Clinamen

I stumbled into a strange story at the Wiki-Observations blog, which had a cryptic discussion of the departure of a Wikipedia admin named Newyorkbrad. After some googling, I think I've pieced things together. It seems that Wikipedia critic Daniel Brandt has outed (or threatened to out) Newyorkbrad by publishing his name and the law firm he works for. This has prompted Newyorkbrad to leave Wikipedia. From what I can tell, Brandt was able to figure out Newyorkbrad's identity because of pictures taken of him during Wikipedia's "Wikimania" conference. Many Wikipedians like to remain anonymous for various reasons - one oft-cited reason is cyberstalkers, but I can imagine that Newyorkbrad might not want the firm he works for knowing that he spends parts of his days editing Wikipedia.

Brandt's site - Wikipedia-Watch - has a list of a number of Wikipedia admins that Brandt deems to be part of a "hive mind." He feels he's been personally attacked by many Wikipedians as he's attempted to get the article about him deleted (currently, there is no "Daniel Brandt" article on Wikipedia.) Brandt also thinks that Wikipedia's anonymity policy is unethical and invites corruption.

This story mostly interests me because of the dissertation chapter I'm currently working on. The chapter focuses on the notion of community and how Wikipedia refigures that notion. Many critics (Brandt included) focus on the Wikipedia "cabal" or inner circle that exerts a good bit of control. I'm fully aware of this group and the power they wield. Such groups are an example of how we can build community through a process of drawing lines between "us" and "them." This has typically been the notion of community that people in rhetorical studies focus on. That is, rhetoric is seen as a way to build communities (for Burke, this happens via identification.)

However, my interest is in the broader Wikipedia community, a community that we know (thanks to Wikiscanner) includes the CIA, The Vatican, and Fox News (among many many others.) It is this more disparate and cacophonous community of Wikipedians (community that happens regardless of or beyond any concerted effort) that most interest me. Texts like Wikipedia that invite so many writers show us that we are in community with various Others that we may or may not sympathize with. That is, Wikipedia gives us an example of how efforts to create community are continually thwarted by textual noise. Why is this important? Well, considering the awful things that can happen when we seal off communities (by excluding those who don't fit), it's useful to see that certain structures (the wiki structure included) leave open the possibility that we can disrupt a "hive mind" or any other kind of groupthink.