Community, consensus, coercion, control: cs*w or how policy mediates mass participation

When large groups cooperate, issues of conflict and control surface because of differences in perspective. Managing such diverse views is a persistent problem in cooperative group work. The Wikipedian community has responded with an evolving body of policies that provide shared principles, processes, and strategies for collaboration. We employ a grounded approach to study a sample of active talk pages and examine how policies are employed as contributors work towards consensus. Although policies help build a stronger community, we find that ambiguities in policies give rise to power plays. This lens demonstrates that support for mass collaboration must take into account policy and power. Categories and Subject Descriptors H.4.3 [Communications Applications]: Bulletin Board Systems; H.5.3 [Group and Organization Interfaces]: Computer-supported cooperative work General Terms Human Factors, Design Keywords Wikipedia, collaborative authoring, community, policy, power

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: GROUP
• Authors: Travis Kriplean, Ivan Beschastnikh, David W. McDonald, Scott A. Golder
• Keywords: Applied Computing, Computer-supported Cooperative Work, Cooperative Group Work, GROUP 2007, Policies