Page 71 - Cyberculture and New Media

62 Knowledge Building and Motivations in Wikipedia
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other outside of Wikipedia. This community is based on interaction that
revolves around the process of knowledge building. The process and these
boundaries can be viewed as the forces that facilitate the evolvement of
Wikipedians into a “Community of Practice”. Wikipedians fit into the
description of CP by forming a social collective of individuals, which deals
with similar problems that matter to them. This Community of Practice, as
well as the sense of community that Wikipedians share, serve together as key
factors in fostering the process of knowledge building taking place in
Wikipedia.
The assessment of Wikipedians’ motivation was based on the “Uses
and Gratifications” perspective. The results indicate that Wikipedians
motivations are mainly cognitive, affective and integrative. Nevertheless, at
least two motivators (“sharing my knowledge” and “contributing to others”)
have a selfless flavor. These were both ranked high in comparison to other
ranked motivation descriptors. We should consider the idea that Wikipedians
really do contribute to Wikipedia (at least partially) based on altruistic
reasons, or at least sharing and collaborating for non-selfish reasons. Quoting
Benkler’s portrayals of Wikipedia (and Wikipedians) mechanisms:

Perhaps the most interesting characteristic about Wikipedia
is the self-conscious-social-norms-based dedication to
objective writing... It depends on self-conscious use of
open discourse, usually aimed at consensus… The project
relies instead on social norms to secure the dedication of
project participants to objective writing. So, while not
entirely anarchic, the project is nonetheless substantially
more social, human, and intensively discourse- and trust-
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based than the other major projects described here.

The findings explored in this study are from two different Wikipedia
communities. The first is the English Wikipedia, which is the oldest
Wikipedia (over five years old at the time of this study) and the largest one,
both in content and in the number of its active users. The Hebrew Wikipedia
was three years old. At the time of writing, this Wikipedia could be
considered medium sized with respect to the number of articles, and the
number of its active users.
The different characteristics of the two Wikipedias might explain the
differences in some of the findings. One more important aspect, that might
explain those differences, is the fact that the Wikipedians of the Hebrew
Wikipedia were largely concentrated in a small geographic area, and had a
much better opportunity to meet “face to face”, a fact that must be further
explored to see how it affects the communal aspects of Wikipedia.
Given the availability of multiple Wikipedias rooted in different