[Air-l] Online graffiti

Jean Burgess je.burgess at qut.edu.au
Sat Apr 22 16:56:03 PDT 2006


I think the case for the abuse of wikipedia working like graffiti  
only works if the metaphor is refined a bit - it's more like someone  
coming along to a community street mural and deliberately painting  
something out of step with the aesthetic and political values that  
have been implicitly or explicitly agreed on by the 'community' that  
is working on the mural.

A bit different from walking up to the blank rendered wall of, say,   
a McDonald's and writing "ronald sucks" on it.  In one case (the  
mural), the wall is constructed as open and 'writable' and in the  
second case (mcdonald's) it isn't, because of very clear binary  
distinctions between who owns the wall and therefore gets to paint  
it, and who doesn't.

All of which makes wikipedia a far more interesting case, IMHO.

cheers
Jean


Jean Burgess
http://hypertext.rmit.edu.au/~burgess

Reviews editor, International Journal of Cultural Studies
http://www.sagepub.com/journal.aspx?pid=196
ISSN: 1367-8779

Creative Industries Research Centre
Queensland University of Technology
Victoria Park Road, Kelvin Grove, QLD 4059
Australia

Phone: +61 7 3864 5603
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On 22/04/2006, at 10:41 PM, Andrea Forte wrote:

>
> The "graffiti" on Wikipedia is definitely defacement. There are  
> rules that
> govern activity on Wikipedia, often vandals act in violation of them.
> Contributions to the encyclopedia are not graffiti--that's just  
> painting a
> wall. ;-) I don't think it would be terribly difficult to study the  
> kinds
> of defacement that happen on Wikipedia. I also think it would be
> interesting to know more about why and when people vandalize as the  
> site
> is charged with a lot of political and social meaning for different
> people.
>
> Andrea
>
> On Thu, 20 Apr 2006, Ariel Foina wrote:
>
>> I believe that the most acurate real manifestation of this "online
>> grafitti"the the website defacement. Otherwise, any communal webpage
>> infrastructure will fit the graffiti Idea. But, the point it that  
>> off-line
>> grafitti is, fundamentaly a kind of ILEGAL social deviance, the  
>> owner of the
>> walls don't want the graffiti ink in it. I don't think that  
>> wikipedia has
>> somethin iligal to itself in its context, I don't think that  
>> wikipedia walls
>> don't want to be furfil of content.
>> MAYBE, when someone post deliberately, false contet on wikipedia,  
>> this could
>> be seen as a king of grafitti, but I'm affreid that this would be  
>> a very
>> dificul scietific object to investigate.
>>
>> Best Regards
>>
>> Ariel
>>
>> On 4/20/06, Alex Halavais <halavais at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> :). I defined Wikipedia as a "temple built out of grafitti" for a
>>> reporter doing a story on accuracy and wikipedia (see
>>> http://theory.isthereason.com/?p=810).
>>>
>>> - Alex
>>>
>>> On 4/20/06, Andrea Forte <aforte at cc.gatech.edu> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> On Thu, 20 Apr 2006, M.B.Gaved wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> sounds interesting. Like Cameron, I'd ask about what definition  
>>>>> you
>>> have for "online graffitti"
>>>> <snip>
>>>>> - defacement of existing online content?
>>>>
>>>> By this definition, Wikipedia has a rich history of textual  
>>>> "graffiti."
>>>> :-) Actually, I don't know much about graffiti, but it seems  
>>>> that there
>>>> are many kinds present in Wikipedia, from the "kilroy was here"  
>>>> variety,
>>>> to malicious defacing, to elaborate and sometimes pretty or  
>>>> interesting
>>>> little stories and passages that simply don't belong.
>>>>
>>>> Andrea
>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> //
>>> // Alexander Halavais
>>> // Graduate Director of Informatics
>>> // University at Buffalo School of Informatics
>>> // http://alex.halavais.net
>>> //
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