wikipedia

[jesty@uchicago.edu]

Dear Anne and Joe

This article was posted on H-1960s a while ago and I thought 
it was interesting:

"Can History be Open Source? Wikipedia and the Future of the 
Past"
Roy Rosenzweig

This article was originally published in The Journal of 
American History
Volume 93, Number 1 (June, 2006): 117-46.

Also available online at: 
http://chnm.gmu.edu/resources/essays/d/42#f57

One of the things that it shows is that if you are writing 
on a topic that other people have opinions about, it can be 
frustrating to keep the entry the way you think it should 
be. Wikipedia has a tendency to veer towards popular forms 
of history, intersted in accumulating facts.

As for Anne's wish to make the Japan entries more 
contemporary, I couldn't agree more. But at the same time 
point out that not everyone is living in 
that "contemporary." If editing starts to involve a back and 
forth between two versions, it can be helpful to have a few 
people working on it to keep one version in place. This 
might not be the situation with Japan entries, in which case 
you can edit the entries in whichever way you see fit.

As for Joe's comment, I was intersted in his proposal to 
have smaller wikis for certain subjects. I wasn't sure why 
this should be the case. Do you mean wikis with limited 
access so that only relative experts can contribute? If not, 
I would think the wikipedia architecture (barring the 
language issues) provides a pretty good space - any number 
of subcultures can exist on it. 

Take care
Justin Jesty