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 Darwikinism: Between Trollism and Error  

 

 Emilio Vavarella 

 

Keywords: Trollism; Error; Wikipedia; Encyclopedia; Populism; Neutrality; Anti-Intellectualism; Darwikinism


Introduction

Technology has changed the way we read. For example, eBooks have changed the publishing industry; but also reading a hypertext, instead of a classic text, with the use of links to navigate from one page to another, is a big change in the way we approach and consider a text. Technology has also changed the way we write; we can think of, for example, the use of 'grammar check' in Microsoft Word and the difference between making a grammar mistake while writing a virtual text compared to writing with a classic typewriter. The virtual space in which people write today is a place where you can easily go back and change your content an infinite number of times without leaving any sign. In addition, technology has changed the way we learn, for example with e-learning. The field of digital humanities (and many related topics such as "open access to materials, intellectual property rights, tool development, digital libraries, data mining, born-digital preservation, multimedia publication, visualization, GIS, digital reconstruction, studies of the impact of technology, technology for teaching and learning, sustainability models and media studies")(1) is constantly developing new theories and tools that will shape the future of education.(2) Experts expect a significant change in the next twenty years (including huge digital libraries for easier access to automatic language translation)(3) ; a change that can be compared to the effect that 'big data' has had on scientific research.(4)


1. A New Encyclopedia

We are at the beginning of a revolution in the way we read, write and learn, and Wikipedia is an interesting subject to analyze since it summarizes all three. Wikipedia has essentially changed the way we refer to knowledge and our idea of knowledge itself. The classic encyclopedia was a closed structure, with a certain numbers of pages, subjects, topics and editors. The people who wrote the single entries were experts in a specific field (Philosophy, Mathematics, Science, etc.); paid to produce a specific piece of content. The publishing house released a new version of the encyclopedia every few years, and the release was decided by the urgency of updating a specific topic, but also following the demand of information in their specific market. An encyclopedia was often made up of a discrete amount of volumes, so it was expensive to buy and most people who wanted to own one couldn't buy a new version each time one was released. The direct consequence was a more static type of knowledge -- difficult to update and difficult to share. Then, with the introduction of digital encyclopedias available online, on CD-ROM or DVD (like Omnia or Encarta), it was finally possible to diffuse a large number of information at an affordable cost. In addition, many people were able to own a pirate version of these encys, without paying. At the same time, for the publishing house it was possible to update the content more easily, with minor costs. Beside this initial change, the general idea of knowledge associated with the encyclopedia didn't really change, it was just more flexible. Today I've counted 174 online encyclopedias that are still active on several fields(5): 68 of them are of general interest and among them there are some very important ones, such as Encyclopedia Britannica and Wikipedia.(6) But among many competitors, Wikipedia "has become the source of choice for encyclopedic knowledge."(7)

Its history started in 1994, when Ward Cunningham started developing WikiWikiWeb(8), releasing it on March 25, 1995.(9) In less than five years, wikis were commonly used by enterprises for different reasons(10), for example project management.(11) Some universities used the technology for the creation of 'learning groups' and today there are more than one hundred "notable online projects" that use the Wiki technology.(12) Wikipedia is based on this technology, and suddenly became a reference for millions of people, introducing two big innovations in the field of the encyclopedia. The first innovation (or main difference from the classic encyclopedia) is that knowledge is the result of a collective and constant group work. The second is that everyone can participate in the production of it. Since at least the French Enlightenment and the "Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers" by Diderot and d'Alembert, there has been the ideal of creating high quality content with a neutral political point of view. But even if the quality has somehow been assured, political neutrality has never been possible, and is still not possible with Wikipedia, even if each entry is the result of a collective work and there is the obvious possibility that the entries are not directly influenced by a single political perspective. The ideal of a neutral and free encyclopedia has been recently discussed and put under stricter scrutiny. In addition, Wikipedia is commonly associated with unreliability, populism and anti-intellectualism.(13)

The main reason why Wikipedia is considered unreliable is the fact that scholars and amateurs work together. A mechanism Wikipedia has adopted to decide each time if a topic is worthy, is whether it has been covered by other independent and reliable sources: this is known as 'verifiability' and means the topic is notable.(14) While privileging peer-reviewed sources, and still being partially conservative, "Wikipedia accepts a variety of reliable sources such as newspapers and blog posts, there are ways in which the encyclopedia is pushing against the boundaries of established scholarly practice."(15)


2. Populism, Living Knowledge and Utopic Neutrality

The main reason why Wikipedia is considered populist is that the supposed neutrality of its content can't be more than an ideal, and never a fact. To understand why, we should start by looking at what a 'wiki' is. It's a website (usually a community website) that allows a virtually infinite number of users to modify its content – the rules about what everyone can modify changes from case to case and follow the changes of Wikipedia's community. Wikipedia's slogan is "the free encyclopedia and anyone can edit." Commonly wikis are created through a collaborative process for purposes such as knowledge management and note taking, and were originally described by their developer as "the simplest online database that could possibly work."(16) But for exactly that reason -- that a wiki is a mix of many points of view -- they can be seen as a mirror of the particular state of knowledge in a particular place and as a mirror of the intellectual background of a particular group of contributors. For Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia's founder, this is "living knowledge" (17); for others this can be seen as a techno-populism. This is commonly seen with the problem of overrepresentation or underrepresentation of topics. For example, you can see when a topic is very well known in a particular country but not in another. The information available about a particular political party, or a historical battle, can change a lot from one country to another (or from one language to another). We can see the particular interest in a topic through WikiProjects; and for example, we can discover that Military History is very successful(18), while many topics traditionally associated with femininity are not successful at all. Clicking on 'view history' at the top of every page allows you to keep track of changes in Wikipedia's policies, which are also constantly changing following the evolution of the community that is editing every page. Recently, several Feminist groups are claiming what seems obvious, with the slogan: "Every edit is political" and they are pointing out the gender gap present in Wikipedia.(19) According to the last survey, approximately 90% of editors are males(20) so we can conclude that Wikipedia is a male controlled structure.(21) As the researcher Stierch wrote about this topic:


The majority of the editors are white males around 30 years old with higher education, a bachelors or masters degree. So, we've got a group of smart people, but just like history, it's being written by middle-aged white guys.(22)



Wikipedia reflects society and this is why topics associated with femininity are underrepresented(23) (and often deleted), as in one publicly reported case.(24) But this results in at least one positive phenomenon: more women use Wikipedia in order to create a better Encyclopedia (25) (and obviously part of the debate took the form of a wiki-page).(26) At this point in history, there are still many people who believe that the best product is the result of mass collaboration.(27)


3. Anti-Intellectualism, Darwikinism And Errors

Obviously there is a big difference between a closed/classical encyclopedia and an open platform where virtually everybody can contribute and add content. This specific idea of content-improving has been referred to as Darwikinism:


A concept that describes the socially Darwinian process that wiki pages are subject to. Basically, because of the openness of wikis and the rapidity with which wiki pages can be edited, the pages undergo a natural selection process like that which nature subjects to living organisms. 'Unfit' sentences and sections are ruthlessly culled, edited and replaced if they are not considered 'fit', which hopefully results in the evolution of a higher quality and more relevant page.(28)


Maged N. Kamel Boulos, Cito Maramba and Steve Wheeler say that it is the "openness of wikis that gives rise to the concept of 'Darwikinism.'" This is why implementations like MediaWiki allow users to supply an edit summary when they edit a page. It is important to save and store older version of pages in the case of mistakes or vandalizing. Errors are part of Wikipedia's structure, exactly as knowledge is. Wikipedia allows room for errors, because (following Darwikinism) there will always be improvement and errors will be "naturally amended". We know that not just in Wikipedia, but in almost every field of human interest, errors are always possible and necessary, and they need to be recognized and corrected because truth and error are interdependent. This is more than a general idea, and almost a general philosophy itself; truth can be found only in the light of previous errors.(29) In fact, the idea of a Wiki-web, which is the starting point of Wikipedia, was developed by Cunningham(30) following the idea of the American engineer Vanner Bush, who wanted to create a system to allow users to "comment on and change one another's text."(31) From the beginning, the focus was on openness and flexibility, and not on authorship and control. This is why Wikipedia is often accused of anti-intellectualism. For now, it seems that Darwikinism is winning; that the utopic goal of slowly amending all the Wikipedia content of errors and deficiencies is, in fact (or at least virtually), possible, with only the cost of giving up the intellectualism commonly associated with classic encyclopedias.


4. Trolling

While Wikipedia's positivistic vision is spreading all over the world, something seems to be troubling it. We know that the openness of Wikipedia represents an easy target for various influences, both political and economical. But recent studies seem to have ignored the problem of humoristic influences on it. There is a minor form of influence that is under recognized, growing quickly and more difficult to understand: in Internet slang referred to as trolling. The word trolling comes from the name troll, someone who:


...posts inflammatory(32) , extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as a forum, chat room, or blog, with the primary intent of provoking readers into an emotional response(33) , or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.(34)


Trolls have attacked Wikipedia many times, and the reason is always the same: just for fun.(35) They are known as "part of a growing Internet subculture with a fluid morality and a disdain for pretty much everyone else online."(36) There isn't any ideology, or specific reason behind these attacks, but they are growing in number as the 'troll spirit' is spreading online, especially among young Internet users. It can be summarized in one comment I found online: "when you troll someone you just sort of do it. You don't start drawing flowcharts and diagrams and stuff."(37) You can easily find many pages where people post pictures, messages or videos related to trolling and other things.(38)


vavarellaFBimage


I've counted 94 public pages on Facebook devoted to trolling (39) -- the most popular page is in Spanish and has 1,854,220 likes. Facebook has also been widely used to troll people(40), and not just to create a tribute page on trolling, so the company has tried to create countermeasures against the proliferation of these pages.(41) Tumblr hosts a large community interested in this subject(42) , and there have been cases of troll attacks on Twitter, Craigslist and Foursquare, where it is even more difficult to prevent or cancel comments.(43) The last popular social media website massively hit by trolls is Pinterest(44), the perfect platform for another 'troll style' video(45):


There are countless (...) examples where the likes of Starbucks, Foursquare and others have been squatted on by jokers or malicious trolls. Brands and celebrities have an invested interest in maintaining the public perception of their names. Erosion of that image damages their ability to make money in the long run, and some companies are required to maintain a vigilance over their names.(46)


Now there is a famous picture called 'trollface' that is recurrent in scams and jokes online and has been printed all over the world on T-shirts. There are also websites dedicated almost only to these sorts of things, including the most popular sites: 4Chan and Encyclopedia Dramatica(47), which it described as "an online compendium of troll humor and troll lore."(48) Wikipedia has been a documented target of many attacks, including vandalism and ironic alteration of existing pages, as in the recent Carlos Quentin case.(49)

vavarellaQuentinText


It is clear that "harassment often arises in spaces known for their freedom, lack of censure, and experimental nature"(50) and this makes it difficult to maintain an open "yet supportive discussion area, especially for sensitive topics such as race, gender, and sexuality."(51) Wikipedia must face everyday choices about how to relate to sensitive topics while the internet community is demonstrating to be increasingly less sensitive.(52) While Wikipedia's openness is very fertile for acts of digital vandalism, it "also makes it possible to rapidly correct or restore a 'quality' wiki page."(53) This tension, has been clearly summarized by Lars Aronsson, a data system specialist:


Most people, when they first learn about the wiki concept, assume that a Web site that can be edited by anybody would soon be rendered useless by destructive input. It sounds like offering free spray cans next to a grey concrete wall. The only likely outcome would be ugly graffiti and simple tagging, and many artistic efforts would not be long lived. Still, it seems to work very well.(54)




So, while many educational projects (like Wikiversity(55) and WikiEducator(56)), new pedagogies and tentatives to teach are developed(57), pushed by contemporary technological innovations, new destructive forces push towards chaos and error. Wikipedia stands in the middle, and is equipped to resist and grow (for example it is typical to find links to pages that do not yet exist, as a way of inviting others to share what they know about a new subject). Wikipedia is oriented towards an educative goal that tries to democratize knowledge, pulled between a tendency toward errors and the attacks of trolls.(58) We all know, (and Foucault among others wrote extensively on the topic), about how relations to power are constantly transformed through institutions such as universities, research centers, systems providing grants, funding and even encyclopedias. Trolling is a peculiar contemporary resistance and its effects are already felt in the modification of laws and structures of power on the Internet. In the peculiar tension in which Wikipedia finds itself, reside the positivistic vision of Darwikinism and the future of the most popular online encyclopedia.

 

 



NOTES

(1) ^ K. Smith, M. Gavin, B. Bobley, Q&A with Brett Bobley, Director of the NEH's Office of Digital Humanities (ODH) in: http://hastac.org/node/1934.

(2) ^ C. N. Davidson, "A new curriculum for real-world success", The Globe and Mail, 13/10/2012, http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/time-to-lead/a-new-curriculum-for-real-world- success/article4610483/%C2%A0%C2%A0/ and Rethinking Humanities, Meeting #1: 22- 23/10/2012 http://uvasci.org/current-work/graduate-education/rethinking-grad-ed-oct-2012/.

(3) ^ E. Zuckerman, "The Polyglot Internet", 30/10/2008, http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/the-polyglot-internet/ and V. Cerf, "If you thought the internet was cool, wait until it goes space age," The Observer, 17/10/2008, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/17/internet.google.

(4) ^ C. Anderson, "The End of Theory: The Data Deluge Makes the Scientifc Method Obsolete", Wired, 06/23/2008, http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/16-07/pb_theory.

(5) ^ They are: General reference; Biography; Antiquities, arts, and literature; Culture and country-specifics; Pop culture and fiction; Mathematics; Music; Philosophy; Politics and h Religion and theology; Science; Biology-Life science; and Medicine and surgery.

(6) ^ The smallest groups of encyclopedias today are Philosophy and Medicine and Surgery; with four encyclopedias each http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_online_encyclopedias.

(7) ^ M. Nunes, "Wikipedia, Error and Fear of the Bad Actor" in M. Nunes (ed.) Error. Glitch, Noise and Jam in New Media Cultures, Bloomsbury, New York – London, 2012, p. 168.

(8) ^ See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiWikiWeb.

(9) ^ Ebersbach, Wiki: Web Collaboration, Springer Science + Business Media, 2008.

(10) ^ Conlin, "E-Mail Is So Five Minutes Ago", Businessweek, 28/09/2005, http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2005-11-27/e-mail-is-so-fve-minutes-ago; A. Majchrzak, C. Wagner, D. Yates, "Corporate wiki users, Corporate wiki users: results of a survey", Symposium on Wikis, 2011, p. 99.

(11) ^ N. Nayab, M. McDonough, "Using Wikis as a Project Management Tool", Bright Hub PM - Project Management, 10/26/2011, http://www.brighthubpm.com/monitoring-projects/52061-using-wikis-as-a-project-management-tool/ and see: http://projectmanagementwiki.org/tiki-index.php and http://www.editme.com/Ways-to-Wiki-Project- Management.

(12) ^ See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wikis.

(13) ^ BS. Jacoby, "The Dumbing of America," The Washington Post, 17/02/2008, http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2008-02-17/opinions/36908728_1_anti-rationalism-intellectualism-american-life, cit. in M. Nunes, op.cit., p. 168.

(14) ^ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifability.

(15) ^ Anonymous, Wikipedia is pushing the boundaries of scholarly practice but the gender gap must be addressed, Impact of Social Sciences - The London School of Economics and Political Science, 9/04/2013, http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2013/04/09/change-the-world-edit-wikipedia.

(16) ^ W. Cunningham, "What is a Wiki," WikiWikiWeb, 27/06/2002, retrieved April 10, 2008, http://www.wiki.org/wiki.cgi? WhatIsWiki.

(17) ^ J. Wales, "We're Smarter than You Think," The Washington Post, 19/02/2008, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/18/AR2008021801248.html, cit. in M. Nunes, op.cit., p. 168.

(18) ^ See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Military_history.

(19) ^ Anonymous, Wikipedia is pushing the boundaries of scholarly practice but the gender gap must be addressed, Impact of Social Sciences - The London School of Economics and Political Science, 9/04/2013, http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2013/04/09/change-the-world-edit-wikipedia.

(20) S. Stierch, "Women and Wikimedia Survey 2011," http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Women_and_Wikimedia_Survey_2011.

(21) ^ Khanna, "Nine out of ten Wikipedians continue to be men: Editor Survey," 27/04/2012, http://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/04/27/nine-out-of-ten-wikipedians-continue-to-be-men.

(22) ^ A. Shen, "How Many Women Does It Take to Change Wikipedia?", Smithsonian Institute Archive, 4/04/2012, http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/aroundthemall/2012/04/how-many-women-does-it-take-to-change-wikipedia.

(23) ^ C. Potter, "Prikipedia? Or, Looking for the Women on Wikipedia," Tenured Radical, 10/03/2013 http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/aroundthemall/2012/04/how-many-women-does-it-take-to-change-wikipedia.

(24) ^ T. Bosch, "How Kate Middleton's Wedding Gown Demonstrates Wikipedia's Woman Problem," Slate, 13/07/2012, http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/07/13/kate_middleton_s_wedding_gown_and_wikipedia_s_gender_g ap_.html.

(25) ^ F. Barnett, "#tooFEW - Feminists Engage Wikipedia", Hastac, 3/11/2013, http://hastac.org/blogs/fonab/2013/03/11/toofew-feminists-engage-wikipedia; See also: N. Cohen, "Defne Gender Gap? Look Up Wikipedia's Contributor List," The New York Times, 30/01/2011 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/31/business/media/31link.html?_r=2&hpwDefne& and S. C. Herring, J. M. Reagle, J. Cassell, T. Oda, A. North, J. West, J. Margolis, H. Etzkowitz and M. Ranga, "Where Are the Women in Wikipedia?," The New York Times, 2/02/2011, http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/02/02/where-are-the-women-in- wikipedia.

(26) ^ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-02-07/Gender_gap and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/globalwomen.

(27) ^ C. Leadbeater, We-Think – Mass innovation not mass production, Profle Books, 2008.

(28) M. N. K. Boulos, I. Maramba, S. Wheeler "Wikis, blogs and podcasts: a new generation of Web-based tools for virtual collaborative clinical practice and education," BMC medical education n.6 2006, p.41.

(29) ^ J. Roberts, The Necessity of Errors, Verso, London – New York, 2012.

(30) ^ W. Cunningham, "Wiki Wiki Hyper Card", WikiWikiWeb, 26/07/2007, http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiWikiHyperCard.

(31) ^ Definition of "wiki," Encyclopædia Britannica, London, 2007, http://global.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1192819/wiki.

(32) ^ Definition of "troll," Collins English Dictionary, 2012, http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/troll, cit. in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_(Internet)#cite_note-IUKB_def-3.

(33) ^ Definition of: "trolling," PCMAG.COM, Ziff Davis Publishing Holdings Inc, 2009, http://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia/term/53181/trolling#, cit. in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_(Internet)#cite_note-IUKB_def-3.

(34) ^ Anonymous, "What is a troll?," Indiana University Knowledge Base. University Information Technology Services, Indiana University, 24/03/2009, http://kb.iu.edu/data/afhc.html, cit. in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_(Internet)#cite_note-IUKB_def-3.

(35) ^ Definition of: "trollism," Urban Dictionary, 14/09/2011, http://www.urbandictionary.com/defne.php?term=Trollism.

(36) ^ M. Schwartz, "The Trolls Among Us", The New York Times, 3/08/2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/magazine/03trolls-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

(37) ^ 3pithimia, posted on: http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/trollism.

(38) ^ See: http://trollism.cheezburger.com and http://memebase.cheezburger.com/artoftrolling?ref=navbar.

(39) ^ See: https://www.facebook.com/search/results.php?init=quick&q=trolls%20&tas=0.14905903465114534.

(40) ^ See: http://countermeasures.trendmicro.eu/all-that-glisters-is-not-facebook-gold.

(41) E. Woollacott, "Facebook takes (small) step against tribute page trolls", TGDaily, 30/03/2010, http://www.tgdaily.com/software-features/49166-facebook-takes-small-step-against-tribute-page-trolls.

(42) ^ See: http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/trollism, http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/trolling, http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/trollin, http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/troll and http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/trollface.

(43) S. Barnhill, "Attack of the Fourquare Trolls!", 10/1/2011, http://shanebarnhill.com/2011/01/10/slander-by- foursquare.

(44) ^ See: http://pinterest.com/vaah/trollism http://pinterest.com/kandj104/trolling-at-it-s-fnest, and http://pinterest.com/eroddysm/trolling.

(45) ^ CH Staff, "The Fall of Pinterest", CollegeHumour, 4/06/2012, http://www.collegehumor.com/video/6778520/the- fall-of-pinterest.

(46) ^ I. Green, "Trolls and fakers on Pinterest", 24/3/2012, http://greengathering.blogspot.com/2012/03/trolls-and- fakers-on-pinterest.html.

(47) ^ See: http://web.archive.org/web/20110409171828, http://encyclopediadramatica.com/Main_Pag.

(48) ^ M. Schwartz, "The Trolls Among Us", The New York Times, 3/08/2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/magazine/03trolls-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0.

(49) M. Townsend, "Carlos Quentin's Wikipedia page vandalized shortly after suspension announcement", Yahoo! Sports, Apr 14, 2013, http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/mlb-big-league-stew/carlos-quentin-wikipedia-page-vandalized-shortly-suspension-annoucement-083311649--mlb.html.

(50) S. C. Herring, K. Job-Sluder, R. Scheckler, S. Barab, "Searching for Safety Online: Managing 'Trolling' in a Feminist Forum," Center for Social Informatics, Indiana University, 2002.

(51) ^ Ibid.

(52) T. Adams, "How the internet created an age of rage," The Observer, 24/07/2011, http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jul/24/internet-anonymity-trolling-tim-adams.

(53) ^ M. N. K. Boulos, I. Maramba, S. Wheeler "Wikis, blogs and podcasts: a new generation of Web-based tools for virtual collaborative clinical practice and education," BMC medical education n.6 2006.

(54) A. Ebersbach, Wiki: Web Collaboration, Springer Science + Business Media, 2008 .

(55) ^ See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiversity.

(56) ^ See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiEducator.

(57) ^ See: http://hastac.org/forums/hastac-scholars-discussions/making-invisible-learning-visible.

(58) M. Nunes, op.cit., 2012.



REFERENCES

Anderson, "The End of Theory: The Data Deluge Makes the Scientifc Method Obsolete", Wired, 06/23/2008, http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/16-07/pb_theory

Anonymous, "What is a troll?," Indiana University Knowledge Base. University Information Technology Services, Indiana University, 24/03/2009, http://kb.iu.edu/data/afhc.html

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Ebersbach, Wiki: Web Collaboration, Springer Science + Business Media, 2008 F.Barnett, "#tooFEW - Feminists Engage Wikipedia", Hastac, 3/11/2013,

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Khanna, "Nine out of ten Wikipedians continue to be men: Editor Survey," 27/04/2012, http://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/04/27/nine-out-of-ten-wikipedians-continue-to-be-men

Leadbeater, We-Think – Mass innovation not mass production, Profle Books, 2008

M. N. K. Boulos, I. Maramba, S. Wheeler "Wikis, blogs and podcasts: a new generation of Web-based
tools for virtual collaborative clinical practice and education," BMC medical education n.6 2006 M. Conlin, "E-Mail Is So Five Minutes Ago", Businessweek, 28/09/2005,
http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2005-11-27/e-mail-is-so-five-minutes-ago

M. Nunes (edited by) Error. Glitch, Noise and Jam in New Media Cultures, Bloomsbury, New York – London, 2012, p. 168

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N. Cohen, "Defne Gender Gap? Look Up Wikipedia's Contributor List," The New York Times, 30/01/2011 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/31/business/media/31link.html?_r=2&hpwDefine&

N. Davidson, "A new curriculum for real-world success," The Globe and Mail, 13/10/2012, http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/time-to-lead/a-new-curriculum-for-real-world- success/article4610483/%C2%A0%C2%A0

N. Nayab, M. McDonough, "Using Wikis as a Project Management Tool", Bright Hub PM - Project Management, 10/26/2011, http://www.brighthubpm.com/monitoring-projects/52061-using-wikis-as-a- project-management-tool

Potter, "Prikipedia? Or, Looking for the Women on Wikipedia," Tenured Radical, 10/03/2013 http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/aroundthemall/2012/04/how-many-women-does-it-take-to- change-wikipedia

Rethinking Humanities Graduate Education, Meeting #1: 22-23/10/2012 http://uvasci.org/current- work/graduate-education/rethinking-grad-ed-oct-2012

S. Barnhill, "Attack of the Fourquare Trolls!", 10/1/2011, http://shanebarnhill.com/2011/01/10/slander-by- foursquare

S. C. Herring, J. M. Reagle, J. Cassell, T. Oda, A. North, J. West, J. Margolis, H. Etzkowitz and M. Ranga, "Where Are the Women in Wikipedia?," The New York Times, 2/02/2011, http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/02/02/where-are-the-women-in-wikipedia

S. C. Herring, K. Job-Sluder, R. Scheckler, S. Barab, "Searching for Safety Online: Managing "Trolling" in a Feminist Forum," Center for Social Informatics, Indiana University, 2002

S. Jacoby, "The Dumbing of America," The Washington Post, 17/02/2008, http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2008-02-17/opinions/36908728_1_anti-rationalism- intellectualism-american-life

S. Stierch, "Women and Wikimedia Survey 2011," http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Women_and_Wikimedia_Survey_2011

Shen, "How Many Women Does It Take to Change Wikipedia?", Smithsonian Institute Archive, 4/04/2012, http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/aroundthemall/2012/04/how-many-women-does-it- take-to-change-wikipedia

T. Adams, "How the internet created an age of rage," The Observer, 24/07/2011, http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jul/24/internet-anonymity-trolling-tim-adams

T. Bosch, "How Kate Middleton's Wedding Gown Demonstrates Wikipedia's Woman Problem," Slate, 13/07/2012, http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/07/13/kate_middleton_s_wedding_gown_and_wikip edia_s_gender_gap_.html

V. Cerf, "If you thought the internet was cool, wait until it goes space age", The Observer, 17/10/2008, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/17/internet.google

W. Cunningham, "What is a Wiki," WikiWikiWeb, 27/06/2002, retrieved April 10, 2008,
http://www.wiki.org/wiki.cgi?WhatIsWiki

W. Cunningham, "Wiki Wiki Hyper Card", WikiWikiWeb, 26/07/2007, http://c2.com/cgi/wiki? WikiWikiHyperCard

Woollacott, "Facebook takes (small) step against tribute page trolls", TGDaily, 30/03/2010, http://www.tgdaily.com/software-features/49166-facebook-takes-small-step-against-tribute-page- trolls

Zuckerman, "The Polyglot Internet", 30/10/2008, http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/the-polyglot- internet


WEB LINKS

3pithimia, posted on: http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/trollism

Definition of "troll," Collins English Dictionary, 2012,
http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/troll

Definition of: "trolling," PCMAG.COM, Ziff Davis Publishing Holdings Inc, 2009,
http://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia/term/53181/trolling#

Definition of: "trollism," Urban Dictionary, 14/09/2011,
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php? term=Trollism

Definition of "wiki", Encyclopedia Britannica, London, 2007,
http://global.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1192819/wiki

http://www.collegehumor.com/video/6778520/the-fall-of-pinterest

http://countermeasures.trendmicro.eu/all-that-glisters-is-not-facebook-gold

http://hastac.org/forums/hastac-scholars-discussions/making-invisible-learning-visible

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_online_encyclopedias

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifability

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-02-07/Gender_gap

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/globalwomen

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Military_history

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiWikiWeb

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiversity

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiEducator

http://www.editme.com/Ways-to-Wiki-Project-Management

https://www.facebook.com/search/results.php?init=quick&q=trolls%20&tas=0.14905903465114534

http://memebase.cheezburger.com/artoftrolling?ref=navbar

http://pinterest.com/vaah/trollism

http://pinterest.com/eroddysm/trolling

http://pinterest.com/kandj104/trolling-at-it-s-fnest

http://projectmanagementwiki.org/tiki-index.php

http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/trollism

http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/trolling

http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/trollin

http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/troll

http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/trollface

http://trollism.cheezburger.com




All links, where otherwise indicated, were last accessed June 7th, 2013.

 

 




Emilio Vavarella was born in Monfalcone (Italy) in 1989. He graduated summa cum laude from both the University of Bologna with a B.A. in Visual, Cultural, and Media Studies, and from Iuav University of Venice with an M.A. in Visual Arts and study abroad fellowships at Bezalel Academy of Tel Aviv and Bilgi University of Istanbul. Emilio's work has been recently shown at: EYEBEAM, SIGGRAPH, GLITCH Festival, European Media Art Festival Festival and Japan Media Arts Festival. His work has been published in: ARTFORUM, Flash Art, Leonardo and WIRED. He currently lives and works in New York.

 

 

 

 

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