[Air-l] Wikipedia, Rosa Parks, and "The work of race in an age of digital reproduction"?

Karim R. Lakhani lakhani at MIT.EDU
Tue Oct 25 20:40:04 PDT 2005


Admins on wikipedia do have the ability to completely remove edits that 
are of objectionable nature.  you can go on the talk page of that entry 
and post the question as to why that was taken out...

Best

Karim

Mary K. Bryson wrote:
> This is the Wikipedia history for the Rosa Parks entry:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Rosa_Parks&limit=500&action=histor
> y
> 
> There is no entry for October 24/05. The record of the page I saw on October
> 24 appears to have been erased. I will track this down, eventually.
> 
> Mary
> 
> 
> On 10/25/05 7:46 PM, "Michael Zimmer" <mtz206 at nyu.edu> wrote:
> 
> 
>>What do you mean by the version being "permanently deleted from the
>>public history of this page"? These instances of vandalism are
>>retrievable from the page history, as far as I can tell. Do you mean
>>something else?
>>
>>For what it's worth, such instances of vandalism [1] are common on
>>Wikipedia, especially with ongoing events. Some of the vandal
>>activity on the Rosa Parks page has been reported here [2].
>>
>>[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Vandalism
>>[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Vandalism_in_progress
>>
>>On Oct 25, 2005, at 8:50 PM, Mary K. Bryson wrote:
>>
>>
>>>This week I am teaching Radhika Gajjala's wonderful Cyber Selves,
>>>and Lisa
>>>Nakamura's CyberTypes (who writes about "The work of race in an age of
>>>digital reproduction") in a course on new media and the
>>>possibilities for
>>>democratic public pedagogies.
>>>When I heard that Rosa Parks had died yesterday, I went online to
>>>look at
>>>the digital "rendering" of this life, and this death.
>>>On wikipedia, the entry for Rosa Parks contained what I first
>>>reacted to
>>>with disbelief as an extraordinary and somehow, incredible and
>>>incomprehensible racist paragraph under the entry - Death and
>>>Funeral. It
>>>was late. I looked at the page again today, and then the history of
>>>the
>>>page. It would appear that this particular version of the entry on
>>>October
>>>24 has been permanently deleted from the public history of this
>>>page. This
>>>prompted me to look at more of the history of the revisions - just
>>>those
>>>made on October 25/05. Not so extraordinary at all, it turns out. I
>>>have
>>>compiled a short list of some of the contributions to this
>>>wikipedia entry
>>>for my class tomorrow. I don't know enough about Wikipedia to know
>>>how the
>>>revision made on October 24 could summarily be deleted from history.
>>>
>>>At any rate, with a sense of caution in putting this "out there" -
>>>I am
>>>sending what I have found, and I have just started to look...
>>>
>>>http://educ.ubc.ca/faculty/bryson/565/wikipediarp.html
>>>
>>>Mary
>>>
>>>
>>>_______________________________________________
>>>The air-l at listserv.aoir.org mailing list
>>>is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org
>>>Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://
>>>listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
>>>
>>>Join the Association of Internet Researchers:
>>>http://www.aoir.org/
>>>
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>The air-l at listserv.aoir.org mailing list
>>is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org
>>Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at:
>>http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
>>
>>Join the Association of Internet Researchers:
>>http://www.aoir.org/
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> The air-l at listserv.aoir.org mailing list
> is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org
> Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
> 
> Join the Association of Internet Researchers: 
> http://www.aoir.org/


-- 
Karim R. Lakhani
MIT Sloan | The Boston Consulting Group
Mobile: +1 (617) 851-1224
http://spoudaiospaizen.net
http://web.mit.edu/lakhani/www | http://opensource.mit.edu
My *new* book: http://tinyurl.com/cjxj6




More information about the Air-L mailing list