Writing I Like: Nicholson Baker Writes About Wikipedia

I think I’ve liked every piece of Nicholson Baker nonfiction that I’ve ever read, but I thought I would call out his piece about Wikipedia for my new-and-exciting Writing I Like category. Ostensibly, the essay is a review of Wikipedia: The Missing Manual, but in true NYT Review of Books fashion, that’s a lightweight skeleton supporting the piece’s muscle.

Baker has whole battlefronts of conflict at his disposal to spice up his piece: He paints the modern-day Wikipedia as an mostly-unseen war between the keepers of the encyclopedic truth and its would-be spammers and trolls. Even within the legitimate ranks, he finds tension: There are aggressive purgers debating against article inclusionists. (And, really, is it any surprise that the author of Double Fold sides with the “let’s include everything” camp?) There is even his conflict between his life as a newly enthusiastic Wikipedia editor and his life as a father and husband with household obligations.

But this piece really shines with its use of specifics. Baker has a finely tuned eye for detail backed by an obsessive knowledge-seeking mind. Consider his accounts of Wikipedia vandalism:

Some articles are vandalized a lot. On January 11, 2008, the entire fascinating entry on the aardvark was replaced with "one ugly animal"; in February the aardvark was briefly described as a "medium-sized inflatable banana."

He doesn’t bother cracking jokes. Who needs to with source material such as this?

As with the Wired piece about the Netflix Prize, Baker’s piece shines because of his presence in the piece (a more overt presence than that of the writer of the Netflix piece). He talks about how he got drawn in to Wikipedia editing, the battles he won (and lost) to keep articles in the system, the addictive pull of debates with other editors and conflicts with vandals.

I finished the piece feeling a little lighter, a little happier, and a little more inclined to edit Wikipedia articles.