Page 69 - Cyberculture and New Media

60 Knowledge Building and Motivations in Wikipedia
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* Statistically significant differences between English and Hebrew versions
** E=English; Heb=Hebrew

Respondents’ answers in the Socialization mode revealed that the
Wikipedians are compatible with the Wikipedia notion of open participation
and egalitarian space. Nevertheless, some Wikipedians call for monitoring of
both Wikipedia’s content and of the Wikipedians.
Another finding is a statistically significant difference between the
respondents of the English and the Hebrew version regarding two assertions.
In the Hebrew sub-sample, identified users were valued more than the
anonymous ones. The second difference is that English Wikipedians are more
in favor of monitoring the participation in Wikipedia.
An example of externalization (see Table 3) could be seen in the
process of joint creation of concepts, through collective reflection. The fact
that Wikipedians find it important that other Wikipedians will refer to what
they are writing, implies exactly such a process. The process of “combining”
knowledge in Wikipedia is done collectively.
The Combination mode is based on combining new knowledge into
existing sets of knowledge. This process is inherent to the knowledge co-
building-taking place in Wikipedia. We have already seen that the
Wikipedians consider this to be “team work”. Therefore, we can really look
at the Wikipedia content building as a group task or accomplishment, rather
than individual personal effort. Furthermore, the findings regarding this mode
indicate that the Wikipedians do take a position regarding to Wikipedia’s
content. This point of view is expressed in their negative attitude toward
copying information from other sources into Wikipedia, and toward
inaccurate writing that can be found in Wikipedia. These judgments
expressed by the Wikipedians, might derive from their desire to preserve the
quality of the knowledge that is being created. Misshaping this knowledge
can harm any Wikipedian’s efforts to imprint their own knowledge into
Wikipedia.
The mode of Internalization, deals with the opportunity to share
explicit knowledge among individuals. The data presented here are meant to
assess how likely Wikipedians are to internalize Wikipedia’s knowledge.
Table 2 reveals that Wikipedians believe that Wikipedia is a good source for
knowledge regarding other sources on the Internet. They also think that
Wikipedia contributes to the knowledge of its active users. Those points of
view may facilitate the Internalization mode.