Related Papers
Proc. WikiSym'13
A History of Newswork on Wikipedia
Brian C Keegan
Wikipedia's coverage of current events blurs the boundaries of what it means to be an encyclopedia. Drawing on Gieyrn's concept of ``boundary work'', this paper explores how Wiki\-pedia's response to the 9/11 attacks expanded the role of the encyclopedia to include newswork, excluded content like the 9/11 Memorial Wiki that became problematic following this expansion, and legitimized these changes through the adoption of news-related policies and routines like promoting "In the News" content on the homepage. However, a second case exploring WikiNews illustrates the pitfalls of misappropriating professional newswork norms as well as the challenges of sustaining online communities. These cases illuminate the social construction of new technologies as they confront the boundaries of traditional professional identities and also reveal how newswork is changing in response to new forms of organizing enabled by these technologies.
Emergent Social Roles in Wikipedia’s Breaking News Collaborations
Brian C Keegan
Disasters and accidents are endemic to social life but so are the unique forms of social behavior and organization that emerge following them. The “improvisation of order out of chaos”, equanimity of victims, emergence of serendipitous and egalitarian social ties, and redemptive moments of solidarity have characterized postcatastrophe communities for centuries but are also intrinsically ephemeral and recede as the most acute phase passes. Following unexpected and traumatic news events such as a major natural disaster, transportation accident, or mass shooting, familiar reference sources such as Wikipedia become the focus of many people seeking information to help them share information, learn about the response, and make sense of the event.
Hot off the wiki: dynamics, practices, and structures in Wikipedia's coverage of the Tō hoku catastrophes
2011 •
Noshir Contractor
Wikipedia editors are uniquely motivated to collaborate around current and breaking news events. However, the speed, urgency, and intensity with which these collaborations unfold also impose a substantial burden on editors' abilities to effectively coordinate tasks and process information.
Hot off the wiki: dynamics, practices, and structures in Wikipedia's coverage of the Tohoku catastrophes
2011 •
Brian C Keegan, Darren Gergle
Abstract Wikipedia editors are uniquely motivated to collaborate around current and breaking news events. However, the speed, urgency, and intensity with which these collaborations unfold also impose a substantial burden on editors' abilities to effectively coordinate tasks and process information.
‘Is’ to ‘Was’: Coordination and Commemoration on Posthumous Wikipedia Biographies
Brian C Keegan
Following the deaths of notable people, Wikipedians incorporate this new knowledge by updating or creating biographical articles. Drawing on literature from death studies and peer production, we demonstrate how the creation of these ”wikibituaries” requires complex coordination work and highlight processes of commemoration and memorialization within socio-technical systems. Using the corpus of 6,132 articles about people who died in 2012, we examine the network relationships and contribution dynamics of users who perform this work and identify behavioral and content dynamics on the biographical articles about the deceased. The collaborations that emerge from posthumous editing of these biographies are sites of significant activity that coalesce into complex but temporary collaborations. Based on these findings, we argue that Wikipedia has re-imagined the obituary into a genre for creating memory spaces in which the death of a subject prompts a form of “death work” involving the collective re-evaluation of article content and a transition into a new mode of data stewardship.
American Behavioral Scientist
Hot Off the Wiki
2013 •
Noshir Contractor
Wikipedia’s coverage of breaking news and current events dominates editor contributions and reader attention in any given month. Collaborators on breaking news articles rapidly synthesize content to produce timely information in spite of steep coordination demands. Wikipedia’s coverage of breaking news events thus presents a case to test theories about how open collaborations coordinate complex, time-sensitive, and knowledge-intensive work in the absence of central authority, stable membership, clear roles, or reliable information. Using the revision history from Wikipedia articles about over 3,000 breaking news events, we investigate the structure of interactions between editors and articles. Because breaking article collaborations unfold more rapidly and involve more editors than most Wikipedia articles, they potentially regenerate prior forms of organizing. We analyze whether the structures of breaking and nonbreaking article networks are (a) similarly structured over time, (b) e...
Staying in the Loop: Structure and Dynamics of Wikipedia’s Breaking News Collaborations
Brian C Keegan, Darren Gergle
Despite the fact that Wikipedia articles about current events are more popular and attract more contributions than typical articles, canonical studies of Wikipedia have only analyzed articles about pre-existing information. We expect the co-authoring of articles about breaking news incidents to exhibit high-tempo coordination dynamics which are not found in articles about historical events and information. Using 1.03 million revisions made by 158,384 users to 3,233 English Wikipedia articles about disasters, catastrophes, and conflicts since 1990, we construct “article trajectories” of editor interactions as they coauthor an article. Examining a subset of this corpus, our analysis demonstrates that articles about current events exhibit structures and dynamics distinct from those observed among articles about non-breaking events. These findings have implications for how collective intelligence systems can be leveraged to process and make sense of complex information.
structure and dynamics of Wikipedia's breaking news collaborations
Noshir Contractor
Do editors or articles drive collaboration?: multilevel statistical network analysis of wikipedia coauthorship
2012 •
Brian C Keegan, Darren Gergle
Abstract Prior scholarship on Wikipedia's collaboration processes has examined the properties of either editors or articles, but not the interactions between both. We analyze the coauthorship network of Wikipedia articles about breaking news demanding intense coordination and compare the properties of these articles and the editors who contribute to them to articles about contemporary and historical events.
International Federation of Library Associations: Opportunities Paper (Endorsed by IFLA Governing Board): 1-12
(Stephan Bartholmei, Rachel Franks, James Heilman, Mylee Joseph, Vicki McDonald, Anna Raunik, Mia Ridge and Mark Robertson) Opportunities for Academic and Research Libraries and Wikipedia
2016 •
Rachel Franks
This paper explores the potential for active collaborations between Wikipedia editors and academic and research libraries to advance the free flow of information which supports sustainable development around the world. IFLA has the opportunity to support libraries, library staff and library associations by enabling their members to engage with Wikipedia: through networking, skill development, and showcasing examples of successful cultural and knowledge collaborations that can act as models for potential future initiatives. This paper explores several ripe areas of mutual benefit and collaboration around crowdsourcing and community engagement: writing and reference, technical tasks, linked open data, project coordination, high-speed publishing, learning communities, and the support of teaching, learning, and research. There is also consideration of the challenges of pursuing this vital work together. However, the shared mission of sharing knowledge with the world, and the growing bridge that Wikipedia has created between libraries and other information and knowledge actors with the broader public, makes these collaborations broadly beneficial to both communities. Wikimedia and libraries’ collaboration strengthens the strategies, skills and tools available for both communities in their efforts to share knowledge with the world.
