Zazzara. “La storia formattata. Wikipedia tra creazione, uso e consumo.” Passato e presente, no. 100 (2017): 131-155.
  • Lih, Andrew. The Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World’s Greatest Encyclopedia. New York: Hyperion, 2009.
  • Barbe, Lionel, Louise Merzeau, and Valérie Schafer (eds.). Wikipédia objet scientifique non identifié. Nanterre: Presses Universitaires de Paris Ouest, 2015.

Siti web

_____________________

Image Credits

Wikidata map image generated on 06 April 2018 © CC-0 via Commons.

Recommended Citation

Bianchi, Roberto: La storia su Wikipedia: un mondo non neutrale. In: Public History Weekly 10 (2022) 1, DOI: dx.doi.org/10.1515/phw-2022-19332.

Editorial Responsibility

Enrica Salvatori / Deborah Paci

In 2006, Roy Rosenzweig invited historians to engage with Wikipedia for the sole reason that their own students were using it. Today, 15 years later, the participation of historians in the largest and most widespread collaborative platform for the collective production of knowledge is unknown. The relationship between historical research and Wikipedia continues to be controversial because of the ‘five pillars’ and the difficulties in examining the entries.

Inevitable Comparison

Twenty years after its birth, in 2021, there is a vast scholarly literature on Wikipedia and its history; yet we still have some difficulty in understanding how much attention there is among historians towards this free and collaborative online encyclopedia which, as we read on its presentation page, “is a free content, multilingual online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers through a model of open collaboration, using a wiki-based editing system. Individual contributors, also called editors, are known as Wikipedians. It is the largest and most-read reference work in history, and consistently one of the 15 most popular websites ranked by Alexa; as of 2021, Wikipedia was ranked the 13th most popular site”.

It is difficult to say exactly how many and who are the scholars who actively participate in the editing of historical entries, or whether researchers and teachers are mainly consumers of the encyclopedia or also contribute to its creation and to what extent. In Italy, in recent years, many articles and books have been published on the subject, although it was with some delay that the academic community began to pay attention to the phenomenon; in the international arena, Wikipedia studies have been discussed for some time, and it should be remembered that about fifteen years ago

Roy Rosenzweig pointed out that historians would have to deal with Wikipedia, “one reason professional historians need to pay attention to Wikipedia is because our students do”, although an anonymous historiography, collective and not subject to peer review was “unimaginable in our professional culture”.

Scholars, professors and researchers continue to adopt a variety of attitudes, ranging from those who ban Wikipedia because it is considered unstable by nature and written according to amateur methods, to those who call for interventionist choices with appeals to participation or even ideological writing. The fact remains that it is now impossible not to take into account the challenge launched by this operating reality, which is well established and has reached a stage of solidification of the confused magma that characterized it in its early years, as Andrew Lih had already pointed out.

Historicisation of the Present

Wikipedia is the main source of information for a huge number of readers, with its 55 million entries, 6.4 of which are in English (with more than a thousand administrators and 27 million registered users) and 1.7 in Italian (in ninth place in terms of quantity in October 2021, with an average monthly growth of about 10,000 entries for almost 2.2 million registered users and 117 administrators), for a total of 312 active language editions: a number far greater than that of the 193 Member States of the United Nations. About ten years ago, “the online encyclopaedia was nominated for the UNESCO World Heritage List, underscoring its status as a global cultural phenomenon”, as José van Dijck observed, and in the meantime the Wikipedia Foundation has also become a not insignificant economic entity that in 2017 declared a budget of about 120 million dollars. In March 2021, the launch of Wikimedia Enterprise was announced, “a commercial product designed to sell and deliver Wikipedia’s content directly to Big Tech companies”, as the website states.

This massive use of the encyclopedia for a wide variety of purposes, and not only for researching strictly historical information, contributes to introducing Wikipedian contents and methods of communication into the widespread culture, despite the well-known disclaimer “Wikipedia makes no guarantee of validity” placed on the opening page. Within the “new apocryphal gospel of the telematic generation of the beginning of the millennium” (Miguel Gotor’s definition) we find hundreds of thousands of pages on historical topics, but the historical ratio presides over all the entries by virtue of their notability: the concept that guides the attribution of a content’s “encyclopedicity”, because it is assumed that a topic is notable if it has already been significantly treated by reliable sources independent of the subject; in other words, if it has already been in some way “historicized”. The idea of timeliness, of Wikipedia’s ‘direct grasp’ of reality, also puts strong pressure on the historicisation of present time. At the same time, this public space now constitutes an innovative way of producing history on the web, which follows some principles of digital public history.

Deborah Paci recently pointed out that never before, and not only in quantitative terms, has an endless number of “non-experts” been able to produce and disseminate historical content in a space regulated by the Five Pillars of Wikipedia, which must be constantly checked and which lend themselves to discussions that are not yet closed.

Faith in the Npov

In order to examine the presence of history in Wikipedia, we can follow the paths offered by the various thematic and chronological portals, with their numerous ramifications for each different language edition. In fact, however, the chain of associations between entries determines a prioritising effect, defining the boundaries and relevance of a more general topic, which may be significant for those who approach the encyclopedia with a view to an exercise or public discourse, but the very articulation of categories and subcategories lacks solid guidelines and remains entrusted to the associative sensitivity of the user. It is therefore necessary to quickly recall the ideology and practice of the functioning of the Wikipedian world, starting from the neutral point of view (Npov: a principle included among the Five Pillars and defined as non-negotiable), the prohibition of including original research content in the articles (no original research, Nor: because Wikipedia proposes itself as a tertiary source) and the principle of verifiability (V) with reference to sources.

The Npov encompasses in an acronym, made up of simplified prescriptions, centuries of historical and philosophical reflection on the links between subject and object in the act of knowledge, without ever referring to them in any way. Wikipedia makes the principle of neutrality, rather than objectivity, its founding myth, and ends up adhering to a dated and traditional concept of history that is factualist and consensual. The chronologies and discussions of the individual entries provide endless evidence of the users’ ‘act of faith’ towards the ideology of the Npov, without which the whole project would have no basis on which to stand. While in the community there seems to be a consolidated faith in the ‘bare facts’ and the utopia of a world in which knowledge is produced by all and accessible to all, in 2011 Larry Sanger himself distanced himself from the creature he founded with Jimmy Wales. In his opinion, Wikipedia has contributed to the consolidation of a pervasive anti-intellectualism that has completely delegitimised the role of expertise and the importance of learning as memorisation. Clearly, these are issues that have also been discussed elsewhere and that have marked the way of doing and studying history in the transition from the 20th to the 21st century.

This is another reason why various essays and articles have carefully examined the history of Wikipedia entries, philologically, trying to cast a glance at the boundless background that presides over every page of the encyclopedia, of this virtual marketplace that is the result of the work of real members of a large intellectual community, innervated by ideals and capable of regeneration, even if it is always crossed by tensions, marked by edit wars and punctuated by political or ideological conflicts of various kinds.

Studying Wikipedia

As several examples show, a systematic analysis of all the historical entries in the encyclopaedia – i.e. the background from which the negotiations that led to a final, and in any case always provisional, draft emerge – would be an impossible and perhaps even senseless task. The only way to proceed is by means of cores, monitoring individual ‘hot’ entries or entries on which we have a frame of reference regarding events, literature, public usage.

Another way of proceeding in the analysis of Wikipedia is the comparison between different language editions of general overview pages on major topics. We have done this on the entries dedicated to the First World War for various language editions, noting a significant process of progressive convergence of entries as the centenary of the event approaches. However, it should be remembered that the encyclopedia continues to be written mainly by Europeans and Americans.

In conclusion, it must be remembered that any research hypothesis must nevertheless come to terms with a source that is quite anomalous for historians, because it is perpetually changing: the entries are never definitive and stable, but constantly open to rewriting and modification. The process of developing themes through additions and glosses is far removed from an idea of history as a discipline of context. Yet it is desirable for scholars and researchers to be directly involved in writing and rewriting Wikipedia, or at least to make an effort to get to know its rules and ideology, so as to train reader-consumers to make a conscious use of the online encyclopedia, one that is critical but not biased, perhaps also capable of recognising the emerging creative commons and its political potential.

_____________________

Further Reading

  • Bianchi, Roberto, and Gilda Zazzara. “La storia formattata. Wikipedia tra creazione, uso e consumo.” Passato e presente, no. 100 (2017): 131-155.
  • Lih, Andrew. The Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World’s Greatest Encyclopedia. New York: Hyperion, 2009.
  • Barbe, Lionel, Louise Merzeau, and Valérie Schafer (eds.). Wikipédia objet scientifique non identifié. Nanterre: Presses Universitaires de Paris Ouest, 2015.

Web Resources

_____________________

Image Credits

Wikidata map image generated on 06 April 2018 © CC-0 via Commons.

Recommended Citation

Bianchi, Roberto: History on Wikipedia: A Non-neutral World. In: Public History Weekly 10 (2022) 1, DOI: dx.doi.org/10.1515/phw-2022-19332.

Editorial Responsibility
Enrica Salvatori / Deborah Paci

En 2006, Roy Rosenzweig a invité des historiens à s’engager avec Wikipedia pour la seule raison que leurs propres étudiants l’utilisaient. Aujourd’hui, 15 ans plus tard, la participation des historiens à la plate-forme collaborative la plus vaste et la plus répandue pour la production collective de connaissances est inconnue. La relation entre la recherche historique et Wikipédia continue d’être controversée en raison des « cinq piliers » et des difficultés d’examen des entrées.

Comparaison inévitable

Vingt ans après sa naissance, il existe désormais une ample littérature sur Wikipédia et son histoire; cependant nous éprouvons encore quelques difficultés à comprendre l’attention que les historiens portent à l’égard de cette encyclopédie en ligne libre et collaborative qui, ainsi qu’on peut le lire sur la page de présentation, “is a free content, multilingual online encyclopedia written an maintained by a community of volunteers through a model of open collaboration, using a wiki-based editing system. Individual contributors, also called editors, are known as Wikipedians. It is the largest and most-read reference work in history, and consistently one of the 15 most popular websites ranked by Alexa; as of 2021, Wikipedia was ranked the 13th most popular site”.

Il est difficile de dire précisément combien et qui sont les universitaires qui participent activement à la rédaction des notices historiques ou bien si les chercheurs et les enseignants sont surtout des consommateurs de l’encyclopédie ou bien s’ils contribuent également à sa réalisation et dans quelle mesure. Ces dernières années, en Italie, de nombreux travaux ont été publiés sur ce thème, bien que ce soit avec un certain retard que, dans le secteur scientifique, on ait commence à regarder avec attention ce phénomène; à l’étranger, cela fait longtemps que l’on discute de Wikipedia studies et il faut rappeler qu’il y a une quinzaine d’année,

Roy Rosenzweig soulignait que les historiens ne peuvent se soustraire à la confrontation avec “one reason professional historians need to pay attention to Wikipedia is because our students do”, en ce sens qu’une historiographie anonyme, collective et non soumise au jugement de ses pairs était “unimaginable in our professional culture”.

Parmi les spécialistes, les professeurs et les chercheurs, diverses attitudes demeurent: elles vont de la mise au ban de Wikipédia considérée comme instable par nature et rédigée de façon amateuriale, à celle consistant à inviter à agir de façon interventionniste en appelant à la participation voire à l’écriture militante. Indéniablement, il est désormais impossible de ne pas prendre acte du défi lancé par cette réalité en action, consolidée, arrivée désormais à la phase de la solidification après le magma qui l’avait initialement caractérisée lors de ses premières années de vie, ainsi que l’avait relevé Andrew Lih.

Historicisation du présent

Wikipédia est la principale source d’information pour un nombre énorme de lecteurs, avec ses 55 millions de notices, dont 6,4 en langue anglaise (et plus de mille administrateurs ainsi que 27 millions d’usagers enregistrés) et 1,7 en langue italienne (à la neuvième place en terme quantitatif en octobre 2021, avec une croissance mensuelle d’environ 10 000 notices pour près de 2,2 millions d’usagers enregistrés et 117 administrateurs), pour un total de 312 éditions linguistiques actives : un nombre amplement supérieur à celui des 193 États-membres de Nations Unies. Il y a une dizaine d’années, “the online encyclopedia was nominated for the UNESCO World Heritage List, underscoring its status as a global cultural phenomenon”, ainsi que l’avait observé José van Dijck. Entre-temps, la Wikipedia Foundation est aussi devenue un sujet économique important qui affichait en 2017 un chiffre d’affaire de 120 millions de dollars. Au mois de mars 2021, le lancement de Wikimedia Enterprise a été annoncé, “a commercial product designed to sell and deliver Wikipedia’s content directly to Big Tech companies”, ainsi qu’on peut lire sur le site.

Cet usage massif de l’encyclopédie pour des recherches les plus disparates et pas uniquement pour des informations de type strictement historique, contribue à injecter dans la culture diffuse des contenus et des modalités de communication de matrice wikipédienne, malgré la célèbre annonce “Wikipedia makes no guarantee of validity” située sur la page initiale. À l’intérieur du “nouvel Évangile apocryphe de la génération télématique du début du millénaire” (la définition est de Miguel Gotor) nous trouvons une centaine de milliers de pages concernant des thèmes historiques, mais la ratio historique préside à toutes les rubriques en vertu de leur notability: le concept qui oriente l’attribution d’un contenu d’“encyclopédicité”, parce que l’on suppose qu’un argument est notable dès lors qu’il a déjà été traité de façon significative par des sources fiables et indépendantes du sujet. En d’autres termes, s’il est déjà pour ainsi dire “historicisé”. L’idée d’immédiateté, de “prise directe” de Wikipédia sur le réel opère en outre une forte pression sur l’historicisation du temps présent. En même temps, cet espace public constitue désormais une modalité innovante de production d’histoire en ligne qui reproduit certains des principes de la digital public history.

Deborah Paci l’a récemment rappelé: jamais jusqu’à présent n’avait existé une quantité aussi infinie de “non professionnels” en mesure de produire et diffuser des contenus d’histoire au sein d’un espace régulé par les Cinq piliers de Wikipédia qui sont perpétuellement soumis à des vérifications et qui sont l’objet de discussion encore ouvertes.

La foi en Npov

Pour examiner la place de l’histoire sur Wikipédia, nous pouvons emprunter les parcours proposés sur les divers portails thématiques et chronologiques avec leurs nombreuses ramifications pour chaque édition linguistique différente. Cependant, concrètement, la chaîne des associations entre les notices détermine un effet de priorité, définit des limites et des pertinences au sein d’un thème plus général, ce qui peut avoir du sens pour un lecteur consultant l’encyclopédie pour un exercice ou pour un discours public, mais l’articulation-même de catégories et de sous-catégories est privée d’une orientation solide et reste soumise à la sensibilité associative de chaque utilisateur. Il est donc vite nécessaire de rappeler le principe et la pratique du fonctionnement du monde wikipédien en commençant par le Point de vue neutre (neutral point of view, Npov: l’un des Cinq piliers, défini comme non négociable) ; l’interdiction d’insérer dans les notices du contenu provenant de recherches originales (no original research, Nor: car Wikipédia se présente comme une tertiary source [source tierce]) ; le principe de vérifiabilité (verificability, V) avec l’indication des sources.

Le Npov distille avec un acronyme composé de prescriptions simplifiées des siècles de réflexions historiques et philosophiques sur les liens entre sujet et objet dans l’acte de connaissance, sans pour autant jamais les rappeler. Wikipédia fait du principe de neutralité plus que de celui de l’objectivité, son mythe fondateur, finissant par adhérer à une conception de l’histoire factuelle et consensuelle, datée et traditionnelle. Les chronologies et les discussions de chaque notice fournissent d’innombrables preuves de l’“acte de foi” des usagers à l’égard de l’idéologie du Npov, sans laquelle le projet dans son intégralité n’aurait pas de base sur laquelle se tenir. Si au sein de la communauté semblent cohabiter d’une part la foi inébranlable en l’idée des fait “purs et durs” et d’autre part l’utopie d’un monde où la connaissance est produite par tous et accessible à tous, Larry Sanger lui-même, en 2011, prend les distances vis-à-vis de la créature qu’il a précédemment fondé avec Jimmy Wales. À son avis, Wikipédia a contribué au consolidement d’un anti-intellectualisme diffus qui a complètement délégitimé le rôle de l’expertise ainsi que de l’apprentissage comme processus de mémorisation. Il est évident qu’il s’agit ici de thèmes qui font l’objet de discussion dans d’autres secteurs et qui ont marqué la façon de faire et d’étudier l’histoire dans le passage du XXe au XXIe siècle.

C’est aussi pour cela que dans plusieurs travaux et communications, l’histoire de certaines notices de Wikipédia prises individuellement a été étudiée philologiquement pour tenter de scruter le rétro-texte immense qui détermine chaque page de l’encyclopédie, de cette virtuelle place publique qui est le fruit du travail des membres réels d’une nombreuse communauté intellectuelle, nourrie d’idéaux et en mesure de se régénérer, malgré les nombreuses tensions qui la traversent et marquée par des edit wars (guerres d’édition) et constellée de conflits politiques ou idéologiques de différents types.

Étudier Wikipédia

Comme divers exemples le montrent, une analyse systématique de toutes les notices d’histoire de l’encyclopédie – c’est-à-dire du rétro-texte d’où émergent les négociations ayant mené à la rédaction finale bien que toujours provisoire serait une entreprise impossible, pour ne pas dire insensée. La seule façon de procéder est d’effectuer des sondages et de suivre en particulier quelques notices “chaudes” ou sur lesquelles on dispose d’un cadre de référence en terme d’événements, de littérature, d’usage public.

Une autre façon de procéder dans l’analyse de Wikipédia concerne la comparaison entre les différentes éditions linguistiques des pages relatives aux contextes généraux sur de grands thèmes Première guerre mondiale ans plusieurs éditions linguistiques et nous avons remarqué un processus significatif de convergence progressive des notices au fur et à mesure que se rapprochait le centenaire de l’événement. En tout état de cause, il faut rappeler que l’encyclopédie continue en large mesure à être rédigée surtout par des personnes vivant en Europe et aux États-Unis.

Pour conclure, il faut rappeler que toute hypothèse de recherche doit dans tous prendre la mesure d’une source absolument hors norme aux yeux des historiens en ce sens qu’elle change continuellement : les rubriques ne sont jamais définitives et stables mais constamment ouvertes à la réécriture et à la modification. Le processus de développement des thèmes par ajout et gloses est fort distant de l’idée de l’histoire en tant que discipline du contexte. Il est cependant souhaitable que les spécialistes et les chercheurs s’attachent à participer au travail d’écriture et réécriture de Wikipedia, ou tout du moins s’efforcent d’en connaître les règles et les principes afin de former les lecteurs-consommateurs  à une utilisation éclairée de l’encyclopédie en ligne, critique mais sans préjugés et en mesure, idéalement, de pouvoir aussi reconnaître les creative commons émergentes ainsi que leur potentiel politique.

_____________________

Lectures supplémentaires

  • Bianchi, Roberto, and Gilda Zazzara. “La storia formattata. Wikipedia tra creazione, uso e consumo.” Passato e presente, no. 100 (2017): 131-155.
  • Lih, Andrew. The Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World’s Greatest Encyclopedia. New York: Hyperion, 2009.
  • Barbe, Lionel, Louise Merzeau, and Valérie Schafer (eds.). Wikipédia objet scientifique non identifié. Nanterre: Presses Universitaires de Paris Ouest, 2015.

Ressources sur le web

_____________________

Crédits illustration

Wikidata map image generated on 06 April 2018 © CC-0 via Commons.

Citation recommandée

Bianchi, Roberto: History on Wikipedia: A Non-neutral World. In: Public History Weekly 10 (2022) 1, DOI: dx.doi.org/10.1515/phw-2022-19332.

Responsabilité éditoriale

Enrica Salvatori / Deborah Paci

Copyright (c) 2019 by De Gruyter Oldenbourg and the author, all rights reserved. This work may be copied and redistributed for non-commercial, educational purposes, if permission is granted by the author and usage right holders. For permission please contact the editor-in-chief (see here). All articles are reliably referenced via a DOI, which includes all comments that are considered an integral part of the publication.

The assessments in this article reflect only the perspective of the author. PHW considers itself as a pluralistic debate journal, contributions to discussions are very welcome. Please note our commentary guidelines (https://public-history-weekly.degruyter.com/contribute/).


Categories: 10 (2022) 1
DOI: dx.doi.org/10.1515/phw-2022-19332

Tags: , , , ,

2 replies »

  1. Italian version below. To all readers we recommend the automatic DeepL-Translator for 22 languages. Just copy and paste.

    OPEN PEER REVIEW

    A Fascinating Case Study

    Reflecting on the dialectic – or the absence of this – between the typically Wikipedian method of fixing knowledge and historical science is a luxury, and the scarcity of reflections on this issue integrates the parallelism with luxury goods. Using Wikipedia is for many, disturbingly close to everyone; understanding Wikipedia seems to be of interest to few and to move even fewer people. It is precisely for this reason that the following work must be interpreted according to the key not necessarily of historical interest, or professional curiosity, but of social sensitivity: studying – as historians – the User Generated Content platforms means investigating the validity of answers that are now received by the vast majority of history questions, questions posed by those who cannot afford the luxury of criticism. This is the first great merit of this article, primarily social merit.

    The 2006 work of Roy Rosenzweig[1], a pioneering reflection on the field, is the starting point for the Wikipedia studies from a historiographical point of view and this can also be seen in the article: when quoted directly, or when evoked indirectly as with the right thoughts on the constant change of the Wikipedian product (never a final one by its nature). It is this continuous transformation of the content that is analyzed, like an archival envelope that is never the same every time you take it in your hands, which makes the Wikipedian world “maddeningly difficult” to face, as Rosenzweig argued, and which perhaps condemns it to a little palatability as a research field. Even more important, then, that 15 years after Rosenzweig’s article and more than 20 years after the birth of Wikipedia, it is now considered “impossible not to take note of the challenge launched by this operating reality”.

    Already present in Rosenzweig and rightly taken up in this work some severe considerations on the Neutral Point of View, a concept that it would be enough to start using in the French equivalent regard, upon which Foucault said everything yet about it[2], to make it explode in all its contradictions. The Neutral Point of View is not only unscientific and inadequate, but it is also problematic in a decisive way if it is inserted in a context where those who think the past starting from a question of the present not only have the pleasure of research and the curiosity of the human yesterday, but he is also a professional with social duties, such as the preservation of a post-1945 political system that unites all of Europe, a system that arose only and exclusively thanks to the destruction of experiences such as the fascist and National Socialist one. Even if we pretend that interpretation did not play such a central role in science like historical science, where “most of the pieces of the mosaic are lost forever” – as Serge Grusinzki said[3] -, the NPOV would still be inadequate: inadequate for an approach to yesterday that arises from a desire of protection of today, which characterizes (or should characterize) the work of historians.

    Particularly accurate is this work also on issues such as the “enterprise” dimension of the platform created by Jimmy Wales, a dimension detached from the banal “search for strictly historical information”; this is a thought that allows us to understand what we have in front of us, and therefore to approach it with awareness without which a work of analysis and criticism would completely miss the mark. A mark that the author hits in full instead, with the suggestion to investigate the public aspect of topics, and therefore of entries, which are defined as “hot”: it is precisely here that we must investigate to weigh on the balance of the public use of the story the Wikipedian ability to talk about the past. The needle, which will be able to carry out its work only and exclusively thanks to a multidisciplinary approach, will oscillate between Michael Frisch and Jürgen Habermas.

    Furthermore, the use of certain terminology in the text is also appreciable, which helps to clarify what Wikipedia is: “ideology”, an incredibly apt expression to indicate the complex of Wikipedian Pillars and guidelines and introduced in La storia formattata (Bianchi, Zazzara)[4], and “virtual square” to define the Wikipedia environment, an extremely interesting interpretation proposed by Lorenzo Filipaz[5]. It is thus, between ideologies and squares, that Wikipedia turns into a fascinating case study for a historian. In addition, clearly, to an urgency that can no longer be postponed.

    [1] R. Rosenzweig, Can History Be Open Source? Wikipedia and the Future of the Past, «The Journal of American History», XCIII (2006), n.1.

    [2] M. Foucault, Nascita della clinica. Una archeologia dello sguardo medico, Einaudi, Torino 1998.

    [3] S. Gruzinski, Abbiamo ancora bisogno della storia? Il senso del passato nel mondo globalizzato, Raffaello Cortina Editore, Milano 2016, p. 61.

    [4] R. Bianchi, G. Zazzara, La storia formattata. Wikipedia tra creazione, uso e consumo, «Passato e Presente», XXXV (2017), n. 100, p. 141.

    [5] L. Filipaz, Wi-chi? Battaglie per il sapere in rete, «Zapruder, storie in movimento», I (2016), n. 39, p. 148.

    __________

    Riflettere sulla dialettica – o sull’assenza di questa – tra il metodo di fissaggio del sapere tipicamente wikipediano e la scienza storica è un lusso, e la scarsità di riflessioni su questo tema integra il parallelismo con i beni di lusso. Usare Wikipedia è per molti, in un numero che si avvicina inquietantemente al tutti; comprendere Wikipedia sembra interessare pochi, e muovere ancor meno persone. È proprio per questo che il seguente lavoro a mio avviso deve essere interpretato secondo la chiave non necessariamente dell’interesse storico, della curiosità professionale, bensì secondo quella della sensibilità sociale: studiare – da storici – le piattaforme User Generated Content significa indagare la validità delle risposte che ricevono ormai la stragrande maggioranza delle domande di storia, domande poste da chi non può permettersi il lusso della critica. Questo è il primo grande merito di questo articolo, un merito in primis sociale.

    Il lavoro del 2006 di Roy Rosenzweig[1], una riflessione senz’ombra di dubbio pioneristica, è il punto di partenza per gli Wikipedia studies approcciati dal punto di vista storiografico e ciò lo si nota anche nell’articolo: quando citato direttamente, o quando evocato indirettamente come con le giuste riflessioni sul perenne cangiantismo del prodotto (mai finale per sua natura) wikipediano. È questa continua trasformazione del contenuto che si analizza, come una busta d’archivio mai uguale ogni volta che la prendi tra le mani, che rende il mondo wikipediano “maddeningly difficult” da affrontare, come sosteneva Rosenzweig, e che forse lo condanna ad una poca appetibilità come campo di ricerca. Ancora più importante quindi, che a 15 anni dall’articolo di Rosenzweig ed a più di 20 dalla nascita di Wikipedia, si ritenga ormai “impossibile non prendere atto della sfida lanciata da questa realtà operante”.

    Presenti già in Rosenzweig e giustamente riprese in questo lavoro alcune severe considerazioni sul Neutral Point of View, concetto che basterebbe iniziare ad utilizzare nel corrispettivo francese di foucaultiana memoria regard[2] per farlo esplodere in tutte le sue contraddizioni. Il Neutral Point of View non è solo ascientifico ed inadeguato, ma è anche problematico in maniera determinante se lo si inserisce in un contesto dove chi restituisce il passato a partire da una domanda del presente non ha solo il piacere della ricerca e la curiosità dello ieri umano, ma è anche un professionista con dei doveri sociali, come la tutela di un sistema politico post-1945 che accomuna tutta Europa, un sistema sorto solo ed esclusivamente grazie alla distruzione di esperienze come quella fascista e nazionalsocialista. Anche se l’interpretazione non rivestisse un ruolo così centrale in una scienza come quella storica, dove “la maggior parte delle tessere del mosaico risultano perdute per sempre”[3], il NPOV sarebbe comunque inadeguato: inadeguato ad un approccio allo ieri che nasca da un desiderio di tutela dell’oggi, che caratterizza (o dovrebbe caratterizzare) il lavoro degli storici.

    Particolarmente puntuale il lavoro in esame anche su temi come la dimensione “enterprise” della piattaforma creata da Jimmy Wales, dimensione avulsa dalla banale “ricerca di informazioni di tipo strettamente storico”; questa è una riflessione che ci permette di capire cosa abbiamo di fronte a noi, e quindi di approcciarsi a ciò con una consapevolezza senza la quale un lavoro di analisi e critica mancherebbe completamente il segno. Segno che l’autore colpisce in pieno invece, con il suggerimento di indagare l’aspetto pubblico di argomenti, e quindi di voci, che vengono definiti “caldi”: è proprio qui si deve indagare per pesare sulla bilancia dell’uso pubblico della storia la capacità wikipediana nel parlare di passato. L’ago, che potrà svolgere il suo lavoro solo ed esclusivamente grazie ad un approccio multidisciplinare, oscillerà tra Michael Frisch e Jürgen Habermas.

    Inoltre, apprezzabile anche l’utilizzo di una determinata terminologia nel testo, che aiuta a chiarire cosa sia Wikipedia: “ideologia”, espressione incredibilmente azzeccata per indicare il complesso di Pilastri e linee guida wikipediane e introdotto in La storia formattata (Bianchi, Zazzara)[4], e “piazza virtuale” per definire l’ambiente Wikipedia, chiave di lettura estremamente interessante proposta da Lorenzo Filipaz[5]. È così, tra ideologie e piazze, che Wikipedia si trasforma in un affascinante caso di studio per uno storico. Oltre, chiaramente, ad un’impellenza non più rimandabile.

    [1] R. Rosenzweig, Can History Be Open Source? Wikipedia and the Future of the Past, «The Journal of American History», XCIII (2006), n.1.

    [2] M. Foucault, Nascita della clinica. Una archeologia dello sguardo medico, Einaudi, Torino 1998.

    [3] S. Gruzinski, Abbiamo ancora bisogno della storia? Il senso del passato nel mondo globalizzato, Raffaello Cortina Editore, Milano 2016, p. 61.

    [4] R. Bianchi, G. Zazzara, La storia formattata. Wikipedia tra creazione, uso e consumo, «Passato e Presente», XXXV (2017), n. 100, p. 141.

    [5] L. Filipaz, Wi-chi? Battaglie per il sapere in rete, «Zapruder, storie in movimento», I (2016), n. 39, p. 148.

  2. To all readers we recommend the automatic DeepL-Translator for 22 languages. Just copy and paste.

    OPEN PEER REVIEW

    A collaborative critique of Wikipedia?

    After reading a “History on Wikipedia: a non-neutral world”, what one feels is a great thirst for more information, which is perhaps simultaneously a great merit and weakness of the article. However, it would be unfair to demand additional details for a piece that does not intend to be an encyclopedia on the subject, to play with the paper’s central theme. The article addresses a crucial topic: Wikipedia, or more precisely, “the presence of history in Wikipedia”, which is justified for several reasons, many of which are pointed out in the text itself, such as the current significance of Wikipedia and its weight in online searches. One factor that appears discreetly in the text must also be underlined: the way in which wiki frames our thinking and, consequently, research in history, both as a source of factual data and in the reproduction of old-fashioned concepts regarding historical studies (this point is further developed in the article). That said, there is no doubt regarding the relevance of the paper.

    The strong point of the article is treating Wikipedia as a complex object. The paper does not demote the portal with the disdain with which many colleagues adopt towards it – since it is very far from well-evaluated scientific dissemination vehicles (prominent journals and prestigious publishing houses). Nevertheless, neither does it adopt a posture of romanticizing the collaborative aspect of the initiative. Being a complex object, the wiki deserves to be examined in its entrails and subjected to different observation instruments.

    The article highlights critical elements of the wiki, such as the effect of the idea of notability (in the choice of the entry’s creation and the hierarchy of the themes), the effects of the “Five Pillars”, particularly the ‘Npov’, and the logic of writing and rewriting entries through additions and glosses. Finally, it points out ways to study the wiki, based on dense investigations of specific “hot” entries. As the author says: “The only way to proceed is by means of cores, monitoring individual ‘hot’ entries or entries on which we have a frame of reference regarding events, literature, public usage.”

    I’m not sure it’s the only way. I think it’s possible to find so many other ways to study the wiki’s production, re-editing, and consumption. But this is not my central point. I understand that the main problem of the article is the abundance of themes (as I listed above) and slight consequent lack of depth of the central points that, it seems to me, would be associated with the criticism of the “Npov” pattern (seeing the title of the article). I believe that the final part, dedicated to a summary of studies on history in Wikipedia, could be removed in favor of analyzing the contradictions between the current state of historical knowledge (based on theoretical, methodological and epistemological principles) and the pillars of the wiki, maybe – I underline – maybe through some concrete examples or some other story like the one involving Larry Sanger. I imagine examples like this abound.

    The methodological aspects of the study of the wiki, both in history and in any other discipline, would deserve to be dealt with in greater detail perhaps in another paper. The complexity of the research object called Wikipedia, which is stressed in the paper, could be invoked to justify the creation of conferences, work teams, or observatories on the topic, which historians have largely neglected despite its current significance. In the same way that the wiki is a collective product, we should create collective forms of critique of the content, which would bring benefits to the whole of society.

Pin It on Pinterest