Clinamen

Early in my graduate career, a professor pointed out one of my verbal ticks. When I wasn't sure about my evidence for a particular claim, I would use the word "seems." I would say something like: "This seems to indicate that..."

This was good to know, and I now keep an eye out for it. I don't just remove "seems" from my sentences. I revisit those sentences and try to figure out why I'm unsure of that argument at that moment.

My newest tick is "certainly." I use this one when I want to say something like "I recognize things are complicated, but I'm going to state things very clearly anyway." So, I'll say something like: "Certainly, Wikipedia takes account of credentials in certain ways, but..."

Again, this tick seems to indicate a lack of confidence. As my dissertation director has pointed out, I use the word "certainly" at the precise moment that things are far from certain. I'm currently excising the word "certainly" from much of my dissertation.

Some days you don't like your dissertation (actually, this goes for just about any kind of writing...) You read it, and you think: "What the hell am I even talking about?" No one is immune.

See, a dissertation is like a baseball season. It's long, and your feelings about it at any given moment are not indicative of how you will feel at the end of it. Some days you feel great about it. Some days you hate it. Both of these extremes are based on limited data sets. Both of these feelings are essentially wrong.

So, yesterday when my Pirates won their home opener, I was pretty happy. Zach Duke pitched a gem, and Freddy Sanchez was knocking the ball all over the yard. But I also knew that it was one game out of 162. Duke will return to earth...as will the rest of the team. Getting too high or low is a mistake. Likewise, yesterday when I disliked my dissertation, I chalked it up to a bad day. I set it aside.

I will be defending my dissertation, "Hospitable Texts," on May 4. Here's a Wordle of it (click the image for a larger view):

Sometimes I forget to listen. This happens in various situations: conversations with friends (and girlfriend), conversations with relatives, conversations with colleagues. I forget to listen. I get wrapped up in what I want to say.

This flaw sometimes finds its way into my writing. I also sometimes forget to listen when it comes to research. I'm reading Latour's Reassembling the Social, and while I won't be applying his Actor-Network Theory in any direct way (at least not in my dissertation...I can see myself considering ANT for a future project) the book has already reminded me that the best research happens when we just listen. That listening needs to happen regardless of how messy things get. Don't take my word for it, listen to Latour:

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.

Have you ever come across a piece of writing that basically sums up your dissertation better than you could? I think I just did. Now, it would make more sense if this writing had come from my dissertation director, but what I found was written by someone I've never met and who (to my knowledge) has not clue that my dissertation even exists. And so I say "Thank you, Nat Torkington." While writing about a Wikipedia dust up regarding the "notability" of a hacker named "Why_the_lucky_stiff"(and the possible deletion of his Wikipedia article), Torkington's post at O'Reilly Radar did a fairly decent job of summing up Hospitable Texts. He didn't hit every point. But hey, nobody's perfect:

"Perhaps an analogy to another social process would help. Wikipedia is like an open source software project where the great unwashed submit patches, the committers choose which to apply, and the core team make executive decisions when needed. There's no piece of code that determines worthiness to be committed to the source tree. Instead, there are people with judgement and human flaws in the way. The Linux kernel shouldn't grow e-mail protocol stacks, web server hacks, and a built-in relational database just because someone submits the patches. The project's committers are there to keep the software project on track. So too with Wikipedia.

Hating the humans or even hating the filtering process is a waste of time and energy. The deletionists and the inclusionists both have a role to play. Wikipedia has a lot of things that it is not and the humans are there to keep the project on track. Those who want to delete and want to keep are doing their bit, just as others did by creating a page for _why in the first place.

The creators of any piece of social software must carefully choose where to punch holes in pure computational deterministic perfection to let human attributes like intelligence or taste shine through. Their choices define the project. This 'you want X, I want Y, we'll go back and forth citing Wikipedian principles and external sources until a decision emerges or must be made by an administrator' process isn't Wikipedia's weakness, or even its strength, it is Wikipedia."

So, I've been writing away at this chapter on intellectual property and Levinasian ethics, and I've stumbled upon some ideas that actually might not suck. Here is the opening to the chapter as it stands now...two quotes by way of epigraph followed by a few paragraphs...

Chapter 3 – ‘Like a Thief’: Hospitality, the Commons, and Intellectual Property

An ambivalence that is the exception and the subjectivity of the subject, its very psychism, the possibility of inspiration: to be the author of what was, without my knowledge, inspired in me—to have received, whence we know not, that of which I am the author. In the responsibility for the other, we are at the heart of this ambiguity of inspiration. The unheard-of saying is enigmatic in its an-archic response, in my responsibility for the other. This ambiguity within the subject is the trace of the infinite, alternately beginning and intermediary, the diachronic ambivalence that makes ethics possible.
—Emmanuel Lévinas, “Truth of Disclosure and Truth of Testimony”

A lot of the great art of the past is the work of multiple hands, though there may only be one name on the wall next it in the museum.
— Paul Graham, Hackers and Painters

Since deciding to focus my dissertation on Wikipedia (a decision i continue to question every day), I am inundated with stories about Wikipedia. Friends send me links. This is great, but it is also overwhelming. Typically, these emails sit in my inbox for a day or two while I put off reading them...they scare me. Is that weird?

The problem is, I'm writing about a moving target. Now, I recognize that everyone, in some sense, is writing about a moving target - Shakespeare isn't sitting still. Nothing is. But it seems that Wikipedia is always in the news, and I think I'm going to have to keep track of this stuff here...on this blog...that I try to resurrect every sixth months or so.

So, here goes nuthin...