Oh, come on, people; we’re not offing the author…
…We’re just adding new types of authorship.
I believe the Miller’s article on the subject of wiki authoring was a little scattered and underdeveloped. It felt more like an editorial than a scholarly essay. There was very little concrete information beyond reading a few articles and surfing Wikipedia for a few days.
The author type isn’t dying out. I’m sure that anyone who chooses to write, edit, or comment on a wiki page knows that they’re not getting anything out of it except, perhaps, popularity or respect from wiki-writing fans. They do not write the articles to reveal their name to the world; they write for the collaboration.
I believe this new phenomenon of writing for a combined purpose rather than for a solo magnum opus quite compelling and very telling in our society. I believe that certain groups in our generation are branching out of the Western “rugged individualist” model of the last many decades and moving towards something a little more collective. And I think the internet and such writing group sites as Wikipedia are fostering this new growth in community, at least on an electronic plane.
–K. Foley
((Revised for inclusion in ePortfolio Cognizance))
