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WISDOM OF THE CROWD, CONTROVERSIES AND COORDINATING POLICIES

WISDOM OF THE CROWD, CONTROVERSIES AND COORDINATING POLICIES. Shing-Chung Jonathan Yam Department of Sociology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong email: chung [at] cuhk.edu.hk. [[Compact version]] There will be only one sentence of speech per slide!.

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WISDOM OF THE CROWD, CONTROVERSIES AND COORDINATING POLICIES

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  1. WISDOM OF THE CROWD, CONTROVERSIES AND COORDINATING POLICIES Shing-Chung Jonathan Yam Department of Sociology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong email: chung [at] cuhk.edu.hk [[Compact version]] There will be only one sentence of speech per slide!

  2. This paper addresses three questions • How do cooperative knowledge generation (CKG) projects such as Wikipedia institutionalize? • This paper focuses on the period 2003-2006 • How does CKG projects respond to external controversies? • What effect do controversies have on CKG projects?

  3. Outline of Presentation • Brief introduction of Wikipedia • Coordination: Problems and Mechanisms • Controversies and Resolving Policies • Conclusion

  4. Research on Wikipedia • Why study Wikipedia? -multidisciplinary interest -implications for social science and philosophy (epistemology)

  5. Research on Wikipedia: Disciplines Media Business Information science Folklore Wikipedia Sociology Education Social psychology Politics Computer science

  6. Research on Wikipedia: Models and Approaches Propagation of information Human-computer interaction Business model Preserving knowledge Rumors and discussions of Wikipedia policies Wikipedia Legitimacy of knowledge Community Means of teaching and learning Motivation behind altruistic behaviour Social hierarchy Social movement Information technology Algorithm and software design

  7. What is Wikipedia? • An on-line encyclopedia that “everyone can edit”

  8. As Wikipedia community continues to grow… • editors↑ • Contributions by casual editors ↑ ↑ • Problems of group failure: groupthink, dispute, prevalence of non-academic contributions • Institutionalization: expanding social hierarchy • Elevated editing privileges for high-achieving editors • Blocking troublesome users

  9. Mechanisms of Coordination • Voting • Coalition formation • Crieteria for wise crowds: diversity of opinion, independence, decentralization and aggregation (Surowiecki 2005) • Both bottom-up (voting) and top-down (web developer’s say) policies apply Surowiecki, J. (2005). The wisdom of crowds. Anchor.

  10. Controversies • 2005 Seigenthaler incident • 2006 congressional staff edits • 2006 WIF page • Threatens existence of CKG projects (e.g. legal actions) • Web developer actively respond to controversies • Web developer’s suggestion vs. community • Vandalism • Propaganda • Advertising(non-academic intentions)

  11. Conclusion • CKG vs. Academia • CKG: • people from all walks of life, • a variety of intentions, • varied goals not necessarily academic, • end products and raw materials presented simultaneously • Academia: • specialized intellectual, • academic intentions, • only end products available

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