Enlisting "Vertues Noble & Excelent": Behavior, Credit, and Knowledge Organization in the Social Edition

Date

2015

Authors

Constance, Crompton
Siemens, Raymond
Arbuckle, Alyssa
Implementing New Knowledge Environment (INKE)

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Volume Title

Publisher

DHQ: Digital Humanities Quarterly

Abstract

A part of the special issue of DHQ on feminisms and digital humanities, this paper takes as its starting place Greg Crane’s exhortation that there is a "need to shift from lone editorials and monumental editions to editors ... who coordinate contributions from many sources and oversee living editions." In response to Crane, the exploration of the "living edition" detailed here examines the process of creating a publicly editable edition and considers what that edition, the process by which it was built, and the platform in which it was produced means for editions that support and promote gender equity. Drawing on the scholarship about the culture of the Wikimedia suite of projects, and the gendered trolling experienced by members of our team in the production of the Social Edition of the Devonshire Manuscript in Wikibooks, and interviews with our advisory group, we argue that while the Wikimedia projects are often openly hostile online spaces, the Wikimedia suite of projects are so important to the contemporary circulation of knowledge, that the key is to encourage gender equity in social behavior, credit sharing, and knowledge organization in Wikimedia, rather than abandon it for a more controlled collaborative environment for edition production and dissemination.

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Citation

Crompton, Constance, Siemens, Raymond, Arbuckle, Alyssa, & The Implementing New Knowledge Environment (INKE). (2015). Enlisting "Vertues Noble & Excelent": Behavior, Credit, and Knowledge Organization in the Social Edition. DHQ: Digital Humanities Quarterly, 9(2).