The Voice of Experience

            New forums require new models of engagement.  The Web 2.0 forum is based on public participation, and democratic dialogue regarding how we access and put out information.  Therefore, Wikipedia’s paradigm is appropriate because it is open-sourced information.

         The example article I will use to examine this is the one about the American folk opera Porgy & Bess. The Wikipedia article about the opera provides a sound overview to the history and relevance of the work through discussion of the singers, composers, authors, musicology and musicianship, and social impact and reception on the “Talk” page. In popular music the song “Summertime” as been interpreted across genres. It has been most prominently reworked in Jazz, R&B and Blues.  This and other songs from the opera have been covered by many notable Jazz greats such as Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, and Miles Davis.  However, a great many people don’t know the song is a classic operatic aria. Through one song, people become exposed to a host of musical genres and find opportunities to become versed in new interpretations of familiar works.

            The section “Linked by Text” in the article The Social Life of Documents (Brown & Duguid, 1996) discusses how the groups that form out of our contemporary new media platforms are strikingly similar to those scholarly groups that formed around Europe during the Renaissance (Brown & Duguid, 1996).  They also were connected through common interests and thus exchanged information regarding these interests (Brown & Duguid, 1996). They further observe that out of such correspondence through letters, came the prototypes for the scholarly journals we laud today in our academic institutions.  Psyched About Music blogger Becky wrote that her trust in the reliability of Wikipedia’s articles grew when she noticed the attention to detail and prompt revisions the articles undergo (Campbell, 2013).  For this purpose, Wikipedia has created “Wikiprojects” as a paradigm for these emerging communities to self-organize in a way that keeps the openness of the forum. Wikiprojects are defined as the following:

“a group of contributors who want to work together as a team to improve Wikipedia. These groups often focus on a specific topic area (for example, women's history) or a specific kind of task (for example, checking newly created pages).”(Wikipedia, 2013)

For any fan of Jazz who has heard any of the previously mentioned artists’ interpretations, a simple search of “Summertime” will most certainly bring you to the extensive article about opera from which it came, Porgy and Bess.  The entire article is part of the larger “Wikiproject Opera” by extension, “Wikiproject Musical Theatre”. The value of community is at the foremost of wiki sites.  Any information given is for the betterment of the community through the community. This creates a connection between the people that engage the topics and the work itself. Accessibility is very important to those that use Wikipedia.  Blogger Megan from Meg’s Animated Film Blog noted the currency of using Wikipedia for references and the ease of a digital format as opposed using physical encyclopedias (McGraw, 2013). Open information lends to open critique, and open accountability. The democratic process of including certain information is what keeps the integrity of the work itself. The work isn’t only good because your peers are watching; the work had better be good because everyone is watching. 

            Established structure doesn’t necessarily mean better structure.  As humans, we naturally gravitate towards creating, dismantling, and recreating frameworks with which we engage and interpret the world. We do this by instinct. If we this weren’t so, countless technical, artisanal and artistic skills would hold no importance in our societies.  We wouldn’t care what Frank Gehry does with what is essentially a shelter.  So the assumption that somehow a system is inherently flawed because it doesn’t explicitly ascribe to a specific mode of engagement is counter-intuitive. Especially, when anyone can create a new mode of engagement. Jim Giles published the findings of a study carried out by the weekly science journal Nature that the accuracy of information found in Wikipedia is closely comparable to that of the Encyclopedia Britannica (Giles, 2005). Given the purpose of Wikipedia as a general reference and its rising popularity, for me this was not a big surprise. What surprised was the vehement response of Encyclopedia Britannica against the academic journal.  The Encyclopedia Britannica’s rebuttal of the Nature article and subsequent “demand” that they retract their statements read more to me like cries of a dying elitist stronghold.  If such a death were to occur, it is death by suicide for simply not going with the flow and adapting to change. Throughout the rebuttal, Britannica repeatedly references the highly structured standards for scholarship based on contributions from top academics in the respective fields. As Richard Jensen illustrates in his paper “Military History on the Electronic Frontier: Wikipedia Fights the War of 1812” (2012), and in practice (he is a retired Historian) as a contributor to Wikipedia, Wikipedia, its contributors and, the members of Wikiprojects are scholars and laypeople working together to ensure the information remains balanced and accurate. His opinion of Wikipedia’s accuracy even coincides with Nature’s findings (Jensen, 1181 2012). The crowd-sourced format of Wikipedia in no way threatens the integrity of the information.

As one blogger wrote:

“Is it right, to label Wikipedia editors as amateur just because they do not have the editors’ credentials and education background for other users to see on Wikipedia?  There is no way that we will ever find out if these editors are actually ‘amateurs’ and not people that know exactly what they are talking about, for a particular topic.” (Derek, 2013)

What would qualify as valid information without those parameters?  The answer is factual information. To Wikipedia it is only important the information is accurate and free to as many people as possible. While I value the importance of higher education, the academic credibility of individuals has nothing to do with the relevance or factuality of the information they provide. The factuality of information is based on evidence, not who the information comes from. Scholarly bias can become social bias when we forget this.

            The key point of controversy revealed on the Porgy and Bess article’s “Talk” page had to do with how to address the contention many African-Americans held throughout the decades with Porgy and Bess for being perceived as a racist depiction of 1930s African-American life.  Some felt this should be better addressed in the article (Wikipedia, Talk: Porgy and Bess 2012). The original novel and play, Porgy, and subsequent opera libretto was conceived and written by Dubose Heyward, a southern white male.  George Gershwin (also white but, quite moved by the novel approached Heyward to compose an opera based on the story. In 1935, being a heterosexual white Anglo-saxon male was acceptable authority on interpreting, judging and categorizing members or groups within the wider culture. White males telling black stories was not uncommon, since most of the theatrical works of the time were written by whites. Still, could an outsider provide a sympathetic depiction or is it inherently misguided? The story of Porgy and Bess struck a particular nerve that has resonates today in music/theater and culture circles, and even more so in the African-American community. The article references the latest revival of the opera, which experienced reworking of the plot and script to translate more of the character subtext of the original work on stage. With the support of the Gershwin and Heyward estates, Pulitzer prize-winning playwright Susan Lori-Parks (who is also African-American) set to work with director, Diane Paulus on the new adaptation.

McDonald and Lewis as the title characters in “The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess.” Photograph by Francesco Carrozzini.

 American composer Stephen Sondheim in an editorial letter to the New York Times expressed a strong disapproval for what he interpreted as disdain for the original work stating that the life of the characters already exists in the text (The New York Times, 2011). Stephen Sondheim is a revered American composer of musical theatre.  Is his view against re-working a treasured musical artwork somehow more important than Parks and Paulus’ effort to interpret that work into something of broader relevance to the contemporary public? I think the controversy surrounding Porgy and Bess parallels that between Wikipedia and traditional reference works.  The core question they share is, should one person’s perspective accepted/rejected because of her or his place in the social/cultural hierarchy?

            For many, the original Porgy and Bess represented a perspective, not an experience. The new adaptation seeks to rectify that by putting the power to convey in the hands of those who live the experience.  Wikipedia seeks to create a new experience of knowledge simply by opening the community to individuals concerned with its preservation and perpetuation. The spirit of this translates to the contributors and the owner’s calculated process of maintaining accuracy and reliability.  Wikipedia is clearly and unapologetically a public work. It evolves and informs contemporary audiences by involved and informed contributors regardless of credentials and background. Wikipedia encourages the public taking over their power to know and contribute that knowledge to the world.