Erasing “Property Lines”: A Collaborative Notion of Authorship and Textual Ownership on a Fan Wiki

Available online at www.sciencedirect.com

Computers and Composition 28 (2011) 40–56

Erasing “Property Lines”: A Collaborative Notion of Authorship and Textual Ownership on a Fan Wiki Rik Hunter St. John Fisher College Received 16 November 2009; received in revised form 1 November 2010; accepted 21 December 2010

Abstract The collaborative affordances of the wiki, in conjunction with local literacy practices, have important implications for the development of contemporary online notions of authorship. Using discourse analytic methods focused on the talk pages of several World of Warcraft Wiki (WoWWiki) articles, this essay seeks to identify particular patterns of language use in the interactions between members of this online voluntary writing group in order to identify how contributors think about authorship in a clearly collaborative writing space. Candace Spigelman’s (1998) theoretical construct of “habits of mind” and James Paul Gee (1989) theory of discourse are used to describe more or less effective ways of collaborating on writing in this context. The findings suggest the direction of this writing is toward much more collaborative and communal notions of authorship—ones in which the meaning of “collaborative” and “authorship” are being redefined. Successful collaborative writing on WoWWiki is a result of writers sharing common “habits of mind,” and collaboration can be disrupted by those who hold more author-centric perspectives of textual ownership. © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Keywords: wiki; collaboration; collaborative writing; writing groups; textual ownership; authorship; collective intelligence; fandom; participatory culture; video games

“[E]lectronic technology is hastening the demise of the illusion that writing is solitary and originary” —MarthaWoodmansee, “TheAuthor Effect”. 1. Introduction New writing technologies are making it easier for people to write together than ever before. In particular, the collaborative affordances (cf. Gibson, 1977) of the wiki, in conjunction with local literacy practices, have important implications for the development of contemporary online notions of authorship. The direction of this writing, I will argue, is toward much more collaborative and communal notions of authorship–ones in which the meaning of “collaborative” and “authorship” are being redefined. These changing meanings are, in part, the result of how wikis enable quick and easy collaboration across great distances between large numbers of contributors. Collaboration becomes more distributed not merely across extended spans of time, but also place (e.g., the edit and talk pages of articles, as well as policy and guideline articles and community pages). Also, of course, greater numbers of people can collaborate virtually than in face-to-face contexts, coming together for “collective reading [and writing], criticism, and pleasure” (Appadurai, 1996, p. 8). Wikis mediate the very act of collaboration. E-mail address: [email protected] 8755-4615/$ – see front matter © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.compcom.2010.12.004

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Using discourse analytic methods focused on the talk pages of several World of Warcraft Wiki (WoWWiki) articles, this essay seeks to identify patterns of language use in the interactions between members of this voluntary online writing group. Begun in 2004, WoWWiki works looks generally like the popular encyclopedia wiki at . WoWWiki has more than 1,500 active users (over 2.2 million registered users) performing actions on the wiki and nearly 85,000 articles voluntarily written by fans of Warcraft, a fictional and fantasy-based universe with several incarnations of video games, novels, table-top role-playing games, comic books, and other media. According to the web information company Alexa, WoWWiki is one of the top 2,000 websites in the world. In order to describe how contributors think about authorship in this collaborative writing space, I employ Candace Spigelman’s (1998) theoretical construct of “habits of mind” and James Gee’s (1989) theory of discourse. I begin with a brief review of literature concerning fan and gamer production and how their practices can serve as valuable examples of learning and literacy. I then examine Spigelman’s research and findings on writing groups. Spigelman argues that in order for writing groups to work well, the participants need to share a particular mindset: writing groups function best when each writer gives up temporary control over his or her writing, but to to remain motivated to write, retaining ownership of one’s own text is also necessary. My analysis of collaboration on WoWWiki calls these claims into question. Next, I discuss several WoWWiki policies that guide writing and social interaction as well as how the MediaWiki technology shapes collaboration. These two forces, “the social and technological,” operate within a symbiotic relationship to affect how authorship is constructed and practiced in this context. Finally, I offer a close analysis of a dispute between two WoWWiki contributors. This example is notable for the ways in which these contributors use language demonstrating opposing notions of authorship. Overall, the findings suggest that successful collaborative writing on WoWWiki is a result of writers sharing common “habits of mind,” and collaboration can be disrupted by those who hold more author-centric perspectives of textual ownership. 2. Why Study Wiki-Mediated Collaborative Writing in Game Culture? In addition to wikis, fan and gamer writing more broadly includes encyclopedias, online journals, strategy guides, Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), game walkthroughs, fan fiction, as well as forums and personal websites (Johnson, 2008). Henry Jenkins (1992, 2006a, 2006b) and Rebecca Black (2005, 2008, 2009) demonstrate the importance of writing as a fan activity by illustrating the ways in which fan fiction writers self-organize and work together in ways familiar to school-sponsored writing groups (e.g., peer-review and suggestions for revision). Others have argued that fan and gamer practices provide powerful models for learning and engagement compared to school (cf. Hawisher and Selfe, 2007). Williams (2009) explains, “What is most strikingly different in the way students talk about their reading and writing on fan forums is the authority students feel as readers and as members of interpretive communities” (p. 40). Williams’ description of fan forums–notably the discussion of popular culture texts–as giving students “varied and deep experience in interpreting and evaluating” (p. 41) media echoes Gee’s (2003) claims that good video games are powerful sites for learning because game designers incorporate a variety of learning principles into their games, even if unknowingly. To name but a few of these principles: active and critical learning; participation in affinity groups and learning to master a semiotic domain; meta-level thinking; learning about yourself and your current and potential capabilities; forming and testing hypotheses; meanings of texts are situated in embodied experience; basic skills are learned in a context; and the “learner understands texts as a family (‘genre’) of related texts” (Gee, 2003, p. 207-212). What schools need to do, Gee contends, is shift away from the skill-anddrill curricula of standardized testing and toward learning to read and write as “fully embedded in (situated within) a material, social, and cultural world” (p. 8). WoWWiki offers just such embedded experiences in which WoWWikians learn how writing gets done in this highly collaborative context through the activities of writing and interacting with other writers. With respect to video games, in many massively multiplayer online games (MMOs), for instance, thousands of players might inhabit a virtual world where progression (i.e., success) often requires collaboration. Take for example Kurt Squire and Constance Steinkuehler (2005), who describe how “clans” of players “are tight-knit groups consisting of as many as 100 people or more, [which] have their own social organization, mores, folkways, web sites, history, and collective identities,” but more importantly (at least for the purposes of my study):

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Despite fears of games “replacing” literate activities, Lineage play is a thoroughly literate activity involving manipulation of texts, images, and symbols for making meaning and achieving particular ends. If the ends–conducting sieges and defending castles–are not valued literacy activities, then the means surely are: researching equipment, makingmaps, managing resources, investing currencies, building models, designing strategies, debating facts and theories, and writing. Tons of writing. (Squire and Steinkuehler, emphasis added) Put simply, WoWWikians do “tons of writing,” not just in an article but also on an article’s associated talk page as well as a myriad other pages. For writing studies, WoWWiki ultimately helps us understand particular “habits of mind” that extend our theories of writer-reader interactions previously developed around print and, later, hypertext. The wiki affords what neither print nor hypertext can: the near-effortless ability of readers to become literal coauthors of a text.1 Writers and readers from various locations around the world can easily deal directly with one another in literate exchanges; further, wikis afford large-scale collaborations that would be difficult or impossible to accomplish using other writing technologies. These two factors result in a radical collapse of writer-reader relations that, I believe, indicates that we are in an especially lively (and transitional) period. The social web has made possible the emergence of collaborative practices and technologies that are entering a society where the idea of the single author has beenstrong. These are the new conditions of literacy that enable what I call hypersocial-interactive writing (Hunter, 2010a)–subsuming Nystrand’s (1989) social-interactive model of written communication, in which a text acts as a bridge for social interaction between writers and readers (p. 75); Nystrand’s writers and readers do not interact directly, whereas they do so on WoWWiki. With these new conditions as a starting point, I ask a rather open-ended question in my analysis of character biography talk pages: how does this transitional period materialize in the collaborative talk among WoWWikians, and how does this period affect attempts at collaboration? In the following pages, I build my case that writing on WoWWiki demonstrates a much more collaborative and communal notion of authorship and that collaboration on this site can be disrupted by those who hold author-centric ideas of textual ownership. 3. Habits of Mind: Ways of Being in Writing Groups In Across Property Lines: Textual Ownership in Writing Groups, Spigelman (2000) compared and contrasted two writing groups–one self-sponsored and one school-sponsored–in order to describe how theories of ownership materialize in both settings. She argued, ultimately, that for school-based writing groups to be productive, student writers should replicate the habits of mind of expert writers in voluntary non-academic settings. The voluntary group she studied was successful because these expert writers understood knowledge construction as a social activity and were able to entrust group members with temporary co-ownership of their texts. Group members “invest[ed] writers with the ultimate authority for their manuscripts” (p. 68). According to Spigelman, these are practices with which novice writers struggle. Spigelman situates her argument in the middle of expressivist and social constructionist views of ownership and composing processes. On the one hand, as Peter Elbow contends, the empowered writer has final control over the text. Moreover, writing is the product of an author’s private and autonomous solitary labor and originality. On the other hand, the social constructionist perspective holds that language and ideas, and indeed the writer, are shaped by external social forces, and thus absolute ownership of any given piece of writing is impossible. Thus, while acknowledging the effectiveness of temporarily-shared ownership, Spigelman asserts that writers do “engage in solitary writing activities, private moments when ideas are individually experienced and recorded, and that the writer’s commitment to his or her intentions and text is crucial to the development of his or her writing” (p. 4). However, she claims that “for writing groups to function–and hence for writers to write–they must be committed to both public and private notions of ownership” (p. 132). Writers in voluntary writing groups such as the one Spigelman studies, the Franklin Writing Group, understand that in the peer review process a writer must accept giving up “a measure” of control to readers (p. 2) whose readings and responses will contribute to the ongoing formation of a text (p. 120). They work together according to this social contract. 1 George Landow, in Hypertext 3.0, described how HyperCard allowed readers to edit a web page. In fact, Ward Cunningham, inventor of the wiki, created his first wiki using HyperCard in the late 1980s . See also “An Evening With Wiki Inventor Ward Cunningham in Conversation with John Gage” at .

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To illustrate, Spigelman (2000) identifies key differences between productive and unproductive writing groups using face-to-face peer review as the medium: the Franklin Writing Group members “shared common ‘insider’ knowledge about writing theory, processes, and strategies, and they shared a sense of authority as expert writers, despite their differing levels of publication experience” (p. 119). In fact, Spigelman (2004) reports, “all of the members of the Franklin Writing Group were college graduates; several had graduate degrees” (p.134), including one professional fiction writer and three other members who wrote nonfiction prose in their professions. The novice writers in Spigelman’s study, however, were new to college and were therefore outsiders. They “lacked the ‘sanctioned knowledge, experience, and credentials’ that would have given them the ‘right to speak’ about their topics” (Penrose and Geisler qtd. in Spigelman, 2000, p. 119). These writers, we might say, shared a particular discourse model (Gee, 1989) that was acquired over time and within the context of higher education that they then transferred from the context of college to the writing group. Emerging from the New Literacy Studies (Heath, 1983; Street, 1993, 2001), Gee’s (1989) theory of discourse foregrounds the role of discourse in the interactions of everyday life situations. Gee contends that the “focus of literacy studies or applied linguistics should not be language, or literacy, but social practices” (p. 5). For Gee, any actions, including discursive acts, are in fact the playing out of social roles and “(appearing) to hold the right values, beliefs, and attitudes” (p. 6). Abig “D” discourse, as he refers to it, is thus a fusion of language and “ways of being in the world”; like the characters an actor might portray, a “Discourse is a sort of ‘identity kit”’ people acquire through socialization and employ based on circumstance (p. 7). Gee defines an identity kit as a discourse “which comes complete with the appropriate costume and instructions on how to act and talk so as to take on a particular role that others will recognize” (p.7). Spigelman’s (2000) case studies shows how expert and novice writing groups thought and talked about collaborative processes of writing and how they possessed different identity kits. Even though both groups were involved in the same activity and used the same technology of collaboration (i.e., face-to-face), these groups operated under different assumptions about the function and practices of writing groups as well as notions of textual ownership, which influenced invention and revision. Spigelman’s findings have important implications for online collaborative writing groups and projects; scholars concerned with writing groups recognize the need to study how social media and the practices that surround them affect collaborative writing (cf. Selfe, 1992; Spigelman, 2000; Moss et al., 2004), but we limit ourselves if we look solely at the social, as Spigelman does. As I will go on to show, in the case of WoWWiki, collaboration is most effective when a writer both shares the habits of mind of his or her partners and understands the affordances of wiki software such as MediaWiki. On WoWWiki, when we see collaboration break down, contributors use the discourse of individual authorship that is often associated with print. 4. Wikiquette: Ways of Being on WoWWiki WoWWiki is one of many online encyclopedias that uses a wiki platform because it is such a powerful tool for collective action. This is especially true for fans of popular culture, who use wikis to aggregate the knowledge and labor of other fans (cf. Mittell, 2009). We can observe how the trend towards mass authorship and collaborative practices and technologies registers in the writing of wiki users by examining the community’s guidelines and policies as well as WoWWikians’ attempts at collaboration. According to Henry Jenkins et al. (2006), cultural production such as fan fiction, art, and video are occurring within participatory culture because participatory culture values “relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations, and some type of informal mentorship [. . . a culture] in which members believe their contributions matter, and feel some degree of social connection with one another” (p. 3). With wikis, fans can quickly collect information and construct encyclopedias on television shows (e.g., Battlestar Galactica and Buffy the Vampire Slayer), movies (e.g., Star Wars and Indiana Jones), and videogames (e.g., Halo and the Civilization series) that serve as both archives of a fictional universe’s content and guides for fans who could not hope to individually command vast amounts of information. For cyber culture philosopher Pierre Lévy (1997), this pooling of expertise and knowledge is called “collective intelligence” and is a product of the developing knowledge space of the Internet because it affords the “ability to rapidly form and reform intelligent communities . . .”(p.5). Lévy hypothesizes that the knowledge space will “take precedence over the spaces of earth, territory and commerce that preceded it” and will be built upon the following premise: “No one knows everything, everyone knows something, all knowledge resides in humanity” (p. 13-14).

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Jenkins (2006a) offers a fitting example of this knowledge space in Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, where he illustrates collective intelligence at work in the spoiler community for the reality television show Survivor. “Spoiling,” in this case, is the act of fans figuring out what will happen in a particular episode of a program (i.e., the narrative arc or particulars of its season) before the program has aired on television and sharing these revelations with other fans. These activities occurred on discussion boards where viewers pooled knowledge in order to uncover secrets of the show through, for example, the use of satellite imagery and eyewitness accounts to locate the sites of production and identify contestants even while the show is still in the midst of production. As an example of a knowledge community, Jenkins points out, “their members work together to forge new knowledge, often in realms where no traditional expertise exists; the pursuit of and assessment of knowledge is at once communal and adversarial” (2006a, p. 20). Fan fiction, too, involves processes of collective intelligence. Fans of particular television shows, movies, games, etc. write stories about preexisting characters or fictive world, and writing and talking about writing are central activities. A search of FanFiction.net, for instance, will result in categories for literature, television, movies, games, and cartoons–with anywhere from 150 stories based on George Orwell’s 1984 to 5,411 for the television show Grey’s Anatomy, with each story receiving peer review from the community of writers. Jenkins (2006a) shows how Harry Potter fan fiction writers self-organize and work together in ways familiar to school-sponsored writing groups. Rebecca W. Black’s (2008) ethnographic study, Adolescents and Online Fan Fiction also illustrates the ways in which informal, collaborative learning contexts support activities typically thought of as the responsibility of schools–much in the ways Squire and Steinkuehler (2005) demonstrate many school-based practices are found within game cultures. The English language learners use their recreational writing and the feedback they receive on a popular fan fiction website to improve their writing and English. On the whole, the emphasis on cooperation often present in production-driven online communities runs contrary to the current model of “training autonomous problem-solvers” that Jenkins et al. (2006) see in schools because the spaces of fan culture encourage collective problem-solving and value different kinds of expertise. As I will go on to describe, in the case of WoWWiki, this knowledge community clearly embodies Lévy’s premise and challenges individual notions of textual ownership. WoWWiki was established in 2004 by two players of World of Warcraft, which is a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG). WoWWiki to serve as a source for information on the user-interface COSMOS (an add-on created by players to be used with the game’s interface). Its scope later expanded to include both World of Warcraft and Warcraft in general. WoWWiki also bears a strong resemblance to Wikipedia. Although WoWWiki claims to do “many things differently” from Wikipedia, similarities to Wikipedia (stemming in part from the design of the MediaWiki software that both sites use) include the use of the “Community Portal” page (i.e., the “Village Pump”) for asynchronous discussions of importance to the entire wiki. In addition, talk pages are attached to all content pages (see Figure 1). Further, several of WoWWiki’s policy and guideline articles are revised versions of policies and guidelines originally established on Wikipedia. It would not be too much to suggest, then, that WoWWiki owes part of its existence to the MediaWiki platform and the Wikipedia model for producing encyclopedic articles as well as Wikipedia’s guidelines and policies for collaborative writing. That being said, writing gets done as a result of affordances and constraints of writing technologies, as well as social practices that impact and evolve around them–all of which emerge from previous technologies and social practices. As Christina Haas (1996) develops what she calls the “Technology Question,” she argues that technological changes in tools can “transform the act of writing; the behaviors of writing; the form and structures of written textual genres; and the uses, functions, and significance of writing within cultures” (xiii). However, she goes on to say, these technological tools are always a part of the cultural fabric. That is, technology shapes and is shaped by culture: “Cultural tools and cognitive activity constitute one another in a symbiotic relationship” (Haas, xiii). Indeed, writing technologies such as the wiki are not autonomous and are, in fact, a result of the complex interactions between the technologies at hand (as well as the past) and the choices made by people and the practices of cultures (Bolter, 2001b, p. 17). With wiki writing, we can observe how new social roles and a new technology shape the writing landscape. For example, contributors on Ward Cunningham’s WikiWikiWeb, the world’s first wiki, sometimes sign their contributions or ask or respond to questions in the space of an article. Although Wikipedia’s use of a wiki was inspired by Cunningham’s wiki, Wikipedia’s software and practices differ. The practice of not signing edits was introduced by Wikipedia’s co-founder Larry Sanger and was designed into MediaWiki, the software used by Wikipedia and WoWWiki. With MediaWiki, a contributor’s name automatically appears on an article’s history page each time a contributor saves a new version–another addition made in the design of the MediaWiki software (see Figure 2). An individual’s edits to an article are traceable on the

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Fig. 1. Example of talk page table of contents.

history page and give us information on who made an edit, when the edit was made, and–in a limited way–what was edited. Further, discussions regarding revisions take place on an article’s talk page rather than within the main body of text. These distinctions are important because beyond the different purposes to which wikis can be put (i.e., not all wikis share Wikipedia’s and WoWWiki’s focus on producing encyclopedia articles), the infrastructure of MediaWiki under girds the reduced emphasis on individual textual ownership. For these reasons, authorship on WoWWiki emerges out of sets of social practices and technological developments that have histories, and those histories can be ideologically mixed or in transition as a result of changing practices and technologies. In the case of WoWWiki, individual contributions to articles are deemphasized and textual ownership is completely abandoned. As described above, on the surface, wikis using MediaWiki such as WoWWiki (as with print encyclopedias) erase signs of authorship. The design of the wiki software plays a role in this. Additionally, text on WoWWiki is by its very nature not just communal property, but also public property of a sort, whereas according to Spigelman, individual writers in successful face-to-face writing groups must strike a balance between maintaining and giving up control over their writing. Indeed, in a legal sense we might go so far as to say that the texts produced by WoWWikians are not property at all. Articles are always available online, and they can be commented on by readers, much as we would expect in writing groups, by using the talk page. In addition, articles can also be edited by anyone at any time. Finally, and perhaps surprisingly, articles can also be copied and pasted to other websites or print forms (i.e., forked) as long as the text is made available under the same license. Texts are, in effect, never the property of any one person or even

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Fig. 2. Excerpt of history page.

a community. In fact, these are the explicit conditions of the GNU Free Document License, and this license, as well as other guidelines and policies, I believe, has important implications for how authors on WoWWiki must think about writing. As in other nonacademic writing groups (Gere, 1987, 1994; Gere and Roop, 1992), writing on WoWWiki is voluntary. WoWWikians can come and go as they please. They participate because they share common interests and have a natural affinity for each other because of those interests. WoWWikians contribute writing and feedback on writing only when they choose. They report and debate facts found in Warcraft source materials and construct theories in an attempt to fill narrative gaps or deal with continuity errors. WoWWikians also negotiate the content of articles (what is, should be, or could be in articles) and what makes good writing. An article’s talk page is the primary space for this talk about writing (see Figure 3). Thus, a WoWWiki talk page is an ideal site to investigate notions of authorship at play on the wiki because it grants access to much of the information regarding writers’ processes of collaboration. To construct my talk page corpus, I used the method described in Thomas Huckin’s (1992) “Context-Sensitive Text Analysis,” published in Gesa Kirsch and Patricia Sullivan’s collection Methods and Methodology in Composition Research. I initially selected all 43 featured articles because I found that besides being highly valued by the community, these articles tended to include more talk than non-featured articles. I then narrowed the sample down to the 12 character biography articles in order to identify patterns of language used among like articles and see whether these patterns were consistent across article talk pages. Character biography articles were chosen over other topics such as “Locations” because the character-biography talk pages had copious talk in addition to richly developed articles. These biographical articles were also chosen because they represented the largest category of featured articles, nearly one-third. Another feature common to character article talk pages was the activity of synthesizing multiple sources, requiring contributors to interact–that is, to talk. As my research progressed, the study sample expanded to include one non-featured character biography article (found through contributor discussions) as well as several policy and guideline articles. The inclusion of policy and guideline articles is important because my research has found that talk affecting the character articles in the study sample is distributed across a number of spaces on the site, and this collaborative talk includes participants who are not the immediate contributors to a particular article’s talk page. For example, some talk can be found in various stand-alone policy and guideline articles such as “The Manual of Style,” which serves to standardize all articles in much the same way that MLA Handbook works. The complexity of collaborations arises when contributors working on, for example, image formatting and placement for a specific article, might have this discussion on that article’s talk page and also participate in a discussion of images on the “Style Manual” talk page; however, other contributors might only participate on one talk page or the other. On the one hand, we might attribute the distribution of talk to the wiki’s infrastructure; on the other hand, these topically-separated spaces of talk

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Fig. 3. Excerpt from talk page discussion.

are decided upon by those using the tool–in this case, WoWWikians building upon practices already established on Wikipedia. There are several guidelines and policies that directly affect articles’ content as well as guidelines and policies that affect social interaction. In terms of inviting collaboration, for example, WoWWiki’s “Be Bold!” guideline is a central tenet. This article was started on Wikipedia in October 2001 and was adopted by WoWWiki (for the most part copied and pasted) roughly four years later: The wiki community exhorts users to be bold in updating articles. Wikis develop faster when people fix problems, correct grammar, add facts, make sure the language is precise, and so on. Expect everyone to be bold. It’s okay. It does require some amount of politeness, but it works. You’ll see. If someone writes an inferior article, a merely humorous article, an article stub, or out-right patent nonsense, don’t worry about his/her feelings. Correct it, add to it, and, if it’s a total waste of time, replace it with brilliant prose. That’s the nature of a Wiki.

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And, of course, others here will boldly and mercilessly edit what you write. Don’t take it personally. They, like all of us, just want to make WoWWiki as good as it can possibly be. (emphasis original) Indeed, Wikipedia’s co-founder, Larry Sanger (2005), attributed Wikipedia’s success to “good-natured anarchy” and the wiki software encouraging “extreme openness and decentralization” of labor. If a wiki is to grow quickly and cover a wide range of topics, it needs contributors who are free to add or edit content when they see a need. Of course, when anyone can edit, mistakes can be made, differing interpretations of facts will occur, and in some cases edit wars erupt.2 But the WoWWiki community has numerous guidelines and policies–principles of wikiquette–in place to help guide editing and shape collaborative talk. We get a glimpse when reading the article “Don’t Bite the Noobs!”: “By empowering newcomers, we improve the diversity of knowledge, opinions and ideals on WoWWiki, enhance its value and preserve its neutrality and integrity as a resource.”3 In fact, the article goes on to cover how more experienced WoWWikians should conduct themselves when interacting with “noobs” (also known as newbies, newbs, or newcomers) and their edits. For instance, experienced contributors are encouraged to fix the mistakes made by newcomers and move on rather than scolding the newcomer. If one feels compelled to comment, they should “do it in a spirit of being helpful”–that is, introduce oneself, welcome the newcomer to the wiki, present the corrections, and “as the contributor’s peer” point out things they might have done well. Further, the article outlines “How to avoid being a biter” and what do “If you’ve been bitten.” Each section outlines accepted behaviors such as “taking responsibility for resolution of conflicts,” having a “willingness to reach consensus,” and “Listening actively” as well as “actively learning” (emphasis original). In the study sample, all contributors more often than not follow these principles when dealing with newcomers or even other experienced WoWWikians. Adding incorrect information, adding information to incorrect sections of an article, or incorrect formatting are some of the more common mistakes made, but rather than assign blame, it is the community’s practice to “Assume Good Faith”: “Assuming good faith is a fundamental principle on any wiki, including WoWWiki. As we allow anyone to edit, it follows that we assume that most people who work on the project are trying to help it, not hurt it. If this were not true, a project like WoWWiki would be doomed from the beginning.” For example, on several occasions, one of WoWWiki’s administrators overseeing lore-related articles fixed mistakes and remarked on the mistakes in article talk pages. However, WoWWiki administrator Baggins never mentions the name of the contributor who made the original edit, and in fact, he uses the mistakes as teachable moments: “Unless there is a specific citable reference to him [the Lich King] being an actual demi-god, it doesn’t belong in the info box. Speculation of that type doesn’t belong anywhere but the speculation section” (Talk: Lich King, “Demigod”). In terms of textual ownership, what is interesting about this pattern is the apparent lack of ownership attached to mistakes. Baggins, as well as others, could choose to name who a particular incorrect edit belongs to, yet they do not. It might be the case, of course, that it is simply too arduous to always seek out the ownership of individual edits before referring to them on the talk page. One method of assigning ownership is that another contributor would need to be watching the “Most Recent Changes” page and, beginning here, review edits as they post to the page (see Figure 4). This would easily allow tying an edit to a contributor. Another method would be more difficult; one would have to watch/visit specific articles and find mistakes, and then visit and scroll through the article’s history page to find the edit and contributor. Thus, these barriers might explain why we find edits being attributed to “whomever.” Nonetheless, in the vast majority of conversations, even those questioning edits and suggesting different ones, rarely invoke a contributor’s name. Consequently, an individual’s edits–that is, the text he or she has added or revised–are rarely tied to that person on talk pages. I suggest this is, in part, evidence of a shared model of textual production on WoWWiki. According to the community’s practice, the text appearing in articles is bereft of ownership. With the complexity of these interactions, it is difficult to be definitive; however, there is a clear pattern evident when considering other types of textual property on WoWWiki: the individual and co-ownership of theories about articles’ content and Warcraft. Debating Warcraft facts and theories is a constant on WoWWiki. I found (Hunter, 2010b) that nearly 70% of all talk page discussions focused on context (i.e., Warcraft texts: games, book, etc.), and 2 Edit wars are instances when contributors go back and forth, repeatedly overriding each other’s edits, either by deleting and saving the new version or by using the “history” page to revert to an earlier version (one before the offending edit(s)). 3 Biting, simply, is treating newcomers with hostility.

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Fig. 4. Excerpt from recent changes page.

in these discussions we most often find participants working well together. In the present study, by first coding for pronoun usage on talk pages, I identified the function of that language. A key characteristic in these discussions about articles and Warcraft lore is the use of first-person plural and singular and second person-singular, which are used, respectively, in instances of (1) describing currently established or in-question shared knowledge and what actions might be taken in light of it, (2) owning personal theories about or knowledge of Warcraft, or (3) referring to specific individual’s comments. For example, first-person plural comments in the study corpus commonly take this form: “We do not know if she is half draenei” (Baggins, “Garona,” 11 May 2006). Other examples of first-person plural include, “We could”; “We know”; “We don’t know”; “Let’s organize this;” “Let’s wait and see”; “We just have to gird our loins and deal with it”; “We just can’t rule out”; “We finally know”; “For all we know”; and “We can delete.” Using “we,” of course, carries more rhetorical weight than saying “I do not know if she is draenei” because the fundamental pattern is that “we” is used to refer to collective knowledge as it stands in wiki’s articles, or to collective action that has, could have, or should have been taken. Using first-person singular is also, for the most part, utilized in a narrow sense. Examples include “I think”; “I recall”; “I guess”; “I believe”; “I meant”; “I doubt”; “I’ll say”; “I love”; “I’m banking on”; “I wasn’t aware”; “I just figured”; “I can see”; “I like”; “I don’t really think”; “I don’t remember”; “I have a crazy idea”; “I would

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say”; “I am sure”; “I feel”; “I strongly suspect”; and “Appears fishy to me.” These first-person singular phrases typically refer to an individual’s ideas for editing articles, constructing theories about existing Warcraft lore and possible future activities by the Warcraft developers, Blizzard Entertainment. The first-person singular also occurs when WoWWikians evaluate others’ comments, for example, “I think you may have misread something” (Tevri, “Lich King,” 13 May 2009). As mentioned above, references on talk pages to each other’s edits to articles are rare, and beyond the common reminder on talk pages to “Sign your posts,” we find the use of second-person pronouns in cases where contributors refer to each other’s theories and citations: “Your idea”; “Your comment”; “Your suggestion”; “Yours does make sense”; and “You do know?” For the most part, these comments are good-natured: “Still, you raise a rather interesting point” (Dark T Zeratul, “Lich King,” 4 December 2008). Indeed, much of the interaction on talk pages follows these patterns and represents a specific discourse model on WoWWiki (and possibly on other wikis as well): • • • •

We own our collective shared knowledge (that which is produced on the wiki) We are responsible for taking action (to produce accurate articles on the wiki) I/you own my/your suggestions and theories (and I am/you are entitled to those) An edit was made and referred to (but the individual who made it is rarely referred to)

On only a few occasions did I find instances when second person is used to refer to what someone had edited in an article, and here I found personal attacks that fracture collaboration. For example, one contributor, Zalmeeth, suggests that another contributor, The Ultimate, is being “intellectually dishonest” about a point of speculation regarding the Lich King character’s background. When Ragestorm, an administrator overseeing lore articles, agrees with The Ultimate and suggests removing the entire section in question, Zalmeeth then accuses Ragestorm of being “willfully blind.” On the talk page, this discussion might seem to be one over theories (a debate to which Zalmeeth seemingly overreacts) but when also examining the history page to view the article’s past versions, we can see that this is really about invalidating someone’s individual contributions to an article–their text. By the time The Ultimate begins a thread on the talk page, The Ultimate and Zalmeeth have reverted each other’s edits to the article four times over a 28-hour period. Zalmeeth had added two paragraphs of speculation that The Ultimate deleted. The conversation, and thus the collaboration, breaks down with Zalmeeth’s ad hominem attacks, but the trigger setting Zalmeeth off appears to be that the added text was, in the words of the “Be Bold!” policy, “mercilessly” edited, and in this case deleted entirely. For Zalmeeth, the issue was immensely personal, but according to the community’s beliefs, values, and practices, an article’s text on the wiki is co-owned and content is determined by consensus–unlike a writer’s experience in one of Spigelman’s writing groups, where the writer can choose whether or not to accept peers’ suggestions. In rare cases, then, the notion of individual textual ownership rears its head on WoWWiki, and when it does, collaboration breaks down. I suggest that individuals on WoWWiki who operate within a more social interdependent (Johnson and Johnson, 1998) discourse model are thus more effective collaborators than those who hold more individual conceptions of writing and textual ownership because socially interdependent collaborators on WoWWiki act in ways that are consistent with the community’s values. David Johnson and Roger Johnson go on to explain that “social interdependence exists when individuals share common goals and each individual’s outcomes are affected by the actions of the others” and “the absence of social interdependence and dependence results in individualistic efforts.” Contributors on WoWWiki need to pool knowledge and resources and negotiate opposing ideas and theories in order for the project to progress. On WoWWiki, talk page discussions suggest that contributors overwhelmingly accept this social interdependent framework that is both cooperative and competitive but always focused on collective effort and aware of the communal nature of the group’s writing. By contrast, in voluntary groups, as mentioned above, an individual’s story or essay is only partially and temporarily communal property. On WoWWiki, however, the moment any article text is published, it forever forward belongs to everyone and no one. In contradistinction to most voluntary and school-sponsored writing groups, this situation calls for different attitudes about one’s individual contributions because they occur in a space of collective action defined by particular policies and guidelines. This model is in tension with the West’s myth of solitary and isolated genius that prevails in most other contexts, even ones that are defined as collaborative, such as peer writing groups inside and outside the classroom.

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5. There Can Be Only One...or Many?: Notions of Authorship and Textual Ownership Collide This first, very brief excerpt encapsulates the issue of conflicting notions of authorship on WoWWiki. One contributor, Baggins, announced in the WoWWiki Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channel a new article that he had created. Baggins was looking for feedback and possibly assistance from others. Instead, we find another WoWWikian exhibiting an individualized idea of textual production and WoWWiki’s lead administrator Kirkburn stepping in as a result: g0urra: Baggins, even if that’s your intent behind the article, you should’ve put more thought into creating it in the first place Baggins: I’m still working on it g0urra: You put some words and images g0urra: and that’s it Kirkburn: Well, all articles start somewhere, g0urra Baggins: if people help out it saves time. g0urra:... g0urra clearly thought Baggins should have done more work on the article before adding it to the wiki, in contradistinction to the patterns of collaboration in the study sample’s WoWWiki articles. The featured article “Deathwing,” for example, began with only 119 words and took 19 months to reach nearly 2,400 words; during that time, it cycled through 76 versions and had 32 contributors. Over the next two years, “Deathwing” had an additional 346 versions and a total of 79 unique contributors. When I last checked in the fall of 2008, the article was over 4,220 words with more than 11,500 words of written talk on the article’s discussion page. Therefore, we might interpret g0urra’s reaction to be out of line with the general wiki-way of composing practiced on WoWWiki. Although identities such as lore expert, technician, and moderator exist and are ways in which contributors establish individual identities and come to be recognized in the community, the fundamental identity of collaborator emerges from community guidelines and policies, and this fundamental identity is apparent in contributors’ daily interactions. To be an effective collaborator means acquiring a particular identity kit (Gee, 1989, p. 7), and on WoWWiki the identity kit of collaborator holds certain values, beliefs, and attitudes when it comes to writing articles. In the following pages, I explore colliding conceptions of authorship–the individualistic and collaborative–occurring on WoWWiki by analyzing the early exchanges of talk between two contributors regarding an article about the non-player character (NPC) “Abbendis.”This dialogue takes place on the talk page for Abbendis. Abbendis appears in both the Warcraft tabletop role-playing game sourcebooks and the World of Warcraft (WoW) Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG), and the debate centers on how the article should be written considering the fact that in the MMOPRG World of Warcraft the NPC is female, while in the table-toprole-playing “game (published prior to the video game) the” character was a male. At first there was one WoWWiki article for the male Abbendis, but a contributor eventually changed all the male pronouns to female when an image of the female Abbendis from World of Warcraft was added. Following these edits, Baggins created a second Abbendis article, this one for the male character appearing only in the role-playing-game source books. However, the move to begin a second article was met with resistance because another contributor, Tulon, felt there was only one Abbendis character. What had happened, in Tulon’s opinion, is that the game’s developer simply “swapped the gender.” Tulon, S1a:4 1) I am convinced that it is important to merge the two separate articles again. 2) Clearly, all sources show that there is only ONE Abbendis. Just because they

4

To avoid reader confusion and an excessive use of “[sic],” I have corrected spelling, punctuation, and capitalization in talk page excerpts unless otherwise noted.

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3) 4) 5) 6) 7) 8) 9)

retconned [retroactive continuity revision of previously established fact] the gender doesn’t mean there are two when all other facts remain the same. LoC [Lands of Conflict RPG] said Abbendis founded the Crusade, as does Fairbanks in WoW. The two articles right now are only doing two things: irritating the readers, and keeping lore facts from being applied to the Abbendis we see inWoW. Her article looks quite poor to me right now. Your opinions? –Tulon 19:30, 12 September 2007

In my initial analysis, I immediately picked up on the different ways Baggins and Tulon were constructing their arguments for how to handle the inconsistency between sources. Tulon’s position was that “Whilst I appreciate your effort with creating a second page for the alternate Abbendis, Baggins, I do think it is counterproductive in this case, only irritating the readers.” Within minutes of this response, Tulon added the comment, designated “Tulon, S1a” in the transcript.5 In this turn of talk, Tulon demonstrates three identities which we might expect to see enacted on a wiki: (1) the subject-matter expert (e.g., citing sources like the Lands of Conflict RPG sourcebook); (2) concerned community member (i.e., “irritating readers”); and (3) writing partner (“Your opinions?”). For instance, in S1a, line 8, Tulon invites discussion with other contributors. Like Tulon, Baggins also establishes the identities of concerned community member and writing partner by suggesting the addition of a note about the possible retcon in a speculation note: Baggins, S2a: 1) 2) 3) 4) 5) 6) 7) 8) 9) 10)

Considering that LoC version of Abbendis was clearly about a male version and none of those details were established and confirmed for the rare spawn Abbendis in World of Warcraft, we can’t apply them to each other (or go about modifying the quotes from its original intent). Thus one of the reasons why the RPG is given the “may not be found in other sources of lore” warning. In the same way we can’t apply information about female Abbendis established in Cavern’s of Time back on male Abbendis as the info is incompatible, and is obviously about the women. Best we can do is point out that a retcon might have occurred, between the two sets of sources, in a speculation note. –Baggins 18:34, 12 September 2007 (UTC) (emphasis added)

Tulon’s response, S1b: 1) 2) 3) 4) 5) 6) 7) 8) 9) 10) 11) 12) 13) 14)

5

Sorry, but that’s complete nonsense. Both the LoC and the Fairbanks in WoWare talking about the same person, as there is only one Abbendis ever mentioned in either source. The information you are talking about are not incompatible, either. The sourcebook tells us that it was High General Abbendis who founded the Crusade together with Isillien, who was a long-time partner of him/her. Now, in the computer game, we see a female High General Abbendis who fits exactly into the same role, as Fairbanks refers to her in the Ashbringer dialogue and she can be seen accompanying Isillien in the CoTevent. It can’t get more obvious that the gender has been retconned, can it? Please, stay away from the Scarlet Crusade articles. You are seriously hurting the quality of them right now by implying inconsistencies when there are none as well as actually removing lore from characters players get to meet in the game and I don’t want that to happen as I am quite dedicated to these articles. –Tulon 00:45, 13 September 2007

“S1” stands for Speaker 1, and “a” represents the first turn of talk, “b,” the second, and so on.

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In S1b, we see Tulon transition from writing partner to individual author by staking a claim of ownership over not just the “Abbendis” article but also of all the “Scarlet Crusade” articles. In contrast to Baggins’ use of “we” throughout S2a, lines 3,5, and 8, Tulon castigated Baggins for hurting the Abbendis article and all Scarlet Crusade articles (S1b:10-11). Tulon goes so far as to tell Baggins to “stay away” from them. By using “You” (S1b:3, 10) and “I” (S1b:13), Tulon first distributed blame and then claimed jurisdiction based on what could either be an implied comparison of dedication to the writing project or as a means to establish textual ownership, in line 13: “I am quite dedicated to the articles,” which implies that Tulon is more dedicated than Baggins. Tulon was marking territory, perhaps as a tactic to push Baggins away from contributing: “I do not wish to see these articles I have worked so much on remaining ‘vandalized’ for a long time. I’m sorry if I may sound somewhat rude now, but they do mean quite much to me” (Tulon, S1c:10-12). Although both participants in the Abbendis discussion marshaled evidence from Warcraft sources which work to establish their identities as experienced WoWWiki contributors; Tulon went so far as to demonstrate a familiarity with Baggins’ previous work) and guardians of Warcraft lore. Thus larger, conflicting identities also seem to be at play. Baggins, S2b: 1) 2) 3) 4) 5) 6) 7) 8) 9) 10) 11) 12) 13) 14)

(1) The first inconsistency, is the fact that LoC article describes Abbendis as a male. To rewrite info to fit a female form would [be] twisting quotations from what was stated in the original source. Thus the warning that it comes from the RPG and may be wrong. (2) Another inconsistency is reference to date when Isillien met the male Abbendis in comparison to when he met the female Abbendis. According to Lands of Conflict he met male Abbendis not long before Warcraft III, he was “High General” at the time. Whereas we know in WoW, that Isillien was already with “Abbendis” long before that, at the time Abbendis was not a “High General”. (3) Quotes will not be altered from their original source and intent, so if inconsistencies exist in the previous material as it was written, that will be come out in the articles, regardless. It’s not me adding inconsistencies into the text, it’s in consistencies that exist in the text already. –Baggins 00:24, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Tulon, S1c: 1) 2) 3) 4) 5) 6) 7) 8) 9) 10) 11) 12) 13)

Are you also insisting on two Garonas because one was described as being an orc/ human hybrid and the other an orc/draenei? If you think that making a “her” out of “him” is already considered altering quotations: fine by me, then let’s not flag it as a quote, but let us provide this information nonetheless. Besides, we do not know which rank Lady Abbendis held in the CoT, do we? You take the sourcebooks far too pedantic [sic] (I remember you insisting on the language “Elven”, which was replaced with “Thalassian” by later books). In my opinion, you should learn to adapt to retcons and combine the facts we collect. But: as you wish, then let’s wait for the upcoming Dark Factions sourcebook to see that you were wrong. I hope it will be released soon, for I do not wish to see these articles I have worked so much on remaining “vandalized” for a long time. I’m sorry if I may sound somewhat rude now, but they do mean quite much to me. –Tulon 05:10, 13 September 2007

Both participants were contributors to the Abbendis article(s) and members of the WoWWiki community for some time before this conversation occurred. We might assume, then, that Tulon and Baggins understand writing on WoWWiki as collaborative. However, taking into account Tulon’s repeated declarations of ownership and accusation of “vandalism” in stark contrast to Baggins’ continued references to the community working as a collective (in addition to my familiarity

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with Baggins’ interactions on many articles in the study sample), what becomes clear is that these authors are operating within opposing discourse models, that is ways of being (Gee, 1989): writing as an individual activity where individual textual ownership is possible versus writing as an inherently joint enterprise where individual textual ownership is not possible. In this case, Tulon’s powerful sense of ownership and resistance to the collaborative notion of co-authorship interfered with the ability to see collaboration on the Abbendis article as anything but a turf war. Instead, it could be seen as part and parcel of acting, thinking, and interacting within a community that does not simply value talk about writing and co-authorship, but also relies upon it to get the job done. Baggins’ language use while interacting with Tulon suggests that he operates within a different discourse model, one using the “social language” (Gee, 2008) of collaborative authorship. I speculate that this is a result of his deep participation within the WoWWiki community. Baggins is a “semi-active” administrator and “crazy lore contributor,” making him one of only six editors with more than 25,000 edits on WoWWiki. On the contrary, Tulon’s participation is more shallow. Tulon does not have a leadership role in the community or participate in the synchronous IRC channel, nor does Tulon maintain a personal WoWWiki profile page or have nearly as many edits as Baggins. Kenneth Bruffee’s (1986) third tenet of social constructionism, as laid out in Tharon Howard’s (1997) A Rhetoric of Electronic Communities, is helpful in understanding the Baggins/Tulon conflict: “Subjectivity is a social construct” (p. 91). At the time of Baggins’ and Tulon’s exchange, Tulon may not yet have had adequate opportunities to acquire the identity kit of a successful writing partner; in effect, Tulon’s participation is “partial” rather than “full” (Lave and Wenger, 1991). That is, an individual’s subjectivity “is a construct largely community generated and community maintained” (Bruffee, qtd. in Howard, 1997, p. 91). As the central tension between Baggins and Tulon appears to rise from the conflicting attitudes, beliefs, and values these writers bring to the activity, we can surmise that these attitudes, beliefs, and values negotiated and defined on the community’s guideline and policy pages are constitutive of “ways of belonging” (Lave and Wenger, 1991) to this community. In the end, for Tulon the issue seemed to be immensely personal and might have been more fitting in other contexts of collaborative writing, but the reaction and response was out of line with this particular community’s beliefs, values, and practices. The text making up an article is co-owned. Content is determined through consensus. 6. Conclusion The above analysis was concerned with contributors’ collaborations on WoWWiki, asking how notions of authorship and textual ownership manifest in this context. Central to this analysis is the idea that individual contributions to articles are deemphasized and textual ownership is effaced. In these two ways, my findings point to something markedly different than Spigelman’s findings regarding textual ownership in voluntary writing groups. Whereas the practice of individuals in effective voluntary writing groups is to temporarily give up control of their texts to the group (i.e., their peers), authors on WoWWiki must immediately and always relinquish control of their texts to the group. Simultaneously, ownership does not correlate with motivation to write as it did in Spigelman’s study. The collaborative writing on WoWWiki, then, may indicate a significant departure from how textual ownership works in other voluntary writing groups (and with other social media, such as blogs, or genres of fan production, such as fan fiction). For wiki writing to be successful, it appears that writers must always be aware that readers of a wiki article can, at will, become co-authors of the text. What WoWWikians did maintain individual ownership over were the suggestions they made about revising articles and the theories they constructed to explain gaps and discontinuities in Warcraft lore. In the study sample, claims of textual ownership, however, are disruptive. Ultimately, this wiki-mediated form of collaborative writing seems to require contributors to share a more communal notion of authorship and textual property. As WoWWikians debated facts and theories regarding what is, should be, and could be in articles, collaboration was more successful when individuals focused more on the welfare of the group or project over personal advantage. For most writers, these circumstances do not appear to be an issue. On the other hand, only a few contributors show their uneasiness concerning the collective creation of texts–and where we see collaboration break down and the project suffer, contributors in fact use the discourse of individual authorship. Rhetoric and composition continues to show interest in the roles audience plays in writing processes (Weiser et al., 2009). Elsewhere (Hunter, 2010a), I explore how collaboration on WoWWiki extends theories of audience. In Writing Spaces, Jay David Bolter (2001) points out that “in each historical moment, with each writing technology, and with each text, the question is: how and to what extent does the writer control the reader’s experience of reading? To what extent

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does the reader actively participate in choosing his path through the text?” (p. 101). If hypertext and hypertext fiction allow readers to choose between multiple paths that undermine authorial control over the process of reading (Bolter, 2001b; Charney, 1994; Hayles, 2002; Landow, 2006; Slatin, 1990), with wikis readers can become literal coauthors. A writer may write a text, but any readers can come along to revise that text. The wiki ultimately affords a collapse of writer-reader relations, and this collapse changes how a writer must think about textual ownership. Audience is no longer a construct or relegated to more open ways of reading. Readers represent a potentiality. Readers can become readers-as-writers, and writing encyclopedia articles on WoWWiki becomes a hypersocial-interactive project. So we can rework Bolter’s question to ask this question: How and to what extent does the reader-as-writer control the writer’s experience of writing and the reader’s experience of reading? The new conditions of literacy existent on WoWWiki hold particular significance to those interested in the pervasiveness of networked technology in daily life and their effects on authorship and audience but also for those who do not consider digital media and culture an area of central or even peripheral interest. Williams (2009), in considering what principles and practices students are learning online and how teachers might play a role in helping students learn to read and write “regardless of the technology or content” (p. 198), tells us that “students online know audience is a very real community with the ability and interest in responding to their work. When students are part of an audience, they expect to be able to respond to the ideas and writing of others.. . .Participation is the name of the game” (p. 35). Wikis further expand online readers’ participatory powers and undermine traditional views of authorship that can endure in solo-authored genres such as fan fiction. It is my hope that with this study I have illustrated how collaborative writing practices are technologically inflected by the wiki on WoWWiki, and further, how this union of the social and technological problematizes notions of authorship and textual ownership. The consequences of this expansion in participatory powers on wikis (and with other technologies allowing writers to edit each others’ writing) calls for more investigation. Take for example the question of where WoWWikians are learning to write collaboratively. Is this ability, perhaps, a result of playing World of Warcraft, a highly collaborative video game? Also, how might WoWWikians transfer writing practices and beliefs about textual ownership to other, less collaborative contexts? In “‘Fan Fic-ing’ English Studies: A Case Study Exploring the Interplay of Vernacular Literacies and Disciplinary Engagement,” Kevin Roozen (2009) examines one graduate student’s experiences in English studies (as an undergraduate and graduate student) as well as fan fiction and fan art. Roozen describes the links between these two realms of literate activity and that the student repurposed practices from each activity in the other, exploring the “synergies and tensions that texture such interactions” (p. 136) and arguing that we need to pay more attention to the interplay of literate practices we often think of as separate and unconnected. In other words, how has (or will) the collaborative writing taking place on sites such as WoWWiki and Wikipedia affect culture at large? The habits of mind on WoWWiki could indicate of a larger technocultural shift that not only requires us to rethink what it means to be literate in the 21st century, but also to develop curricula that help students acquire the skills that will be (or already are) necessary to participate in culture in meaningful ways. It may be that in order to understand the consequences of this transitional time in literacy, we must understand what it means to read and write together. Rik Hunter is an Assistant Professor of English at St. John Fisher College, where he teaches courses in the Digital Technologies & Culture minor as well as other writing courses. He finished his PhD at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2010, where he taught technology-rich writing courses in the Composition and Rhetoric program and served as Coordinator of the Online Writing Center.

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