Wikipedia Entry Turned Into Actual Encyclopedia

Ponca City, We love you writes "If journalism is the first rough draft of history, what does that make Wikipedia? Time Magazine reports that technology writer James Bridle has created a 12-volume compendium of every edit made to the Wikipedia entry for the Iraq War between December 2004 and November 2009. 'It contains arguments over numbers, differences of opinion on relevance and political standpoints, and frequent moments when someone erases the whole thing and just writes "Saddam Hussein was a dickhead.,"' writes Bridle. 'This is historiography. This is what culture actually looks like: a process of argument, of dissenting and accreting opinion, of gradual and not always correct codification.' The books presumably only exist in one copy, so they are not for sale."

Re:"This is historiography."

[Notquitecajun]

Wow, you missed something in college. Historiography is essentially "checking your sources" and looking at how history was written. It's not some off-the-wall media term or something. Every historian does (or should do) it.

Re:"This is historiography."

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you're just a fucking moron with the vocabulary of a 4th grader.

historiography /hstrigrfi, -stor-/ Show Spelled[hi-stawr-ee-og-ruh-fee, -stohr-] Show IPA
–noun,plural-phies.
1.the body of literature dealing with historical matters; histories collectively.
2.the body of techniques, theories, and principles of historical research and presentation; methods of historical scholarship.
3.the narrative presentation of history based on a critical examination, evaluation, and selection of material from primary and secondary sources and subject to scholarly criteria.
4.an official history: medieval historiographies.