I'm at that point in the semester where I'm asking students to think about what they want to do for their more open-ended assignment. Rather than simply answering questions I've asked or applying course material to a particular case, I request that they propose a topic they would like to research. This is a source of difficulty and anxiety for some. Granted, there is an element of risk in the openness but I never had much difficulty with choosing a topic myself as a student, so it's difficult to understand how I can best help as a teacher. For example, for a film class I wrote a brief essay on Blade Runner that I really enjoyed working on and am quite fond of. I didn't get the grade I thought I deserved -- and I suspect the instructor didn't "get it", so I appreciate the risk -- but I had no problem conceiving the topic and executing the argument. (Fortunately, the essay would be widely read on the Web, for which I would get a lot of responses and it was even translated into Italian -- not too bad for an undergraduate essay!)

So while I always liked these type of assignments, some bright students can have difficulties. To address this I do the following:

1. Ask the students to send me a proposal with a sense of the topic, argument, concepts and readings that will be used. (I started this in my second semester of teaching and it yielded better results.)
2. Provide example topics and/or even an example proposal.
3. Encourage students to review their reading responses or bring relevant news items to the attention of the class throughout the semester, so as to build a repository of ideas.
4. Provide a list of themes/concepts at the beginning of the course and highlight them throughout.
5. Encourage them to brainstorm a number of (provocative) arguments they could make as they research and outline their topic.

But, still, some students experience difficulty with choosing a topic. Are there any resources you would recommend in guiding students through the writing of open-ended assignments?

So much time in teaching is spent on trivial but time-consuming tasks. Having taught for a couple of years now, some things have gotten easier, but many chores remain. I've tried various free tools, and there are many proprietary solutions, but none satisfy. The following are personal -- and poorly documented -- hacks that are useful to me.

Grade sheet

I used to use a sophisticated Excel spreadsheet I found on the Web, but the author has since taken it proprietary/commercial, plus it didn't support a simple point system (e.g., 100 points allocated throughout the semester). Also, my sheet now accommodates some of my idiosyncratic policies for class responses and attendance (e.g., dropping the lowest X grades, Y freebie absences).

Grade Reports

This Python script makes use of the XLRD library to read an instance of the above, and generate a report for the whole class or a single student, to the console or as a messages in my drafts mailbox.

Class Calendar

Given the duration of the semester, the days on which a class meets, university holidays, and the class on which an assignment is due, this generates a calendar for the syllabus. (A surprisingly time-consuming manual task.) I hope to incorporate Jewish holidays into this if I can find such a library.

Mailbox Prettyprint

Instead of using the inaccessible and proprietary BlackBoard product, I ask students to e-mail their responses which are automatically sorted into a mailbox. Before class, this script will prettyprint all responses sent since the last class to an HTML page, including (now) MS Word attachments.

I have spent much of the summer working on revising the dissertation into a book manuscript. One of the big changes is a new chapter on Wikipedia consensus. If you would be willing to provide me with feedback, I would be happy to share a draft:

H. G. Wells (1936) thought the "World Encyclopedia" should be more than an information repository, it should also be an institution of "adjustment and adjudication; a clearinghouse of misunderstandings" (p. 921). Wikipedia certainly has its share of misunderstandings, some imported from the conflicted world it documents and some unique to its own undertaking. An example of a contagious real world conflict is the already discussed "Creation-Evolution Controversy" (Wkipedia 2008cec). Also, political and ethnic differences are often mirrored at Wikipedia, prompting the formation of a "Working Group on Ethnic and Cultural Edit Wars" (Wikipedia 2008wgo). There are also plenty of local "misunderstandings," such as whether every episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer deserves its own article. I raised this dispute earlier to illustrate two opposing philosophies at Wikipedia: inclusionism and deletionism. This issue, and the proliferation of articles, gave rise to an even more trivial -- though no less bellicose -- debate: If every television show episode has its own article, how should they be named so as not to conflict with other articles? This discussion reveals possible misunderstandings about consensus, and the difficulties of this decision-making practice in an open community.
In this chapter, I identify the difficulties of consensus decision-making, and its meaning and practice at Wikipedia. I consider this relative to insights from literature about consensus in "real life" communities, such as the Quakers, and the collaborators who built the Internet and Web using "rough consensus and running code."

I am indebted to the help I received on comp.text.tex in formatting my dissertation and dealing with bibliography issues. When I turned to the book manuscript, I decided I wanted to move from APA parenthetical citations towards Chicago footnotes. Unfortunately, this is a complex system, and nothing was up to the task. Fortunately, the biblatex package, an absolutely brilliant piece of work by Philipp Lehman for defining bibliographic styles, became available in beta form. Unfortunately, there were very few styles available in this format. Fortunately, I found a work in progress by Charles Schaum, and began making my own changes to improve compliance with the Chicago Manual of Style. I worked on this through a number of revisions, but eventually came up short. Now, David Fussner has published an amazing package using and demonstrating the power biblatex. I don't imagine there is any bibliographic system out there that is as accommodating to the nuances of Chicago footnotes style.

I don't often post CFPs and I won't be able to attend WikiSym this year, but I am looking forward to reading the submissions and papers. I've been mulling over what it means when people describe "interdisciplinary" -- or "multidisciplinary" -- research and haven't reached any definitive conclusions, but as Inigo Montoya once said to Vizzini, I sometimes think: "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." In any case, I hope this workshop might shed some light on the question in the context of wiki community studies.

Interdisciplinary Research on Wiki Communities, September 8, 2008

The array of approaches to studying wikis is a source of wealth but also a possible source of confusion: What are appropriate methodologies for the analysis of wiki communities? Which are the most critical parameters (both quantitative and qualitative) for study in wiki evolution and outcomes? Is it possible to find effective interdisciplinary approaches to augment our overall understanding of these dynamic creative environments? This workshop intends to provide an opportunity to explore these questions by researchers and practitioners willing to participate in a "brainstorming research meeting".

The Wikipedia Weekly interview with Jimmy Wales turned to a topic dear to my heart: the role of Neutral Point of View in collaboration. Wales explicitly articulated -- in minute 33 -- one of the main themes of my work:

31 Wales: The idea that we should focus on the facts of reality, something I very much believe in, on the other hand, much of Wikipedia tends to focus on which facts of reality, and they tend to be about facts about what other people said. In other words, we are looking for reliable sources and things like that.

32 Wales: Outsources truth? I kind of like that. There's something, a thing that is sometimes said, and I don't care much for it, which is "verifiability not truth." And, the problem I have with that, is that it sort of suggests that we don't care about the truth. We only care about some artificial game of verifiability. What I would say is that we care about verifiability and truth. In other words, the verifiable truth. Things that people with very divergent views can look at and agree. We may not agree with what happened that day, but we can certainly agree on what the New York Times said about it. That is a lot easier to agree on. And it's not that we don't care what the truth is, but we care to write down the truths that we all can agree on.

33 Wales: The whole concept of Neutral Point of View, as I originally envisioned it, was this idea of a social concept, for helping people get along: to avoid or sidestep a lot of philosophical debates. Someone who believes that that truth is socially constructed, and somebody who believes that truth is a correspondence to the facts in reality, they can still work together.

If only I had something like this while working on the dissertation!

... "We here at Mead understand that as students get older and wiser, they need notebooks with increasingly narrow lines," Mead CEO John A. Luke told reporters. "In college, people are at a stage in their education where they require 9/32nds of an inch between each line, which is why we make college-ruled notebooks. But I think we can all agree that grad school is a completely different world than college: a world where 9/32nds of an inch is simply too much room."..."How can we expect graduate students to learn to gather information and construct knowledge independently within their specialized field of study using college-ruled notebooks?" he added. "These students need a narrower-lined notebook, and at long last, they have it."..."Just think: If you are writing a dissertation on elements of thanatopsis and necromimesis as they relate to cacaesthesian themes of mid-20th-century Irish literature, do you really want your notebook lines to be more than seven millimeters apart?" Luke said. "Of course not."..."Gone are the days of graduate students having to tediously pencil in new lines between each existing college-ruled line just to make the notebooks usable," the press release read in part. "And with the time you'll save by not having to flip a page every 33 lines, you could earn your Ph.D. a year early." (The Onion)

Something I learned at the W3C was that a document was never done, there are only milestones and the question of whether you have moved on. For example, the XML security specifications received more "peer review" than any other thing I'm ever likely to work on. It surprised me, and felt great, when people from other countries who I never spoke with would send in an interop report based on the specification and test suite. Even so, the specifications continued to receive errata two years after they were published as Recommendations. I still receive questions about them, but I've given that work little thought in well over five years, so I've "moved on" and can answer only the most trivial questions.

I'm about to submit the final copy of my dissertation, successfully defended on March 5, which is a big milestone. And I still do think about it, and the improvements I could make. In fact, I am caught between my desire to make it freely available and a desire (a necessity even, in the academic context) to see it published as a book. So, for the present I am making the first chapter and bibliography publicly available and hope to do more after discussions with publishers. However, I would like to share it with interested colleagues and sources (see acknowledgments and references): I expect more correction, criticism and commentary -- public even, here or elsewhere -- will provide further value to any book that might result.

——

Reagle, J. (2008).In good faith: Wikipedia collaboration and the pursuit of the universal encyclopedia. PhD thesis, New York University, New York, NY. [ http://reagle.org/joseph/2008/03/dsrtn-in-good-faith ]

@phdthesis{Reagle2008,
   author = {Joseph Reagle},
   title = {In good faith: {Wikipedia} collaboration
        and the pursuit of the universal encyclopedia},
   year = {2008},
   address = {New York, NY},
   url = {http://reagle.org/joseph/2008/03/dsrtn-in-good-faith},
   month = {May}, 
   school = {New York University},
}

Wikipedia, "the free encyclopedia anyone can edit," has caught the attention of the world. Discourse about the efficacy and legitimacy of this collaborative work abound, from the news pages of "The New York Times" to the satire of "The Onion." So how might we understand Wikipedia collaboration? In part 1 I argue that Wikipedia is an heir to a twentieth century vision of universal access and goodwill; an idea advocated by H. G. Wells and Paul Otlet almost a century ago. This vision is inspired by technological innovation -- microfilm and index cards then, digital networks today -- and driven by the encyclopedic compulsion to capture and index everything known. In addition, I place Wikipedia within the history of reference works, focusing on their (often fervent) creators, and the cooperation, competition, and plagiarism encountered in their production. In part 2, I conceptualize Wikipedia as a technologically mediated "open" community; through ethnography I identify the norms, practices and meanings of Wikipedia culture including "Neutral Point of View," good faith, and authorial leadership. In particular, I use the metaphor of a jigsaw puzzle to explain the operation of Wikipedia's collaborative culture: "Neutral Point of View" ensures that the scattered pieces of what we think we know can be joined and good faith facilitates the actual practice of fitting them together. Finally, in part 3 I focus on the cultural reception and interpretation of Wikipedia. I argue that in the history of reference works Wikipedia is not alone in serving as a flashpoint for larger social anxieties about technological and social change. I try to make sense of the social unease embodied in and prompted by Wikipedia by way of four themes present throughout the dissertation: collaborative practice, universal vision, encyclopedic impulse, and technological inspiration. I show that the discourse around Wikipedia reveals concerns about how new forms of technologically mediated content production are changing the role and autonomy of the individual, the authority of existing institutions, and the character (and quality) of cultural products.

Despite my apathy toward Scientology, I viewed the recent attacks by Anonymous with a similar indifference. I don't view Anonymous' attempts to bring down Scientology websites in the same like I do earlier geek engagements with Scientology, or other actions like the anti-DMCA protests I participated in. Both Anonymous' means and ends are objectionable. As described by Jaclyn Friedman (2008) in "Wack Attack: Giving the Digital Finger to Blog Bandits" Anonymous is a "loosely organized cybermob" that attacks various sites and people for laughs on lulz message boards. While I sometimes share a dislike for their targets (e.g., Scientology, molesters) the frequent misogynistic attacks by this larger cultural movement on women are offensive, and their methods are contrary to the liberal values of free speech and open discourse.

The culture of lulz is saturated with juvenile, racist, misogynistic, and homophobic language and imagery. They use "fags" and "foggot" as blanket insults, make jokes about raping your mother, and define rape as, among other things, "black sex." (p. 46)

I began to get a sense of this phenomenon when Kathy Sierra was attacked. Being a fan of all things productive and organized, I had subscribed to her blog feed a few years ago -- her gender was not something I even remember being aware of. This changed when I saw the passionate and unreasoned hate that poured down on her for no reason other than because she was a woman. Similarly, in following Wikipedia, I noticed the type of criticism was changing: in addition to those with specific concerns or complaints, communities of derision, of "haters," were forming.

The phenomenon of virtual antagonism is not new. We've all heard of "flaming" and "trolls"; I even had a friend who ran a warboard BBS in the 80s -- and, yes, we were in middle school. While I didn't understand the appeal even then, on a warboard the "hate" was largely limited to the others who joined. What seems to be novel about the new haters is the community and cultural aspect. Just as I highlight the importance of a "good-faith" collaborative culture in the Wikipedia community, we are moving beyond the individual angry cloud. To be buzzword compliant, we might call it "Bully 2.0" or the "culture of hatefuck."

After a presentation of my chapter on "encyclopedic anxiety" Alice Marwick recommended David Foster Wallace's "Tense Present: Democracy, English, and the Wars Over Usage." I find the essay to be maddeningly frustrating: based on claims I absolutely agree with, he manages to find lines of argumentation that I think are very wrong. My notes from this essay are full of lengthy annotations. I agree that some works such as a usage dictionary or writers guide serve us well by being prescriptive: guiding us as to what is effective and accepted. (I'm slowly working my way through reading all of the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition, and enjoying it too! It is informative, pragmatic and useful in helping this writer address difficult questions.) However, this doesn't mean there's no room for descriptive reference works: telling us what is said or thought regardless of whether it is right or wrong according to someone's standard. Wallace is not willing to accept that description and prescription can coexist happily because he fears the Descriptivists then taint the larger culture and deprive SNOOTS such as himself the ability to tell others what is proper. He then makes a complete muddle of science:

If a physics textbook operated on Descriptivist principles, the fact that some Americans believe that electricity flows better downhill (based on the observed fact that power lines tend to run high above the homes they serve) would require the Electricity Flows Better Downhill Theory to be included as a "valid" theory in the textbook -- just as, for Dr. Fries, if some Americans use infer or implied, the use becomes an ipso facto "valid" part of language. Structural linguists like Gove and Fries are not, finally, scientists but census-takers who happen to misconstrue the importance of "the observed facts." It isn't scientific phenomenon they're tabulating but rather a set of human behaviors, and a lot of human behaviors are -- to be blunt -- moronic. (Wallace, p. 11).

He would also appreciate (and possibly hate) Wikipedia's NPOV which is descriptive in the way that he describes and objects to. In any case, he is confusing the method (i.e., scientific description) with a particular phenomenon (i.e., deterministic laws of physics, or less predictable patterns of human behavior). However, one might take a varied and subjective view of deterministic physical phenomena (e.g., a nonscientific poem about a falling acorn) or a scientific approach to more complex phenomenon (e.g., statistical inferences about human behavior, or complex nondeterministic phenomena).

On his point of stupidity, consider that to maintain that the earth is flat today might be considered moronic, but I don't go to Wikipedia (a largely descriptive undertaking) because it will tell me what is true -- you must look for that elsewhere -- but to understand what is understood about that theory including the contours and history of the flat-eathers. However, this doesn't mean Wikipedians must pretended that the earth is flat just to make some minority happy. Instead, one can also have completely descriptive statements that the theory is no longer supported by scientific authorities via references to authoritative sources. (And, here, Wikipedia does have a prescriptive bias in favoring references to authoritative sources within the materialistic/scientific worldview.) So, his metaphor seems backwards: the descriptive approach seems appropriate, and to some extent necessary, because human language is biased, and not a "law" in the same way that gravity is. To assume that the operation of gravity might reverse a century later violates a fundamental presumption of physics; but there is no such certainty in language use. Therefore, sometimes I might hear a word that I would never use myself for fear of giving offense, but I still might want to know its meaning: there is a role for a balance between prescriptive and descriptive.