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

Anna Filippova

The voluntary and computer mediated nature of FOSS work present challenges to effective collaboration. Conflict within the team is one challenge that may arise due to limited communication channels and the distributed nature of work. As conflict may be both harmful and beneficial for a team, we propose a quantitative content analysis method to identify the various types of conflict that may occur during FOSS development. Additionally, we propose a related study to survey the relationship of these conflict types with FOSS team outputs, in order to better inform community design.

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

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

Bluma S Gelley

In my thesis, I explore the dynamics of gatekeeping in online peer-production communities, such as Wikipedia, Stack Overflow, and various open-source software projects. How are standards set for content inclusion, and what mechanisms are used to find and remove content deemed inappropriate by the community? The subject of vandalism, or the malicious addition of “bad” content, has been widely studied. Here, I focus on content added in good faith that has nevertheless been judged inappropriate for the specific community. I also explore the possibility of using various automated tools to assist humans in gatekeeping tasks.

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

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

Christoph Hannebauer

This application to the WikiSym + OpenSym 2013 doctoral symposium describes the current status of the doctoral thesis Wiki Development Environments. The doctoral thesis analyzes contribution barriers to Free, Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) projects and how to minimize these contribution barriers. The doctoral thesis contains a novel approach to lower these contribution barriers. This approach comprises the combination of a wiki system and an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) into a Wiki Development Environment (WikiDE). A WikiDE is a web-based code editor that allows anonymous users to edit source code and contribute it to a FLOSS project.

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

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

Kim Osman

Wikipedia is an important institution and part of the new media landscape having evolved from the collaborative efforts of millions of distributed users. This research will examine how the issues that have been highlighted by conflict within the community have shaped the evolution of Wikipedia from an open wiki experiment to a global knowledge producer. Bringing together the concepts of interpretive flexibility and generative friction with existing theories on the evolution of institutions, the research aims to present possible futures for Wikipedia as part of not only the larger Wikimedia movement, but of an open and accessible web.

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

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

Laishan Tam

Based on the assumption that the underlying goal of communication is problem solving, my research focuses on how individuals express their nationalistic sentiments online when focusing events are reported in the news media. Focusing events are either initiated by a transnational organization operating in a foreign country or a government proposing a change in policy towards a foreign country, causing anger in the citizens of the foreign country concerned. By understanding how individuals are motivated to be engaged in communicative actions, my research seeks to examine the dynamics how become collectively engaged in online interactions until the problems are resolved.

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

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

Amir Azarbakht

How can we understand FOSS collaboration better? Can social issues that emerge be identified and addressed before it is too late? Can the community heal itself, become more transparent and inclusive, and promote diversity? We propose a technique to address these issues by quantitative analysis of social dynamics in FOSS communities. We propose using social network analysis metrics to identify growth patterns and unhealthy dynamics; giving the community a heads-up when they can still take action to ensure the sustainability of the project.

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

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

Bluma S. Gelley, Torsten Suel

Wikipedia’s low barriers to participation have the unintended effect of attracting a large amount of inappropriate content. One form of inappropriate content is articles whose topics do not meet Wikipedia’s inclusion standards. The deletion of these articles wastes a large amount of time and effort that could be better spent improving Wikipedia’s quality. We propose to partially automate the task of detecting unencylopedic pages using machine learning. We examine three main deletion methods in Wikipedia and collect a dataset of articles, heretofore inaccessible, deleted using each method. We use the data to train classifiers to detect articles that should be deleted. We report precision of .986 and recall of .975 in the best case and high precision with lower, but still useful, recall, in the most difficult case. Our results show that it is possible to use an automated software system to assist humans in finding articles for deletion.

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

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

Han-Teng Liao

Prior empirical and theoretical work has discussed the role of dominant search engine plays in the function of information gatekeeping on the Web, and there are reports on the high ranking of Wikipedia website among the search engine result pages (SERP). However, little research has been conducted on non-Google search engines and non-English versions of user-generated encyclopedias. This paper proposes a method to quantify the “display” gatekeeping differences of the SERP ranking and presents findings based on the Chinese SERP data. Based on 2,500 mainly-Chinese-language search queries, the data set includes the SERP outcome of four Chinese-speaking regions (mainland China, Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan) provided by three major search engines (Baidu, and Google and Yahoo), covering over 97% of the search engine market in each region. The findings, analysed and visualized using network analysis techniques, demonstrate the followings: major user-generated encyclopedias are among the most visible; localization factors matter (certain search engine variants produce the most divergent outcomes, especially mainland Chinese ones). The indicated strong effects of “network gatekeeping” by search engines also suggest similar dynamics inside user-generated encyclopedias.

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

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

Han-Teng Liao

Though open collaboration websites such as Wikipedia have attracted attention for their more inclusive and participatory potentials, it becomes increasingly clear that certain information filtering/control or gatekeeping mechanisms are set to render them manageable. Applying the network gatekeeping theory, this paper presents a case study of Baidu Baike and Chinese Wikipedia, focusing on their editorial policies and practices, which have not been systematically examined. Through a detailed analysis of editorial priorities, power users, and geo-linguistic arrangement over how, by whom and for whom and which types of information are processed, the findings show different bases and salience components for distinct network gatekeeping processes. In Chinese Wikipedia, filtering copyright-dubious materials and accommodating Chinese geo-linguistic variants are more salient, whereas censoring politically-sensitive content and enforcing a national cultural political framework of People’s Republic of China are more salient in Baidu Baike. The usefulness and limitations of applying network gatekeeping theory for open collaboration websites is discussed.

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

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

Junghong Choi; Bruce Ferwerda; Jungpil Hahn; Jinwoo Kim, Jae Yun Moon

The promise of collective intelligence emerging from voluntary participation, contribution and knowledge sharing brought about by ubiquitous information and communication technologies has recently attracted the attention of academics and practitioners alike. Of many related phenomena, open source software (OSS) development has been touted as one of the leading examples that speak to the potential of collective intelligence. Recently, the advent of novel open collaboration platforms for open source software development, such as Github, has prompted researchers to examine the impact of increased work transparency induced by the introduction of social features on voluntary self-organization and allocation of resources to projects. In this paper, we present both qualitative and quantitative analyses from which we derive some initial propositions regarding the impact of transparency on voluntary self-organization processes and decision mechanisms.

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