WIRW - Interdisciplinary Research on Wikipedia and Wiki Communities

From WikiSym 2008

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Contents 1 Workshop on Interdisciplinary Research on Wikipedia and wiki communities 1.1 Collaborate with Wiki Research Planet 1.2 Download Presentations! 1.3 Workshop summary 1.4 Detailed scheduling 1.5 Invited Talk 1.6 Wiki Research Planet 1.7 Summary of topics considered in this workshop 1.8 Main Goals 1.9 Special interest contacts

Workshop on Interdisciplinary Research on Wikipedia and wiki communities

Collaborate with Wiki Research Planet

Intereste in collaborating with us to create a Wiki Research Planet? Do you want to make suggestions? Go to the Wiki_Research_Planet page and let us know!

Download Presentations!

You can go to the WIRW webpage to download the presentation slides

Workshop summary

A growing number of projects seek to build upon the collective intelligence of Internet users, looking for more dynamic, open and creative approaches to content creation and knowledge sharing. To this end, many projects have chosen the wiki, and it is therefore the subject of much research interest, particularly Wikipedia, from varied disciplines. The array of approaches to studying wikis is a source of wealth but also a possible source of confusion:

• What are appropriate methodologies for the analysis of wiki communities?
• Which are the most critical aspects (both quantitative and qualitative) for study in wiki evolution and outcomes?
• Is it possible to find effective interdisciplinary approaches to augment our overall understanding of these dynamic creative environments?

This workshop intends to provide an opportunity to explore these questions by researchers and practitioners willing to participate in a "brainstorming research meeting".

Detailed scheduling

Please visit WIRW page at GSyC/Libresoft website to see detailed information about the activities and presentations scheduled for this workshop.

Invited Talk

Philipp Schmidt will present some research questions posed by the imminent Wikipedia Survey. Though we do not have any results yet, our invited speaker will present methodologies and challenges that have been already identified by the UNU-MERIT research team. This presentation will provide the opportunity for other researchers and interested participants to share their suggestions with the team.

Wiki Research Planet

Wiki research encompasses many different goals, methodologies and strategies. Research targets usually include Wikipedia and other important projects. Wiki researchers all around the world would benefit from knowing each other methods and results, and from exploring opportunities to collaborate with other colleagues to broaden and strengthen their own research work.

In this workshop, we want to propel a project to create a Wiki Research Planet, a knowledge forge providing many services like:

• Central access point for many different wiki bibliography databases disseminated on the Internet.
• A central repository providing access to database dumps, wiki metadata, and other useful data resources frequently employed in wiki research.
• Creating a research wishes directory, to organize requests for data and collaboration to large organizations like Wikimedia Foundation, that would find difficulties to attend every single research group individually.
• Up to date directory of wiki researchers all around the world.
• A Wiki Research space to share ideas about methodologies, results and future research lines.
• Blog spaces for wiki researchers.

Summary of topics considered in this workshop

Research on any aspect of Wikipedia, any Wikimedia Foundation project, or any other wiki community, is welcomed. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• Research tools supporting quantitative analysis of wiki communities.
• Content quality, assessment, and author reputation.
• Social Network Analysis, web graphs, and visualization techniques for wiki communities.
• Technological innovation for supporting wiki communities (e.g., content distribution, P2P, security and authentication).
• Ontological and taxonomic technologies (lexical corpus and authorities, semantic searches, content categorization).
• Reflections upon methodological and disciplinary experiences in studying wiki communities (e.g., sociology, education, knowledge management, economics).

Main Goals

The main goal of this workshop is to provide an adequate forum for wiki researchers to:

• Present their own approaches for studying wiki communities from multiple perspectives (e-learning, sociology, content analysis, quantitative analysis and data mining, social networking, etc.).
• Explain the main problems they face when integrating different research approaches into a coherent line of research.
• Propose possible solutions in the form of tools, methodologies, research strategies and ways of collaboration that can be adopted to further such research.
• Exchange research ideas with colleagues who can provide novel points of view that could complement existing research initiatives.

In this context, the workshop organization will be threefold:

  1. Present a complete perspective of the current state-of-the-art of Wikipedia and wiki-based open communities from different points of view, specially focusing on multidisciplnary reserach aproaches. This will be achieved by presentations of position papers explaining existing tools and research methods successfully applied to the analysis of wiki environments.

  2. Promote the creation of small working groups to consider the integration of distinct research strategies, including opportunities for interactions and feedback between researchers.

  3. A final plenary session to consider the different solutions proposed by the working groups, and summarizing a catalog of tools, methodologies and opportunities of collaboration that may be offered to wiki researchers wanting to undertake interdisciplinary analysis in this area.

Special interest contacts

Organizer Committee

• Joseph Reagle (NYU, USA)
• Felipe Ortega (GSyC/Libresoft, URJC, Spain)
• Antonio J. Reinoso (UAX & GSyC/Libresoft URJC, Spain)
• Rut Jesus (CPNSS, University of Copenhagen, Denmark)

Reviews Coordinator

• Gregorio Robles (GSyC/Libresoft, URJC, Spain)