blog de notas de juan freire

Understanding collaboration in Wikipedia, by Royce Kimmons. First Monday, Volume 16, Number 12 - 5 December 2011

Abstract: Wikipedia stands as an undeniable success in online participation and collaboration. However, 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 contributed to a given article) or have made generalizations about collaboration within Wikipedia based upon the content validity of a few select articles. By looking more closely at metrics associated with each extant Wikipedia article (N=3,427,236) along with all revisions (N=225,226,370), 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 the community but, rather, represent the work of relatively few contributors.

The visibility of Wikipedia in scholarly publications, by Taemin Kim Park. First Monday, Volume 16, Number 8 - 1 August 2011

Abstract

Publications in the Institute of Scientific Information’s (ISI, currently Thomson Reuters) Web of Science (WoS) and Elsevier’s Scopus databases were utilized to collect data about Wikipedia research and citations to Wikipedia. The growth of publications on Wikipedia research, the most active researchers, their associated institutions, academic fields and their geographic distribution are treated in this paper. The impact and influence of Wikipedia were identified, utilizing cited work found in (WoS) and Scopus. Additionally, leading authors, affiliated institutions, countries, academic fields, and publications that frequently cite Wikipedia are identified.

My report on the SXSW session The Era of Crowdsourcing: General Principles, featuring Scott Belsky of Behance and Jeffrey Kalmikoff of Digg…

According to Belsky and Kalmikoff, the crowdsourcing definition needs to evolve, especially beyond the common misconception that crowdsourcing means access only to free labor. They mention three business models:

1) Crowdsource wisdom (or knowledge/expertise/skill), as with Wikipedia.
2) Crowdsource labor, as with Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, or traditional spec contests.
3) Crowdsource both wisdom and labor, as with Digg or Threadless. Keep the community active in the business.

To the question of crowds vs communities… a crowd is definable through a common purpose or set of emotions. Where crowds are concerned, sourcing exists in sprints.

In communities, intent, beliefs, risks, etc. may be present in common, affecting identity and cohesiveness. Sustainability exists inherently in the organic, adaptive nature of communities.

…

[Full paper, pdf]

… This paper is about “do-it-yourself” as a practice of free culture. Here DIY is not only used as David Garcia’s (1997) definition for tactical media, DIY is meant as a way of “hand on” and doing things to change the systems, it is about not waiting for the government or institutions to do the work. It is about being responsible the one’s own surroundings. That is a big cultural difference between Brazil and Europe. While in Europe all the basic surviving needs are granted for you by institutions, by that I mean food, education and health. In Brazil we have to struggle to get these things, we don’t survive if we wait for the government. It is why many forms of alternative living emerge.

…

Based on these and many other statements heard on interviews or read onproject’s website, it is effortless to get an optimistic feeling. All the projects are made essentially by people: people with energy, people that dedicate their time and own resources, people that collaborate, people that, in a way, believe, and believe in a social change.

After reading a text by Hernani Dimantas (2005), a Brazilian media theorist, called “Linkania - The Hyperconected Multitude,” many questions came to my mind. The most important one was “have we an optimist view of the web?” I say this because I feel that every time I read something from Brazil. Therefore I sent him an email with my questions to discuss on the subject.

Among all the answers and arguments his last paragraph was: e, isso tudo é sobre o Brasil… sobre conversas, mestiçagens, generosidades, mutirões e puxadinhos digitais. Colaboração aqui é sobrevivência.

The Guardian reports that a study by Ed H Chi demonstrates that the character of Wikipedia has changed significantly since Wikipedia’s first burst of activity between 2004 and 2007. While the encyclopedia is still growing overall, the number of articles being added has reduced from an average of 2,200 a day in July 2007 to around 1,300 today while at the same time, the base of highly active editors has remained more or less static. Chi’s team discovered that the way the site operates had changed significantly from the early days, when it ran an open-door policy that allowed in anyone with the time and energy to dedicate to the project. Today, they discovered, a stable group of high-level editors has become increasingly responsible for controlling the encyclopedia, while casual contributors and editors are falling away. ‘We found that if you were an elite editor, the chance of your edit being reverted was something in the order of 1% — and that’s been very consistent over time from around 2003 or 2004,’ says Chi. ‘For editors that make between two and nine edits a month, the percentage of their edits being reverted had gone from 5% in 2004 all the way up to about 15% by October 2008. And the ‘onesies’ — people who only make one edit a month — their edits are now being reverted at a 25% rate.’ While Chi points out that this does not necessarily imply causation, he suggests it is concrete evidence to back up what many people have been saying: that it is increasingly difficult to enjoy contributing to Wikipedia unless you are part of the site’s inner core of editors. Wikipedia’s growth pattern suggests that it is becoming like a community where resources have started to run out. ‘As you run out of food, people start competing for that food, and that results in a slowdown in population growth and means that the stronger, more well-adapted part of the population starts to have more power.

Vía P2P Foundation.