While I’m completely comfortable with the fact that both the content of my ideas and their presentation will change over time and differ depending on the audience or time available, in this transitional period, we are particularly vulnerable to all sorts of criticism that will one day hopefully seem comical. This is unfortunately preventing a lot of really intelligent and interesting people from contributing to discussions online because, even though they know a great deal and have much to contribute, they worry about contributing anything that is less than solidly researched and completely thought out.

I believe that we must overcome this reservation and admit that there are is in fact a full spectrum of acceptable formats which represent different levels of development, detail, or diligence. Not every idea or argument we utter needs to have the full weight of a sabbatical year of research behidn it. Many of the most powerful and useful ideas first make their way into “the open” in very “half baked” forms, and I believe the academic world must evolve to accomidate more of them (or at least promote and permit us to venture out freely to share them). The resistance to this is, I believe, a consequence of the “crap on the internet” argument. It goes something like this,

“1) We scholars are sick and tired of our students citing materials from the internet or using it for their research because there is so much crap there.
2) Because we need to defend the (ivory?) walls (of Vienna?) against the barbarian hordes unleashing this crap on the internet, we should continue to produce only very high quality and deeply researched materials for publication in reputable and refereed journals or published monographs. That way there will always be a place to turn to for authentic scholarship and reputable debate.
3) Contributing to the internet discussions in informal environments not only means that we are “lowering ourselves” to conducting discourse with the ignorant masses online but a) we are wasting valuable time which is better spent plowing through another obscure archive document to round out that paper for publication b) we are potentially producing less than high quality work by posting blog articles etc. that have far less time and effort contributed to them than we should expect from scholars. Do you really think you have more than 2 interesting things to say per month that you can sufficiently argue and research?”

I will leave it to other commenters or the reader to find the glaring problems with this sort of argument. However, it might be worth adding that the kind of thing that we are now doing on our blogs and a place like Frog in a Well is not so different than what we do in our own seminar discussions, in the debates that follow academic presentations, in the lounges of univeristy history departments, in the coffee shops and libraries where we study. I for one, always feel a bit uncomfortable with the fact that there is a whole world out there of interested individuals who might benefit from these discussions and, god forbid, might have something to contribute. I can’t help feeling like we are complicit in shutting the door on them, or in building the wall for entry too high. I am not ashamed of the things I say in these more confined settings, nor do I find it at all problematic that I am later discovered to have made proposterous arguments that turn out to be hogwash. That some of these failed attempts are now often on record is unnerving but not necessarily a negative development. If anything, I think that my increased participation in these online discussions will increase the quality of the whole of my history related discourse with friends, future students, and others I happen to subject to some of my ideas. My arguments will be refined, perhaps a bit of my cynicism will be blunted, and I will hopefully gain a greater appreciation for the range of responses there might be to any given way I might approach a historical question.