[NetBehaviour] What Is An Artist (On Wikipedia)?

[Rob Myers]

On 02/09/13 11:11 PM, Alan Sondheim wrote:
> 
> 
> It seems to me this is no different than what occurs in any communality; 
> there are always debates about who is an artist, what art is, etc., and 
> Wikipedia just reflects that. And in fact because it mostly excludes so- 
> called regional artists, it's not much use in this kind of thinking. I 
> must be missing something, but the problem seems to be the kind of 
> discourse that's always gone on within and without the arts - Alan

What made this different for me is:

* I'd spent several frustrating hours trying to get a list of artists
from Wikipedia via DBPedia, and I kept getting books and clock making
companies in the list.

* With Wikipedia the process is less familiar, and the structures more
explicit, so it is more obvious and easier to investigate.

* Wikipedia is often presented as a postmodern model of knowledge, this
showed that it has some very modernist hangovers.