Harnessing the Wisdom of Crowds in Wikipedia: Quality Through Coordination - 5 views
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Tamlin Dobrich on 25 Mar 12Kittur, A., & Kraut, R. (2008). Harnessing the Wisdom of Crowds in Wikipedia: Quality Through Coordination. Carnegie Mellon University. Retrieved 2012, March 19th from http://kraut.hciresearch.org/sites/kraut.hciresearch.org/files/articles/Kittur08-WikipediaWisdomOfCrowds_CSCWsubmitted.pdf Harnessing the Wisdom of Crowds in Wikipedia: Quality Through Coordination is a study that looks into "the critical importance of coordination in effectively harnessing the "wisdom of the crowds" in online production environments". The article suggests that Wikipedia's success is reliant on significant and varied coordination from its users and not just determined by a large and diverse author-base as proposed in other studies (Arazy, Morgan, Ofer, Patterson, Raymond & Wayne, 2006). Elements such as editor(s) coordination methods, article lifecycle, and task interdependence determine whether a large author-base will be effective or counteractive in achieving high Wikipedia entry quality. The study found that unspoken expectations and a shared understanding (implicit coordination) between authors encouraged positive results when collaborating with a large author-base however more editors promoted a negative effect on article quality when using direct communication and verbal planning (explicit coordination). During the early stages of article development, both implicit and explicit coordination tend to promote content quality because author(s) need to establish structure, direction and scope of the article. For these high-coordination tasks, the study found it was more beneficial to have a small or core group of editors to set direction and as the article became more established, value can be maximized by distributing low-coordination tasks, such as fixing grammar, correcting vandalism and creating links, to a larger author-base.
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FARNAZ SHAMS on 10 Apr 12This paper discusses the how online community can increase the size and quality of Wikipedia's article. In Wikipedia 40% of edits have done with the help of discussion page, which they focus on development of policies and procedures, communication and consensus building. Most of the editors read discussion page to know how they can increase the quality of the articles (Kittur & Kraut, n.d). According to my own studies, the most exiting research on Wikipedia belongs on how many times an article needs to have the highest quality? And why some articles have high level of quality and others not? Some contributors like to read and edit articles with similar subject and they do not edit other articles. So, Wikipedia, needs some soft wares to ask contributors' the duties they should do. For example, one article needs more reference link and another one needs more grammar correcting and of course, there are some people who their interest is finding relevant links or there are some others who like to correct grammatical mistake and they just need to know which article needs their help, so, these kind of soft wares can assert to contributors needs of articles and help of contributors Wikipedia can have equal level of quality for its articles (Ram, 2010). Ram, S. (2010). Who does what on Wikipedia? Available on http://www.redorbit.com/news/technology/1832403/who_does_what_on_wikipedia/