12,177 research outputs found
Network Structure, Efficiency, and Performance in WikiProjects
The internet has enabled collaborations at a scale never before possible, but
the best practices for organizing such large collaborations are still not
clear. Wikipedia is a visible and successful example of such a collaboration
which might offer insight into what makes large-scale, decentralized
collaborations successful. We analyze the relationship between the structural
properties of WikiProject coeditor networks and the performance and efficiency
of those projects. We confirm the existence of an overall
performance-efficiency trade-off, while observing that some projects are higher
than others in both performance and efficiency, suggesting the existence
factors correlating positively with both. Namely, we find an association
between low-degree coeditor networks and both high performance and high
efficiency. We also confirm results seen in previous numerical and small-scale
lab studies: higher performance with less skewed node distributions, and higher
performance with shorter path lengths. We use agent-based models to explore
possible mechanisms for degree-dependent performance and efficiency. We present
a novel local-majority learning strategy designed to satisfy properties of
real-world collaborations. The local-majority strategy as well as a localized
conformity-based strategy both show degree-dependent performance and
efficiency, but in opposite directions, suggesting that these factors depend on
both network structure and learning strategy. Our results suggest possible
benefits to decentralized collaborations made of smaller, more tightly-knit
teams, and that these benefits may be modulated by the particular learning
strategies in use.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures, to appear in ICWSM 201
Are anonymity-seekers just like everybody else? An analysis of contributions to Wikipedia from Tor
User-generated content sites routinely block contributions from users of
privacy-enhancing proxies like Tor because of a perception that proxies are a
source of vandalism, spam, and abuse. Although these blocks might be effective,
collateral damage in the form of unrealized valuable contributions from
anonymity seekers is invisible. One of the largest and most important
user-generated content sites, Wikipedia, has attempted to block contributions
from Tor users since as early as 2005. We demonstrate that these blocks have
been imperfect and that thousands of attempts to edit on Wikipedia through Tor
have been successful. We draw upon several data sources and analytical
techniques to measure and describe the history of Tor editing on Wikipedia over
time and to compare contributions from Tor users to those from other groups of
Wikipedia users. Our analysis suggests that although Tor users who slip through
Wikipedia's ban contribute content that is more likely to be reverted and to
revert others, their contributions are otherwise similar in quality to those
from other unregistered participants and to the initial contributions of
registered users.Comment: To appear in the IEEE Symposium on Security & Privacy, May 202
Wikipedia Conflict Representation in Articles of War: A critical discourse analysis of current, on-going, socio-political Wikipedia articles about war
With the help of a discourse-historical approach, a textual corpus composed of the talk pages of three controversial, socio-political Wikipedia articles about ongoing wars was analyzed in order to shed light on the way in which conflict is represented through the editing and discussion process. Additionally, a rational discourse was employed in order to unravel communication distortions within the editing process in an attempt to improve communication and consensus-seeking. Finally, semi-structured interviews of participating contributors within studied articles were used in order to better understand Wikipedian experience in a controversial collaboration scenario. Results unveiled a set of discursive practices in which Wikipedians participate, as well as the creation of a Wikipedian argumentation topoi framework useful for further Wikipedia-specific discourse analysis involving the content change-retain negotiation process
CONTROLLING THE OPEN CONTENT CREATION PROCESS: AN ANALYSIS OF CONTROL MECHANISMS USING THE REPERTORY GRID METHOD
We develop a governance framework for open collaboration, specifically for the process of collaborative content creation. Our analysis is based on in-depth interviews with 12 active Wikipedians using the repertory grid method. The framework reflects the governance of wiki-based peer production by identifying the different structures, processes and mechanisms which guide and control the contributions and activities of individuals. Our findings concerning the driving principles for successful governance recognize four such principles: the power of the many, the influence of the few, the role of (persistent) conversations, and the value of rules
The role of cognitive conflict in open-content collaboration
IS research on participant’s motivation1 in Knowledge Management System have paid relatively limited attention to the effect of diversifying the technological artifacts while they focused more on identifying the generic motivational factors that apply across the varying contexts. However, the manifest success of disruptive collaboration system outside of the corporate boundaries such as Wikipedia calls for our extended attention to the motivational factors that may not be emergent without the provision of context and artifacts that challenge the assumptions made by KMS within the organizational setting.
Through the online survey of 100 Wikipedians, this study evaluates the effect of one novel construct (i.e., socio-cognitive conflict) proposed by Cress and Kimmerle (2008) as an example of such emergent motivation made explicit by maneuvering specific design of collaboration system which otherwise would remain immaterial. In parallel, the analysis also explores the generic motivational constructs the effects of which have been extensively studied within organizational contexts but not sufficiently examined outside of such boundaries
Changing Higher Education Learning with Web 2.0 and Open Education Citation, Annotation, and Thematic Coding Appendices
Appendices of citations, annotations and themes for research conducted on four websites: Delicious, Wikipedia, YouTube, and Facebook
What makes Individual I's a Collective We; Coordination mechanisms & costs
For a collective to become greater than the sum of its parts, individuals'
efforts and activities must be coordinated or regulated. Not readily observable
and measurable, this particular aspect often goes unnoticed and understudied in
complex systems. Diving into the Wikipedia ecosystem, where people are free to
join and voluntarily edit individual pages with no firm rules, we identified
and quantified three fundamental coordination mechanisms and found they scale
with an influx of contributors in a remarkably systemic way over three order of
magnitudes. Firstly, we have found a super-linear growth in mutual adjustments
(scaling exponent: 1.3), manifested through extensive discussions and activity
reversals. Secondly, the increase in direct supervision (scaling exponent:
0.9), as represented by the administrators' activities, is disproportionately
limited. Finally, the rate of rule enforcement exhibits the slowest escalation
(scaling exponent 0.7), reflected by automated bots. The observed scaling
exponents are notably robust across topical categories with minor variations
attributed to the topic complication. Our findings suggest that as more people
contribute to a project, a self-regulating ecosystem incurs faster mutual
adjustments than direct supervision and rule enforcement. These findings have
practical implications for online collaborative communities aiming to enhance
their coordination efficiency. These results also have implications for how we
understand human organizations in general.Comment: 27 pages, 7 figure
Wikitruth Through Wikiorder
How does large-scale social production coordinate individual behavior to produce public goods? In 1968, Hardin denied that the creation of public goods absent markets or the State is possible. Benkler, Shirky, Zittrain, and Lessig recently countered that the necessary coordination might emerge though social norms. However, scholars have not fully explained how this coordination is to occur. Game theorists have modeled large-scale social production as a solution to the herder problem/multi-player Prisoner¿s Dilemma. But we demonstrate that the ¿weeding in function reflects dynamics more accurately captured in coordination games. In this way, dispute resolution can provide a constitutive function for the community
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