Page 17 - AC/E Digital Culture Annual Report 2016

The decentralised authorship model makes it forbidden for an article to be signed by justone contributor. And this convention appearsto destabilise the paradigm of certainty that science has upheld with rationalistic fervour since the eighteenth century. Perhaps this is because Wikipedia is absolutely dependent on science, on which its truthfulness is based, and because it pursues aims di erent from whatwe take certainty to mean when we assess an original research product. Wikipedia draws on conventional material available to everyone. Is it, then, omission of knowledge of new sources that permits erroneous knowledge in Wikipedia? How can we assess con dence in the project – through what it hasn’t got or because what it has got doesn’t re ect the current status of the matter in question?Model of encyclopaedic answerThe inherited model of encyclopaedic question that underpins Wikipedia’s structure has remained practically unchanged. As such, following this reasoning, Wikipedia is not an innovative product; its historical roots are embedded in this semantic structure and it answers questions in the same manner as its predecessors. There are other online knowledge resources with di erent aims such as Quora, which bases its experience on questions.The reasoning behind Wikipedia’s structure functions on the principle of this is this. And from there it leads to a broad explanation. There are testimonies telling how Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger established the basic guidelines for de ning truthfulness and neutrality accordingto their philosophical understanding (Lih: 2009). But these testimonies do not make it clear whether this model was questioned or how both men decided to make it that way.Wikipedia, vandalism and gonzo journalismIn the Wikipedia world, vandalism means purposely including in the encyclopaedia contentthat is known to be erroneous, generally for ‘amusement’, to launder information that is uncomfortable or to exaggerate attributions of phenomena or people. Even so, the percentage of vandalism is lower than that of good edits.By ‘amusement’ we mean when somebody who is not committed to Wikipedia’s values realises that anyone can edit it and changes dates or information or gives an object or person ctitious attributes.It is based on a collective model of donations and funds through the Wikipedia Foundation, a not-for-pro t organisation that provides technical, administrative and nancial support.Intentional vandalism can also extend to activism. For example: in Mexico, in 2015, the word ‘criminal’ was added to the article on Javier Duarte, governor of Veracruz, to describe his profession, following the murders of a journalist and activist of Veracruz, to suggest that he was implicated. This vandalism lasted a couple of minutes.There are more controversial cases of modi cations of this kind, which bring to mind Hunter Thompson and his gonzo journalism,as some media have been discovered to have modi ed articles in order to stand out. Oneof the most notorious cases was in Argentinain 2010, when the daily newspaper Clarín vandalised the article ‘La noche de los lápices’ in order to be able to publish on its cover (http:// edant.clarin.com/diario/2006/09/14/um/m- 01271296.htm) that Wikipedia supported the coup d’état.14All data for which there are no references is deleted; that is why actions of this kind make extra work for the community of people who build Wikipedia.AC/E DIGITAL CULTURE ANNUAL REPORT 201617Smart Culture: Impact of the Internet on Artistic Creation