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Abstract:

The article examines the use of the online information gathered in the free open encyclopedia Wikipedia when commenting literary works. As an example of online research, the article analyzes the paradox connected with Pushkin’s date of birth: Pushkin said he was born on May 26^th (in the Julian calendar) but the parish register of the Church in Elokhovo records another date — May 27^th. The author considers Russian calendars of the 18^th c. and rules of record maintenance together with other possible sources that allow to clarify Pushkin’s date of birth. Commenting is considered as the solution to an “inverse problem”, i.e. as a research that starts from a given text and moves on to find its real and literary sources. This kind of research needs a wide context that neither a single researcher nor a group of philologists can possess because of the natural limits of knowledge; that is why it is necessary to draw in “popular” literary studies that can be organized by Wikipedia principles. The article analyze the reliability of the information given by different language segments of Wikipedia (English, Russian, French and German) on the base of Wikipedia rules of
writing/editing and change control. The article considers the main principles of Wikipedia, such as “good” sources only (preferably articles and other works published in reviewed magazines), neutrality (i.e. reflecting all points of view and advertising ban) and ban upon original researches (“Wikipedia is not as composition, it is a summary”). In conclusion, the author considers the possibility of creating a specific open multilingual Wikipedia, Wiki-Dostoevsky, together with some speculations about making and using specific encyclopedias of this kind.