The future of the past

Since its creation in 2001, Wikipedia, ‘the online free encyclopedia that anyone can edit’, has increasingly become a subject of debate among historians due to its radical departure from traditional history scholarship. The medium democratized the field of knowledge production to an extent that has not been experienced before and it was the incredible popularity of the medium that triggered historians to raise questions about the quality of the online reference work and implications for the historian’s craft. However, despite a vast body of research devoted to the digital encyclopedia, no consensus has yet been reached in these debates due to a general lack of empirical research. This study therefore begins to fill this academic research on history as an ‘open source’ discipline by conducting a case study on the (re)presentation of the Holocaust in Wikipedia. More specifically, a combination of quantitative and qualitative content analysis has been conducted to examine and compare the main entry of the Holocaust on the English, German, and Dutch language version of Wikipedia, with particular attention to (a) how the Holocaust is (re)presented and being shaped on Wikipedia (b) who is involved in the information production of this modern historical episode and (c) to what extent national influences are apparent in the representation of the Holocaust on Wikipedia. In addition, the implications of the findings for Western historiography have received considerable attention in this study. One of the most significant findings of this research is that the Holocaust entries under study revealed that there does not exist one representation of the Holocaust, but each language version has its own unique account of events and phenomena included in the representation of the Holocaust. In fact, significant differences exist between the Holocaust entries under study, as, for example, the English-language has been found to be the most elaborate in absolute quantity, succeeded by the German-language, and followed with considerable distance by the Dutch-language. These quantitative differences have accordingly be found to further resonate in the qualitative depth of the articles, such as the level of detail and thoroughness of the description of events and phenomena. This is been reflected in the fact that the Dutch-language representation of the Holocaust is incomplete (the liberation of the camps is ignored) and is lacking further detail, while its English- and German-language counterparts are considerably ‘better’ in this respect. Another important finding is that it has been found that none of the Holocaust entries under study is rated ‘good quality’, which indicates that the pages are in considerable need of improvement according to Wikimedia standards. At this point, this study envisages a role for professional historians, who are overtly encouraged in this study to contribute to Wikipedia and improve historiography in this respect. Wikipedia simply needs the contributions of expert historians. Further implications of the findings of this study are positioned in larger themes of digital storytelling, public history, and commemoration.