Summary
The authors of this paper examined what makes Wikipedia so successful and how people are able to collaborate together to create high quality content.
Reflection
The researchers of this paper are interested in learning what allows collaborators to work together to develop high quality content. The most common belief is that Wikipedia benefits from high numbers of collaborators and therefore the more collaborators you have working on an article, the higher the quality of the article. According to the researchers, that common belief may be the case but it mostly depends on the type of collaboration used. They differentiate between explicit and implicit collaboration. According to the researchers, though explicit coordination is important, implicit coordination is critical when there are a large number of collaborators. In fact, a large number of collaborators without implicit coordination can hurt the quality of the article.
I found the project to be very similar to my own project. This project explores how high quality is created by online collaborators who don’t really know each other. On the other hand, my goal is to create an application that allows students to create high quality notes using collaborative techniques. Both projects rely on heavy usage of collaboration and examine the ability of strangers to collaborate in order to develop content which will benefit everyone. Another interesting commonality between the two projects is that users are expected to volunteer their time and skills for the benefit of the public. This is generally a new phenomenon which has benefitted sites such as Wikipedia immensely. I have yet to determine if my application will also benefit from this phenomenon. After reading the paper, I was interested in learning what types of collaboration would allow students to create better notes. This led me to think more about a structural approach where there is a person (or automated feature in the app) that provides a level of guidance and structure to the students; similar to the way Wikipedia articles are typically driven by a small group of authors.
I would’ve been curious to find out if the role of diversity has any effect on the quality of a Wikipedia article. The researchers described the talk page feature where users discuss changes that should be made. I wonder if a diverse group of collaborators with various different beliefs would benefit or hurt the collaborative effort. I think this is quite important since the online community is very diverse and with the penetration of the internet into newer territories, the online community will only get more diverse.
I found this paper to be quite informative since it allows users to understand how collaboration is beneficial only if there is proper communication and structure. Otherwise, too many collaborators can actually hurt the end product. I also like this paper since the results from this paper could allow me to understand how management succeeds or fails.