Hi all. I was wondering if anyone would be interested in discussing a paper
I've been working on, which uses Wikipedia to assess questions on
authorship and authority in Ancient Historiography.
I don't know where is the best place to upload the draft, though... There's
the
Academia.edu "sessions" draft, and of course Google docs, but maybe you
know some better option?
Here's the current paper:
Title: Is Livy a good Wikipedian? Authority and authorship in ancient
historiography through the lenses of contemporary anonymous writing
Abstract: In this paper, I present an experiment conducted in an online
environment akin to Wikipedia, where proficient Wikipedia editors evaluate
three texts from Livy, presented to them without their knowledge and with
different authorship attributions, in order to assess whether Livy's
writing would conform to the standards of notability and impartiality on
Wikipedia, while aiming also to understand how the influence of different
attributions of authorship affects the recognition of authority in history
texts. The ultimate goal of this experiment is to demonstrate the
interconnection between modes of presentation of literary authority and the
construction and need for an authorial persona. The choice of Livy as
evaluated author sheds light on traditional topics of Livian scholarship,
such as his use of sources and self-presentation, while also indicating
differences and similarities in ancient and contemporary historiographical
parameters.
Although I use Livy as the author for my experiment, my main focus is
really on theoretical aspects related to authority and authorship. I've
written quite a substantial part on the workings of Wikipedia because I
intend to publish for academic readers which are not very knowledgeable
about it. I've already detected some methodological issues, so I'm eager to
see what others have to say. My current discussion with fellow classicists
has been a bit difficult, for as you may imagine, the field is very
traditional - to put it nicely.
Thank you all,
Juliana
--
www.domusaurea.org