The Space Between

Controversies in the New Archival Medium

For a contemporary application of Web 2.0 and a budding system of semantic tagging, one need look no further than the wiki, a software application that allows the readers of a site to generate and edit the content of the site, either anonymously or through a username system. The most recognizable use of the wiki software is, of course, Wikipedia. And while it provides an unsurpassed amount of reader participation in crafting the textual space, it is not without controversy.

As I mentioned in the introduction, tempering and vandalism have been the bane the Wikipedia since its immense rise in popularity. If the popular record is so malleable, many wonder, how can any of it be considered accurate? How can an anonymous mass of readers create a text as accurate as the world-famous Encyclopedia Britannica? As Johndan Johnson-Eiola and Amy Kimme Hea write:

What happens if history is erased or conversely if history is made too convenient? Is every history equally viable? Do all histories have equally loud voices? If every text and every view is equally available at all times, critical distance collapses and we are left without a way of reflecting critically on our present; we cannot locate the rupture, and any efforts to discuss the relationships among different hypertexts leaves everyone waiting in an absurdist play for a fictional character who is never to arrive. We require a non-accommodating hypertext, one that allows us a place into which we can push back. (418)

When every reader has a voice, it becomes increasingly difficult to hear one voice among the din. The non-accomodating hypertext that Johnson-Eiola and Kimme Hea propose would be one that provides rules and regulations, a firm hypertext in the spirit of Nelson’s Project Xanadu. Such systems are in the works, even by Nelson himself, with the goal of assigning credit (or blame) in a more print-traditional manner. DiLoria and Vitali look to return the Web to its globally-writable roots with their software IsaWiki, which promises safe and controlled page editing. They assert that “customization and reuse of other peoples’ materials can be the right moves towards and augmented web publishing environment, if and only if they are performed in a controlled and safe way, i.e., with good support for individual merits and authorship” (Di Lorio and Vitali 2) Their system essentially mirrors in code what the Wikipedia has recently adopted as policy. On Wikipedia, all those who wish to change a page must now register for a user account with the site. There is no way to certify an editor’s identity, but the thin veil of even a username is sometimes enough to provoke honesty and integrity on the Web.

But despite an apparent need for attribution—as per the Wikipedia scandals—typical Web users value anonymity over attribution, seeing open publishing without citation as the defining characteristic of the Web and of hypertext in general, which, as Johnson-Eiola and Kimme Hea write, “coalesces, it seems, around a wish of what we want text to be—contingent, anchored, slipping, caught in a net, Disappearing” (416).

Ultimate reader freedom on the Web may not be possible, considering the Web’s status as mediated hypertext. An observation make by Michalak and Coney is especially important to this theme: “a reader who attempted to play the role of user would be thoroughly frustrated by a document in which the designer had anticipated them to play maker of meaning” (180). In other words, the role a reader/user can expect to play is uncertain at best; and in a highly decentralized hypertext there is little in the way of context or semantic linkage to let the reader know her place with respect to the text or to indicate which roles she should play. Michalak and Coney imagine a system in which the reader could chose the role she wanted to play from the start. Only by understanding the relationship between author and reader from the start can a hypertext reader complete the chain of signification and accomplish hypertext’s primary purpose: communication (Michalak and Coney 181).