What's mine is mine: territoriality in collaborative authoring

Territoriality, the expression of ownership towards an object, can emerge when social actors occupy a shared social space. In the case of Wikipedia, the prevailing cultural norm is one that warns against ownership of one's work. However, we observe the emergence of territoriality in online space with respect to a subset of articles that have been tagged with the Maintained template through a qualitative study of 15 editors who have self-designated as Maintainers. Our participants communicated ownership, demarcated boundaries and asserted their control over artifacts for the sake of quality by appropriating existing features of Wikipedia. We then suggest design strategies to support these behaviors in the proper context within collaborative authoring systems more generally. Author Keywords Territoriality, ownership, collaboration, Wikipedia, authorship ACM Classification Keywords H5.3. Group and Organizational Interfaces

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: CHI
• Authors: Jennifer Thom-Santelli, Dan Cosley, Geri Gay
• Keywords: ACM Classification Keywords, Author Keywords Territoriality, CHI 2009, Human Computer Interaction, Participants Communicated Ownership