Wikipedia: a complex social machine
Wikipedia: a complex social machine
Wikipedia represents a successful peer-produced knowledge-resource constructed via the endeavours of millions of volunteers. We examine the activity of Wikipedia by analysing WikiProjects, an community-driven feature which allows communities of Wikipedians to coordinate their efforts in order to improve or produce Wikipedia articles. We harvested the content of over 600 active Wikipedia projects, which comprised of over 100 million edits and 15 million Talk entries, associated with over 1.5 million Wikipedia articles and Talk pages produced by 14 million unique users. Our analysis reveals findings related to the overall positive activity and growth of Wikipedia, as well as the connected community of Wikipedians within and between specific WikiProjects. We argue that the complexity of Wikipedia requires metrics which reflect the many aspects of the Wikipedia social machine, and by doing so, will offer insights into its state of health.
1-10
Tinati, Ramine
f74a0556-6a04-40c5-8bcf-6f5235dbf687
Luczak-Roesch, Markus
6cfe587f-e02c-48e8-b2b8-543952ab50a7
2017
Tinati, Ramine
f74a0556-6a04-40c5-8bcf-6f5235dbf687
Luczak-Roesch, Markus
6cfe587f-e02c-48e8-b2b8-543952ab50a7
Tinati, Ramine and Luczak-Roesch, Markus
(2017)
Wikipedia: a complex social machine.
SIGWEB Newsletter, (Winter 2017), Winter Issue, , [6].
(doi:10.1145/3027141.3027147).
Abstract
Wikipedia represents a successful peer-produced knowledge-resource constructed via the endeavours of millions of volunteers. We examine the activity of Wikipedia by analysing WikiProjects, an community-driven feature which allows communities of Wikipedians to coordinate their efforts in order to improve or produce Wikipedia articles. We harvested the content of over 600 active Wikipedia projects, which comprised of over 100 million edits and 15 million Talk entries, associated with over 1.5 million Wikipedia articles and Talk pages produced by 14 million unique users. Our analysis reveals findings related to the overall positive activity and growth of Wikipedia, as well as the connected community of Wikipedians within and between specific WikiProjects. We argue that the complexity of Wikipedia requires metrics which reflect the many aspects of the Wikipedia social machine, and by doing so, will offer insights into its state of health.
Text
2017 Sig Web tinati.pdf
- Accepted Manuscript
More information
Accepted/In Press date: 1 December 2016
e-pub ahead of print date: 3 February 2017
Published date: 2017
Organisations:
Web & Internet Science
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 404287
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/404287
ISSN: 1931-1745
PURE UUID: 20695d00-36db-4b64-abcf-d9706d3601fa
Catalogue record
Date deposited: 06 Jan 2017 09:28
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 06:11
Export record
Altmetrics
Contributors
Author:
Markus Luczak-Roesch
Download statistics
Downloads from ePrints over the past year. Other digital versions may also be available to download e.g. from the publisher's website.
View more statistics