Yesterday, I was thinking about how everything I post here (or on facebook or twitter or …) has a life of its own. This site is durable in a way that only digital things can be durable: infinite copies, nearly no value, ephemeral yet eternal.
Not everything I’ve done online is here or places like facebook. In October 2006, I wrote a Wikipedia article about Slowness, a book by Milan Kundera. I was and am still skeptical about Wikipedia’s value, especially as Google can offer links to many sites written by academic experts as opposed to Wikipedia’s self-appointed editorial “experts”.
Nothing new. Most people I know feel the same way.
It’s been three years since I wrote that article, so I went into the history to see how much was changed by other people. The answer surprised me a tiny bit: not much changed.
To be honest, I wrote a short article about a short novel by an author who is famous for two or three of his other works. This one is, in a way, an also-ran in his oeuvre…but it’s the one I enjoyed most.
I doubt I’ll ever write anything else (or even edit anything) on Wikipedia. While it was fun to try once, the interface is still a pain. All the markup and standard ways to identify things and notations are just annoying.
I never aspired to write for an encyclopedia. I am completely opposed to learning a second language (the markup tags and formatting rules) to even try to write for an encyclopedia.
And so, I’d say this is certainly the last time I ever write about Wikipedia, unless I think about comparing a few pages again…
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I like the book too – I’ve actually mentioned it and probably skimmed your article at the time. The Joke is my favorite, though.