Negotiating Authorities, Building Knowledge: Digital and Collaborative Historiography in the Project Theory of History on Wikipedia

Abstract

Among collaborative projects of free access to big data organization, Wikipedia stands out as a platform with great results in search engines which organizes and compiles information dispersed on the Web, in addition to uploading a large number of entries dedicated to history. Based on the experience of the extension project Theory of History on Wikipedia, this article highlights the phenomenon of writing history on this platform. We start from the point of view that writing history in a digital and collaborative encyclopedia constantly implies the negotiation of authority. Because it is a history produced with the public, it transforms academic orientation into social editing/curation, causing strangeness with respect to current academic practices. Finally, this article defends that it is possible to foster the dialogue between the rules of the disciplinary canon of writing history and the pillars of digital encyclopedism, as expressed by Wikipedia.