Page 61 - Cyberculture and New Media

52 Knowledge Building and Motivations in Wikipedia
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the careful balance of individual effort and social control. Previous studies
concerning Wikipedia investigated its functions as an on-line volunteer-
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contributed encyclopedia, as a community, the value of its content and
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users co-authoring.
This study focuses on Wikipedians - Wikipedia participants that
contribute to its content and taking part (or not) in its community. After a
brief description of Wikipedia features and their relevance to our study, we
will turn to discuss the process of knowledge building in community and the
motivations for participating in Wikipedia. We focus on two Wikipedias, the
English language based and the Hebrew language based Wikipedia.

2. What is Wikipedia?
Wikipedia is a wiki-based application. Wikis are group-editing tools
that allow the creation and maintenance of online linked web pages by a
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group of collaborating users ; the term Wiki refers to the content as well as
the software used to manage these pages. In a Wiki, all users are potential
authors and editors. To modify a page, a user simply clicks on an “Edit page”
link, changes the text in a text area, and submits the changes. The term Wiki
comes from the Hawaiian language, where “Wiki Wiki” means, fast. The
term itself implies the ease and the speed of use and maintenance of Web
pages through Wikis. However, beginners’ performance in various Wiki
features, available in Wikipedia, is somewhat questionable.
Wikipedia is an on-line, user-generated, volunteer-contribution-
driven encyclopedia. Each web page is an article in this online encyclopedia.
Every article allows accompanying online conversation. A detailed history of
changes is readily available for each article. The system allows anyone
(registered or anonymous - identified only by IP number) to add, change or
delete content on any of the articles. Thus, articles are authored collectively.
Professional editors do not review article’s content prior to publication.
Instead, visitors to the online site monitor content. A few users, called
bureaucrats and administrators, gain the privilege of suspending the editing of
an article in case of vandalism or excessive edits. Individuals, who have
interest in a specific topic, may purposefully follow recent changes and
traffic. Occasional and sporadic visitors may contribute as well.

3. Wikipedia as a knowledge building community
The process of constructing a collaboratively written encyclopedia
highlights Wikipedia’s communal aspects. Thus, let us first suggest a few
relevant concepts relating to the process of knowledge co-building.
Knowledge is a highly controversial and ambiguous concept. A large number
of different (and sometimes opposing) approaches were raised to define what
knowledge is.
We need to define Knowledge in relation to Data and Information,