Unpacking Stitching between Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons: Barriers to Cross-Platform Collaboration

Abstract

The study of work practices across two or more collaborative platforms is relatively rare. Participants and researchers have to be competent, or even experts, in both just to begin to make sense of what is happening. With the growing popularity of peer-production systems, the integration of resources across various platforms is more and more common. The framework of stitching is one analytical stance that has been used to describe the cross-platform work to build and highlight informational and social networks. Through a qualitative study with 32 participants who have different foci on Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons, we reveal their practices in three essential stitching processes, production, curation, and dynamic integration. We highlight how their practices enact stitching and extend the conceptual framework to explain barriers that inhibit effective stitching across platforms. We further discuss implications for research in cross-platform work and design to facilitate Wikipedia-Commons collaboration.