[Air-l] wikipedia research?

[Dr. Christian Stegbauer]

Recently we have started with a research project to investigate how and 
why people collaborate in wikipedia.
Why people are engaged in the encyclopedia could not be  explained  by  
individual motivation.
We hope to find some explanations in the commitment of the core group of 
the activists and in the picture of the different positions of all 
participants .
We will conduct network analysis of different levels of Wikipeda, like 
the articles, the discussions around articles, different mailing lists etc.
The project will last two years, but I am sure we can present some of 
our first results at the Sunbelt Conference in Corfu next year.

Christian



danah boyd schrieb:
> Aaron Swartz is looking into what constitutes "the community" on  
> Wikipedia through content analysis (challenging the fact that only  
> 500 people edit the majority of Wikipedia).
>
> Andrea Forte (Georgia Tech) is doing a qualitative study of Wikipedia  
> culture.
>
> Fernanda Viegas & Martin Wattenberg (IBM) have been building  
> visualizations of Wikipedia's editing patterns.
>
> These are the key people that i know looking into Wikipedia from  
> different angles.  Andrea's probably your best bet for looking at  
> motivation.  That said, some very interesting bits are coming out of  
> Aaron's work... namely that the kinds of edits made by anonymous  
> folks are very different (and often content more detailed content)  
> than those made from people with accounts who are frequent editors.
>
> (Jimmy - do you know of other studies going on?)
>
> danah
>
>
> On Oct 7, 2006, at 2:23 PM, Barry Wellman wrote:
>
>   
>> Having had several experiences with Wikipedia entries and edits  
>> this week,
>> I am curious if anyone is doing research on:
>>
>> the social structure and reward structure of Wikipedists -- item  
>> enterers,
>> editing others, administrators, etc. (I don't know the structure well
>> enough to know the nomenclature).
>>
>>  Barry Wellman
>>  _____________________________________________________________________
>>
>>   Barry Wellman   S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology   NetLab Director
>>   Centre for Urban & Community Studies          University of Toronto
>>   455 Spadina Avenue    Toronto Canada M5S 2G8    fax:+1-416-978-7162
>>   wellman at chass.utoronto.ca  http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman
>>         for fun: http://chass.utoronto.ca/oldnew/cybertimes.php
>>  _____________________________________________________________________
>>
>>
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>
> - - - - - - - - - - d a n a h ( d o t ) o r g - - - - - - - - - -
> "taken out of context i must seem so strange"
>
> musings :: http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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> is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org
> Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
>
> Join the Association of Internet Researchers: 
> http://www.aoir.org/
>
>   

-- 
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PD Dr. Christian Stegbauer
Goethe-Universität Frankfurt
Fachbereich Gesellschaftswissenschaften
Institut für Gesellschafts- und Politikanalyse
60054 Frankfurt
Tel.Uni:  069 798-23543 
Tel.priv: 069 55 43 92
e-mail: stegbauer at soz.uni-frankfurt.de



Magazin:
kommunikation at gesellschaft
Journal für alte und neue Medien aus soziologischer, kulturanthropologischer 
und kommunikationswissenschaftlicher Perspektive
www.kommunikation-gesellschaft.de

demnächst:
Stegbauer, Christian / Rausch, Alexander
Strukturalistische Internetforschung. 2006. Ca. 240 S. Wiesbaden, VS-Verlag,*
ISBN: 3-531-15110-X         
und
Stegbauer, Christian
Geschmackssache? Eine kleine Soziologie für Genießer.
2006. Ca. 200 Seiten.ISBN 3-939519-16-2. Hamburg: Merus 

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