Jason Swarts
ABSTRACT
For years Wikipedia has come to symbolize the potential of Web 2.0 for harnessing the power of mass collaboration and collective intelligence. As wikis continue to develop and move into streams of cultural, social, academic, and enterprise work activity, it is appropriate to consider how collective intelligence emerges from mass collaboration. Collective intelligence can take many forms - this paper examines one, the emergence of stable facts on Wikipedia. More specifically, this paper examines ways of participating that lead to the creation of facts. This research will show how we can be more effective consumers, producers, and managers of wiki information by understanding how collaboration shapes facts.
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Index Terms
- The collaborative construction of "fact" on Wikipedia
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Reviews
Felix Hamza-Lup
This paper investigates how topics on Wikipedia are created and stabilized through mass collaboration. Swarts does an excellent job of managing the information presented. The paper starts by examining the problems and benefits of mass collaboration. The author uses a theoretical perspective called actor-network theory (ANT) to present the information. After some background information on larger forces that act on fact creation, Swarts focuses on how a single Wikipedia entry-on clean coal-was created and stabilized. He presents thoughtful descriptions of how clean coal facts were created, and his discussion has a very easy flow. The paper successfully introduces the concepts and the process by which facts are created through mass collaboration. The information presented is very thorough and easy to understand, which makes the paper accessible to just about anyone. As Swarts shows, while Wikipedia entries may appear to contain factual information, these "facts" can be highly controversial and are constantly evolving. Online Computing Reviews Service
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