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Participants’ Motivation Factors and Profile In Crowdsourced Law Reform

Announcement, OpenSym 2015, Proceedings

Title: Participants’ Motivation Factors and Profile In Crowdsourced Law Reform

Authors: Tanja Aitamurto (Stanford University), Hélène Landemore (Yale University)

Abstract: This paper examines participants’ motivation factors and identity in crowdsourced policy-making, in which citizens collaboratively participate in online ideation and knowledge creation for policy reforms. Drawing on data from a crowdsourced law reform in Finland, this paper examines the drivers of the participants and their demographic profile. The findings show that the participants typically are male, educated, full-time working professionals with a strong interest in the off-road traffic issue. The motivations to contribute to crowdsourced policy-making are a mix of intrinsic and extrinsic factors. Intrinsic drivers include the desire to do what is one’s “civic duty,” that is, to participate constructively in a political process, and the desire to deliberate with peers and learn from them. Extrinsic motivations include the desire to have an impact on an issue of importance to participants. The drivers are, in part, similar to those that drive participation in traditional democratic processes like voting, and to those that motivate other volunteer-based large-scale online collaborations, like Wikipedia creation.

This contribution to OpenSym 2015 will be made available as part of the OpenSym 2015 proceedings (or companion) on or after August 19, 2015.

Peer-production system or collaborative ontology engineering effort: What is Wikidata?

Announcement, OpenSym 2015, Proceedings

Title: Peer-production system or collaborative ontology engineering effort: What is Wikidata?

Authors: Claudia Müller-Birn, Benjamin Karran, Janette Lehmann (Freie Universität Berlin), Markus Luczak-Rösch (University of Southampton)

Abstract: Wikidata promises to reduce factual inconsistencies across all Wikipedia language versions. It will enable dynamic data reuse and complex fact queries within the world’s largest knowledge database. Studies of the existing participation patterns that emerge in Wikidata are only just beginning. What delineates most of the contributions in the system has not yet been investigated. Is it an inheritance from the Wikipedia peer-production system or the proximity of tasks in Wikidata that have been studied in collaborative ontology engineering? As a first step to answering this question, we performed a cluster analysis of participants’ content editing activities. This allowed us to blend our results with typical roles found in peer-production and collaborative ontology engineering projects. Our results suggest very specialised contributions from a majority of users. Only a minority, which is the most active group, participate all over the project. These users are particularly responsible for developing the conceptual knowledge of Wikidata. We show the alignment of existing algorithmic participation patterns with these human patterns of participation. In summary, our results suggest that Wikidata rather supports peer-production activities caused by its current focus on data collection. We hope that our study informs future analyses and developments and, as a result, allows us to build better tools to support contributors in peer-production-based ontology engineering.

This contribution to OpenSym 2015 will be made available as part of the OpenSym 2015 proceedings (or companion) on or after August 19, 2015.

OpenSym Doctoral Symposium with Keynote on “A Strange Animal Called Peer-reviewed Publishing”

Doctoral Symposium, OpenSym 2014, , , ,

On Tuesday before the official opening of this year’s OpenSym conference, the Doctoral Symposium Workshop will be held at Wikimedia Germany, Tempelhofer Ufer 23/24, 10963 Berlin. We are very happy that Prof. Gordon Müller-Seitz (University of Duisburg-Essen and TU Kaiserslautern) agreed to give an opening keynote on “A Strange Animal Called Peer-reviewed Publishing”.

Please find the preliminary DocSym program below:

Introduction & Keynote

  • 10:00 – 10:10 AM:  Welcome & introducing the day by Leonhard Dobusch and Claudia Müller-Birn (DocSym Chairs)
  • 10:00 – 10:30 AM: Participant introduction roundtable
  • 10:30 – 11:15 AM: Gordon Müller-Seitz: “A Strange Animal Called Peer-reviewed Publishing” (Introductory lecture and Q&A)

Part I: Open Source Software

  • 11:30 – 12:00 AM: Ann Barcomb: “Volunteer Attraction and Retention in Open Source Communities”
  • 12:00 – 12:30 AM: Jose Teixeira: “Understanding Coopetition in the Open-Source Arena: The Cases of WebKit and OpenStack”
  • 12:30-13:00 AM: Ahmmad Youssef: “Impact of Collaboration on Structural Software Quality”

Lunch Break

Part II: Open Institutions

  • 2:00 – 2:30 PM: David Rozas: “Drupal as a Commons-Based Peer Production community: a sociological perspective”
  • 2:30 – 3:00 PM: Maximilian Heimstädt: “The Institutionalization of Digital Openness – How NGOs, Hackers and Civil Servants Organize Municipal Open Data Ecosystems”
  • 3:00-3:15 PM: Summary & Closing

OpenSym participants who want to attend as visitors, please send an e-mail to the DocSym chairs Leonhard Dobusch and Claudia Müller-Birn because space is limited.

Call for Submissions (Papers): IT-Driven Open Innovation at OpenSym 2014

Announcement, OpenSym 2014

Research paper submission deadline: May 4th, 2014 (changed from April 20th to evade Easter celebrations/vacation).

Link to full call for submissions: IT-Driven Open Innovation Research Track.

Call for Submissions to IT-driven Open Innovation Research Track

Open innovation expands the scope of research and development activities beyond the boundaries of single company structures and turns the participants into proactive and self-organized contributors. While most open innovation activities do not require extensive management control and guidance, they strongly rely on a functional infrastructure and powerful tools for data exchange, communication and cooperation in order to proceed efficiently and to generate valuable results. Information technology therefore plays a decisive role for open innovation.

There can hardly be doubt that recent developments in information technology such as social media have hugely contributed to the enormous popularity of open innovation. Nevertheless, scientific insight into this dynamic is still rather limited. This opens up a wide field of research in computer science, information systems and adjacent disciplines, including topics such as:

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Call for Submissions (Papers): Wikis and Open Collaboration Research Track at OpenSym 2014

Announcement, OpenSym 2014

Research paper submission deadline: May 4th, 2014 (changed from April 20th to evade Easter celebrations/vacation).

Link to full call for submissions: Wikis and Open Collaboration Research Track.

Call for Submissions to the Wikis and Open Collaboration Research Track (WikiSym)

While Wikipedia has shown that Internet-enabled open collaboration can be amazingly successful, the potential of open collaboration extends well beyond this single instance. This track is dedicated to the science and application of wikis and open collaboration technology outside of the context of Wikipedia.

Researchers and practitioners from all disciplines interested in open collaboration technologies are encouraged to submit to this track. We anticipate that papers accepted to this track will examine these technologies using a variety of lenses informed by diverse disciplinary perspectives.

We expect that some of the topics covered in this track will include (but by all means will not be limited to):

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Call for Submissions (Papers): Open Educational Resources (OER) Research Track at OpenSym 2014

OpenSym 2014

Research paper submission deadline: May 4th, 2014 (changed from April 20th to evade Easter celebrations/vacation).

Link to full call for submissions: Open Educational Resources Research Track.

OER (Open Educational Resources) Research Track

Open Educational Resources (OER) are learning materials that are freely available to use, reuse, adapt, and share. Collaborative spaces such as wikis and blogs allow teachers to connect, share and customize materials. Open online learning environments such as MOOCs make educational material for learners available in and out of school. With OER, we can harness the power of open access to high-level education addressing learners worldwide.

The availability of large sets of user data and new analysis methods allows us to take into account individual differences of teachers and learners. By addressing learners’ different needs and various levels of prior knowledge more timely and adaptively, we may overcome the “one size fits all” solution towards a more flexible approach to teaching and learning. Connecting our students with rich and dynamic educational materials, thereby supporting self-paced learning and co-construction of knowledge, we may provoke critical thinking and ultimately enhance their learning.

Continue reading Call for Submissions (Papers): Open Educational Resources (OER) Research Track at OpenSym 2014 →

Call for Submissions (Papers): Wikipedia Research Track at OpenSym 2014

OpenSym 2014

Research paper submission deadline: May 4th, 2014 (changed from April 20th to evade Easter celebrations/vacation).

Link to full call for submissions: Wikipedia Research Track.

Wikipedia Research Track (Wikisym): Call for Submissions

The OpenSym conference includes a track specifically addressing Wikipedia Research (WikiSym). Topics of interest to this track include, but are not limited to:

Continue reading Call for Submissions (Papers): Wikipedia Research Track at OpenSym 2014 →

R-Tools: Mediawiki extension for full-scale statistical computing

OpenSym 2013, WikiSym 2013

This presentation is part of the WikiSym + OpenSym 2013 program.

Juha Villman; Einari Happonen

Wikisystems are proven to be good for producing text and knowledge in collaborative manner but they are not designed to handle large amounts of numerical data. We needed a system that is capable for producing text and run calculations from datasets. For this purpose we created Opasnet which is a Mediawiki with integrated statistical computing extension and an external database for data. In our demonstration we will show how R (statistical software) can be integrated into Mediawiki as an extension (R-Tools) and how it can be used directly from wiki pages. This extension enables users to write R-code, run it and see the results of the calculation on the wiki page. R-tools can use data from external databases and this functionality is also demonstrated. First R-Tools demonstration was held at Wikisym 2012 in Linz. Now we will focus on its new features developed within this year.

A PDF file will be made available on August 5, 2013, through the WikiSym + OpenSym 2013 conference proceedings.

The Basic Techniques in Text Mining using Open-source Tools

OpenSym 2013, WikiSym 2013

This presentation is part of the WikiSym + OpenSym 2013 program.

Jun Iio

There are many text mining tools provided commercially and non-commercially. However, the elementary text-based analysis can be done with basic Unix commands, shell-scripts, and small program of scripting languages, instead of using such extensive software. This paper introduces the basic techniques for text mining, using combination of a set of standard commands, small code, and generic tools provided as the open-source software. The target of the analysis are sixty-seven articles written by one author in a relay column since 1998. Several text-based analyses reveals a trend of interest moved within about fifteen years. In addition, at the end of this paper, the results of text-based analysis are compared with that of non-text-based analysis and the efficiency of non-parametric analysis is discussed.

A PDF file will be made available on August 5, 2013, through the WikiSym + OpenSym 2013 conference proceedings.

Data Twist: An experimental script family to twist Open Data into new shapes

OpenSym 2013, WikiSym 2013

This presentation is part of the WikiSym + OpenSym 2013 program.

Shane Coughlan; Tetsuo Noda; Yasumichi Hanagata

Data Twist is a project to help people use Open Data to make directories. It is a project that helps anyone create open versions of Yelp ™ or TripAdvisor ™. Data Twist acts a foundation for open directories by importing OpenStreetMap XML data into WordPress. Data Twist has a few dependencies. One is WordPress. Another is Geo Mashup, a plug-in that allows you to store geo-references with each WordPress post.

A PDF file will be made available on August 5, 2013, through the WikiSym + OpenSym 2013 conference proceedings.