literary sleuths online
DESCRIPTION
Study of Pynchon Wiki first presented at AoIR 2007TRANSCRIPT
Literary Sleuths Online: e-Research Collaboration on the Pynchon Wiki
Ralph Schroeder
Matthijs den Besten
Motivation
• November 2006: Thomas Pynchon publishes “Against the Day”;
• A Wiki immediately springs up that has annotated “Against the Day” in full;
• Autumn 2007: How does the annotation measure up? How do Wikis work as collaborative tools? How does e-Research collaboration work?
e-Research, Online Collaboration, and Pynchon
• Wikipedia
• e-Research in the Humanities and other Sciences
• Pynchon website and mailing list, similar to some other authors
• Wiki shifts attention to annotation and away from mailing list
Charting Pynchon Activity OnlineCommunity Acitivity
0
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
3000
Jan-06 Feb-06 Mar-06 Apr-06 May-06 Jun-06 Jul-06 Aug-06 Sep-06 Oct-06 Nov-06 Dec-06 Jan-07 Feb-07 Mar-07 Apr-07 May-07 Jun-07
Pynchon- l mailinglist messages Against the day Wiki edits
Anticipation
Annotation
And what’s next?
Outline
• Pynchon’s Work - Online & Offline
• The “Against the Day” Wiki
• Quality of online annotations
Thomas Pynchon
• A notorious recluse;• Author of
– Gravity’s Rainbow, annotated in book form
– Against the Day– Other Novels
annotated
• Arcana integral to story-lines
Literary Annotation and “Against the Day”
• Annotation can ‘check up on author’, or quixotically follow trail of leads, or provide ‘engagement’ with author
• Pynchon: ‘…it may not be wrong to make it up…there are no longer any exuses for small stupid mistakes’
• Mixed reviews, publication preceded by lots of ‘buzz’
Wiki Structure
• There's basically 3 things the Wiki does at the moment:” (Pirate Prentice, 2007) – straight up reference;– connections to other Pynchon novels;– interpretation.
• By July 2007:– > 200 contributors– > 5000 entries– > 400 000 words
Wiki Governance
• Volunteer effort
• Registered users only
• The ‘laid back sherrif’
• Separation of discussion and annotation pages
• Page-by-page first, then topical and alphabetical
Wiki Edits over Time
0
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
Oct-06 Nov-06 Dec-06 Jan-07 Feb-07 Mar-07 Apr-07 May-07 Jun-07 Jul-07
page-by-page
alphabetical
topical
Why page-by-page?
• ‘I think the page-by-page (can we now call that the PbP?) is a lot more fun to edit, since it follows the way I am reading the book’– Fblau 09:03, 25 November 2006
Pages of Against the Day annotated over time
Most edited topics1 Main_Page 158
2 ATD_Reviews 73
3 Errata 71
4 Against_the_Day_Title 44
5 The_Sexual_Angle 31
6 Thomas_Pynchon 29
7 ATD_cover_analysis 28
8 Against_the_Day_description 27
9 Timeline 25
10 Birds 18
Comparison of Annotation efforts by Weisenburger and in the Pynchon Wiki
Size (no. of words)
Entries (topical+alphabetical
+ page-by-page)
Contributors Annotation
162000 904 1(22) Weisenburger’s Gravity’s Rainbow
455057 120+1358+4067 235 Against the day
32214 22+2+94 13 Crying of Lot 49
168902 155+1356+214 20 Gravity's Rainbow
75934 76+1231+309 13 Mason Dixon
95603 76+753+236 6 V.
Qualitative Assessment of Contributions
• Weisenburger can be used as benchmark
• Weisenburger’s entries are ‘scholarly’
• Wiki entries pursue ‘long shots’
• Weber and other Wiki entries use Web, Weisenburger relies on limited and apposite sources
Comparing Weisenburger and Wiki
• Wiki continues to expand and becomes more differentiated (where does reference stop?)
• Stabilization and finalization as with Wikipedia? Side by side possibilities?
• Weisenburger references print, Wiki references Web
• Wiki is anonymous
Conclusions I
• Wiki strengths (range and depth) vs book strenths (conciseness and consistency) – and Wiki has speed and size
• Wiki structure encourages ‘race’ to finish detective work
• Encouraging contribution and interaction with other readers, but does this lead to finalization or discussion forum?
Conclusions II
• Benkler on peer-to-peer creativity, • Annotations enhance reading, Wiki also
provides enjoyable collaboration• “a great place to share my discovery--without
feeling too shy about the ‘well duh, of course everyone knows that...’ responses that one might subject oneself to in an open forum” - Ande, 2007