My dissertation is moving along these days. I've drafted an opening chapter that explains why I see Wikipedia's constitution of hospitality (that is, its willingness to invite a broad range of writers) as a reason to rethink some key terms like intellectual property, community, and rhetorical agency. I've also drafted two other chapters: one that takes up the Essjay controversy and Citizendium and another that focuses on the Seigenthaler controversy and tools like Wikiscanner.

My goal now is to draft a chapter that focuses on Wikipedia's Biographies of Living Persons (BLP) policy. My hope is that the stories of certain figures and their struggles with BLP (Daniel Brandt, Jay Mariotti, Fuzzy Zoeller, and many more) will allow me to talk about how virtual-textual communities like Wikipedia force us to rethink agency. In rhetorical theory, the study of agency (that is, the study of the effects of language, how texts work, and whether/how an author can control what kind of work a text does) has become a kind of obsession. Who controls a text? Does it reach its intended audience? How do I control what message I convey?

BLP raises and confuses a lot of these questions, especially when we consider the folks who attempt to control what is written about them on Wikipedia. With these situations in mind, the questions shift a bit: Who writes me into existence? Can I control that? Could I ever control that? Is Wikipedia creating this problem or magnifying an existing one?

This last question is the one that will probably frame the chapter. I don't think Wikipedia creates very many "new" problems. Instead, I think its constitution of hospitality (a constitution that welcomes many more writers than most other texts) magnifies some problems and forces us to rethink a number of issues. When it comes to BLP, it seems to me that Wikipedia takes an existing problem (my persona is always up for grabs and being defined by other people) and kicks it into 5th gear. With Wikipedia, more people get to define me and that definition doesn't go through a traditional vetting process. Now what?

What interests me most about Wikipedia's BLP is that community members' discussion of the issue usually begin from the assumption that anonymous users will always contribute to Wikipedia. Certainly, some have suggested that "real names" would fix a lot of problems (this is what Citizendium is designed to do), but the constitution of hospitality that grounds Wikipedia seems to be pretty firm on an issue like BLP. Rather than reworking this founding concept ("anyone can edit"), discussions of BLP begin from the assumption that "anons" will always edit and then attempt to grapple with the havoc that such anons can often bring to the text.

When it comes to this chapter, things are very much up in the air at this point. But I'm hoping that things follow the pattern I've seen with other chapters. As I write more, it will become clearer how this discussion of BLP fits with my larger argument.