Finding social roles in Wikipedia

Abstract

Abstract:The concept of "social role" has long been used in social science describe the intersection of behavioral, meaningful, and structural attributes that emerge regularly in particular settings and institutions. We use structural signature methods to identify key roles in a large distributed collaboration system (Wikipedia) by examining the distribution of edits across types of pages and the structure of relationships between editors. We distinguish between technical editors, substantive experts, vandal fighters, and social networkers and demonstrate key ways that their patterns of interaction and contribution differ. We conclude by considering how differential entry into and retention in particular roles may affect the operation of the large social system. IntroductionIt is difficult to gauge the social significance of Wikipedia, other than to say that, like Google, Wikipedia has forever changed how we use, find and think about information. Both pundits (like Stephen Colbert) and researchers (Stvilia et al. 2005, Giles 2005) have been pre-occupied with the question of whether the product of Wikipedia is of sufficient quality, or whether its pages constitute legitimate references (Read 2006). Others argue that the project will never achieve a sufficient level of quality relying on non-expert volunteers of unknown identity (Chesney). Instead of prognosticating about the potential of the Wikipedia project we contend that scholars should be more focused on understanding how Wikipedia has achieved the success that it has: a "pretty good" resource for a basic understanding of most any topic. How has the "pretty good" and incredibly extensive resource been achieved? And how has this been possible given the absence of the resources and controls of conventional firms and bureaucracies?Through the course of our research we have come to suspect that the success of Wikipedia has stemmed from two key sources: (1) infrastructural features that help people find their roles in the organization (2) technical innovations that allow substantial economies of scale in the performance of many of those roles. This paper concentrates on the former and is about finding roles in a double sense: to what extent can we identify the roles people play in Wikipedia by measuring general behavioral and structural features of their participation? We address this technical challenge by using a range of qualitative and quantitative methods to find signatures of social roles in Wikipedia (cite cite). The second sense asks: how do people find their roles in Wikipedia? We address this question quantitatively by comparing general patterns in editing across two different samples of Wikipedians, a cohort that first edited in January of 2005 and a sample of dedicated Wikipedians whose edits spanned a period of greater than one year. These samples allow us to compare how patterns in participation vary between cross section of new participants and those who stick around, and become the long term participants in the social system. Finding Social Role...

Triad-Based Role Discovery for Large Social Systems

“…A plausible explanation for such structures are generalist editors who perform basic tasks such as spelling, grammar, and hyperlink corrections to contributed content that may have also been reviewed by specialists. Such technical editors may even be edited by other technical editors, as the language and wording of an article becomes more defined, adding to the density of this structure This explanation is also compatible with past observations of Wikipedia editors [14].…”

“…Such behaviors may emerge when two domain-specific specialists are only editing articles that only fall under their purview. This hypothesis is substantiated by previous research that found users labeled as substantive experts on Wikipedia exhibiting a similar ego-network structure [14]. Yet we still see a small amount of overlap between these two contributors, which may be done when editing Wikipedia articles that discuss many different topics.…”

“…Gliwa et al examined collections of online bloggers and defined roles such as selfish influential user, social influential blogger, and standard commentator [5]. Welser et al defined the roles substantive experts, technical editors, counter vandalism, and social networkers for Wikipedia users [14]. These implied role analyses are based off of social roles that are presumed to exist without evaluating any interactions in the network first.…”

Examining Collective Memory Building in Wikipedia: A Multilevel Network Approach

“…For example, the structure of interactions in the user talk page network helped to distinguish between substantive experts and technical editors [15]. Moreover, preexisting social capital, operationalized as the proportion of collaborators being members of a pre-existing network and the overall cohesiveness of a pre-existing network, increased the efficiency of collaboration among Wikipedia contributors [16].…”

Agent Based Modeling to Inform the Design of Multiuser Systems

“…Many multiuser systems are complex by nature, involving agents in different roles, artifacts of different types, and complicated connections between agents, artifacts, and their environment. For example, work in Wikipedia occurs in 270 different languages and depends upon the contribution of tens of thousands of volunteer editors who take on a variety of tasks from creating new articles to writing policies (Bao et al, 2012 ;Welser et al, 2011 ). The editors are organized into hundreds of subgroups known as WikiProjects, and they collaborate on a technical infrastructure run by a nonprofi t organization.…”