Coordination, Division of Labor, and Open Content Communities: Template Messages in Wiki-Based Collections

In this paper we investigate how in commons based peer production a large community of contributors coordinates its efforts towards the production of high quality open content. We carry out our empirical analysis at the level of articles and focus on the dynamics surrounding their production. That is, we focus on the continuous process of revision and update due to the spontaneous and largely uncoordinated sequence of contributions by a multiplicity of individuals. We argue that this loosely regulated process, according to which any user can make changes to any entry, while allowing highly creative contributions, has to come into terms with potential issues with respect to the quality and consistency of the output. In this respect, we focus on emergent, bottom up organizational practice arising within the Wikipedia community, namely the use of template messages, which seems to act as an effective and parsimonious coordination device in emphasizing quality concerns (in terms of accuracy, consistency, completeness, fragmentation, and so on) or in highlighting the existence of other particular issues which are to be addressed. We focus on the template "NPOV" which signals breaches on the fundamental policy of neutrality of Wikipedia articles and we show how and to what extent imposing such template on a page affects the production process and changes the nature and division of labor among participants. We find that intensity of editing increases immediately after the "NPOV" template appears. Moreover, articles that are treated most successfully, in the sense that "NPOV" disappears again relatively soon, are those articles which receive the attention of a limited group of editors. In this dimension at least the distribution of tasks in Wikipedia looks quite similar to what is know about the distribution in the FLOSS development process

The free encyclopaedia that anyone can edit: the shifting values of Wikipedia editors

Wikipedia is often held up as an example of the potential of the internet to foster open, free and non-commercial collaboration. However such discourses often conflate these values without recognising how they play out in reality in a peer-production community. As Wikipedia is evolving, it is an ideal time to examine these discourses and the tensions that exist between its initial ideals and the reality of commercial activity in the encyclopaedia. Through an analysis of three failed proposals to ban paid advocacy editing in the English language Wikipedia, this paper highlights the shift in values from the early editorial community that forked encyclopaedic content over the threat of commercialisation, to one that today values the freedom that allows anyone to edit the encyclopaedia

Coordination, Division of Labor, and Open Content Communities: Template Messages in Wiki-Based Collections.

In this paper we investigate how in commons based peer production a large community of contributors coordinates its efforts towards the production of high quality open content. We carry out our empirical analysis at the level of articles and focus on the dynamics surrounding their production. That is, we focus on the continuous process of revision and update due to the spontaneous and largely uncoordinated sequence of contributions by a multiplicity of individuals. We argue that this loosely regulated process, according to which any user can make changes to any entry, while allowing highly creative contributions, has to come into terms with potential issues with respect to the quality and consistency of the output. In this respect, we focus on emergent, bottom up organizational practice arising within the Wikipedia community, namely the use of template messages, which seems to act as an effective and parsimonious coordination device in emphasizing quality concerns (in terms of accuracy, consistency, completeness, fragmentation, and so on) or in highlighting the existence of other particular issues which are to be addressed. We focus on the template "NPOV" which signals breaches on the fundamental policy of neutrality of Wikipedia articles and we show how and to what extent imposing such template on a page affects the production process and changes the nature and division of labor among participants. We find that intensity of editing increases immediately after the "NPOV" template appears. Moreover, articles that are treated most successfully, in the sense that "NPOV" disappears again relatively soon, are those articles which receive the attention of a limited group of editors. In this dimension at least the distribution of tasks in Wikipedia looks quite similar to what is know about the distribution in the FLOSS development process.commons based peer production; wikipedia; wiki; survival analysis; quality; bug fixing; template messages; coordination

Bioethics: Reincarnation of Natural Philosophy in Modern Science

The theory of evolution of complex and comprising of human systems and algorithm for its constructing are the synthesis of evolutionary epistemology, philosophical anthropology and concrete scientific empirical basis in modern (transdisciplinary) science. «Trans-disciplinary» in the context is interpreted as a completely new epistemological situation, which is fraught with the initiation of a civilizational crisis. Philosophy and ideology of technogenic civilization is based on the possibility of unambiguous demarcation of public value and descriptive scientific discourses (1), and the object and subject of the cognitive process (2). Both of these attributes are no longer valid. For mass, everyday consciousness and institutional philosophical tradition it is intuitively obvious that having the ability to control the evolutionary process, Homo sapiens came close to the borders of their own biological and cultural identity. The spontaneous coevolutionary process of interaction between the «subject» (rational living organisms) and the «object» (material world), is the teleological trend of the movement towards the complete rationalization of the World as It Is, its merger with the World of Due. The stratification of the global evolutionary process into selective and semantic (teleological) coevolutionary and therefore ontologically inseparable components follows. With the entry of anthropogenic civilization into the stage of the information society, firsty, the post-academic phase of the historical evolution of scientific rationality began, the attributes of which are the specific methodology of scientific knowledge, scientific ethos and ontology. Bioethics as a phenomenon of intellectual culture represents a natural philosophical core of modern post- academic (human-dimensional) science, in which the ethical neutrality of scientific theory principle is inapplicable, and elements of public-axiological and scientific-descriptive discourses are integrated into a single logic construction. As result, hermeneutics precedes epistemology not only methodologically, but also meaningfully, and natural philosophy is regaining the status of the backbone of the theory of evolution – in an explicit for

Web Science: expanding the notion of Computer Science

Academic disciplines which practice in the context of rapid external change face particular problems when seeking to maintain timely, current and relevant teaching programs. In different institutions faculty will tune and update individual component courses while more radical revisions are typically departmental-wide strategic responses to perceived needs. Internationally, the ACM has sought to define curriculum recommendations since the 1960s and recognizes the diversity of the computing disciplines with its 2005 overview volume. The consequent rolling program of revisions is demanding in terms of time and effort, but an inevitable response to the change inherent is our family of specialisms. Preparation for the Computer Curricula 2013 is underway, so it seems appropriate to ask what place Web Science will have in the curriculum landscape. Web Science has been variously described; the most concise definition being the ‘science of decentralized information systems’. Web science is fundamentally interdisciplinary encompassing the study of the technologies and engineering which constitute the Web, alongside emerging associated human, social and organizational practices. Furthermore, to date little teaching of Web Science is at undergraduate level. Some questions emerge - is Web Science a transient artifact? Can Web Science claim a place in the ACM family, Is Web Science an exotic relative with a home elsewhere? This paper discusses the role and place of Web Science in the context of the computing disciplines. It provides an account of work which has been established towards defining an initial curriculum for Web Science with plans for future developments utilizing novel methods to support and elaborate curriculum definition and review. The findings of a desk survey of existing related curriculum recommendations are presented. The paper concludes with recommendations for future activities which may help us determine whether we should expand the notion of computer science

WHAT IS INFORMATION SUCH THAT THERE CAN BE INFORMATION SYSTEMS?

Information systems, as a discipline, is concerned with the generation, storage and transmission of information, generally by technological means. As such, it would seem to be fundamental that it has a clear and agreed conceptualization of its core subject matter – namely “information”. Yet, we would claim, this is clearly not the case. As McKinney and Yoos point out, in a recent survey of the term information within information systems: “This is the IS predicament – using information as a ubiquitous label whose meaning is almost never specified. Virtually all the extant IS literature fails to explicitly specify meaning for the very label that identifies it.” We live in an information age and the vast majority of information (whatever it may be) is made available through a wide range of computer systems and one would expect therefore that information systems would in fact be one of the leading disciplines of the times rather than one that appears to hide itself in the shadows. Governments nowadays routinely utilize many academic experts to advise them in a whole range of areas but how many IS professors ever get asked? So, the primary purpose of this paper is to stimulate a debate within IS to discuss, and try to establish, a secure foundation for the discipline in terms of its fundamental concept – information. The structure of the paper is that we will firstly review the theories of information used (generally implicitly) within IS. Then we will widen the picture to consider the range of theories available more broadly within other disciplines. We will then suggest a particular approach that we consider most fruitful and discuss some of the major contentious issues. We will illustrate the theories with examples from IS

Net neutrality discourses: comparing advocacy and regulatory arguments in the United States and the United Kingdom

Telecommunications policy issues rarely make news, much less mobilize thousands of people. Yet this has been occurring in the United States around efforts to introduce "Net neutrality" regulation. A similar grassroots mobilization has not developed in the United Kingdom or elsewhere in Europe. We develop a comparative analysis of U.S. and UK Net neutrality debates with an eye toward identifying the arguments for and against regulation, how those arguments differ between the countries, and what the implications of those differences are for the Internet. Drawing on mass media, advocacy, and regulatory discourses, we find that local regulatory precedents as well as cultural factors contribute to both agenda setting and framing of Net neutrality. The differences between national discourses provide a way to understand both the structural differences between regulatory cultures and the substantive differences between policy interpretations, both of which must be reconciled for the Internet to continue to thrive as a global medium

The experience as a document: designing for the future of collaborative remembering in digital archives

How does it feel when we remember together on-line? Who gets to say what it is worth to be remembered? To understand how the user experience of participation is affecting the formation of collective memories in the context of online environments, first it is important to take into consideration how the notion of memory has been transformed under the influence of the digital revolution. I aim to contribute to the field of User Experience (UX) research theorizing on the felt experience of users from a memory perspective, taking into consideration aspects linked to both personal and collective memories in the context of connected environments.Harassment and hate speech in connected conversational environments are specially targeted to women and underprivileged communities, which has become a problem for digital archives of vernacular creativity (Burgess, J. E. 2007) such as YouTube, Twitter, Reddit and Wikipedia. An evaluation of the user experience of underprivileged communities in creative archives such as Wikipedia indicates the urgency for building a feminist space where women and queer folks can focus on knowledge production and learning without being harassed. The theoretical models and designs that I propose are a result of a series of prototype testing and case studies focused on cognitive tools for a mediated human memory operating inside transactive memory systems. With them, aims to imagine the means by which feminist protocols for UX design and research can assist in the building and maintenance of the archive as a safe/brave space.Working with perspectives from media theory, memory theory and gender studies and centering the user experience of participation for women, queer folks, people of colour (POC) and other vulnerable and underrepresented communities as the main focus of inquiring, my research takes an interdisciplinary approach to interrogate how online misogyny and other forms of abuse are perceived by communities placed outside the center of the hegemonic normativity, and how the user experience of online abuse is affecting the formation of collective memories in the context of online environments

Net neutrality discourses: comparing advocacy and regulatory arguments in the United States and the United Kingdom

Telecommunications policy issues rarely make news, much less mobilize thousands of people. Yet this has been occurring in the United States around efforts to introduce "Net neutrality" regulation. A similar grassroots mobilization has not developed in the United Kingdom or elsewhere in Europe. We develop a comparative analysis of U.S. and UK Net neutrality debates with an eye toward identifying the arguments for and against regulation, how those arguments differ between the countries, and what the implications of those differences are for the Internet. Drawing on mass media, advocacy, and regulatory discourses, we find that local regulatory precedents as well as cultural factors contribute to both agenda setting and framing of Net neutrality. The differences between national discourses provide a way to understand both the structural differences between regulatory cultures and the substantive differences between policy interpretations, both of which must be reconciled for the Internet to continue to thrive as a global medium