New Research Article: "Understanding Collaboration in Wikipedia" (in Latest Issue of First Monday)

Title: Understanding collaboration in Wikipedia
Author: Royce Kimmons (The University of Texas at Austin)
Graduate Research Assistant and doctoral student in Instructional Technology
Source: First Monday (Vol. 16 No. 12 – 5 December 2011)
Abstract

Previous attempts at studying collaboration within Wikipedia have focused on simple metrics like rigor (i.e. the number of revisions in an article’s revision history) and diversity (i.e. the number of authors that have voluntarily contributed to a given article) or have made generalizations about collaboration within Wikipedia based upon the content validity of a few select articles. By analyzing the contents of randomly selected Wikipedia articles (n = 1,271) and their revisions (n = 85,563) more closely, this study attempts to understand what collaboration within Wikipedia actually looks like under the surface. Findings suggest that typical Wikipedia articles are not rigorous, in a collaborative sense, and do not reflect much diversity in the construction of content and macro-structural writing, leading to the conclusion that most articles in Wikipedia are not reflective of the collaborative efforts of any community but, rather, represent the work of relatively few contributors.

Read the Full Text Article: Understanding collaboration in Wikipedia
See Also: Table of Contents for First Monday (Vol. 16 No. 12 – 5 December 2011)

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