Cover of Wikipedia and the Politics of Openness
Wikipedia and the Politics of Openness
by Nathaniel Tkacz
University of Chicago Press, 2014
Cloth: 978-0-226-19227-7 | Paper: 978-0-226-19230-7 | Electronic: 978-0-226-19244-4
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226192444.001.0001

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ABOUT THIS BOOKAUTHOR BIOGRAPHYREVIEWSTABLE OF CONTENTS

ABOUT THIS BOOK

Few virtues are as celebrated in contemporary culture as openness. Rooted in software culture and carrying more than a whiff of Silicon Valley technical utopianism, openness—of decision-making, data, and organizational structure—is seen as the cure for many problems in politics and business.
 
But what does openness mean, and what would a political theory of openness look like? With Wikipedia and the Politics of Openness, Nathaniel Tkacz uses Wikipedia, the most prominent product of open organization, to analyze the theory and politics of openness in practice—and to break its spell. Through discussions of edit wars, article deletion policies, user access levels, and more, Tkacz enables us to see how the key concepts of openness—including collaboration, ad-hocracy, and the splitting of contested projects through “forking”—play out in reality.
 
The resulting book is the richest critical analysis of openness to date, one that roots media theory in messy reality and thereby helps us move beyond the vaporware promises of digital utopians and take the first steps toward truly understanding what openness does, and does not, have to offer.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Nathaniel Tkacz is assistant professor in the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies at the University of Warwick and coeditor of Critical Point of View: A Wikipedia Reader.

REVIEWS

“This book will make people sit up and think in a new way about a timely set of issues. Tkacz’s argument is not predictable or one-dimensional. Instead, it is productive of new knowledge at each step. Each new layer of argument uncovers riches of detail, new bibliographies of current research, and surprising new directions of thought. His argument balances nicely between powerful general statements and compelling concrete demonstrations.”
— Alan Liu, University of California, Santa Barbara

“A crucial intervention in the field of new media studies. The book thinks rigorously about participation and collaboration as few others do. It is certain to generate much excitement, debate, and even controversy.”
— Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Brown University

“Highly original and delightfully written, Wikipedia and the Politics of Openness is one of the finest pieces of work I have read in the field of network cultures and software studies. Tkacz has undertaken a comprehensive critique of openness—or open politics—as it manifests across a range of institutional and social-technical settings. This book has all the key ingredients to make a substantial impact in debates surrounding network governance and software politics.”
— Ned Rossiter, University of Western Sydney

“Wikipedia and the Politics of Openness is an important book. . . . At one level it is a fascinating inside look at the operations of Wikipedia – from someone who clearly knows and understands it from the inside. . . . At the next level, Wikipedia and the Politics of Openness is a critique not just of Wikipedia but of the whole idea of openness – one of the sacred cows of the internet, something considered almost beyond criticism. . . . Tkacz challenges assumptions and forces you to question your own views, particularly about openness itself.”
— Times Higher Education

“Tkacz’s book is an important reminder to be critical of any discourse that advocates technology as a one-solution-fits-all quick fix. His analysis of Wikipedia demonstrates, in fine detail, that hierarchy does not disappear when digital collaboration is added to the mix. Indeed, it is often precisely the opposite.”
— Public Books

“Could be used across many disciplines, such as communications, media studies, philosophy, linguistics, sociology, and cultural studies. . . . Highly recommended.”
— Choice

“Tkacz’s book provides a valuable set of concepts and techniques of political description which can be used ‘to speak coherently back to openness’ and re-examine our assumptions about it.”
— Cultural Studies Review

“This text is a fine example of new work in critical digital media studies. . . . It will be of great interest to those in new/digital media studies and science and technology studies.”
— Information, Communication, and Society

“Wikipedia and the Politics of Openness uses ideas from cultural studies and organizational theory to discuss governance in an extremely important online community. In addition to highly valuable case studies, it is also to be commended for employing ideas from various traditions of cultural studies in ways that are lucid and informative.”
— Contemporary Sociology

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Introduction


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226192444.003.0001
[open politics, open society, Karl Popper, open government, open source software, Richard Stallman, Eric Raymond]
Notions of openness are increasingly visible in a great number of political developments, from activist groups to software projects, from political writings to the institutions of government. And yet, there has been very little reflection on what openness means, how it functions, or how seemingly radically different groups can all claim to desire openness. This chapter considers the proliferation of openness as a political concept. By tracing the (re)emergence of “the open” through software cultures in the 1980s and more recently in network cultures, it shows how contemporary political openness functions in relation to a new set of concepts – collaboration, participation, and transparency – but also identifies important historical continuities, most notably in the work of Karl Popper. By revisiting the work of Popper in relation to this second coming of the open, the chapter suggests that there is a critical flaw in how openness functions in relation to politics. (pages 14 - 41)


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226192444.003.0002
[Wikipedia, collaboration, participation, Frames, Wikipedia Art, Muhammad, statements]
This chapter begins with a critical overview of how working together on open projects has been understood in terms of participation and collaboration. While such notions do point to novel developments in the organization of work online, they tell us very little about how specific contributions make it into open projects, while others are “sorted out.” In order to fill this gap and build a more politicized understanding of collaborative work, the chapter considers two case studies where the work of sorting contributions becomes highly visible and politically energized: the deletion of the article entry “Wikipedia Art” and the debate over the inclusion of certain images in the article entry for “Muhammad.” In order to better understand the ordering work of collaboration, the chapter draws from Bateson’s notion of “frames” and places this within a broader discussion of Foucauldian “statements.” (pages 42 - 87)


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226192444.003.0003
[Wikipedia, bureaucracy, ad-hocracy, Max Weber, Alvin Toffler, NPOV, bots, statements, governance]
This chapter offers a revised theory of organizational governance in critical dialogue with Weber’s account of “bureaucracy” and Toffler’s notion of “ad-hocracy.” It argues that contemporary theories of governance in open projects are largely and problematically indebted to the work of Toffler, which has led to a situation where the very question of organizational governance is obscured. The chapter takes up selected aspects of Weber’s foundational work on bureaucracy to rethink governance in projects that are all too often described as flat, leaderless, self-organizing, and in constant flux. In developing a revised theory of governance, the chapter includes discussions of Wikipedia’s extensive body of rules (including a detailed analysis of the Neutral Point of View principle), automated “bots,” and user-access levels. (pages 88 - 125)


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226192444.003.0004
[Wikipedia, software fork, computation, exit, open, organization]
This chapter considers the procedure of software forking in relation to other forms of leave-oriented political action, such as exit, exodus, and revolution. The chapter details the political qualities that are attributed to both the practice and discourse of forking and considers more generally the relationship between forking and openness. The chapter argues that even though forking is commonly presented as an ever-present possibility within open projects, achieving a successful fork is actually dependant on a range of contingencies that cannot be taken for granted. Such contingences not only weaken the political promises of forking, but also offer the chance to consider the “computational” worldview that informs this practice. (pages 126 - 149)


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226192444.003.0005
[Wikipedia, controversy, software fork, statements, mouthpiece, spokesperson, modalities]
This chapter continues the investigation of forking from Chapter Four, but focuses specifically on a heated discussion about the possible inclusion of advertising that led to the Spanish Fork of Wikipedia. The chapter borrows from the tradition of “controversy analysis” in Science and Technology Studies to re-read the discussion as a battle of “statements.” It is argued that the challenge of this controversy is to produce the most powerful statements – ones that will come to define the future direction of Wikipedia – but, since open projects are supposedly “leaderless,” such authoritative statements must be produced without an authority. This peculiar situation of (anti)leadership is considered in relation to the Latourian figures of the spokesperson and the mouthpiece. The chapter finishes by reflecting on what fork controversies reveal about open projects more generally. (pages 150 - 176)

Conclusion: The Neoliberal Tinge

Appendix A: Archival Statements from the Depictions of Muhammad Debate

Appendix B: Selections from the Mediation Archives

References

Index

Book published by University of Chicago Press, 2014. Page maintained by BiblioVault.