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

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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

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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