Learning through Massively Co-Authored Biographies: Making Sense of Steve Jobs on Wikipedia through Delegated Voice

This paper discusses opportunities for learning about biographies through Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopaedia. We examine argumentation and interpretation practices in Steve Jobs´s entry and its associated Talk pages, focusing on editors´ debates on whether Jobs was an “inventor”. We highlight argumentation from delegated voice as a core element of Wikipedian knowledge building; contributors´ variable skills in engaging this NPOV mandated requirement account for their success or failure in promoting changes in page content and structure. Editors´ concerns about topic relevance and page structure are particularly vulnerable to counter-argumentation from delegated voice.