Formalization and community investment in wikipedia's regulating texts: the role of essays

This poster presents ongoing research on how discursive and editing behaviors are regulated on Wikipedia by means of documented rules and practices. Our analysis focuses on three types of collaboratively-created policy document (policies, guidelines and essays), that have been formalized to different degrees and represent different degrees of community investment. We employ a content analysis methodology to explore how these regulating texts differ according to a) the aspects of editor behavior, content standards and community principles that they address, and b) how they are used by Wikipedians engaged in ‘talk’ page discussions to inform, persuade and coordinate with one another. Categories and Subject Descriptors H.5.3 [INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (e.g., HCI)] Group and Organization Interfaces – Computersupported cooperative work, Theory and models, Web-based interaction. General Terms Management, Documentation, Experimentation, Standardization, Languages, Theory....

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: SIGDOC
• Authors: Jonathan T. Morgan, Katie Derthick, Toni Ferro, Elly Searle, Mark Zachry, Travis Kriplean
• Keywords: Collaboratively-created Policy Document, Content Analysis Methodology, Cooperative Work, Document Analysis , SIGDOC 2009