Wikipedia – A New Community of Practice?

The correct title of this article is Wikipedia: A New Community of Practice?. The substitution or omission of the colon is because of technical restrictions.

Wikipedia: A New Community of Practice? is a 2009 book by British historian Dan O'Sullivan. The book takes an academic approach to Wikipedia, applying the ideas of theorists like Jürgen Habermas, Michael Warner, and Roland Barthes.[1]

Contents

O'Sullivan begins with an overview of group theory, and explores several groups he sees to be precursors to Wikipedia: the Library of Alexandria, the British Royal Society, the French Republic of Letters (focusing on Denis Diderot and the Encyclopédie), the Oxford English Dictionary, and, oddly, the Left Book Club, a mid-century British communist publishing collective. For each group, O'Sullivan discusses the group's aims; its community and make-up; its costs of doing business (transaction costs); its relations with the public; and its legacy.

The second part of the book applies the group theory approach to Wikipedia, devoting a chapter to each aspect. Chapter 10, on the structure of Wikipedia, explains the use of "talk pages" and featured articles. Chapter 13, "Wikipedia and the Nature of Knowledge," explores the question of expertise. In this chapter O'Sullivan claims a fundamental disagreement between Wikipedia's two founders, Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger. While Wales, an admirer of the economist Friedrich Hayek, believed in the wisdom of crowds and that Wikipedia would eventually converge to ideal pages, Sanger believed in the necessity of experts to ensure quality content. O'Sullivan puts Wikipedia in the context of philosophical debates about expertise and elitism.

The third and final part of the book explains how to use Wikipedia. O'Sullivan includes chapters on browsing and editing, and his longest chapter provides a 10-point schema to assess the value of Wikipedia articles. He uses the article on the Great Fire of London as an example, and a significant portion of the chapter reproduces earlier versions of it.

Reviews

The book was reviewed in the academic journals Libraries and the Academy[2] and Library Review,[3] as well as in Wikipedia's community-written newspaper The Signpost.[4]

Chapters

Preface

Introduction

Part I: Groups in History

1. Group Theory

2. The Library of Alexandria

3. The Royal Society

4. The Republic of Letters

5. The Making of the Oxford English Dictionary

6. The Left Book Club

Part II: Wikipedia

7. Social Sites

8. Wikipedia: Aims

9. Wikipedia: the Community

10. Wikipedia: Structure

11. Wikipedia: Transaction Costs

12. Wikipedia and the Public

13. Wikipedia and the Nature of Knowledge

Part III Using Wikipedia

14. Browsing Wikipedia

15. Assessing Wikipedia

16. Contributing to Wikipedia

See also

References

  1. ↑ O'Sullivan, Dan (2009). Wikipedia: A New Community of Practice?. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate. ISBN 9780754674337. OCLC 320696473.
  2. ↑ Nicholas G. Tomaiulo, review of Wikipedia: A New Community of Practice? Libraries and the Academy 10.2 (April 2010), 249-250.
  3. ↑ Charles Oppenheim, "Wikipedia: A New Community of Practice", Library Review 60.7 (2011), pp.624-5
  4. ↑ Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2010-05-10/Book review


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