WIDE OPEN
Implementing a class
wiki
Mark Phillipson
CCNMTL University Seminar
Columbia University
October 27, 2005
Wikis and collective
authoring
Wikipedia’s Alexander Hamilton entry (on 10/14/2005)
Wikipedia’s Alexander Hamilton entry (on 10/24/2005)
History flow rendering of Wikipedia’s ‘Microsoft’ entry, 11/2001 - 6/2003
History flow rendering of Wikipedia’s ‘Chocolate’ entry, 12/2001-7/2003
History flow rendering of Wikipedia’s ‘Abortion’ entry, 12/2001-6/2003,
graphed by saved versions
History flow rendering of Wikipedia’s ‘Abortion’ entry, 12/2001-6/2003,
graphed by date
Everything2 ‘Alexander Hamilton’ page (on 10/14/2005)
Breeding ground: Open Source Software movement
Various models of OSS development
Ward Cunningham,
progenitor of wikis
A brief taxonomy of
pedagogical wikis
A student-authored ‘resource’ wiki: Social Justice Movements
A student-authored ‘gateway’ wiki: The SaratogaCensus
A student-authored ‘simulation’ wiki: The Holocaust Project
Student ‘illuminated’ wikis - RAP1 (2003) and RAP2 (2005)
Background of the
Romanticism
Audience Project
“Lord Byron Shaking the Dust of England From His Shoes”
- Max Beerbohm, 1916
Letters to John Murray 1817 - 1819
Pray when I send you a parcel or packet—do acknowledge it—I care nothing about my letters or your
answers—I only want to know, when I have taken trouble about a thing that it has arrived.
When parcels that have cost some pains in the composition, & great trouble in the copying are sent to you I
should at least be put out of Suspense by the immediate acknowledgement [sic] per return of post….—I am
naturally—knowing what continental posts are—anxious to hear that they are arrived….
Don Juan shall be an entire horse or none…. In no way will I have the poem mutilated
I will permit no curtailments…. You shan’t make Canticles of my Cantos….. I will have none of your damned
cutting and slashing
It is serious to me—who am thousands of miles off—& have no opportunity of not proving myself the fool yr.
printer makes me—except your pleasure & leisure forsooth. The Gods prosper—& forgive you for I wont
[The author] doth kindly trust—with all due deference to those superior persons—the publisher and printer—that
they will in future—less misspell—misplace—mistake and mis-everything, the humbled M.S.S. of their humble
Servant.
Proof of Don Juan Canto I, with marginal jousting between Byron
and his London editors
Illustration accompanying Mazeppa (1819)
“The Finding of Don Juan By Haidee”
- Ford Madox Brown, 1873
In times of old, books were as religious oracles; as literature
advanced, they next became venerable preceptors; they then
descended to the rank of instructive friends; and as their
numbers increased, they sunk still lower to that of entertaining
companions; and at present they seem degraded into culprits to
hold up their hands at the bar of every self- elected, yet not the
less peremptory, judge, who chuses to write from humour or
interest
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, 1817
With an unstable text that can be intruded upon by other
author-readers, how do you, caught in the maze, avoid the
trivial? How do you duck the garbage? Venerable novelistic
values like unity, integrity, coherence, vision, voice, seem to be
in danger. Eloquence is being redefined. "Text" has lost its
canonical certainty. How does one judge, analyze, write about
a work that never reads the same way twice?
Sven Birkerts, The Gutenberg Elegies, 1994
The most important characteristics of modern literature, are the extent of surface over which it is diffused, and the
number of persons that participate in it.
Indeed, if there be such a thing as truth, it must infallibly be struck out by the collision of mind with mind.
William Godwin, Political Justice (1793)
No self is an island; each exists in a fabric of relations that is now more complex and mobile than ever
before … a person is always located at 'nodal points' of specific communication circuits …
The truth of (a) statement and the competence of its sender are… subject to the collective approval of a
group of persons who are competent on an equal basis.
Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition (1984)
Romanticism seminar website, UC Berkeley, 2000
Envisioning RAP
Comparing Wikis in 2002
RAP demo
Live page at http://ssad.bowdoin.edu: 8668/space/Wide+Open+demo
Two generations of RAP students mark up Clare’s “I Am”
The Romantic Audience Project
RAP 1 (2003): http://ssad.bowdoin.edu:8668/
RAP 2 (2005):
http://ssad.bowdoin.edu:9780/snipsnap/eng242s05/space/start
Talk demo:
http://ssad.bowdoin.edu:8668/space/Wide+Open+demo
References
Behrent, Steven C. "The Romantic Reader." A Companion to
Romanticism. Ed. Duncan Wu. Cambr idge, MA: Blackwell,
1997. 91-100.
Birkerts, Sven. The Gutenberg Elegies : The Fate of
Reading in an Electronic Age. Boston: Faber, 1994.
Guzdial, M., et. al. "When Collaboration DoesnХt Work. "
2002. Available:
http://coweb.cc.gatech.edu:8888/csl/uploads/24/CMCI-ICLSfinal.pdf. July 7 2004.
Klancher, Jon P. The Making of English Reading Audiences,
1790-1832. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1986.
Lyotard, Jean Francois. The Postmodern Condition : A
Report on Knowledge. Theory and History of Literature. Vol.
10. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1984, 1984.
McHenry, Robert. "The Faith-Based Encyclopedia." 2004.
Available: http://www.techcentralstation.com/111504A.html.
October 5 2005.
Nakakoji, K, et. al. ТEvolution Patterns of Open-Source
Software Systems and Commu nities.У2002. Available:
http://www.kid.rcast.utokyo.ac.jp/%7Ekumi yo/mypapers/IWPSE2002.pdf. October
2 2005.
Newlyn, Lucy. Reading, Writing, and Romanticism : The
Anxiety of Reception. New York: Oxford UP, 2000.
Phillipson, Mark, and Hamilton, David. "The Romantic
Audience Project: A Wiki Experiment." 2004. Romantic
Circles. Available:
http://www.rc.umd.edu/pedagogies/common s/innovations/ra
p/index.htm. Oct. 2 2005.
ViЋgas, Fernanda B., Wattenberg, Martin, and Dave, Kushal.
"Studying Cooperation and Conflict between Authors with
History Flow Visualizations." 2004. Available:
http://portal.acm.org/ft_gateway.cfm?id=985765&type=pdf&c
oll=GUIDE&dl=GUIDE&CFID=59226987&CFTOKE N=87355
038. September 20, 2005.