Warcraft Wiki:In Academia

WoWWiki is part of academia!

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Rik Hunter is a soon-to-be 5th year PhD student/dissertator (circa 2008) in the UW-Madison English department's Composition and Rhetoric program (sometime coordinator of the Online Writing Center). His interests include new media, fan production, collective intelligence, and collaborative writing and learning.

His dissertation, (currently) titled "Recovering Collectivity: Technology, Talk, and Collaboration in an Online Community of Writers," (originally titled, "Writing WoWWiki: Wiki-Mediated Collaborative Composition & Social Interaction") develops an understanding of how the interaction of wiki technology and the goals of a self-sponsored fan community shape collaborative composition in an online environment (i.e., the ways in which technologies shape and are shaped by communities for specific purposes).

On May 23, 2008, he posted a flash presentation based on his dissertation largely focused on WoWWiki.

Other presentations

• “Writing WoWWiki: Open Source Knowledge Production in a Fan Community and Its Implications for Writing Instruction in the 21st Century.” Computers and Writing, Athens, May 2008.
• “Don't Bite the n00bs!: Collective Networks & Collaborative Composition in WoWWiki.” CCCC, New Orleans, March 2008.

Trivia

• Hear Kirkburn (aka George Pribul) speak in the flash presentation (excerpts from his appearance at SXSW on 8-Mar-2008)!

External links

rikhunter.com Canned Goods (Rik Hunter's new blog): WoWWiki dissertation info

rikhunter.net Canned Goods (Rik Hunter's old blog): WoWWiki dissertation info

rikhunter.com About Canned Goods (Rik Hunter's blog)

mywebspace.wisc.edu Writing WoWWiki flash presentation