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.

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.

Title: Contribution, Social networking, and the Request for Adminship process in Wikipedia

Authors: Romain Picot-Clémente, Cécile Bothorel (UMR CNRS 6285 Lab-STICC),
Nicolas Jullien (ICI-M@rsouin)

Abstract: Epistemic communities are said to be project-oriented communities of experts, evaluated on their contribution in terms of knowledge, where the main criterion for promotion is knowledge production. However, for Wikipedia, for open source, have argued that taking responsibility is an additional step from being a regular contributor, and social interactions with peers may be an additional requirement for being promoted. This work addresses this discussion by looking at the electing process of the administrators (admin) in the English Wikipedia, where exists a quite competitive process of election for the managing position called “administrator”, where social connections and knowledge production skills seem to matter. From 2006-01-01 to 2007-10-01, which is our period of study, there were 1,617 RfA, with a 49.2% rate of success).

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

Title: Wikipedia in the World of Global Gender Inequality Indices: What The Biography Gender Gap Is Measuring

Authors: Max Klein

Abstract: While Wikipedia’s editor gender gap is important but difficult to measure, its biographical gender gap can more readily be measured. We correlate a Wikipedia-derived gender inequality indicator (WIGI), with four widespread gender inequality indices in use today (GDI, GEI, GGGI, and SIGI). Analysing their methodologies and correlations to Wikipedia, we find evidence that Wikipedia’s bias in biographical coverage is related to the gender bias in positions of social power.

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

Title: Tool-Mediated Coordination of Virtual Teams in Complex Systems

Authors: Michael Gilbert, Mark Zachry (Human Centered Design & Engineering University of Washington Seattle, WA USA)

Abstract: Support for coordination in online spaces, specifically in peer production systems, has frequently been an after-thought. In the absence of such support, the users of such systems must work to find an emergent order that drives shared project goals and leads to equitable processes. In short, they must rely on the “wisdom of the crowds.” As our study demonstrates, however, the reality is that often the system tools available for coordination, evaluation, and work articulation are not suitable to the task at hand. Our study, first, takes a theoretical approach to understanding how tool-mediated coordination functions within peer production systems. Secondly, we enumerate the methods available to identify automated and semi-automated tools that function within such systems by quantitatively and qualitatively analyzing trace interactions and their utility in Wikipedia over a year-long period. Finally, we identify potential vacuums where new design interventions have the greatest potential for enhancing peer-production systems.

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

Title: Open Access to Working Notes in the Humanities

Authors: Michael K. Buckland, School of Information, University of California, Berkeley, CA Patrick Golden, Ryan B. Shaw (Sch. of Information & Library Science, University of North Carolina)

Abstract: A web-based tool for making and sharing research designed for authors, curators, and editors in the humanities is described, editorsnotes.org. Notes are a varied genre not limited to annotations. The data for the tool is modeled as three kinds of records: Notes created; Documents cited; and Topics, headings for names and subjects. Structured records are needed for interoperability and sharing. Open access, sustainability issues, and how working notes can complement other infrastructure are discussed in a status report.

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

Title: The Rise and Fall of an Online Project: Is Bureaucracy Killing Efficiency in Open Knowledge Production?

Authors: Nicolas Jullien (LUSSI-iSchool, ICI-M@rsouin, Télécom Bretagne), Kevin Crowston (School of Information Studies, Syracuse University), Felipe Ortega, Dept. Statistics andOperations Research (University Rey Juan Carlos)

Abstract: We evaluate the efficiency of an online knowledge production project and identify factors that affect efficiency. To assess efficiency, we used the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) modelling methodology. We apply DEA to data from more than 30 Wikipedia language projects over three years. We show that the main Wikipedia projects were indeed less efficient that smaller ones, an effect that can be attributed in part to decreasing returns to scale.

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

Title: #Wikipedia on Twitter: Analyzing Tweets about Wikipedia

Authors: Eva Zangerle, Georg Schmidhammer, Günther Specht (Databases and Information Systems, Institute of Computer Science University of Innsbruck, Austria)

Abstract: Wikipedia has long become a standard source of information on the web and as such is widely referenced on the web and in social media. This paper analyzes the usage of Wikipedia on Twitter by looking into languages used on both platforms, content features of posted articles and recent edits of those articles. The analysis is based on a set of four million tweets and links these tweets to Wikipedia articles and their features to identify interesting relations. We find that within English and Japanese tweets containing a link to Wikipedia, 97% of the links lead to the English resp. Japanese Wikipedia, whereas for other languages 20% of the tweets contain a link to a Wikipedia of a dierent language. Our results also indicate that the number of tweets about a certain topic is not correlated to the number of recent edits on the particular page at the time of sending the tweet.

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

Title: Page Protection: Another Missing Dimension of Wikipedia Research

Authors: Benjamin Mako Hill (University of Washington, Department of Communication), Aaron Shaw (Northwestern University, Department of Communication Studies)

Abstract: Page protection is a feature of wiki software that allows administrators to restrict contributions to particular pages. For example, pages are frequently protected so that they can only be edited by administrators. Page protection affects tens of thousands of pages in English Wikipedia and renders many of Wikipedia’s most visible pages uneditable by the vast majority of visitors. That said, page protection has attracted very little attention and is rarely taken into account by researchers. This note describes page protection and illustrates why it plays an important role in shaping user behavior on wikis. We also present a new longitudinal dataset of page protection events for English Wikipedia, the software used to produce it, and results from tests that support both the validity of the dataset and the impact of page protection on patterns of editing.

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

Title: Measuring the Crowd – A Preliminary Taxonomy of Crowdsourcing Metrics

Authors: Eoin Cullina, Kieran Conboy, Lorraine Morgan (NUI Galway, J.E Cairnes School of Business & Economics, Newcastle, Galway, Ireland)

Abstract: Crowdsourcing initiatives benefit from tapping into diversity. A vast plethora of disparate individuals, organizations, frameworks and skillsets can all play a role in sourcing solutions to a challenge. Nevertheless, while crowdsourcing has become a pervasive phenomenon, there is a paucity of research that addresses how the crowdsourcing process is measured. Whereas research has advanced various taxonomies of crowdsourcing none to date have specifically addressed the issue of measuring either specific stages of the crowdsourcing process or the process as a whole. As a first step towards achieving this goal, this research-inprogress paper examines crowdsourcing at the operational level with a view towards (i) identifying the parts of the process (ii) identifying what can be measured and (iii) categorising operational metrics to facilitate deployment in practice. The taxonomy advanced is overarching in nature and can be deployed across disciplines. Furthermore, the preliminary taxonomy presented will offer practitioners a comprehensive list of metrics that will enable them to facilitate comparison across various crowdsourcing initiatives.

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