Wikipedia Historiography Paper: Some Considerations and a Potential Structure

As it looks like most people are choosing to write the Wikipedia historiography paper for the Oct. 15 deadline, I thought I'd post some thoughts about how you might go about approach this assignment as well as a potential structure for writing it.

Here's a reminder of the official description from the syllabus:

Using the “View History” function of Wikipedia, students will write an 800–1000 word historiography of a Wikipedia page relevant to their subtopic. We will spend time in class discussing how to think about and trace the historiography of a topic, what to look for within this “View History” page, and collaboratively decide how this assignment should be evaluated.

Given that most of our discussions have been quite engaging and I want to give the discussion leader this week ample time to help the class grapple with this week's readings, I thought I'd post what I had initially thought we'd have time to discuss. Hopefully we can address any questions in class, but this blog post will, I hope, serve as a useful guide as each of you embarks on your analysis.

As a reminder, historiography is essentially the study of how writing history changes over time. As historians develop and embrace new approaches, encounter new sources, and perceive the world in new ways given their present circumstances, the way they analyze the causes of past events change significantly. Wikipedia (what a shocking source to draw on here, I know!) has a nice encapsulation of how these changes have been seen in the historical profession in the past 40 or so years:

So, in order to assess these types of interpretive changes for a Wikipedia page, here's a list of questions to consider as you read through the "View History" tab of your selected topic.

• Who created the page and when? Who are the major contributors?
• What can you find out about these people and their educational or professional backgrounds
• What other pages or types of edits have they made on Wikipedia? Do they seem to have an academic or topical specialty? Do they tend to make particular types of edits on all the Wikipedia pages to which they contribute?
• What sources do these editors cite? What can you tell about the quality of their research and the sources on which they draw?
• What are the major sources of disagreement about the page? Where do the Wikipedia contributors seem to go back-and-forth the most?
• Are there key dates in the history of a page that spur a flurry of edits?
• Are there particular contributions that challenge or directly violate Wikipedia's "neutral point of view" policy (e.g. vandalism)?
• What images have users added to the page and how do these contribute to its usefulness and/or the argument that it conveys?

In terms of then structuring your paper after you've done a close and thorough reading of the "View History" tab, you might consider the following framework (though it is not set in stone):

• Intro ¶
• Brief overview of topic and its origin on Wikipedia
• Structural thesis statement (e.g. clear argumentative claim and a roadmap/blueprint for your body paragraphs) establishing the most significant areas of interpretive controversy or debate AND/OR the most significant contributions to the page.
• Body ¶s
• Elaborate on each of the points from your thesis and provide evidence from the page about the interpretive debates AND/OR contributions.
• Conclusion ¶
• Evaluation of the page's value/trustworthiness as an introductory source on this topic.
  AND
• A consideration of how the page's transformation fits into some of the major trends about historical interpretations and arguments about transatlantic slavery that we've read about thus far in class.

NOTE: Please use footnotes in your paper. If you'd like to use full Chicago Style citations for all URLs you may, but you can also just footnote the URL by itself.

I hope this set of questions and potential structure prove useful in guiding your research and helping you organize the evidence you encounter. Please post any questions you have in the comments so that your peers, who may have the same concerns, can also see my response or provide feedback and guidance of their own.

And for good measure, I'll include my favorite historiography-related cartoon below (because there are sooooooo many to choose from):