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theresia sandjaja

Why do people write for Wikipedia? Incentives to contribute to open-content publishing. - 45 views

This paper discusses the reasons why people would voluntarily share their knowledge to the online community. In the first section of the paper, the author uses theory based on the scientific commun...

Net308_508 Wikipedia Contribution publishing

started by FARNAZ SHAMS on 18 Mar 12 4 follow-ups, last by theresia sandjaja on 09 Apr 12
Mitchell Houwen

What Wikipedia Can Teach Businesses About Collaborative Authoring - 15 views

www.cmswire.com/...aborative-authoring-008463.php

Wikipedia business tools usability collaboration

shared by Mitchell Houwen on 25 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • Mitchell Houwen on 25 Mar 12
     
    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?
  • ...2 more comments...
  • Dean Strautins on 25 Mar 12
     
    The paper seems idealistic. Presenting all the good points of Wikipedia as has applied to the the vast amount of contributors does not translate well to corporations. The paper does not mention the impact of business culture, hierarchies, specialist knowledge and a smaller base of contributors. I think if you want to destroy working relations in a company then deploying wikis would be a good start.
  • FARNAZ SHAMS on 02 Apr 12
     
    This article related to my topic (Wikipedia). 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 volunteers all around the world who edit and publish its articles. For most of the businesses doing something for free is painful, but in Wikipedia publishers enjoy to publish articles for free. The base structure of Wikipedia is each articles consist of some pieces, so, editors never face with file- lock during their editing, because, articles are chunking and editors can edit each part of an article in a same time, but they cannot work on the same piece of article in a same time. In addition, against HTML, which is a computer language that this technology cannot support chunked articles, XML largely can support chunked articles and Wikipedia created by XML technology to give permission to volunteer to edit article/articles in a same time. Moreover, XML allows writers to choose their desire heading level, for example, they can choose level-1 heading and the system will automatically obey it. Wikipedia's can also choose the format, text size, color and font of their text and XML will automatically add the number of each page in cross- references and make it nice for printing
  • Sian Cooper on 05 Apr 12
     
    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
  • FARNAZ SHAMS on 10 Apr 12
     
    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/
Tamlin Dobrich

Is Wikipedia a Victim of Its Own Success? - 8 views

www.time.com/...0,9171,1924492,00.html

Net308_508 collaboration community Crowd Wikipedia participatory

shared by Tamlin Dobrich on 25 Mar 12 - Cached
  • Tamlin Dobrich on 25 Mar 12
     
    Manjoo, F. (2009, September 28). Is Wikipedia a Victim of Its Own Success? Time Magazine. Retrieved from http://www.time.com/time/magazine Is Wikipedia a Victim of Its Own Success? is an article which suggests Wikipedia's achievement level has reached its peak and eventually will see its downfall. The article looks in depth at the potential causes for Wikipedia's slowing growth and how these elements could possibly lead to the community's eventual failure. It suggests one reason for Wikipedia's decelerating growth rate is simply that "the site has hit the natural limit of knowledge expansion" and the only possible remaining contributions are obscure topics and "janitorial" editing job such as formatting and fixing grammar. The article claims "Wikipedia's natural resource is emotion" and editors are motivated by the "rush of joy" they receive when contributing their unique wisdom to an audience of 300 million people. What this means is that as the need for significant edits diminishes, so too does participation enthusiasm. Additionally, as Wikipedia has grown, so too has the bureaucracy and complex laws of Wikipedia, resulting in a community that has become unwelcoming to novice Wikipedians. The article discusses how Wikipedia editors are made up of a narrow class of participants dominated by young males from wealthy countries and academic backgrounds. The Wikipedia author-base is not as broad and diverse as first thought and it seems "the encyclopedia is missing the voices of people in developing countries, women and experts in various specialties that have traditionally been divorced from tech". This too is given as a reason for Wikipedia's imminent downfall.
  • ...5 more comments...
  • Dean Strautins on 25 Mar 12
     
    An interesting topic of diminishing contributors and a conclusion I had already theorised must be happening for the exact theories stated in the article. I think this article will be good to reflect on in future years. Maybe a future article will be on If You Do Not Innovate Then You Die. I see Wikipedia only having to start including a genealogy aspect where everyone can geo tag relatives grave sites and stories about then and their relatives and what they achieved in their life to see a boom in contributors and tie all the history in Wikipedia to real every day people. So when I read in Wikipedia about a civil war or history of a country I can also choose to see who's firends relatives were there at that time etc. Later DNA results can further be added. So I do not see Wikipedia dying if it Innovates.
  • Emily Lloyd on 06 Apr 12
     
    Is Wikipedia a Victim of Its Own Success? is an interesting article, as it suggests that since 2007, the number of people contributing to Wikipedia has decreased (Manjoo, 2009, para. 2). This is further reinforced by the following graph from the Wikipedia website (http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WMFArticlesVsContrib.png), which also shows that the number of contributors is plateauing (Bridgestone Partners, 2009). Farhad Manjoo's explanation for this - that the encyclopedia has "hit the natural limit of knowledge expansion" and the only editing jobs left are 'janitorial' - seems plausible (Manjoo, 2009, para. 6). Personally, this is what I have found through my own use of Wikipedia, that while there are areas which need some work, they are generally topics and jobs which are rather mundane. The success of collaborative projects does rest on ensuring the contributors are enthusiastic about what they are doing, in order for them to continue to produce quality contributions (Anthony, Smith & Williamson, 2007). One of the resources I chose for this assignment further reinforces this. Katherine Ehmann, Andrew Large and Jamshid Beheshti in Collaboration in Context: Comparing Article Evolution among Subject Disciplines in Wikipedia find that through their research, an average of 90.3 percent of the initial Wikipedia article text remained over time (Ehmann et al., 2008, para. 40). Therefore, it seems that contributors are less inclined to change a great deal of the original entry, and if Manjoo's suggestions are correct, and Wikipedia does already cover the majority of the topics required by users, there is less chance that contributors will continue to go back and edit these existing entries. As Dean Strautins suggests in the comment above, Wikipedia may need to look into new ways of continuing to engage their contribu
  • Emily Lloyd on 06 Apr 12
     
    References Anthony, D., Smith, S.W., & Williamson, T. (2007) The Quality of Open Source Production: Zealots and Good Samaritans in the Case of Wikipedia. Dartmouth Computer Science Technical Report TR2007-606. Retrieved from http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/reports/TR2007-606.pdf Bridgestone Partners. (2009). File: WMFArticlesVsContrib.png. Retrieved from http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WMFArticlesVsContrib.png Ehmann, K., Large, A., & Beheshti, J. (2008). Collaboration in Context: Comparing Article Evolution among Subject Disciplines in Wikipedia. First Monday, 13(10). Retrieved from: http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/2217/2034 Manjoo, F. (2009, September 28). Is Wikipedia a Victim of Its Own Success?. Time. Retrieved from http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1924492,00.html
  • FARNAZ SHAMS on 06 Apr 12
     
    This article is related to my topic and starts with a brief summary of Wikipedia's start. Wikipedia started its work in 2001 and allowed Wikipedians to contribute and share their articles with others through it. Wikipedia increased its article slowly, in 2008 there were about 2200 articles being added to the Wikipedia every day and in 2009 Wikipedia had about 3 million articles in English. So, Wikipedia broken the record held by Chinese Yongle encyclopedia, which was the famous encyclopedia. The article mentioned, there are thousands of active volunteers who are editing articles or publishing new articles, volunteers check articles to correct them and make them more valid. In addition, in Wikipedia some topics absorb large number of people, for example, subject like "Barack Obama" has large number of viewers, however, other articles which are about other ordinary people do not have that much viewers, and this is a big hole for Wikipedia, because it needs to update these kind of subjects too. The article mentions, In Wikipedia's early days volunteers could be easily be staff of Wikipedia and editing or publishing the articles was not hard, but now volunteers should obey some rules and volunteers must gather some credit to get permission from Wikipedia to publish their articles, so, volunteers may think why should they contribute in Wikipedia and these rsule may decrease the volunteers of Wikipedia.
  • Mitchell Houwen on 07 Apr 12
     
    The change in the rate of publishing material does not determine the success of a project such as Wikipedia. New material will be sourced for Wikipedia because the world is constantly evolving. Wikipedia's only downfall is the amount of people that contribute. When Wikipedia articles are monitored by users the mediators can control their own page which they see as perfection because they have written majority of it. This is the exact reason why people have begun to shy away from adding or editing Wikipedia pages. Does this mean however that Wikipedia will fail at some point? I believe nothing could be further from the truth. I think Wikipedia will simply run in cycles as new topics are generated therefore new experts will be required to moderate and new people needed to add subject matter. As more people begin to collaborate on these pages more and more people will feel confident to edit themselves. Think of the Wikipedia cycle as one that is constantly changing with both highs and lows of activity. This current inactive period will not last long. This unit looks at the collaborative process that is being undertaken throughout the web and it is important to understand that without people adding their own pieces the puzzle is never going to be finished. Will Wikipedia run the cycle as my theory predicts?
  • michelangelo magasic on 08 Apr 12
     
    This article brings up a very interesting idea: the concept of an endpoint for Web 2.0 communities. As the author relates it, this would occur as a Malthusian collapse. Whilst at first glance this seems unfeasible given the infinite expanse of virtual pastures, the article makes some interesting points for consideration: the number of contributors on Wikipedia is dropping and it seems the we have run out of topics to write. It is interesting to compare the Wikipedia community to that of Bittorrent which has found renewed growth, and purpose, in the context of its struggle against copyright laws. Wikipedia has been hailed as a revolutionary form of knowledge democratisation, it is hard to imagine that wikipedians don't share a sense of purpose in their collaboration, and, perhaps even harder to imagine that we are running out of things to write about. Whilst this article is from a highly reputable source, its bias might be considered in following that of the conservative media toward copyleft, this is highlighted by phrases like 'Wikipedia's joyride' which suggests the growth of the site as frivolous. Considering the data it presents, the article is certainly very relevant to an understanding of online collaboration and thought provoking. I cannot help but think that there are still multitudes of topics to be written about, how many contributors, for example, have penned a page for themselves? Whilst ostensibly trivial, this might be the kind of interaction that sees renewed interest in the site and attracts the minority demographics which Gardner says the site needs to make its community richer (p.2). Perhaps the flagging interest in the site comes from the reason that the site is moving too close to the status quo, that as the BitTorrent community has seen, it needs to reminded of its position in an ideological shift.
  • FARNAZ SHAMS on 10 Apr 12
     
    This article starts with a brief summary of Wikipedia's start. Wikipedia started its work in 2001 and allowed Wikipedia's to contribute and share their articles with others through it. Wikipedia increased its article slowly, in 2008 there were about 2200 articles being added to the Wikipedia every day and in 2009 Wikipedia had about 3 million articles in English. So, Wikipedia broken the record held by Chinese Yongle encyclopedia, which was the famous encyclopedia (Manjoo, 2009). According to my own studies, Wikipedia has different level of articles; they divided to low-, medium- and high quality and different people must play different roles, such as linking, editing and writing. For example, cleaning up other editor's mistake is a very important part, because some people do not add valuable information and some editors must come to increase articles quality and maybe the article needs another editor to correct the article again and this process may need to continue many times to increase quality of that article. However, that does not mean casual users work is not worthy, because, they can absorb more well-rounded contributors to make more valuable articles. To help contributors, University of Arizona suggested Wiki software, which guides contributors to know what should they do, for example, they will aware the article needs more link, references or it needs more editing and writing (Conger, 2010). Conger, C. (2010). Who writes Wikipedia articles? Retrieved from http://news.discovery.com/human/wikipedia-community-articles.html
Dean Strautins

Internet Based Collaboration and Organisation in Education Institutions - 20 views

I will post not much to try to draw these papers to the top of the list in an attempt to attract comment as it now is listed as 85 of 86 posts.

Collaboration in Higher Education

started by Dean Strautins on 22 Mar 12 1 follow-up, last by Dean Strautins on 07 Apr 12
ianzed

Making the News: Movement Organisations, Media attention and the public agenda - 18 views

This article very loosely relates to my focus on Anonymous. Although not particularly relevant to my focus, it does provide a decent contextual setting for explaining why Anonymous receives so much...

Net308_508 collaboration community Crowd participatory

started by Jannicke Rye on 25 Mar 12 3 follow-ups, last by ianzed on 10 Apr 12
Emily Lloyd

A knowledge sharing and collaboration platform. - 33 views

A Knowledge Sharing and Collaboration Platform provides a good summary of some of the advantages wikis provide for businesses. Written by Dr Donna Hendrix, and Griet Johannsen, both part of the She...

Net308_508 wikis education corporations collaboration

started by Sian Cooper on 21 Mar 12 2 follow-ups, last by Emily Lloyd on 06 Apr 12
Stephen R

Anatomy of an Anonymous Attack - 1 views

www.imperva.com/...omy_of_an_Anonymous_Attack.pdf

NET308_508 Anonymous hacktivism hacking activism collaboration organisation tools LOIC low orbit ion cannon twitter internet relay chat IRC youtube facebook

shared by Stephen R on 25 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • Stephen R on 25 Mar 12
     
    This article, recently published by security firm Imperva, investigates how an Anonymous attack is mounted. A Particularly interesting point is that this article makes no mention of IRC channels, instead painting Facebook, Twitter and Youtube channels as the main methods of communication for Anonymous. Also interesting is that such communication is referred to as recruitment, recruitment of technically savvy hackers and not so technically savvy activists who are willing to participate in the attack. Particular attention should be paid to pages 6-8 which outline the recruitment activities over Facebook, Youtube and Twitter. Imperva outline the technical methods used to stage the attack, mentioning that there are 10 -15 'Anons' working to analyse the victim website for security vulnerabilities. These are more experienced hackers who are searching for a vulnerability that might allow them to retrieve private data from the victim (p.6). Although not mentioned in this article, perhaps these experienced hackers collaborate using Internet Relay Chat. When no vulnerability was found, Imperva notes that Anonymous instead tries a DDoS attack, but instead of employing the LOIC, a web based version is used for ease of participation (p.13). This way, users of any device can be recruited (through social media) into participate in the attack with minimum of barriers to entry. Although this article focusses heavily on the technical aspect of the attack, a significant portion of the article deals with the recruitment of participant through social media, alongside discussion of the online variant of the LOIC collaborative Denial of Service tool. Anatomy of an Anonymous Attack. 2012. Imperva. http://www.imperva.com/docs/HII_The_Anatomy_of_an_Anonymous_Attack.pdf
  • ianzed on 10 Apr 12
     
    This document may prove to be quite a significant additional reference to my focus of my chosen topic of the Anonymous movement and hacktivism. This article discusses precisely what Mansfield-Devine (2011) neglected to note; that within the Anonymous movement, there are a number of individuals with significant hacking skills who are able to retrieve valuable data from the targets of Anonymous attacks. The article quite thoroughly deconstructs the order in which Anonymous attacks typically occur, the differences between the two major types of individuals who participate, and circumstances under which Anonymous attacks are generally able to be successfully performed (2012). Of particular interest, is the emphasis placed on the importance of acknowledging the fact that Anonymous attacks are not always as harmless as they may appear. Another interesting note is found within the conclusion of the report. The report suggests that targeted, small-scale data retrieval attacks are the preferred means of attack for the Anonymous movement and that "DDoS is the hacker's last resort" (Anatomy of an Anonymous Attack, 2012). This would suggest that unlike many sources of information regarding Anonymous hacktivism attacks, Imperva has identified the serious nature of many incidents involving the Anonymous movement, which do not necessarily receive as much immediate attention as a simple DDoS attack may. Anatomy of an Anonymous Attack. (2012). Imperva. Retrieved from http://www.imperva.com/docs/HII_The_Anatomy_of_an_Anonymous_Attack.pdf Mansfield-Devine, S. (2011). Anonymous: Serious threat or mere annoyance? Network Security 1: 4-10. Retrieved from http://www.sciencedirect.com.dbgw.lis.curtin.edu.au/science/article/pii/S1353485811700046
Dean Strautins

How organisations framed the 2009 H1N1 pandemic via social and traditional media - 5 views

This paper dazzles me with non stop cramming of terms and references. I simply can not hold all those reference points in my head at the one and same time to be able to come up with insightful lear...

Net308_508 community social media Crowd participatory technology

started by Jannicke Rye on 25 Mar 12 1 follow-up, last by Dean Strautins on 25 Mar 12
Emily Lloyd

Statistical measure of quality in Wikipedia. - 49 views

Hi Farnaz, just letting you know that when I click on your link it comes up with 403 - Forbidden: Access is denied. Is there another way to view it?

Net308_508 collaboration quality Wikipedia

started by FARNAZ SHAMS on 15 Mar 12 2 follow-ups, last by Emily Lloyd on 20 Mar 12
Mitchell Houwen

Review of Lazy Virtues: teaching writing in the edge of Wikipedia. - 22 views

I think it is very astute of Potts to refer to the different generations as 'digital natives' and 'digital immigrants'. We (I include myself in the younger generation) have grown up in a world of c...

Net308_508 Wikipedia Educatin

started by FARNAZ SHAMS on 18 Mar 12 3 follow-ups, last by Mitchell Houwen on 07 Apr 12
Mitchell Houwen

The Wiki: an environment to revolutionise employees' interaction with corporate knowledge. - 0 views

www.ozchi.org/...hasan-p377.pdf

shared by Mitchell Houwen on 21 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • Sian Cooper on 21 Mar 12
     
    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 This article focuses on collaborative social software, such as wikis, being used by members to communicate and collaborate electronically within corporate organisations. The authors use the term Knowledge Management (KM) to describe the ways in which wikis can be used within these organisations to share knowledge, create content, distribute documents and edit files. The advantages of using wikis within corporate organisations are that knowledge can be shared quickly and efficiently, allowing editing of pages to be recorded and information to be kept up-to-date. New pages are able to be created and old ones deleted. Editing of pages and knowledge contribution is relatively easy when employing a wiki, even for the novice user. Overall the "wiki takes advantage of the collaborative efforts of all members of the organisation to create an effective library of knowledge" (p.378). Major corporations such as IBM, the Disney Corporation, and British Telecommunications, are three major organisations that have been noted to employ wikis to assist with KM amongst workers. However, some corporate organisations choose not to employ wikis to organise KM for a number of reasons. Wikis may appear to change the organisational structure within companies such that "senior executives may be reluctant to share power with their subordinates" (p.379). There are issues surrounding intellectual property and quality control of information. Privacy concerns also come into play, and conflict may arise if workers are contributing more information or less information to the wiki than other employees. However the authors note that through offering corporate incentives, implementing revision control, and employing u
  • Mitchell Houwen on 25 Mar 12
     
    Corporate knowledge pertains to the inside information that companies need to operate. Internal wikis allow companies to coordinate and collaborate their internal information to streamline the normal business processes. This also allows businesses to spread their business network across many areas and still work cohesively on a common task. Wikipedia can be considered one enormous organization that serves the single purpose of supplying information to the entire globe through the detailed and yet at the same time brief articles. Global networks like this are true representations of collaboration and how steps can be taken in an effort to allow and access the knowledge of crowds. The knowledge of crowds is an idea that there is a bank of information that can be attained by taking the small pieces that each person in the crowd holds. Can corporations use wikis effectively to store information? Who holds the power? With any type of wiki it is important to remember that someone must be in charge of moderating and filtering the information. Or if a wiki is used inside a corporation does that remove the need for a person in charge of filtering? Either way a wiki can be an effective tool in allowing businesses to collaborate without the need to be in the same geographic location.
Victoria Jobling

The Revolutions Were Tweeted: Information Flows during the 2011 Tunisian and Egyptian R... - 4 views

ijoc.org/...643

Net308_508 community Twitter social media collaboration organisation movement revolution activism political protest

shared by Victoria Jobling on 25 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • Victoria Jobling on 25 Mar 12
     
    Lotan, G., Graeff, E., Ananny, M., Gaffney, D., Pearce, I., & boyd, d. (2011). The Revolutions Were Tweeted: Information Flows during the 2011 Tunisian and Egyptian Revolutions. International Journal of Communications, 5, 1375-1405. Retrieved March 24, 2012, from http://ijoc.org/ojs/index.php/ijoc/article/view/1246/643 This article investigates how information was disseminated via Twitter during the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions. It is clear that there were advantages in relying upon Twitter and social media during this time, because these sites provided real-time updates that mainstream media could not convey, due to the limitations of the platform, or censorship (Grossman, 2009; p.1399). The use of hashtags or key words assisted in the organisation of information, such as #sidibouzid and #Tunisia (p. 1376; p. 1395). However, the constant and rapid flow of content made it difficult to determine what is false and what is legitimate information - Twitter's strength and weakness in this situation. It is essential to understand how information can be organised and filtered through the positions of 'actor types' (classification of users in this study), making this article valuable to the study of political protests. There were many different actors mentioned but the most important contributors to the dissemination of content were journalists, bloggers, and activists. These actors had a tendency to retweet information from the same actor type or amongst the three aforementioned categories, to essentially create a sense of reliable organisation to the Twitter chaos (p. 1393). The study also concluded that individuals, rather than organisations, were considered more reliable during the uprising (p. 1398). This appears to demonstrate the scepticism associated with mainstream media in a society that no longer wishes to be talked 'at', but rather invo
  • Stephen R on 10 Apr 12
     
    This article relates my topic in its discussion of Twitter usage in online activism. The online activist group Anonymous (my topic of choice) also performed activist activities surrounding Egypt and Tunisia. Much of Anonymous' activities were organised through the use of Twitter making this article quite relevant. As suggested in the article, Anonymous did appear to have certain high powered actors who highlighted information of particular relevance to the operations, affecting the flow of information through the Twitter network. The article is published in a peer-reviewed journal making it a highly reliable source. It is also quite recent, written in 2011, which is a huge asset given the rate at which social networking technology progresses. The article is also perfectly relevant to the discussion of Twitter usage in political protests. The way that information flows and is determined critical or irrelevant through various actors' retweets is an important topic. I found the article quite useful as the topic is closely related to the online activism performed by the Anonymous group. This article contributes a great deal of value to this collaborative resource development project on a whole, as it is a reliable source, is very recent and it is highly relevant, dealing with Twitter as a collaboration and organisation tool.
Emily Lloyd

Resource 4: Collaboration in context: Comparing article evolution among subject discipl... - 4 views

www.uic.edu/...2034

Net308_508 Net508 Collaboration community Wikipedia wikis organisations Collaborative Resource Development Katherine Ehmann Andrew Large Jamshid Behesht article disciplines The Wisdom of Crowds Talk Pages coordination

shared by Emily Lloyd on 25 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • Emily Lloyd on 25 Mar 12
     
    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).
  • ...1 more comment...
  • Emily Lloyd on 25 Mar 12
     
    References Ehmann, K., Large, A., & Beheshti, J. (2008). Collaboration in context: Comparing article evolution among subject disciplines in Wikipedia. First Monday, 13(10). Retrieved from: http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/2217/2034 Rosenzweig, R. (2006). Can History Be Open Source? Wikipedia and the Future of the Past. The Journal of American History, 93, 117-146. Retrieved from: http://www.jstor.org/ Surowiecki, J. (2004). The wisdom of crowds: Why the many are smarter than the few. New York, NY: Doubleday.
  • FARNAZ SHAMS on 08 Apr 12
     
    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
  • michelangelo magasic on 08 Apr 12
     
    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.
Tamlin Dobrich

The More, The Wikier - 4 views

www.nature.com/...news070226-6.html

Net308_508 Wikipedia collaboration Wisdom_of_Crowds

shared by Tamlin Dobrich on 25 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • Tamlin Dobrich on 25 Mar 12
     
    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.
  • ...1 more comment...
  • Emily Lloyd on 06 Apr 12
     
    I found the article, The More, the Wikier, useful to the topic I am studying, which is Wikipedia and how James Surowiecki's 'the wisdom of crowds' theory (Surowiecki, 2004) relates to it. The research Philip Ball refers to, suggests that the best Wikipedia articles are those with a large number of edits by a large number of contributors (Ball, 2007, para. 2). This supports 'the wisdom of crowds' theory which basically rests on the idea that if more people are involved in a project, the results will be stronger (Surowiecki, 2004, p. 5). The article also states that, not only is it important to have a large number of contributors to achieve good results, the contributors should come from a wide range of demographics (Ball, 2007, para. 14). Roy Rosenzweig, the author of one of the resources I chose, Can History be Open Source? Wikipedia and the Future of the Past, and Farhad Manjoo, the author of Is Wikipedia a Victim of Its Own Success? another article that Tamlin Dobrich uploaded to this Diigo group, both support this claim also. Rosenzweig and Manjoo write about the bias in the types of Wikipedia contributors there are (the majority are white, English-speaking, educated, Western males) which contribute to some topics and views being missed (Rosenzweig, 2006, p. 128; Manjoo, 2009, para. 9). While this article does discuss some important points about Wikipedia and 'the wisdom of crowds' (Surowiecki, 2004) which are important to the topic I am studying, I think this resource would be more valuable if Ball had included more examples to support the statements he makes, in order to further bolster his arguments. References Ball, P. (2007, February 27). The More, the Wikier. Nature. doi: 10.1038/news070226-6 Manjoo, F. (2009, September 28). Is Wikipedia a Victim of Its Own Success?. Time. Retrieved from http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ar
  • Mitchell Houwen on 07 Apr 12
     
    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?
  • Kate Namestnik on 09 Apr 12
     
    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
Stephen R

Online Activism - 14 views

My topic of choice is the Anonymous activist group who's activities are often, but not exclusively, enacted online. The online activism by Anonymous is similar to the online activism described in Y...

Net308_508 collaboration organisation crowds china kony 2012 online activism

started by Kate Namestnik on 26 Mar 12 2 follow-ups, last by Stephen R on 10 Apr 12
Oliver Hennessey

Moldova's internet revolution: Analyzing the role of technologies in various phases of ... - 0 views

www.sciencedirect.com.dbgw.lis.curtin.edu.au/...S0040162511001223

Net308_508 collaboration social media Crowd Twitter organisation political protest

shared by Oliver Hennessey on 26 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • Oliver Hennessey on 26 Mar 12
     
    Lysenko, V., Desouza, K. (2011). Moldova's internet revolution: Analyzing the role of technologies in various phases of the confrontation. Technological Forecasting & Social Change 79 (2012) 341-361. Retrieved March 23, 2012 from http://www.sciencedirect.com.dbgw.lis.curtin.edu.au/science/article/pii/S0040162511001223 This research article published in the journal 'Technological Forecasting & Social Change' analyses the role played by online collaboration and organisation tools in Moldova's revolution of April 2009. It specifically details the different technologies used during various phases of the revolution. The research is quite detailed in identifying the different groups involved - dissenters and authorities - with statistics and case studies breaking down the timeline and dynamics of the revolution. Overall the researchers found that: "1) the protesters organized their initial mobilization through social network services (SNS) and short message service (SMS); 2) Twitter was mostly used during later phases of the revolution - the active street protests and the subsequent information war - for communication about the conflict both locally and globally; and 3) through skillful use of new Internet-based ICTs, it is possible to conduct a successful revolution without noticeable prior offline organization". I chose this article as it highlights the power of Twitter as an organization tool through its involvement in providing a communication platform for the dissenters to organize street protests and then update from the ground what was happening. It also shows Twitters strength as a collaborative tool for movements with the involvement of supporters outside of Moldova tweeting about the revolution.
  • Dean Strautins on 04 Apr 12
     
    I love this article as it relates to the Orange Revolution. I am also a proud protester of a post Orange Revolution protest in New Europe (Latvia) where I had personal exchanges with MP's in a New European country - read here http://balticguide.ee.klient.veebimajutus.ee/index.php?s=1&n=110&a=4161 In Latvia there have been many protests and I sought to increase international pressure on the Latvian government through my founding the Australian Chamber of Commerce in Latvia and in many other ways. I even managed to gain the participation of Curtin University honours Business Students that stayed in a remote city of Latvia to assist the council with its plans. The use of mobile SNS was not part of the protests I was aware of and participated in. Friends informed me what was being posted on websites about the time and place of the next protest. This enabled the inclusion of older proud Latvians and this caused the dynamic situation where younger people restrained their physical action in respect of the older participants so they would not get caught up in altercations. Later protests were much more violent. I as a primary source of information about student protests in New European countries can attest to the fact that the use of mobile SNS would have been very helpful and would have increased the momentum of protests. Because of the many protests in Latvia, many of the citizens that would like to see change, are suffering from protest fatigue. Possibly the earlier more effective use of mobile SNS could have made a difference. I blogged http://austchamriga.blogspot.com.au/ and wrote threatening letters to the IMF as well as led by example through organising courses for the youth of Latvia http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uBThbeXy9Q I will be back to Latvia to push more for the direction and changes the people want. I am arming myself with information like in this paper and what I learn in the Masters of Internet Communication. What is clear to me is that without a
Jocelyn Workman

Expecting the Unexpected: The Need for a Networked Terrorism and Disaster Response Stra... - 14 views

Stephenson and Bonabeau's article (2007) proposes an alternative strategic approach for emergencies that utilises the concepts of 'swarm intelligence' and 'netwar' (2007, p. 2), a combination of co...

Net308_508 collaboration community social media Twitter Wikipedia Disaster Management Crisis Response

started by jessica_mann on 26 Mar 12 2 follow-ups, last by Jocelyn Workman on 07 Apr 12
Emily Lloyd

Influences on Cooperation in BitTorrent Communities. - 10 views

Influence on Cooperation in BitTorrent Communities is a useful resource, not just for looking at file sharing communities, but also to compare to other collaborative communities. For example, I bel...

Net308_508 bittorrent Crowd

started by Chin Sing Wong on 25 Mar 12 1 follow-up, last by Emily Lloyd on 06 Apr 12
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