01725nas a2200217 4500008004100000245004000041210003600081260000900117300001100126490000700137520116000144653001201304653001401316653001001330653002401340653001401364100001901378700001701397700002501414856006801439 2009 eng d00aThe Evolution of Genre in Wikipedia0 aEvolution of Genre in Wikipedia c2009 a1–220 v243 a
This paper presents an overview of the ways in which genres, or structuralforms, develop in a community of practice, in this case, Wikipedia. Firstly, we collected data by performing a small search task in the Wikipedia search engine (powered by Lucene) to locate articles related to global car manufacturers, for example, British Leyland, Ferrari and General Motors. We also searched for typical biographical articles about notable people, such as Spike Milligan, Alex Ferguson, Nelson Mandela and Karl Marx. An examination of the data thus obtained revealed that these articles have particular forms and that some genres connect to each other and evolve, merge and overlap. We then looked at the ways in which the purpose and form of a biographical article have evolved over six years within this community. We concluded the work with a discussion on the usefulness of Wikipedia as a vehicle for such genre investigations. This small analysis has allowed us to start generating a number of detailed research questions as to how forms may act as descriptors of genre and to discuss plans for experimental work aimed at answering these questions.
10adigital10aevolution10agenre10ainformation science10awikipedia1 aClark, Malcolm1 aRuthven, Ian1 aHolt, Patrik O'Brian uhttps://genreacrossborders.org/biblio/evolution-genre-wikipedia