Group items tagged

In the article, Collaboration in context: Comparing article evolution among subject disciplines in Wikipedia, the writers Katherine Ehmann, Andrew Large and Jamshid Beheshti, compare a small selection of articles - some newly created, and some well-established - from three subject disciplines - the hard sciences, soft sciences and humanities - in order to examine the article quality, how it differs from discipline to discipline and if it changes over time (Ehmann, Large & Beheshti, 2008). One of the most interesting findings that was published in this article was that, contrary to previous research (Brandle, 2005; Dondio, et al., 2006; Lig, 2004; Stvilia, et al., 2005a, 2008; Wilkinson and Huberman, 2007), the articles used that had a greater number of edits than the others, were not the articles of the highest quality (Ehmann, Large & Beheshti, 2008). Wikipedia articles on average retained 90.3 percent of their original text and in general, only small edits were made over time (Ehmann, Large & Beheshti, 2008). I believe these new findings still support, 'the wisdom of crowds' theory though (Surowiecki, 2004, p. 5). Even though a large portion of the text remains from the original contributor, the small edits by other contributors over time, still help to fine-tune the article's meaning and readability. The authors' exploration into Wikipedia Talk pages is also of interest, especially how these places aided the collaboration and coordination process and how this in turn contributed to the quality of articles in Wikipedia (Ehmann, Large & Beheshti, 2008). While Ehmann, Large and Beheshti only studied a small number of articles, and another study is required which examines a larger number of articles, in order to make more conclusive findings, I think this article is still a useful resource (Ehmann, Large & Beheshti, 2008). It is constructive to compare this article's findings to the findings in the Rosenzweig article (Rosenzweig, 2006).

I think this article is interesting and pointed wisdom of crowd cannot bring high quality for Wikipedia's article. Talk pages are playing important role in Wikipedia, editors post their suggestion there and other active editors come and follow them or put other suggestion to make a more credible article (in Talk pages the most request belonged to the suggestion for editing and completeness had the less request followed by accuracy and accessibility) (Beheshti, Ehmann & Large, 2088). According to my own research, one of the important things, which mentions in talk pages is about sources of articles which can take a place as print resources, deep web resources external links and inexact references. Disagreement about content of articles is another important subject in Wikipedia and before an article edited, editors discuss in talk pages about adding controversial material or removing content, and then they get a decision to how edit the article. Talk pages may use to notify other users to know this article had recent edit or editors ask their questions there from other or they request for help. However, the author mentioned participation of contributors on different topics is different. There are many articles which have only one comment on their talk page and there is large number of articles who has various comment and suggestions on their talk page (Breslin, Passant & Schneider, 2010). Breslin, J, G., A, Passant. & Schneider, J. (2010). A content analysis: How Wikipedia talk pages are used. 7. Retrieved from http://journal.webscience.org/373/2/websci10_submission_80.pdf

Collaboration in Context takes an in-depth view at the collaboration which produces Wikipedia pages. I was attracted to this resource in that I imagined it would assist me in understanding how users interacted in a organised context - ie. the mindsets of users collaborating on a specific, and, in the case of many Wikipedia pages, complex, task. Whilst the paper examines the development of pages from a 'contributor's' point of view, it does this through statistical interpretation of a set of data the authors assembled on page edits. The result is that the paper doesn't so much uncover the nuances of collaboration in an organisational setting, as relate the nuts and bolts of page editing. Perhaps, the mores of collaboration might be inferred from this reading of Wikipedia's collaborative process, though I found it difficult to see this in numbers rather than testimony from wikipedians themselves. What this paper does do is highlight the efficacy of 'talk pages' in the process of building of 'rich' Wikipedia entries. These forums provide the engine of collaboration on Wikipedia - users able to get together as a group to uncover the most efficient ways to combine their work - the paper concluding, "Talk pages - in addition to article edits themselves - provide wikipedians with a powerful means of shaping the presentation of knowledge. (chap.8)" This information is useful to me in the way I will be able to compare it to the, say, simpler, and more spontaneous collaboration of strangers in bittorrent which does not require a 'talk page'. What I would have liked to have known is how the 'talk' on these pages allowed networks of 'equal' users to perfect articles on complex topics, and what the users themselves thought of the arrangement.

You Tube Need to Know | Crisis mappers: Mobile technology helps disaster victims worldwide | Uploaded by PBS . Retrieved 20 March 2012 http://www.youtube.com/​watch?v=xW7Vt5iunWE This YouTube presentation tells the story of how crisis mapping came to be a source of critical and timely support to Haitians requiring aid following the 2010 devastating earthquake. It is a remarkable example of resourcefulness, voluntary collaboration and use of social media to assist with the humanitarian aid response. The video includes a live interview with, Patrick Meier, head of Ushahidi, a not-for-profit organisation, who explains that within hours of the news of the quake reaching the world, he knew that it would be a real challenge to get information from people on the ground in Haiti. Based on the Haitians high mobile ownership (85%) he worked out that texting a message would be the best way to find out who needed help. He arranged for a local phone company to provide a number for emergency texts. The number is advertised on the radio as 90% of the population has radio access. A call was put out on Facebook to locate volunteers who could translate messages from Haitian Kreyol to English. These messages are then forwarded to Boston where a voluntary group of students plot the location on an online map. The online location is then forwarded to the US response group coordinating the distribution of aid. Within hours help is sent. I came across this video when sourcing materials and was impressed with the professional presentation, the inclusion of a Haitian recipients experience of receiving aid after texting the number he heard on the radio, and interviews with major stakeholders. Further searches of Patrick Meier verified the story. Crisis mapping was also used during the Libyan crisis to bring aid to victims. Crisis locations were extracted from posts for help on Facebook and Twitter and plotted by volunteers

(My commentary is actually against the PDF that's linked to, rather than the YouTube video. Reference at the end). This report, commissioned by the United States Institute of Peace, examines the role of Ushahidi, a crisis-mapping platform, in the relief effort following the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. It highlights the ability of crowd-sourcing to provide a more reliable account of what's happening in a disaster situation than traditional intelligence gathering means which don't engage the local population. It begins by describing the challenge that rescuers faced when sourcing their intelligence from media reports, which tended to focus on isolated incidents of violence, wrongly spreading the idea that violence was commonplace and leading the rescue teams to delay their rescue efforts. The report accuses the media of deliberately producing exaggerated reports, which may be true, but even the most ethical journalist can only report on what he or she experiences - if he or she sees or hears about a violent incident, the resulting report will almost certainly give the impression of violence. For the most objective and detailed picture of the state of a crowd, the largest possible portion of that crowd needs to have a voice - something an individual journalist could never facilitate. That's where Ushahidi proved a valuable tool. By aggregating SMS messages, email and social media communications from those in distress, it allowed rescuers to direct assistance appropriately. In addition to crowd-sourcing the conditions of those in distress, Ushahidi also incorporated other forms of crowd-sourcing - maps were sourced from the World Bank, Yahoo!, GeoEye and the U.S. government to provide geographic information, and staffing power was provided by a vast team of volunteers. This gives the case study a lot of depth. Heinzelman, J. and Waters, C. (2010) Crowdsourcing Crisis Information in Disaster-Affected Haiti Retrieved 2 April 2012 from http://www.us

The poster child of collaboration? A bold statement but is it that far off the truth? Every day Wikipedia helps people around the world find information that is both detailed and related to the topic they have searched. The modern internet is filled with incorrect and purposely misleading information that users can freely access. The user has no idea that the information they are receiving is incorrect so it is quite often trusted. Wikipedia's system of article moderators allows the information to be supplied by anyone but filtered by people considered to be well educated in that chosen field. This means that the information is not as random as other information available throughout World Wide Web. The progression in the Web 2.0 era has been at an exponential rate and Wikipedia has been at the fore front of the revolution as it allows users of the World Wide Web to contribute which is what separates Web 1.0 and web 2.0. So I don't completely agree with the idea that Wikipedia is the poster child of collaboration, however I would suggest that it is the poster child of the Web 2.0 era as it encompasses all that makes the new era so exciting.

I found this article was an interesting read as it discusses Wikipedia's journey in becoming a successful and reliable encyclopedia. While I do consider myself a Wikipedia supporter I did find the article to be incredibly bias in favour of Wikipedia as it speaks extensively with Sue Gardner the Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation. The article does briefly touch on some negative points about Wikipedia in hearing from Robert McHenry, author and former Editor-in-Chief of Encyclopedia Britannica (Wikipedia's largest competitor) but soon turns back in favour of Wikipedia explaining that its scientific articles are of similar accuracy to that of Encyclopedia Britannica (Solon, 2011). As this article suggests, Wikipedia is evermore becoming a reliable source of information however people still seem to question Wikipedia's reliability. Here are somethings that I found in my own research that can suggest people's lack of confidence in Wikipedia's reliability: * Wikipedia articles that cover obscure and unusual topics tend to present more inaccuracies and errors than those covering mainstream topics - this is because obscure topics receive less traffic and therefore there is less likelihood of errors being corrected (Ball, 2007). * Wikipedia is not an accurate representation of a vast and diverse crowd, in fact "the encyclopedia is missing the voices of people in developing countries, women and experts in various specialties that have traditionally been divorced from tech" (Manjoo, 2009). * Wikipedia has in the past been subject to vandalism with hoax and defamatory article updates (Ball, 2007). Reference: Ball, P. (2007, February 27). The more, the wikier. Nature: International weekly journal of Science. Retrieved from http://www.nature.com Manjoo, F. (2009, September 28). Is Wikipedia a Victim of Its Own Success? Time Magazine. Retrieved from http://www.time.com/time/magazine Solon, O. (2011, January 11). A Decade of Wikipedia, Th

This article provides quite an interesting overview of Wikipedia and how it started off as a "dirty little secret" for some in the earlier years, with its use progressing to be an "accepted part of daily life in the developed world" ten years after its launch. In addition, higher education facilities (Grossek, 2009; CCNMTL, 2008) and companies (Hendrix & Johannsen, 2008; Hasan & Pfaff, 2006) are beginning to discover the advantages of employing wikis in their respective institutions. We are beginning to see that the 'wisdom of the crowds' and 'knowledge management' are important factors in larger organisations. Thus what once started out as an online encyclopaedia and a "dirty little secret" is now branching out and weaving its way into larger businesses, organisations, and educational institutions. Although Wikipedia has suffered its fair share of editing glitches and is not completely error free, as mentioned in this article, Wikipedia has come a long way since its introduction into the Web 2.0 world and is becoming a more commonly used tool. In addition, it has shown us the effects of the 'wisdom of the crowds' and how collaboration can be so important. Speakers at the New Media in Education Conference (CCNMTL, 2008) note that wikis provide such a valuable communication and collaboration platform that they essentially create a virtual classroom- an interactive platform where students can share ideas, edit documents, and collaborate on group projects. Inevitably I do agree with the title of this paper and think that Wikipedia is "The Poster Child for Collaboration", with Wikipedia and wikis weaving their way into educational institutions (Grossek, 2009; CCNMTL, 2008) and companies (Hendrix & Johannsen, 2008; Hasan & Pfaff, 2006) who use them as a collaborative tool. Additional References: CCNMTL (Nov 3rd, 2008). Promoting Collaborative Learning using Wikis. [YouTube Video]. Retrieved 22nd March 2012 from http://www.yout

This is an extremely interesting article as it focuses on the ways in which wikis have excelled in enticing people into contributing and exciting them about making contributions. Businesses and organizations can learn a lot from this article as it also illustrates ways in which a wiki can be used to increase the rate, amount and quality of contribution. The precise nature of Wikipedia is one of the greatest advantages it has over other information sources. People looking for information find their topic and the information provided is in a formatted style that is maintained throughout the site. The limited security measures on Wikipedia allow people to contribute what they wish with minimal restrictions. The question is however can a wiki such as Wikipedia be used effectively to add value and increase collaboration within a business environment? Wikipedia does allow users to contribute information and remove the barriers and restrictions of both geographic and social status. This can allow bias or ill-informed information to be present in articles. Within a business structure there is little to no chance of purposely misleading information being presented to the articles. This does remove one of the major problems that Wikipedia faces as the integrity of information is assured. So with this in mind does a wiki remain a great resource for collaboration within a business environment?

Overall, this article provides a nice summary of how businesses and corporations can employ wikis in their knowledge production, highlighting some of the advantages and disadvantages and discussing some troubleshooting problems. Yeo (2010) notes that an added benefit of using wikis in businesses is that multiple people can work on a document at once, allowing multiple editors to work on different sections of the wiki at the same time. However where companies may struggle is with the layout and formatting of the page. Hasan and Pfaff (2006) note that IBM, the Disney Corporation, and British Telecommunications are just some of the major corporations that have successfully implemented the use of wikis into their business structure. The Shell Corporation is yet another business that has successfully employed the use of wikis in their organisation (Hendrix & Johannsen, 2008). Similarly, the revision history and ability to track editing changes made to pages is a common advantage running across all of these studies. Although this article offers a nice description of how wikis can be used in businesses, it does not delve into the world of knowledge management and using wikis as a knowledge sharing platform, as discussed by Hasan and Pfatt (2006). They also fail to provide strategies to motivate employees to make use of the wiki and participate in knowledge contribution, as mentioned by Hendrix and Johannsen (2008). Nevertheless, the article makes us aware about wikis and how they can be incorporated in businesses, noting some of the advantages and limitations. Additional References: Hasan, H., & Pfaff, C.C. (2006). The wiki: an environment to revolutionise employees' interaction with corporate knowledge. OZCHI. 11(24-26). Pp377-380. Retrieved 19th March 2012 from http://www.ozchi.org/proceedings/2006/sessions/short-papers/social/hasan-p377.pdf Hendrix, D., & Johannsen, G. (May 16th, 2008). A knowledge sharing and collaboration platform. Inside Knowledg

This article related to my topic discussed about how Wikipedia as one of the popular online collaborative encyclopedias allows everyone to write and read its article for free and there are large numbers of businesses all around the world who edit and publish its articles (Yeo, 2010). According to my own studies, Wikipedia will be good for small businesses? Wikipedia as a popular online community can help small businesses to have an article there. Of course, everyone can make a page in Wikipedia, but, having a page for businesses can bring more customers for them, for example, Zip's Drive-In has article in Wikipedia which gives information to people about its fast foods. Tekserve, sales Apple products in New York, has a Wikipedia article to gives beneficial information about their new products and absorb them on their own blog. Or even "Hollywood-based Roscoe's House of Chicken and Waffles" has article in Wikipedia (Mcgee, 2009). But why businesses want to have an article in Wikipedia? They can have great exposure of their new products: when a company has article in Wikipedia that means more people all over the world can read their information that brings them more exposure. They can manage their information and their through Wikipedia and people know Wikipedia as a trustable resource. Moreover, Wikipedia gives permission to businesses to update their articles, and with the help of Talk page they can read customers wishes and suggestion (Mcgee, 2009). However, businesses must aware there in Wikipedia there will be some angry customers and they may edit their articles, so, businesses should aware to correct any untruthful information which added by others and it is a truth that monitoring can be very time-consuming for them (Mcgee, 2009). Mcgee, M. (17 september 2009). Should a small business have a Wikipedia article? Available online at: http://www.smallbusinesssem.com/should-small-business-have-wikipedia-article/2311/

Ball, P. (2007, February 27). The more, the wikier. Nature: International weekly journal of Science. Retrieved from http://www.nature.com The More, The Wikier is an article published on Nature: International Weekly Journal of Science, which explores the secret behind the quality of Wikipedia entries when anyone, anywhere has the ability to write and edit content. The article looks at three groups of researchers who "claim to have untangled the process by which many Wikipedia entries achieve their impressive accuracy". Wikipedia is an organisation in which users collaborate their knowledge to create an encyclopedia of information. "The percentage of edits made by the Wikipedia 'élite' of administrators" is steadily declining and "Wikipedia is now dominated by users who are much more numerous than the elite but individually less active." "The wisdom of the crowds" principle suggests that the combined knowledge of a large and diverse group is superior to the knowledge of a few experts. Ball explains that content accuracy and quality of Wikipedia articles is related to a high number of edits by a large number of users. For example, articles that deal with very topical issues receive a higher level of attention from a large and diverse audience and therefore are of higher quality than articles that are not as topical and thus do not attract the same attention. The three research groups referenced in the article are: Dennis Wilkinson and Bernardo Huberman of Hewlett Packard's research laboratories who studied how a high number of edits by a large number of users create the 'best' Wikipedia articles, Aniket Kittur of the University of California, and co-workers who explored how the Wiki community has evolved from a small governing group to a democracy, and Ofer Arazy and colleagues at the University of Alberta who discuss the importance of this diversification of Wikipedia contributors to the overall success of its articles.

This article takes a look at the crowd sourcing idea that Wikipedia thrives on. 'Lots of edits by lots of people'. Crowd sourcing makes use of the knowledge of crowds. The more people you have contributing information to an article the more information the article will contain. This is however affected when fewer people begin to contribute to the writing and collaboration process. A person contributing to the Wikipedia page may only be making a change as small as a simple grammatical correction but it means quite a lot to the overall aesthetic of the page. People are far less likely to believe the information presented by an article filled with errors and punctuation problems. It might seem like a small issue but this is how many hands make light work. Wikipedia's reliability comes from its ability to be edited by many people with small alterations. It is strange however that in your other article regarding Wikipedia being its own worst enemy you have points made there of why Wikipedia is leaning towards extinction. These mainly are concerned with the decreasing number of people editing. So is Wikipedia going to stay strong or will it slowly become just another encyclopedia?

Ball's article highlights the successful nature of Wikipedia's open source network and how quality of information is achieved. He suggests that the 'secret' to Wikipedia's credibility is the increasing number of contributors and the 'diversification' it brings to the platform through collective knowledge (Ball, 2007). I can relate Ball's article to Surowiecki's (2004) article Wisdom of the Crowds because it reinforces the notion that people must be unrelated, independent, and have diversity of mind from one another to form good opinions. The architecture of the collaborative platform Wikipedia harnesses the 'power of the crowds' in such a way that encourages diverse participation, as opposed to a group-think scenario, and thus produces 'wisdom' through quality information (Surowiecki, 2004, p5). Ball observes that Wikipedia's structure allows for an above average quality of information on more topical articles. This occurs because popular topics create more traffic, which in turn enables more contributors to edit an article and therefore creating more 'diverse' and 'reliable' information (Ball, 2007). This reinforces the quality of an article through diversification and mass collaboration. This notion of 'quality' can be applied to the Kony 2012 campaign page on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kony_2012), which has been edited over 500 times and has been viewed 1,227,982 times since 6 March 2012, when the Kony 2012 campaign was first launched (Wikipedia Article Page Statistics, 2012). However, it is at this point that the similarities between Ball and Surowiecki cease. According to Ball, the Kony 2012 Wikipedia article is a prime example of a topical issue. The statistics reinforce his observations about Wikipedia's crowds and how they are able to create credible and reliable information due to diversification brought into the article by 1,227,98

Jaap van den Herik, H., Postma, E., & Spek, S. (2006). Wikipedia: organisation from a bottom-up approach. Maastricht University. Retrieved 2012, March 19th from http://arxiv.org/pdf/cs/0611068v2.pdf The article Wikipedia: organisation from a bottom-up approach is a study into Wikipedia as a successful self-managing team via the analysis of the Dutch Wikipedia. The study explores how Wikipedia successfully creates a cohesive and logical data structure through bottom-up organisation in which labour division is autonomous. The article suggests that this bottom-up structure, with many contributors working towards a common goal, enables greater speed and efficiency subsequently allowing Wikipedia to update new developments faster than other encyclopedias. Additionally this structure, coupled with the online nature of the information network, encourages more communication and cooperation between divisions, increased enthusiasm in participants, and decreased managerial overheads. In terms of Wikipedia's content organisation, a sample study of Wikipedia articles demonstrated article clustering, scale-freeness, and potentially even small-worldliness indicating that Wikipedia's content is itself an organised network. Finally the article looks into the varying Wikipedia pieces and author types and analyzes their relationship. The study found that articles which receive a low average of edits per author (average of edits = number of edits on an article divided by the number of unique authors on the same article) in general "deal with topic areas that most people have at least some expertise in, or topic areas that everyone claims to know about". Contrastingly articles with a high average of edits per author were generally more specialized topics. What this means is that articles, which cover mainstream topics, attract a larger and more diverse crowd of authors (

Chatora, A. (2012). Encouraging Political Participation in Africa: The Potential of Social Media Platforms. Institute for Security Studies. Retrieved March 22, 2012 from http://www.iss.co.za/uploads/15Mar2012SocialMedia.pdf This situation report is from the Institute for Security Studies (a pan-African applied policy research institute based in South Africa), and examines the role of social media in facilitating political participation. It uses as its catalyst the recent popular protests dubbed the 'Arab Spring' to explore the possibility of an 'African Spring' protest movement. The report includes case studies on several African countries highlighting difficulties faced by different countries utilising social media, which includes historical experiences, institutional arrangements and socioeconomic and political conditions. Of note are the actions taken in Cameroon where the government blocked the Twitter service for ten days during the Arab Spring protests for reasons of 'national security', and in Uganda when the 'walk-to-work' protests were successfully initiated by protest groups making use of social media such as Twitter, the government suspended the use of social networks causing 'walk-to-work' protests to lose their momentum. The report concludes that despite the severe challenges facing Africans in taking up social media, that ultimately "engaging with these platforms will allow citizens to circumvent the wide range of tactics used to stifle public opinion". I find this report to be a valuable resource as it explores the current environment, requirements, and limitations within Africa for movements to successfully incorporate social media such as Twitter into their political protests.

This article discusses the potential for political protests in African nations, in light of the recent activism in Arab countries. I found this article beneficial, as it clearly highlights the profound difficulties that are faced in some African nations, and discusses elements that are not covered in other articles related to the topic. An element of particular importance was the consideration of historical context when investigating the potential for political activism, both online and offline. The widespread poverty and clear digital divide between some people in Africa, is of significance as many choose to engage in activities of survival, rather than that of political action (Chatora, 2012, p.4). Computer literacy skills and the willingness of people to disobey controlling governments must also be considered, as people in Angola have shown no signs of retreating from political discussion and the organization of protests online, compared to people in Cameroon and Zimbabwe who are facing various difficulties against repressive regimes (Chatora, 2012, p.9-10). The importance of historical context clearly resonates with the article I discussed - "Protest 2.0: Online Interactions and Aboriginal Activists." The Aboriginal activists were uncomfortable with using new technology, due to a lack of computer literacy, as well as, the evident interference it made with the historical context of communication in their culture, as visual storytelling is favoured over the written word used online (Petray, 2011, p.927). This article adds value to the discussion of political activism as it is of great relevance to the topic and appears to be a reliable source of information. Whilst it does comment on various elements not covered in other articles, it also highlights an area of significance regarding the uptake of social media in African nations - clearly implying that there will be future developments in this area of research. Reference: Petray, T.L. (20