470428

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NMS15810.1177/1461444812470428new media & societyLoveland and Reagle

Article

new media & society

Wikipedia and encyclopedic 15(8) 12941311

The Author(s) 2013
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DOI: 10.1177/1461444812470428
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Jeff Loveland
University of Cincinnati, USA

Joseph Reagle
Northeastern University, USA

Abstract
Wikipedia is often presented within a foreshortened or idealized history of encyclopedia-
making. Here we challenge this viewpoint by contextualizing Wikipedia and its modes
of production on a broad temporal scale. Drawing on examples from Roman antiquity
onward, but focusing on the years since 1700, we identify three forms of encyclopedic
production: compulsive collection, stigmergic accumulation, and corporate production.
While each could be characterized as a discrete period, we point out the existence
of significant overlaps in time as well as with the production of Wikipedia today.
Our analysis explores the relation of editors, their collaborators, and their modes of
composition with respect to changing notions of authorship and originality. Ultimately,
we hope our contribution will help scholars avoid ahistorical claims about Wikipedia,
identify historical cases germane to the social scientists concerns, and show that
contemporary questions about Wikipedia have a lifespan exceeding the past decade.

Keywords
Collaboration, encyclopedias, history, production, Wikipedia

Characterizations of Wikipedia, like those of other new media, are often exaggerated and
ahistorical a tendency that prevents us from appreciating genuine innovation and robs
us of opportunities to engage with the past. For example, Wikipedia has been repeatedly
compared with just one other encyclopedia, the Encyclopaedia Britannica in its most

Corresponding author:
Jeff Loveland, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH
45221-0377, USA.
Email: jeff.loveland@uc.edu

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Loveland and Reagle 1295

recent printed and electronic editions. These comparisons often posit a contrast between
an encyclopedia supposedly produced by anonymous, collaborating nobodies and one
supposedly composed wholly by individual, named experts (e.g., Giles, 2005; Gorman,
2007; Keen, 2007: 20, 3637; Lih, 2009). Such a contrast not only simplifies Wikipedia
and the recent Encyclopaedia Britannica but also neglects centuries of history.
One of the few writers to contextualize Wikipedia in a broad history of encyclopedism
is Daniel Pink (2005), who posits three periods or forms of encyclopedic production. The
One Smart Guy model of the earliest encyclopedias involved the genius and prodigious
effort of a lone individual such as Pliny the Elder. The One Best Way model is that of
the Encyclopaedia Britannica and other scholarly encyclopedias, which applied methods
of scientific and industrial management to aggregate the efforts of dozens of experts
working in their own domains under central editorial control. Finally, the One for All
model draws on thousands of fairly smart guys and gals because 500 Kvarans
[ordinary Wikipedians] equals one Pliny the Elder (Pink, 2005).
Although Pink provides a useful framework for introducing Wikipedia, his periodi-
zation into these distinct eras is problematic. Of course, all historical partitioning is
problematic, however useful, insofar as it smoothes over the complexities of the past
(e.g., Gerhard, 1973; Harr and Fathali, 2006). A first problem for large-scale periodiza-
tion of encyclopedic activities is one of genre. In particular, the genres of the dictionary
and the encyclopedia that we now take for granted did not always exist as such.
Admittedly, since around the 18th century, the European-originated general encyclope-
dia has enjoyed stability as a genre. It is a predominantly alphabetical work covering the
arts and sciences as well as history, biography, and geography (Loveland, in press), and
it is written for consultation by non-professional readers. However, in earlier centuries
and in other settings, encyclopedic texts were often different in their contents and pur-
poses, and they were not necessarily seen as a unified genre, as Aude Doody has argued
regarding the encyclopedias of classical antiquity (Doody, 2010: 45, 4258). Our
approach has been to recognize differences between past encyclopedias as well as their
connections with related genres. Furthermore, in contrast to Pinks periods, we offer
three modes of encyclopedic production in which subsequent stages do not necessarily
obviate preceding ones. Using this methodology, one can find surprising similarities
between todays Wikipedia and older works.
This article is thus a historically informed presentation of encyclopedic production rela-
tive to Wikipedia. We argue that Wikipedia should be better understood within the history
of producing works of reference. Specifically, we focus on three overlapping forms of
encyclopedic production: compulsive collection (production by the prodigious informa-
tion-gathering efforts of individuals), stigmergic accumulation (production by accretion
onto a previous text), and corporate production (production by a group, not necessarily by
a corporation in the modern sense of the term). The focus on these terms arose from our
inductive engagement with the history of encyclopedism; they are, moreover, among the
most important forms of production in the European tradition of encyclopedia-making.
Interestingly, all of them point to a certain amount of continuity relative to Wikipedia, con-
tinuity that is often overlooked in standard comparisons of Wikipedia to other works, espe-
cially recent editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Grounded in the notion of
production, our analysis explores the relation of editors, their collaborators, and their
modes of composition with respect to changing notions of authorship and originality.

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1296 new media & society 15(8)

Compulsive collection
In describing his One Smart Guy period, Pink (2005) refers to the extraordinary
amount of work done by a few, for example by the ancient Roman nobleman Pliny the
Elder, the author of the 37-volume Natural History, often considered the first Western
encyclopedia. Still, like all encyclopedias, the Natural History was much more than a
single-handed production, for Pliny relied on informants and secretarial slaves in
addition to his own colossal labors and discipline (Blair, 2010: 8182).
The practice of collection further accelerated in the European Renaissance. New
knowledge became available in a period of discovery, recovery, and geographical
expansion, but as Ann Blair points out, it would not have been seen as worth collecting
and arranging if the culture of the Renaissance had not also been oriented toward
seeking out and stockpiling information (Blair, 2010: 12). Collections took many
forms during the period, including the herbarium and ancestors of the modern
museum and alphabetical encyclopedias; the latter acquired firmer contours in the
late 17th century and emerged as a genre in the mid-18th century (Loveland, in press).
Tireless, detail-oriented people continued to be attracted to the labor of compiling
encyclopedias in the early modern and modern periods. Louis de Jaucourt, for example,
an 18th-century French nobleman, physician, and polymath, spent 20 years compiling a
six-volume medical encyclopedia, but the completed manuscript was lost in a shipwreck.
Undeterred from his calling in scholarly compilation, Jaucourt then volunteered as a
contributor to Denis Diderot and Jean Le Rond DAlemberts Encyclopdie, writing
articles on botany, medicine, and other subjects, and expanding his output when many
fellow contributors abandoned the project after it ran into political and legal troubles in
the late 1750s. In the end, it is estimated that Jaucourt wrote 25% of the Encyclopdie,
which extended to 17 volumes in folio and contained some 25 million words.
A wealthy aristocrat, Jaucourt wrote for the Encyclopdie in exchange for books, not
money. Indeed, he hired secretaries to help with his compilation and paid for some of
their salaries by selling a house (Lough, 1971: 46). It is important to remember, however,
that one of the compulsions behind many encyclopedists apparently obsessive collection
was that of financial need. Consider for example James Tytler, the compiler of the second
edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. As the primary compiler of a 10 million-word
encyclopedia, he evidently had a certain talent and energy for the collection of informa-
tion. Furthermore, like Pliny and Jaucourt, Tytler was an intellectual idealist, passionate,
in particular, about the cause of political liberty. Yet his main motivation for compiling
the Britannica was undoubtedly the salary. An undistinguished writer with a family to
support and a history of indebtedness, Tytler was able to enter a rare phase of financial
stability through his work on the Britannica (Doig et al., 2009).
Like past encyclopedists, Wikipedians can be compulsive in collecting and preparing
information, so much so that they may characterize themselves as Wikipediholics
(Wikipedia, 2012i) suffering from editcountitis, an unhealthy obsession with the num-
ber of edits you have made to Wikipedia (Wikipedia, 2012d). A persons edit count is
rather arbitrary, since some save a Wikipedia page after every tweak, whereas others edit
offline and then paste back the finished text, thereby generating a single edit. Nevertheless,
the edit count is a widely used measure of involvement and commitment to Wikipedia.
For example, one must have a minimum number of edits to participate in Board of

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Loveland and Reagle 1297

Trustees elections (Wikimedia, 2012). Likewise, the Deceased Wikipedians page is

supposed to commemorate only those who were part of the community and made at
least several hundred edits or were known for substantial contributions to certain arti-
cles (Wikipedia, 2012c).
Although tens of thousands of Wikipedians make a handful of changes, a much
smaller number are extraordinarily prolific. Ironically, some of the most prolific are
not even human beings but rather bots pieces of software that comb through
incoming contributions to correct misspellings and flag vandalism (Geiger, 2011;
Niederer and Dijck, 2011). Still, hyper-productive human contributors are not hard to
find. Simon Pulsifer, a Canadian Wikipedian, created more than 2000 pages and
edited more than 78,000 (Shimo, 2006). How does such a habit form? Andrew Lih
(2009: 106108), the author of The Wikipedia Revolution, draws attention to the red
dot guy, Seth Anthony, who tells of his own slip into involvement with Wikipedia as
follows:

Sometime early in 2004, I made a dot-map showing the location of my hometown: Apex,
North Carolina. Then I decided, what the heck, since Ive done that and have the graphics
program open, why dont I make maps for every town in the county. That afternoon, I did about
a third of the state and it didnt make any sense to stop there, so I just kept on running.
(Wikipedia, 2006)

Perhaps it is the focused but cumulative work that grabs people like Ilys and makes
them addicts. Tom McArthur (1986: 93) has labeled this impulse the taxonomic
urge, though encyclopedic urge may be more accurate in indicating a scope beyond
classification. Contemporary research into the psychology of Wikipedians motivation
builds on research on free and open source software, where much work is also volun-
tary. At Wikipedia, where anonymous and pseudonymous contributions are common,
reported motivations include personal satisfaction, identification with the values and
goals of the project, a desire to share information, a sense of fulfillment, and interest
in developing knowledge and skills (Forte and Bruckman, 2005; Johnson, 2007;
Rafaeli et al., 2005). Though the notion of a compulsion to collect and present infor-
mation for Wikipedia is charming and humorous for the most part, a hint of distress can
be detected in those who complain of staying up late, falling behind with work, and
experiencing sore wrists. The Wikipedia article on blocking states, eerily, that users
requests to block their own accounts so as to enforce a wikibreak are typically
refused, though a JavaScript-based wikibreak enforcer is available for use (Wikipedia,
2012a).
Despite the huge contributions of certain individuals, Wikipedia is ultimately produced
by thousands of people. The balance between the few who contribute much (the elite)
and the many who contribute little (the bourgeoisie, long tail, crowd, or mob) was
one of the most lively areas of early research into Wikipedia. Early on, co-founder Jimmy
Wales (2005) noted that half the edits by logged in users belong to just 2.5% of logged in
users. This result was confirmed by Voss (2005) but also contested (Kittur et al., 2007).
Other analyses have shown that the balance one finds between the contributions of the few
and the many depends on what criteria are used to define a contribution (Adler et al.,
2008; Priedhorsky et al., 2007; Swartz, 2006) as well as what criteria are used to define

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1298 new media & society 15(8)

the few and the many (Ortega et al., 2008; Ortega and Gonzalez-Barahona, 2007).
Wikipedia, moreover, may be changing as it matures (Ball, 2007; Niederer and Dijck,
2011; Spinellis and Louridas, 2008).
In sum, while it is novel that hundreds of thousands of contributors have worked
directly and interactively on Wikipedia in its first decade of life, claiming Wikipedia is
the work of either an elite or a mob is simplistic; it is both and more. Hence, as Reagle
(2010: 146151) argues, dismissals of Wikipedia as representing a Maoist collective
intelligence are hyperbolic. Whatever their exact role, smart guys and gals engaged in
heroic and perhaps compulsive feats of collection and compilation continue to play a role
in the production of Wikipedia, albeit with less visibility than in one-man encyclope-
dias of the past. Conversely, these latter works were also collaborative, much more so
than their supposed authorship by one or more compulsive individuals might lead us to
believe.
If the distinction between a collectively authored Wikipedia and its individually
authored predecessors turns out to be murky, a crucial distinction remains in the motiva-
tions of contributors. While not all encyclopedists before the time of Wikipedia were
motivated by money, the vast majority were, even if this motive existed alongside more
idealistic ones. Many made a living as encyclopedists. By contrast, few people are paid
to write articles for Wikipedia and most of these people do so discreetly as their pro-
motional efforts are counter to Wikipedias policies on neutrality and conflict of inter-
est. Furthermore, authors are unable to take full credit for authorship of an article an
enticement that drew unpaid contributors to prestigious printed encyclopedias since
articles in Wikipedia are open to revision and collaboration. Contributors can use edits
as a ladder for advancement in standing within the community, but the social capital
thus acquired is of limited value outside Wikipedia, unlike the wages paid to other
encyclopedists.

Stigmergic accumulation
The labor of even an apparently lone encyclopedist was nonetheless social in the follow-
ing way: besides sometimes enjoying the assistance of secretaries or informants, the
encyclopedist relied on others texts. One can see this cumulative form of collaboration
over time as a type of stigmergy a term coined by the French zoologist Pierre-Paul
Grass to describe how wasps and termites collectively build complex structures by add-
ing to the product of previous work rather than by communicating directly among them-
selves (Karsai, 2004: 101). This notion is helpful in explaining the collaboration behind
Wikipedia, as Mark Elliott argues: [It] provides an intuitive and easy-to-grasp theory for
helping understand how disparate, distributed, ad hoc contributions could lead to the
emergence of the largest collaborative enterprises the world has seen (Elliott, 2006: 4).
Thus, even the One Smart Guy responsible for a singly authored encyclopedia was
relying on predecessors, building on their work and using the cumulative character of
texts and knowledge as a ladder of sorts. In the case of encyclopedias that ran into mul-
tiple editions, the previous edition was a good platform to build on, much as one revision
of an article in Wikipedia is the basis for the next. Furthermore, just as collaborative
authorship leaves certain articles in Wikipedia with a jerky or contradictory appearance,

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Loveland and Reagle 1299

the same effect can be observed in serially revised articles in printed encyclopedias. In
his Dictionnaire universel, for example, Antoine Furetire wrote in the article Arteil
(on the toe) that the people wrongly say orteil, to which a later reviser simply added
a counter-correction: And that is how it should be said (Loveland, 2010b).
Borrowing also took place regularly between different encyclopedias, even competing
ones, in practices that were sometimes illegal but more often merely piratical morally
or commercially objectionable in the terms of Adrian Johns (2009: 68). At a most basic
level, encyclopedias throughout the ages have used the nomenclature or list of words
of previous works to establish their own. From here it was just a small step to copying a
portion of other encyclopedias content. Examples are numerous from the 18th century.
Many encyclopedias, for example, took articles from the most respected and successful of
Britains early 18th-century encyclopedias, Ephraim Chambers Cyclopaedia (Loveland,
2012; Yeo, 2001: 206); Scottish pirates even reprinted it in its entirety and were ulti-
mately supported in court (Johns, 2009: 118119; Yeo, 2001: 198200). Yet Chambers too
borrowed articles from elsewhere, notably from the Dictionnaire de Trvoux (Leca-
Tsiomis, 1999: 196209). Indeed Chambers avowed that the Cyclopaedia contained lit-
tle new, and of my own growth (Chambers, 1728: xxix).
Whatever we call this practice of borrowing, encyclopedists were often liberal in
justifying their recourse to it. Chambers, for example, wrote in the Cyclopaedia that it
was idle to pretend any thing of Property in things of this Nature (Chambers, 1728:
xxix; see also Yeo, 2001: 215220). More pragmatically, advertisements for the New
Americanized Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica rationalized the works soon-to-
be-illegal copying as a way of protecting knowledge-hungry Americans from high
British prices (Banished from the American Market, 1908). More unusually, Diderot
declared that anyone was welcome to reuse the illustrations in the Encyclopdie a
stance probably meant to justify his and his colleagues appropriation of illustrations
from the Description des arts et mtiers (Schwab, 1984: 1617), but one also foreshad-
owing the open source movement and Wikipedia.
In any event, despite their rationalizations for their own borrowing, encyclopedists
were typically quick to denounce others infringements on their literary property. They
and their publishers also took advantage of a changing range of means for protecting
their works against borrowing, including royal privileges, letters patent, and registra-
tion for legal copyright, but such means were less effective against partial copying or
paraphrasing than against reproduction of whole works (Loveland, 2010a: 8384).
Furthermore, even when encyclopedias received protection in a particular country or
jurisdiction, they could still be reproduced by pirates in other countries and jurisdic-
tions. Thus, in the early 18th century, Furetires Dutch-published Dictionnaire universel
was copied in almost its entirety into the Dictionnaire de Trvoux, published in the prin-
cipality of Dombes (Behnke, 1996: 98120); in the following century, both Friedrich
Arnold Brockhauss Konversationslexikon or conversational encyclopedia and the
Encyclopaedia Britannica were republished without permission by extraterritorial
presses (Kruse, 1963; Peche, 2001: 19, 144, 351). Treaties providing for international
copyright were only gradually negotiated in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Indeed, in the absence of a restraining copyright, the unauthorized reproduction of
encyclopedias was a frequent occurrence, for their value was considerable. The

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1300 new media & society 15(8)

Cyclopedia, for example, was one of the most expensive literary properties in Britain
in the 1740s (Yeo, 2001: 199). Given the popularity of Wikipedia, people have esti-
mated how much the site would be worth if it were to accept advertisements; even
when it was only a handful of years old, one observer speculated that it could earn
millions of dollars of annual profit (Froosh, 2006). Yet besides alienating volunteers,
such a switch in policy might expose Wikipedia to more scrutiny about its violations
of copyright. In fact, Wikipedia has had to deal with violations of copyright from the
start. For example, in 2005,Wikipedias page for Copyright Problems reported that
material in the article Jeremy Bentham was copied verbatim from a site sponsored by
the University College of London. Within a month, the potential violation of copyright
had been addressed: Wikipedia user Arniep identified Susurrus as the contributor of
the offending text, and the latter redrafted it (Wikipedia, 2005).
Even if a violation of copyright is technically avoided, redrafts like Susurruss may
still constitute plagiarism by contemporary scholarly standards at least until other
Wikipedians alter the text beyond recognition. Yet many Wikipedians do not consider
this to be a significant concern, perhaps because of the longstanding tendency to see texts
presenting common knowledge as ineligible for ownership, and perhaps because
Wikipedia is a volunteer-driven non-profit surely the first among major encyclope-
dias. In the end, Chambers characterization of his Cyclopaedia applies well to Wikipedia,
as does his suggestion that readers themselves may be unwitting co-authors: The Book
is not mine, tis every bodys, the mixd Issue of a thousand Loins If ever you wrote
any thing your self, tis possible there is something in it of yours (Chambers, 1728:
xxix). Meanwhile, an interesting sign of Wikipedias maturity is that todays headlines
are more likely to be about others (e.g., authors, journalists, and politicians) copying
from Wikipedia than vice versa (Jaquith, 2009). Of course, Wikipedia is intended to be
copied, but in accordance with a license that requires attribution.
In addition to its bearing on the matter of copyright, the concept of stigmergy is useful
for the light that it casts on authorship in encyclopedias. What, for example, should we
call someone like Chambers an editor, an author, or a compiler? While Wikipedia brings
a new salience to this question, it is an old one. The 13th-century Franciscan Saint
Bonaventura, for instance, distinguished between a scribe (who writes the works of oth-
ers), a compiler (who writes the work of others with additions which are not his own),
a commentator (who writes both others work and his own, but with others work in
principal place, adding his own for purposes of explanation), and an author (who writes
both his own work and others but with his own work in principal place) (Eisenstein,
2005: 95). Chambers, for his part, considered himself an author insofar as he organized
borrowed materials in an original way in his Cyclopaedia. Nevertheless, his and other
encyclopedists attempts to lay claim to the status of author suggest that they were often
relegated to the status of compiler, a status also indicated by phrases like revised by on
certain title pages (Loveland, 2010b). The role of editor only emerged in the context of
encyclopedias in the 18th and 19th centuries with the rise of multiple authorship and the
corporate encyclopedia, as discussed below. Specifically, an editor came to be the director
of an encyclopedia, charged at least in part with directing the people who contributed
articles (Loveland, 2010b).
In Wikipedia, significantly, those who work on articles are referred to as contributors
or editors, rather than authors. This diction reflects the stigmergic and collaborative

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Loveland and Reagle 1301

nature of Wikipedia as well as a mistrust of originality: Wikipedia does not publish

original research or original thought (Wikipedia, 2012f). A few printed encyclopedias
also advertised their refusal of original material, pronouncing it detrimental to accurate
overviews (Spree, 2000: 3839). Conversely, however, though many 19th-century ency-
clopedias especially advertised their originality, only a small proportion actually pub-
lished enduring original material. One notable example is Thomas Youngs article
Egypt for the Supplement to the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Editions of the Encyclopaedia
Britannica, in which he presented a first, partial deciphering of ancient Egyptian writing
(Robinson, 2006: 161162; see also Yeo, 2001: 274275). Still, distinguishing too
sharply between original and merely synthesized knowledge is philosophically dubious;
it also implies wrongly that syntheses of extant information require little skill and do not
constitute a contribution to knowledge. Finally, this distinction assumes that one can
always draw a line easily between ones own work and influences.
More generally, although the notions of authorship, ownership, and other elements of
print culture are taken for granted today, Adrian Johns (2001) argues that they are in fact
rather more contingent than generally acknowledged. In particular, the process of stig-
mergy is at odds with increasingly strict laws regarding copyright. In this vein, Peter
Jaszi argues that copyright law, with its emphasis on rewarding and safeguarding origi-
nality, has lost sight of the cultural value of what might be called serial collaborations
works resulting from successive elaborations of an idea or text (Jaszi, 1994: 40).
Furthermore, deference to copyright has become so exaggerated that, in Rebecca Moore
Howards view, it prompts a form of hypocrisy around what she calls patchwriting, a
form of imitatio, of mimesis that is inherent to professional writing and students learn-
ing (Howard, 1999: xviii). A similar concern leads Richard Posner (2007) to conclude
that plagiarism is a complex and constructed notion, overreaching and inappropriate in
many of its contemporary applications; according to Posner, what we should focus on
and condemn is intellectual fraud.

Corporate production
The idea of recruiting experts for an encyclopedia to write on their specialties dates back
to the late 17th century at least (Kafker and Loveland, 2012). Early proponents of the idea
reasoned that no single person could cover all knowledge adequately a development
related to the increasing specialization of knowledge as well as a decline of faith in poly-
maths or walking encyclopedias, as chronicled by Richard Yeo (2007). Hence, corporate
production of encyclopedias takes advantage of multiple contributors, usually under the
direction of a single editor or just a few editors. Two of the earliest attempts to create an
encyclopedia with specialized collaborators were those of Henri Basnage de Beauval for
the 1701 edition of Furetires Dictionnaire universel and of Johann Heinrich Zedler for
the Grosses vollstndiges Universal-Lexicon, published from 1732 to 1750: Basnage
recruited a physician to revise or rewrite articles on scientific subjects, of which he avowed
ignorance, while Zedler boasted of having recruited nine specialized but unidentified
muses. Soon afterward, Europes more than 75-year-old dream of a substantially col-
laborative encyclopedia was finally realized in the form of Diderot and DAlemberts
Encyclopdie, for which around 140 specialists are known to have written (Loveland,
2010b).

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1302 new media & society 15(8)

Editors of such encyclopedias inevitably faced frustrations in seeking to coordinate

contributors. A typical range of problems can be discerned in Macvey Napiers editing of
the Supplement to the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica,
for which he solicited novel and original contributions from experts. In Richard Yeos
account,

This led to some tense exchanges as Napier had to settle a number of issues, such as the
appropriate level of difficulty, especially in mathematical topics such as the calculus, the
inclusion of unpublished experimental measurements by the contributor, or the refusal to do a
useful summary of a field in a reasonable space. (Yeo, 2001: 263)

Thanks to the multiplicity of its contributors perspectives, Wikipedia too confronts

issues of consistency regarding such matters as how important a subject must be to merit
an article (Wikipedia, 2012g), the circumstances under which a contributor may legiti-
mately be blocked (Wikipedia, 2012a), and the senses in which Wikipedia should be
made appropriate for young people (Wikipedia, 2012h). Wikipedians, however, almost
always settle these issues through community decision-making (Reagle, 2010: 97115)
rather than simple negotiation between an editor and an author. Furthermore, they are
settled before the watching world; even the seemingly innocuous deletion of a stub
article on a South African sandwich shop, authored by Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy
Wales, became matter for an article in the Los Angeles Times (Sarno, 2007).
After the Encyclopdie, broad collaboration became commonplace in encyclopedias.
In the 20th century, the biggest corporate encyclopedias sometimes topped a thousand
contributors. Even so, other encyclopedias continued to be authored by single individu-
als, presumably helped by invisible assistants or stigmergic copying from other texts.
One was the 242-volume Oeconomisch-technische Encyclopdie, compiled between
1773 and 1858 by four compilers appointed one after another, the last one assisted by two
unnamed assistants (Frhner, 1994: 4057). In the main, however, such encyclopedias
were typically smaller than their corporately produced counterparts, and often directed
toward less affluent readers.
In fact, economic considerations were frequently a factor in any decision about
whether to hire specialists. When funds for the late 19th-century Grande Encyclopdie
ran low, for example, the participation of specialists could no longer be budgeted; conse-
quently, the co-editor Andr Berthelot took it upon himself to write hundreds if not thou-
sands of pages on all kinds of subjects (Jacquet-Pfau, 2006). From a cynical perspective,
the choice to engage specialists was more a matter of symbolism than of quality, for, in
theory, a less generously paid compiler could summarize a specialists work as well as
the specialist. Indeed, as the example of certain contributors to the Encyclopdie sug-
gests (Loveland, 2010b), specialists were probably particularly prone to approaching
their contributions to encyclopedias without enthusiasm or using them as a forum for
settling professional scores. In the mid-19th century, Herrmann Julius Meyer, the pub-
lisher of a Konversationslexikon, complained of his experience with famous authori-
ties, who were paid more, in his view, for what they did not write than for what they
wrote (Estermann, 1998). For all of these reasons, it would be wrong to present the
transformation from singly authored encyclopedias to corporate ones as an irreversible

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Loveland and Reagle 1303

process driven by the state of knowledge alone; economics and cultural symbolism
played major roles too.
Nor were the contributors to corporate encyclopedias necessarily recruited on the
basis of expertise. For one thing, their contributions were often wide-ranging in the
18th and 19th centuries, conspicuously more so than those of later experts (Loveland,
2010b; Yeo, 2001: 248249, 252253). Occasionally, specialization was simply disre-
garded in multiply authored encyclopedias: Brockhaus had collaborators from the start
of his involvement with Konversationslexika, but he originally assigned them to differ-
ent alphabetical sections rather than on the basis of intellectual specialties (Hingst, 1995:
105, 111112). As Peter Burke observes (Burke, 2012: 232), the culture of amateurism
with which Wikipedia is associated is more a revival than a novel development: amateurs
continued to make substantial contributions to knowledge in general through the early
20th century.
Even in the 20th century, North American academics complained that too much of
the 11th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica had been written by people whom they
saw as non-specialists (Thomas, 1992: 67, 13, 1617). Likewise, the Britannicas
increasing reliance on practitioners and celebrities rather than experts came under
attack. In a critique occasioned by the announcement that the boxer Gene Tunney would
write for the 14th edition, for example, one reviewer argued that Tunneys article would
be inferior to one written by a detached expert who never set foot in the professional
ring and that people with practical experiences, however successful, were not the best
suited to writing about the domains in which they were active (Twentieth-Century
Encyclopedists, 1928); a few decades later, Harvey Einbinder berated the Britannica for
allowing religious insiders rather than uninvolved experts to treat sensitive topics such
as the Jesuits or Christian Science (1964: 6468, 189193).
Wikipedia, for its part, attempts to control such contributors with a policy on conflict
of interest. Among other things, this policy advises people not to edit or to exercise great
caution when editing articles related to you, your organization, or its competitors, as well
as projects and products they are involved with (Wikipedia, 2012b). Those who none-
theless attempt to use Wikipedia to glorify themselves or their organizations risk being
embarrassed with outing or having their claims edited into conformity with Wikipedias
ideal of the neutral point of view (Wikipedia, 2012e).
Furthermore, beyond named contributors, nearly every large encyclopedia-maker
of the 20th century entrusted a certain amount of article-writing to a professional staff,
the members of which could rarely be counted as experts. Spains Enciclopedia Espasa,
for example, depended not only on contributions from specialized contributors but also
on the services of salaried writers, many of them needy journalists (Castellano, 2000:
166167).
Finally, in a manner reminiscent of Wikipedia, editors of printed encyclopedias
sometimes sought to recruit the collective expertise of a broad public. It is well known
that amateur volunteers played a major role in assembling quotations to illustrate words
usage for the Oxford English Dictionary (OSullivan, 2009: 4756), but encyclopedia-
makers as well sought out and took advantage of volunteers (e.g., Loveland, 2010b;
Spree, 2000: 27). Consider the example of the Franciscan friar Vincenzo Coronelli, who
published seven volumes of his unfinished Biblioteca universale from 1701 to 1706.

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1304 new media & society 15(8)

Exemplifying creation by stigmergy, he modeled his encyclopedia on Louis Morris

Grand Dictionnaire historique but also took much material from other encyclopedias
(Fuchs, 1983: 176, 204208). Like many multi-volume works of the period, including
encyclopedias, the Biblioteca universale was sold by subscription a system that
allowed publishers to gauge the market before starting printing. In addition, Richard
Yeo argues that subscription encouraged the sense of corporate involvement, making
readers akin to corporate authors, so that the list of subscribers was a corporate iden-
tity as well as a mode of feedback to the compiler (Yeo, 2001: 5253). In Coronellis
case, the link between subscribers and authors was even more intimate, for Coronelli
invited contributions from subscribers, not only to flatter them but also to bolster his
work with local information. Toward the latter end, he mailed out hundreds of question-
naires; it is impossible to know how many were returned and made use of, but combined
with his correspondence, the richness of the Biblioteca suggests that the initiative paid
off (Fuchs, 1983: 121123, 147153, 187188).
Other printed encyclopedias as well may have benefited from the publics participa-
tion. As noted above, Zedler claimed to have recruited nine muses to compile the
Universal-Lexicon, but one of his editors also appealed to the public for help, appar-
ently successfully. For one thing, the Leipzig-based Universal-Lexicon accords gener-
ous coverage to minor, still-living notables in the area (Schneider, 2004). Similarly, the
article on the small German town of Wurzen is longer than the article on Leipzig
perhaps because the former article was written and sent in by an effusive resident of
Wurzen (Schneider, 2007).
Involving the public was undoubtedly easier within a limited geographical range,
for example within greater Leipzig, the likely home for much of the personnel of the
Universal-Lexicon. By contrast, the logistics of corresponding with far-flung con-
tributors was a source of anxiety to the editors of many printed encyclopedias.
Probably in part for this reason, though also because of growing commitment to the
authority of expertise, contributions to encyclopedias on the part of the public at
large were generally of minor importance before the arrival of Wikipedia. These
contributions also seem to have been on biographical and geographical topics for the
most part, whereas articles on the arts and sciences were typically solicited from
specialists or compiled from specialized accounts. While alien to Wikipedia, this
division of labor between the public and specialists is reminiscent of later dictionar-
ies reliance on volunteers for linguistic data versus their reliance on experts for
linguistic analysis.
Just as volunteering contributors to the Universal-Lexicon seem to have focused on
commemorating local places and dignitaries, volunteers contributing to electronic pro-
jects have their own priorities, not wholly congruent with those of the projects. In free
and open source development, for example, many note that sexy work such as develop-
ing new features receives more attention than the mundane work of fixing bugs and
preparing documentation (Levesque, 2004; Sterling, 2002). This tension is evident in a
proposal by Kelly Martin, a commentator on publicly editable wikis: after noting that
other projects occasionally issue a moratorium on the development of new features,
Martin (2007) suggested that Wikipedians needed to stop adding new stuff until they get
the old stuff organized.

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Loveland and Reagle 1305

Besides raising questions about the value of expertise and participation by the public,
the advent of the corporate encyclopedia changed conceptions of authorship. Michel
Foucault has argued that the notion of the author is historically situated and functions
as the principle by which a society limits, excludes, and chooses the meaning of the
text. Foucault claimed that prior to the advent of science in the modern sense, the author-
ity of a non-literary text was closely associated with an authors name; after the 18th
century, it was the methodological apparatus and venue of publication that lent scientific
works their authority, whereas literary texts became more closely bound with authors
names (Foucault, 1984; see also Chartier, 2003).
Relative to this schema, authorship in encyclopedias has followed a mixed course
since the 18th century (Loveland, 2010b). On the one hand, many of the larger encyclo-
pedias featured individually attributed articles and advertised the identities of their most
prestigious contributors. On the other hand, German encyclopedias especially continued
a tradition of offering mainly unsigned articles, though lists often appeared of contribu-
tors in general. Even in encyclopedias where signed articles were favored, however,
some chose to keep their authorship secret. Fear undoubtedly motivated certain con-
tributors to the Encyclopdie to write anonymous articles (e.g., Kafker and Kafker, 1988:
17, 172, 322, 348). Likewise, Thomas Young agreed to contribute to the Encyclopaedia
Britannica but demanded anonymity in any subject not immediately medical; he did
not want scientific controversies to damage his reputation as a physician (Yeo, 2001:
265). Today, Wikipedians edit anonymously or under a pseudonym for similar reasons,
haunted by the possibility of a disagreement turning into stalking or the outing of
ones real identity, leading to contamination with the other facets of ones life (e.g.,
Orthogonal, 2006).

Conclusion
Wikipedia is in some respects a novelty in the history of encyclopedias. Measured by
text, pictures, or sound, it is the biggest encyclopedia in human history, something it
achieved by taking advantage of the Webs technology and myriad users. Reliance on
volunteers and distance from traditional commercial considerations also differentiate it
from other encyclopedias. Yet it is important not to exaggerate the discontinuities
between Wikipedia and its predecessors, as do Daniel Pinks periodization of the history
of encyclopedias and shallow comparisons with the Encyclopaedia Britannica and
other printed works of reference. In fact, the continuities between Wikipedia and past
encyclopedias are numerous and significant, as we have shown here.
First, individual encyclopedists throughout the ages have spent staggeringly long
hours collecting and compiling information motivated by idealism, an obsessive
encyclopedic impulse, and frequently also by financial need. At the same time, the
contribution of unnamed assistants and social networks to supposedly single-handed
productions has been neglected.
Second, Wikipedia, like other encyclopedias, relies on what we call stigmergic accu-
mulation. The chronic dependence of encyclopedias on other texts means that concerns
about Wikipedia and copyright are not sudden manifestations of Web 2.0 but rather the
continuation of concerns that have troubled scholars and legal communities for several

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1306 new media & society 15(8)

centuries. The strengthening of laws regarding copyright since the early 20th century has
meant that encyclopedic stigmergy has increasingly taken place with financial compen-
sation to owners of texts, from edition to edition of the same encyclopedia, or through
masking or paraphrasing. The distinctiveness of Wikipedia in this regard is that it does
not purchase rights and is more prone than recent printed encyclopedias to both using
copied material and being copied by others.
Third, characterizing Wikipedia as exemplifying the reign of the amateur in opposi-
tion to a past golden age in which experts wrote encyclopedias is an idealization of the
historical record, even in the unusual instance of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Since
the late 18th century, many but not all encyclopedias have been credited to large teams
of collaborators, but experts in the modern sense were not the only ones contributing, just
as experts are hardly absent from the ranks of Wikipedians. Indeed, concerns about
whether the contributors to encyclopedias were sufficiently expert have been voiced
throughout the history of the modern encyclopedia. Nor is Wikipedia the first encyclope-
dia to benefit from volunteers or to appeal to the public for help, though its technological
foundations have made it more successful in harnessing such contributors.
In conclusion, this article is meant to clarify the place of Wikipedia in the long history
of encyclopedic production and thus add historical depth to debates and reflections about
the encyclopedia and its future. Ultimately, we hope our contribution will help scholars
avoid ahistorical claims about Wikipedia, identify historical material germane to the
social scientists concerns (such as the motivations of encyclopedia-producers), and
show that contemporary questions about Wikipedia (such as what exactly should be
counted as a contribution) have a lifespan exceeding the past decade.

Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Frank A. Kafker and two anonymous readers for New Media and Society for
their suggestions for improving the article. Both authors are equal contributors and thus lead authors.

Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or
not-for-profit sectors.

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Loveland and Reagle 1311

Author biographies
Jeff Loveland is a Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Cincinnati.
Much of his recent research has been on the history of encyclopedias, especially 18th-century
encyclopedias in western Europe. Among other things, he is the author of An Alternative
Encyclopedia: Dennis de Coetlogons Universal History of Arts and Sciences (SVEC, 2010) and
co-editor of The Early Britannia (17681803); The Growth of an Outstanding Encyclopedia
(SVEC, 2009).

Joseph Reagle is an Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at Northeastern, a faculty asso-

ciate at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard, and author of Good Faith
Collaboration: The Culture of Wikipedia (The MIT Press, 2010). He taught and received his PhD
at NYUs (New York University) Department of Media, Culture, and Communication. As a
research engineer at MIT, he served as a Working Group Chair and Author within Internet
Engineering Task Force (IETE) and World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) on topics including digi-
tal security, privacy, and internet policy.

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