Joseph Reagle is a Doctoral Fellow at NYU's Culture and Communication Department where he studies collaborative cultures, specifically the Wikipedia. For seven years he was a Research Engineer at the MIT Lab for Computer Science where he has served as a Working Group Chair and Author within the joint IETF/W3C XML Signature, XML Encryption and Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P) activities. Additionally, he has worked as a Policy Analyst addressing privacy, content-selection/free-speech, and intellectual rights, including the development and maintenance of W3C's privacy and intellectual rights policies (i.e., copyright/trademark licenses and patent analysis).
Abstract
Claims of neutrality and accusations of bias are common themes of contemporary discourse about the media government education and technology. In this presentation I extend earlier work on the collaborative culture of Wikipedia (an on-line and free encyclopedia) to specifically focus on the fundamental but often misunderstood notion of neutrality. This presentation is inspired by earlier debates on neutrality oftechnical standards, literature on bias in technical systems, my present fascination with this Wikipedia norm and a change in my belief that while an important concept, the label of neutrality was an unfortunate coinage in the Wikipedia context.