“…We see that, as Wikipedia continues to grow and to grow up, the community is learning to accommodate some messier motivations, to grapple with matters of representation and access that challenge all knowledge-creation projects, to recognize that acting boldly and in good faith need some tempering with rules, and to recognize that for this global project to continue, the rules must also continue to grow and change.”
Amy Carleton, Lecturer in English, and Cecelia Musselman, Teaching Professor in English, alongside their colleague Rebecca Thorndike-Breeze have contributed a chapter to the collection Wikipedia @ 20: Stories of an Incomplete Future, an MIT Press collection reflecting on the first 20 years of the encyclopedia and looking toward its future. The collection, edited by Joseph Reagle (also a Northeastern professor in the Communication Studies Department) and Jackie Koerner, is both a physical book and an expanded web-based collection of essays by a wide range of people who have worked intimately with Wikipedia.
Carleton and Musselman’s chapter, entitled, “Three links: Be bold, assume good faith, and there are no firm rules,” reflects on how three Wikipedia principles manifest in the authors’ own collaboration and self-understanding. Read the full chapter here.
