\section{The Italian context}
Probably, the best achievement of the present research has been the interview of Umberto Eco as a prominent and important insider of Humanities
in the Italian context. 
Professor Eco is a worldwide known professor and author of best-sellers as \textquotedblleft The Name of the Rose \textquotedblright and 
\textquotedblleft Foucault's Pendulum\textquotedblright.
He is also a medievalist, semiotician, philosopher, literary critic and novelist: he has written from academic texts to children's books, 
as well as many essays regarding very different topics, from politics to literature.

Professor Eco was interviewed by the researcher for a project called \textquotedblleft Wiki@Home\textquotedblright, supported by the Italian chapter of the 
Wikimedia Foundation\footnote{\url{http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home}}, Wikimedia Italia\footnote{\url{http://www.wikimedia.it/index.php/Who_we_are}}. 
Wikimedia Italia (WMI) is an association for open culture and open knwoledge, and it supports Wikimedia projects as Wikipedia and Wikisource. 
Wiki@Home is a subproject of WMI which is aimed to interview important members of the cultural and entertainment world. 

Within this context, the researcher contacted and gained and appointment with professor Eco to interview him about Internet, collaboration and Wikipedia. 
The researcher thus exploited this unique occasion to utilize professor Eco as a \textit{key informant} for the study, 
investigating topics as collaboration between scholars, especially within Humanities in the Italian context. 

Interview revealed to be extremely rich and helpful to gain in-depth information about Humanities in the Italian area and their 
approach to Internet and collaboration. 

Thus, in the following paragraphs his interview will be analyzed, providing a rich picture of the Italian Humanities environment. 

\section{Academic publishing}
In the US academic environment, it is popular the phrase \textquotedblleft publish or perish\textquotedblright, meaning the \textquotedblleft pressure to publish work constantly to further or sustain a career in academia. 
The competition for tenure-track faculty positions in academia puts increasing pressure on scholars to publish new work frequently.\textquotedblright \cite{popWP}

Related to this, as both a consequence and a cause, there is the fact that publication on academic journals is one of the few possibilities for scholars to
improve their visibility, and mantain or obtain the position in universities.

Academic publishing in thus the main way to further a carrer in academia: unfortunately, this runs against the possibility of creating and sustaining online collaborative VREs, 
because often working in such projects is seen as a proper task for researcher, and it is not relevant for evaluation of a scholar. 

This is unfortunately very relevant in Italy, where, according to interviewee \texttt{I3}: 
\begin{quotation}
There are several issues regarding career, and complex ones. 
For tenure and scholarship application, digital publishing is not relevant, \textit{it's not evaluated} for such applications. 
%ci sono problematiche legate alla carriera, piuttosto complesse. In sede concorsuale, non valgono le edizioni digitali. Non vengono contate. 
In fact, for collaborative work it would be much worse, due to the fact that it is very difficult to track authorship of contributes. 
%Pensa cosa potrebbe succedere per un lavoro collaborativo, in cui non si riesce a ridimere l'attribuzione di ogni contributo. 
This is a serious problem, that will be maybe solved by younger generations of scholars, that are much more aware of the whole knowledge sharing issue.
\end{quotation}

\subsection{Italian scholars are quite behind}
Professor Eco confirmed the idea of a generation of Italian scholars that is particularly unaware of the new aspect of the Web, 
and it is quite diffident about new directions of scrince and scholarship, as well as a disruptive technology as Internet, with the whole bargain of innovation carried. 


\subsection{The ivory tower}
There is a well-known metaphor, at leat in Italy, that say that intellectuals who are far from people, 
relegated in their abstact thoughts and concepts, live in a \textquotedblleft ivory tower\textquotedblright.
This elitary approach is unfortunately very common in old and remarkable intellectuals, as well in scholars of older generations.

It is the opinion of the researcher that Umberto Eco indirectly provided a picture of Italian academia as still bounded to this concept of lonely intellectual.
Professor Eco is known to be left-winged and with a broad and open mind: the research confirms this impression. 
Yet, through the whole interview emerges a view of a society somehow divided in two (or more) culatural classes.  
Professor Eco was asked about his opinion on Wikipedia, and expressed it very clearly:
\begin{quotation}
poveri ricchi 
\end{quotation}


 
\subsection{Low and motivated crowd}
Therefore Eco divided the normal, \textquotedblleft low\textquotedblright crowd, which often supports every kind of falsity 
(\textquotedblleft If you ask to 6 billion of inhabitants of the world, the majority will tell you that the Sun is going round the Earth. 
There's nothing to do about it\textquotedblright) to what he called the \textit{motivated crowd},
which can actually create trustworthy information, as (sometimes) happens in Wikipedia.
\begin{quotation}
Allora bisogna trovare un altro criterio che è quello quello della folla motivata. 
Quelli che collaborano a Wikipedia, non sono soltanto un'aristocrazia, solo professori dell'università, ma neanche la folla indiscriminata: 
sono quella parte della folla che si sente motivata a collaborare a Wikipedia 
\end{quotation}



-----
The researcher somehow feels that Eco did attribute some flaws to collective processes that he did not see in scientific communinities. 
He trusted the scientific cmmunity to reach, eventually, a convergence that he's not willing to attribute at the communities of active users of Wikipedia. 
\begin{quotation}
peirce
\end{quotation}


The researcher is absolutely not competent of sociology of science; yet, it is his opinion that a statement like this may be disputed in the future. 
Sociology of science is a quite sectorial and young field of study, but provides interesting insights about behaviour of scientific communities 
(and single scholars), illustrating a much more (and disturbing) picture of science, research and scholarship.
Mechanisms of knowledge production and science discovery are not immune of the influence of external factors as grants, scientific fads, trends, mainstream science,
competition among scholars, etc. Even the existence of a core, mainstream science is a political fact that preventes a free and totally open science and research, 
especially in developing countries\cite{guedon}.  
------

This explains (and it is caused by) the diffidence of scholars regarding collaborative projects, especially open ones. 
The best example is Wikipedia, which professor Eco knows well and that was the main topic of the interview. 
Wikipedia is open to everyone, and this is a flaw that few scholars tolerate.
A lot of research has been done regarding the problem of authority and reliability in Wikipedia and similar projects, 
and more research has to be done to understand and comprehend the phenomenon in its broadness. 
It is the opinion of the researcher that only the surface of these issues has been scratched.
Wikipedia opened a window that we did not expect to exist: it shows us a world where expert are important, but not so much. 
Crowds of active and good-willing users can flock and creates coherent and complete enciclopedic articles, almost about everything. 

This is a comeplex issue that is very feared, for many reasons, by scholars and academy in general. 
Their commnets and critics are often grounded and very agreeable, but it is still valid the opinion that this whole phenomenon of crowdsourcing, 
\textquotedblleft wisdom of the crowds\textquotedblright and value of expertise (as well as pervese mechanisms in academy and scientific communities) 
are yet to be understood. 

\begin{quotation}
Take for example the journal \textit{Nature}. 
In the scientific world, if an article apperad on Nature, where there is peer review and large control, it is taken seriously.
It is true, in any case, that Nature could make an error, and exclude a brilliant article: nevertheless, Nature is believed a landmark of reliability, with fringe boundaries.
There is always the ppoossibility of an error, or event a little academic revenge\dots
%Nel mondo scientifico, se un articolo è apparso su Nature, dove c'è stata la peer review ed un vasto controllo, viene preso sul serio. E' vero in tutti i casi, 
%che può darsi che Nature commetta un errore, ed escluda un articolo brillante: però, comunque, 
%si ritiene che Nature sia un centro di attendibilità, coi confini sfrangiati. Perchè può sempre succedere l'errore, o una piccola vendetta accademica...  
\end{quotation}
