The nail that sticks up gets hammered down. 出る釘は打たれる  I’ve heard my Swedish friend and Japanese friend both claim this is from their country and I always thought it was English.  It’s perhaps a transnational truth about dissent and individuality and perhaps never truer than in a wiki. 

Is collective intelligence an oxymoron?  Are we dumbing down to the lowest level --  do they delete that which is beyond
them or to subtle?  Are the “smart” ones running rough shod over the basic statements or “obvious” points?   Is it simply a magnified space for frustrations?  

Do we settle to a bland midpoint that no one is quite happy with?  Or is the sum greater than the parts and collectively solve issues that none of us could alone? 

Do we address dissent productively or do we troll (and concern troll) and self-censor?   How does it vary when changes are attributed to users?  A wiki shows who did what --  there’s no hiding your actions.  Everyone knows if you’re the “grammar
nazi”  or the one whose work is always debunked.  We see who stirs the pot, who adds ingredients, who kibitzes, and who thinks were not making soup at all. So perhaps we are “nicer” in those venues – or are we more tactful?  Do we spend time second guessing?   Are we paralyzed and our self-scrutiny does the job for the totalitarians?  Woo. Panopticon of the wiki. 

Perhaps a more opaque space has a value for its liberatory value.  Scalar may make attribution harder, but it is a little more freeing.  

On the other hand if there’s no individual credit attached, many of us are reluctant to contribute to a group effort.  Both literally as in class credit (getting smart student to participate in group work is a bear ) and more metaphorically  -- what of my reputation if that article isn’t seen as mine? Or that snappy remark?   

What of plagiarism’s essence --   my words are absorbed into a whole – how can I show my own thinking?  The Borg have got me.  

The verification of information from multiple sources is a key aspect of historiography  --  we want to triangulate.  But do we want to crowd source?   The verification via seeing for ourselves was a key aspect of Herodotus’ method --  the autopsy --  tied to the ethos of the person reporting back to us.  Now we have an added aspect --  we see the narrative as it is written.  There is no ethos for a wiki.  Is there? We do not see the events, but we see how the narrative of the event is created --  we literally see the “winners”  version come to be.  In this case, it’s the victors of edit wars, not of the event itself.   We become
aware of the shaping of the past by the present.  This however has the power for the literal losers to be the recorders of the event and be victorious by having their version recorded --  they win the PR battle.

Expressing an sense of individuality within another’s architecture (whether Scalar or wiki or other platform)  can be a challenge, yet creativity usually wins out.  Our voices and personal style give us away --  until multiple edit passes by others at least.  Should we wish for a seamless blend, we can choose to deemphasize personal style and opinion, but it’s tougher than we think to do so completely.   

We are part of the wiki, we’re the ghost in the machine, we’re not just the subject of the entry we are subject to the structure.  The architecture constrains us  --  we can get lost if we don’t understand it.  If we have no sitemap, we lose our virtual sense of direction --  literally in where we are placing material  and metaphorically in that our conversations have no recipient, we have no feedback, we are shouting into a cave.  Those parallel processes need to meet, folks.