Wikimedia Research/Showcase/Archive/2021/01

January 2021

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Macro-level organizational analysis of peer production communities

January 20, 2021 Video: YouTube

The importance of thinking big. Convergence, divergence, and interdependence among wikis and peer production communities
By Aaron Shaw (Northwestern University)
Designing and governing collaborative, peer production communities can benefit from large-scale, macro-level thinking that focuses on communities as the units of analysis. For example, understanding how and why seemingly comparable communities may follow convergent, divergent, and/or interdependent patterns of behavior can inform more parsimonious theoretical and empirical insights as well as more effective strategic action. This talk gives a sneak peak at research-in-progress by members of the Community Data Science Collective to illustrate these points. In particular, I focus on studies of (1) convergent trends of formalization in several large Wikipedias; (2) divergent editor engagement among three small Wikipedias; and (3) commensal patterns of ecological interdependence across communities. Together, the studies underscore the value and challenges of macro-level organizational analysis of peer production and social computing systems.