Military History on the Electronic Frontier: Wikipedia Fights the War of 1812

Wikipedia has become the world’s dominant educational resource, with over four million articles in the English language edition that reach hundreds of millions of readers. Wikipedia is written by and for the benefit of highly motivated amateurs. Military history is one of its strengths, with over 50,000 articles and over 700 well-organized volunteers who prevent mischief and work on upgrading quality. They rely on free online sources and popular books, and generally ignore historiography and scholarly monographs and articles. The military articles are old-fashioned, with an emphasis on tactics, battles, and technology, and are weak on social and cultural dimensions. This essay examines how the 14,000-word article on the “War of 1812” was worked on by 2,400 different people, with no overall coordinator or plan. Debates raged as the 1812 article attracted over 3,300 comments by 627 of the most active editors. The main dispute was over who won the war.