On Vox and Wikipedia
At the moment I’m working on developing some lesson plans targeted at advanced learners. Some of the readings I’m using come from link-heavy websites: the Washington Post, Vox, and Wikipedia. Comparing the text structures and layout of the three, I’ve been reflecting on how students can compose for new media.
It’s interesting to see these sites transforming. I’ve been a reader of the Washington Post for a long time, and the design of their articles – link-heavy and informal – is new. Five years ago, the Washington Post looked a lot closer to the New York Times, with long, mostly-formal, independently readable articles. The articles used to contain all of the background information you’d need to understand the topic at hand. Links were sparse to non-existent.
The page layout has shifted along with the content. The Washington Post now has lists of links (like “top stories”) in different orders on different parts of the page, designed to get your attention, get more clicks. Ads dot the page for subscribers and non-subscribers alike. There’s also a “Profile page” that’s accessible from a Google-like link in the top right, and a comment section on each article with names and pictures of the commenters, and a “Like” button to upvote a comment. The left sidebar has bright, attention-grabbing icons to share the article with different social networks. These aren’t a single shift; they’ve been added slowly over time, with some of them literally appearing today for the first time.
It looks, in short, like Vox. All of these elements were pioneered by Vox, which was founded by the former Post journalist Ezra Klein who left in order to be able to develop an internet-first approach to the news. But none of these changes help unless you’ve fallen down the rabbit hole. They obfuscate news and content, burying it in article after article on the same subject, leading readers to read all of it in order to understand any of it. They bring in the insights of a million different people, offering both well- and ill-informed views on the topic with no clear distinction between the two. The opinion commentary, which used to offer a few perspectives on each topic, now includes blog-like discussion of every topic by every writer, even those who have nothing new to say.
Wikipedia, on the other hand, is a relic. It incorporates multimedia elements, but it doesn’t focus on videos or audio as a core element of its presentation. Its writing is obsessively edited to be as neutral as possible, and it speaks in the voice of Encyclopedia Britannica, not Salon. And it works; it presents a great deal of information very quickly, with every claim carefully sourced and confusing terms carefully explained or hyperlinked. It’s flawed – mostly because its ambitions are so great that its userbase can’t keep up – but it’s one of the most useful (and popular) websites on the internet for learning.
I keep thinking of Wikipedia as I read articles arguing that companies like Facebook can only exist because of ad revenue and, therefore, because of exploitative, manipulative attention-seeking. Wikipedia avoided becoming monetized by staying a non-profit, relying exclusively on donations. And that model works: despite handling a great deal of traffic and an enormous number of contributors, it has a staff the fraction the size of Facebook with no advertisements at all.
The differences are striking. Hyperlinks have unambiguous referents. Information is organized and updated with carefully-structured disambiguation pages. Images are chosen to be informative, not to be attention-grabbing, and there are no social media icons in sight. And all of the information is developed via the goodwill of the community, expecting nothing in exchange from its readership.
Fundamentally, the Wikipedia model makes a lot more sense for academic writing than the Vox model. Science and research don’t need to addict readers and keep them coming back; they just need to tell readers what is true. And Wikipedia allows articles to grow and develop when new information appears, not with the implicit assumption of a blog that you will update on a regular schedule. Changes are motivated by necessity, not by expectation.
Of course personal essays and the like don’t flourish in this environment, but neither do they flourish in the rigidity of a blog. Hypermedia allows for new, multidimensional forms of creative or expressive writing. But an argumentative or explanatory paper still has the same basic needs as it did fifty years ago, and computers should empower the writers to satisfy those needs, not replace the entire paradigm. Composition classes ought to take more notice of how Wikipedia manages those constraints and pay less attention to Vox.
It’s interesting to see these sites transforming. I’ve been a reader of the Washington Post for a long time, and the design of their articles – link-heavy and informal – is new. Five years ago, the Washington Post looked a lot closer to the New York Times, with long, mostly-formal, independently readable articles. The articles used to contain all of the background information you’d need to understand the topic at hand. Links were sparse to non-existent.
The page layout has shifted along with the content. The Washington Post now has lists of links (like “top stories”) in different orders on different parts of the page, designed to get your attention, get more clicks. Ads dot the page for subscribers and non-subscribers alike. There’s also a “Profile page” that’s accessible from a Google-like link in the top right, and a comment section on each article with names and pictures of the commenters, and a “Like” button to upvote a comment. The left sidebar has bright, attention-grabbing icons to share the article with different social networks. These aren’t a single shift; they’ve been added slowly over time, with some of them literally appearing today for the first time.
It looks, in short, like Vox. All of these elements were pioneered by Vox, which was founded by the former Post journalist Ezra Klein who left in order to be able to develop an internet-first approach to the news. But none of these changes help unless you’ve fallen down the rabbit hole. They obfuscate news and content, burying it in article after article on the same subject, leading readers to read all of it in order to understand any of it. They bring in the insights of a million different people, offering both well- and ill-informed views on the topic with no clear distinction between the two. The opinion commentary, which used to offer a few perspectives on each topic, now includes blog-like discussion of every topic by every writer, even those who have nothing new to say.
Wikipedia, on the other hand, is a relic. It incorporates multimedia elements, but it doesn’t focus on videos or audio as a core element of its presentation. Its writing is obsessively edited to be as neutral as possible, and it speaks in the voice of Encyclopedia Britannica, not Salon. And it works; it presents a great deal of information very quickly, with every claim carefully sourced and confusing terms carefully explained or hyperlinked. It’s flawed – mostly because its ambitions are so great that its userbase can’t keep up – but it’s one of the most useful (and popular) websites on the internet for learning.
I keep thinking of Wikipedia as I read articles arguing that companies like Facebook can only exist because of ad revenue and, therefore, because of exploitative, manipulative attention-seeking. Wikipedia avoided becoming monetized by staying a non-profit, relying exclusively on donations. And that model works: despite handling a great deal of traffic and an enormous number of contributors, it has a staff the fraction the size of Facebook with no advertisements at all.
The differences are striking. Hyperlinks have unambiguous referents. Information is organized and updated with carefully-structured disambiguation pages. Images are chosen to be informative, not to be attention-grabbing, and there are no social media icons in sight. And all of the information is developed via the goodwill of the community, expecting nothing in exchange from its readership.
Fundamentally, the Wikipedia model makes a lot more sense for academic writing than the Vox model. Science and research don’t need to addict readers and keep them coming back; they just need to tell readers what is true. And Wikipedia allows articles to grow and develop when new information appears, not with the implicit assumption of a blog that you will update on a regular schedule. Changes are motivated by necessity, not by expectation.
Of course personal essays and the like don’t flourish in this environment, but neither do they flourish in the rigidity of a blog. Hypermedia allows for new, multidimensional forms of creative or expressive writing. But an argumentative or explanatory paper still has the same basic needs as it did fifty years ago, and computers should empower the writers to satisfy those needs, not replace the entire paradigm. Composition classes ought to take more notice of how Wikipedia manages those constraints and pay less attention to Vox.
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