Identity and Provenance

Forking as (cultural) feature raised issues of identity and provenance.

We can see that frances.uk.fedwikihappening.net created the page and directory.fedwikihappening.net forked it, adding commentary. Finding out that frances is Frances Bell, or that directory.fedwikihappings.net is Mike Caulfield, is Discoverable but not Obvious.

FedWiki's neighborhood boundaries are vague and dynamic. But everybody owns their stuff in this network. When should that ownership be more, or less, obvious?

In architecture and urban design, the identity of an architect is typically discoverable but not to the extent that the building is literally signed, as a painting might be.

The issue with collaborative authorship in academic writing is one we already grapple with, where "we" typically means "me then him then her then me again." This tangles with the question of paradoxical uniqueness associated with writing as the production of authorial celebrity.