WIKIPEDIA

FORM OF EXPRESSION : TAKEN FROM THE CARTOPOLOGIST’S LIFE

Saturday, 14^th of November 2020. After running. 

‘You have to take cartopology seriously!’ 

How many times do I have to hear this sentence? Now, it is less than before when cartopology was premature and I did not dare to take the word serious yet. Not in my practice, not in teaching nor in my research. Which actions did I undertake to come to the point where I am now?

“Carto-Pology”. It really does not make sense, does it? I don’t dare to take it serious. I keep on laughing at the idea that one day, maybe, it might be a respected discipline and practice. Why do I keep using it, then? I don’t know. Maybe because it gives me the space to have my ‘own’ thing. 

Not to be a cartographer, a researcher, an architect or an artist but a ‘cartopologist’. 

The more I use the word, the more I get habituated with it and the more I start to share the word, its
meaning and purpose. I am using the word in presentations and as titles for teaching programs for
example.
I open the webpage google.com and search for ‘cartopology’. Not much is happening and
instead Google is proposing to search for ‘car topology’. Searching for antropology, the second
hit in Google is a Wikipedia page, just below an advertisement. Typing architecture, Wikipedia is
the first hit on the list of Google. I hesitate, but… Cartopology also needs to have a Wikipedia page.
Taking it seriously means I have at least to try! Not much fuss: I make an account, type in what the
page needs to be about: cartopology. I explain what it means and click [enter]. A minimum of a
couple of weeks before the page gets reviewed and accepted or declined on the Wikipedia platform.

I wait, wait and wait till the moment Wikipedia replies: declined.  

They explain that a contraction of words, an amalgam, is not sufficiently innovative to merit a Wikipedia page, unless it is a very well-researched and self-contained topic. 

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