There is an interesting discussion of Wikipedia in the latest TDR (The Drama Revew). The author notes that if you go to the entry for ‘theatre’ you will find that the entry is not particulary well written (in his words, ”slight” and “underwhelming”). Neither is he impressed by the standard Wikipedia defence that its virtue can be found in its open-source aspects, which allow a kind of consensus discussion around the topic by various participants; what he finds is mostly “anonymous sparring to exorcise spleen”.
The thing that he does find useful is the way it opens a series of associations and links with other articles and information. The point of Wikipedia is that its not that it is “volumes on a shelf” but that it occupies a kind of multidimensional space allowing inspiration, connections, lines of thinking and research. In his area of theatre studies he notes how the entry for the TDR editor Richard Schechner is linked to “‘New York University,’ ‘Tulane University,’ ‘Performance Studies,’ the ‘Performing Garage,’ ‘experimental theater,’ ‘The Wooster Group,’ and ‘SoHo,’ among others. (The link to TDR is still pending.)”
The author finishes by relating Wikipedia itself to his field of performance studies:
But this form of knowledge—open, combinatory, and mobile—is what I use in creating performance works that are born, live, and die in conversation with their environments and contexts. Performance does not just produce knowledge, it is itself a form of knowledge—caressing and recoiling against the conditions of its appearance. Wikipedia provides just such a way of looking at the world.
We might see Wikipedia as having a different kind of function, then, than the standard encyclopedia or similar. Students’ uncritical use of the information found on Wikipedia is a familiar problem. Use of the connections and lines of association that it allows them to explore is perhaps an underrated benefit.
