skip to main content
10.1145/1822258.1822271acmotherconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PageswikisymConference Proceedingsconference-collections
research-article

Socs: increasing social and group awareness for Wikis by example of Wikipedia

Published: 08 September 2008 Publication History

Abstract

Many wikis provide good workspace awareness. Users see quickly what changes have been made or get notified about modifications on selected pages. However, they do not support a more sophisticated social or group awareness.
Being aware of social structures is important for collaborative work. Adequate tools permit team members to reflect upon their and others' roles, detect and solve related conflicts in good time, and provide a means to communicate team developments. This makes such applications an effective means for new collaborators (to understand the team), long term team members (to see what is going on), and team coordinators (to manage teams and identify potential problems). This becomes especially important for fragile, large, or ad hoc virtual teams as we find around many wikis, such as Wikipedia. Furthermore, we argue that social and group awareness increases the quality of articles indirectly and is beneficial for both experts and novice users.
We introduce Socs, a prototype that permits authoring social structures using spatial hypertext methods via a so-called "social space". It serves as a means to express, store, and communicate social information about people, such as wiki authors. Furthermore, Socs integrates a Web browser and the system-wide address book that act as sources for the social space and as a basis for sophisticated awareness services.
Socs provides awareness about the authors of a wiki page and which of them are part of the user's structure on the social space, those that are of special interest to the user. This creates implicitly recommendations about wiki pages (because users get notified when wiki pages are authored by known people), provides the basis of interpreting the authors' intentions (because users become aware of who wrote the articles), and foster communication (because users may want to discuss those article with whom they know).

References

[1]
Apple Computer. Web Kit Objective-C Framework Reference, 5 2006. Visited on 2008-04-22.
[2]
Apple Computer. Address Book Objective-C Framework Reference, 7 2007. Visited on 2008-04-22.
[3]
C. Atzenbeck. WildDocs -- Investigating Construction of Metaphors in Office Work. PhD thesis, Aalborg University, Denmark, 7 2006.
[4]
C. Atzenbeck. Interview with Peter J. Nürnberg. SIGWEB Newsletter, 2007(Fall):3, 2007.
[5]
C. Atzenbeck. Interview with Wendy Hall. SIGWEB Newsletter, 2007(Spring):1--4, 2008.
[6]
C. Atzenbeck, D. L. Hicks, and N. Memon. Emergent structure and awareness support for intelligence analysis. In E. Banissi, L. Stuart, M. Jern, G. Andrienko, F. T. Marchese, N. Memon, R. Alhajj, T. G. Wyeld, R. A. Burkhard, G. Grinstein, D. Groth, A. Ursyn, C. Maple, A. Faiola, and B. Craft, editors, Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Information Visualization (IV'08), pages 326--332. IEEE Computer Society, 2008.
[7]
C. Atzenbeck and M. Tzagarakis. Criteria for social applications. In V. Dimitrova, M. Tzagarakis, and J. Vassileva, editors, SociUM: Adaptation and personalization in social systems: groups, teams, communities. Workshop proceedings in conjunction with the 11th international conference on User Modeling, pages 45--49, 2007.
[8]
T. Berners-Lee and R. Cailliau. World-Wide Web. In Computing in High Energy Physics, 9 1992.
[9]
M. Bernstein. The Tinderbox Way. Eastgate Systems, 2006.
[10]
S. L. Bryant, A. Forte, and A. Bruckman. Becoming Wikipedian: transformation of participation in a collaborative online encyclopedia. In GROUP '05: Proceedings of the 2005 international ACM SIGGROUP conference on Supporting group work, pages 1--10. ACM Press, 2005.
[11]
Bundeskriminalamt. Operative Fallanalyse (OFA). WWW, 2008. Visited on 2008-04-05.
[12]
V. Bush. As we may think. The Atlantic Monthly, 176(1):101--108, 7 1945.
[13]
J. Conklin. Hypertext: an introduction and survey. Computer, 20(9):17--41, 1987.
[14]
R.-A. de Beaugrande and W. Dressler. Introduction to Text Linguistics. Addison-Wesley, 1981.
[15]
P. Dourish and V. Bellotti. Awareness and coordination in shared workspaces. In CSCW '92: Proceedings of the 1992 ACM conference on Computer-supported cooperative work, pages 107--114. ACM Press, 1992.
[16]
D. C. Engelbart. Augmenting human intellect: A conceptual framework. Summary Report AFOSR-3233, Standford Research Institute, 10 1962.
[17]
D. C. Engelbart. Collaboration support provisions in AUGMENT. In Proceedings of the AFIPS Office Automation Conference (OAC '84), pages 51--58, 1984.
[18]
L. Francisco-Revilla and F. Shipman. Parsing and interpreting ambiguous structures in spatial hypermedia. In Proceedings of the 16th ACM Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia, pages 107--116. ACM Press, 2005.
[19]
C. H. Ganoe, G. Convertino, and J. M. Carroll. The BRIDGE awareness workspace: tools supporting activity awareness for collaborative project work. In NordiCHI '04: Proceedings of the third Nordic conference on Human-computer interaction, pages 453--454. ACM Press, 2004.
[20]
Google. Campfire one: Introducing OpenSocial. YouTube Video, 2007.
[21]
S. Greenberg, C. Gutwin, and A. Cockburn. Awareness through fisheye views in relaxed-WYSIWIS groupware. In GI'96: Proceedings of the conference on Graphics interface '96, pages 28--38. Canadian Information Processing Society, 1996.
[22]
M. D. Gross and E. Y.-L. Do. Ambiguous intentions: a paper-like interface for creative design. In UIST '96: Proceedings of the 9th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology, pages 183--192. ACM Press, 1996.
[23]
C. Gutwin, G. Stark, and S. Greenberg. Support for workspace awareness in educational groupware. In CSCL '95: The first international conference on Computer support for collaborative learning, pages 147--156. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., 1995.
[24]
F. G. Halasz. "Seven Issues" revisited. Keynote address, Hypertext '91 conference, San Antonio, Texas. WWW, 12 1991.
[25]
C. Y. Jang, C. Steinfield, and B. Pfaff. Supporting awareness among virtual teams in a web-based collaborative system: the teamscope system. SIGGROUP Bulletin, 21(3):28--34, 2000.
[26]
T. H. Kean, L. H. Hamilton, R. Ben-Veniste, B. Kerrey, F. F. Fielding, J. F. Lehman, J. S. Gorelick, T. J. Roemer, S. Gorton, and J. R. Thompson, editors. The 9/11 Commission Report. Executive Summary. Norton, 2004.
[27]
S. Kuznetsov. Motivations of contributors to Wikipedia. SIGCAS Comput. Soc., 36(2):1, 2006.
[28]
I. Liccardi, H. C. Davis, and S. White. CAWS: a wiki system to improve workspace awareness to advance effectiveness of co-authoring activities. In CHI '07 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems, pages 2555--2560. ACM Press, 2007.
[29]
C. C. Marshall, F. G. Halasz, R. A. Rogers, and W. C. Janssen. Aquanet: a hypertext tool to hold your knowledge in place. In Proceedings of the 3rd ACM Conference on Hypertext, pages 261--275. ACM Press, 1991.
[30]
C. C. Marshall and F. M. Shipman. Spatial hypertext: designing for change. Communications of the ACM, 38(8):88--97, 8 1995.
[31]
C. C. Marshall, F. M. Shipman, and J. H. Coombs. VIKI: Spatial hypertext supporting emergent structure. In Proceedings of the 1994 ACM European Conference on Hypermedia Technology, pages 13--23. ACM Press, 1994.
[32]
N. Memon and H. L. Larsen. Structural analysis and destabilizing terrorist networks. In Proceedings of the 2006 International Conference on Data Mining DMIN'06, pages 296--302, 2006.
[33]
S. Mendoza-Chapa, M. Romero-Salcedo, and H. Oktaba. Group awareness support in collaborative writing systems. In Proceedings of the 6th international workshop on groupware (CRIWG), pages 112--118. IEEE Computer Society, 2000.
[34]
A. Mitchell, I. Posner, and R. Baecker. Learning to write together using groupware. In CHI '95: Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, pages 288--295. ACM Press, Addison-Wesley, 1995.
[35]
B. A. Nardi, S. Whittaker, E. Isaacs, M. Creech, J. Johnson, and J. Hainsworth. Integrating communication and information through ContactMap. Communcation of the ACM, 45(4):89--95, 2002.
[36]
T. O'Reilly. What is Web 2.0? Design patterns and business models for the next generation of software. WWW, 9 2005.
[37]
R. Priedhorsky, J. Chen, S. T. K. Lam, K. Panciera, L. Terveen, and J. Riedl. Creating, destroying, and restoring value in Wikipedia. In GROUP '07: Proceedings of the 2007 international ACM conference on Supporting group work, pages 259--268. ACM Press, 2007.
[38]
F. Shipman, R. Airhart, H. Hsieh, P. Maloor, J. M. Moore, and D. Shah. Visual and spatial communication and task organization using the Visual Knowledge Builder. In Proceedings of the 2001 International ACM SIGGROUP Conference on Supporting Group Work, pages 260--269. ACM Press, 2001.
[39]
F. M. Shipman, H. Hsieh, P. Maloor, and J. M. Moore. The Visual Knowledge Builder: a second generation spatial hypertext. In Proceedings of the 12th ACM Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia, pages 113--122. ACM Press, 2001.
[40]
F. B. Viégas, M. Wattenberg, J. Kriss, and F. van Ham. Talk before you type: Coordination in Wikipedia. In HICSS '07: Proceedings of the 40th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, page 78. IEEE Computer Society, 2007.
[41]
C. Ware. Information Visualization. Morgan Kaufmann, 2 edition, 2004.
[42]
S. Whittaker, Q. Jones, B. Nardi, M. Creech, L. Terveen, E. Isaacs, and J. Hainsworth. ContactMap: Organizing communication in a social desktop. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), 11(4):445--471, 2004.
[43]
Wikipedia. Help: Recent changes. WWW, 7 2008. Visited on 2008-07-14.
[44]
D. M. Wilkinson and B. A. Huberman. Cooperation and quality in Wikipedia. In WikiSym '07: Proceedings of the 2007 international symposium on Wikis, pages 157--164. ACM Press, 2007.
[45]
Y. Yamamoto, K. Nakakoji, and A. Aoki. Spatial hypertext for linear-information authoring: Interaction design and system development based on the art design principle. In Proceedings of the 13th ACM Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia, pages 35--44. ACM Press, 2002.

Cited By

View all
  • (2012)Deletion discussions in WikipediaProceedings of the Eighth Annual International Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration10.1145/2462932.2462955(1-10)Online publication date: 27-Aug-2012
  • (2011)Supporting reasoning and communication for intelligence officersInternational Journal of Networking and Virtual Organisations10.1504/IJNVO.2011.0371598:1/2(15-36)Online publication date: 1-Nov-2011
  • (2011)Social Network Analysis in Community-Built DatabasesCommunity-Built Databases10.1007/978-3-642-19047-6_3(51-71)Online publication date: 12-Apr-2011
  • Show More Cited By

Recommendations

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Other conferences
WikiSym '08: Proceedings of the 4th International Symposium on Wikis
September 2008
219 pages
ISBN:9781605581286
DOI:10.1145/1822258
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Sponsors

  • University of Porto

In-Cooperation

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 08 September 2008

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Check for updates

Author Tags

  1. Socs
  2. Web 2.0
  3. Wikipedia
  4. collaboration
  5. coordination
  6. group awareness
  7. hypermedia
  8. social awareness
  9. wiki

Qualifiers

  • Research-article

Conference

WikiSym08
Sponsor:
WikiSym08: 2008 International Symposium on Wikis
September 8 - 10, 2008
Porto, Portugal

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 69 of 145 submissions, 48%

Contributors

Other Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

  • Downloads (Last 12 months)0
  • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0
Reflects downloads up to 14 Feb 2025

Other Metrics

Citations

Cited By

View all
  • (2012)Deletion discussions in WikipediaProceedings of the Eighth Annual International Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration10.1145/2462932.2462955(1-10)Online publication date: 27-Aug-2012
  • (2011)Supporting reasoning and communication for intelligence officersInternational Journal of Networking and Virtual Organisations10.1504/IJNVO.2011.0371598:1/2(15-36)Online publication date: 1-Nov-2011
  • (2011)Social Network Analysis in Community-Built DatabasesCommunity-Built Databases10.1007/978-3-642-19047-6_3(51-71)Online publication date: 12-Apr-2011
  • (2009)Supporting emergent knowledge and team communication in police investigationsProceedings of the 2009 IEEE international conference on Intelligence and security informatics10.5555/1706428.1706445(95-100)Online publication date: 8-Jun-2009
  • (2009)Linking and Organising Information in Law Enforcement InvestigationsProceedings of the 2009 13th International Conference Information Visualisation10.1109/IV.2009.107(443-449)Online publication date: 15-Jul-2009
  • (2009)Supporting emergent knowledge and team communication in police investigations2009 IEEE International Conference on Intelligence and Security Informatics10.1109/ISI.2009.5137278(95-100)Online publication date: Jun-2009

View Options

Login options

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

PDF

eReader

View online with eReader.

eReader

Figures

Tables

Media

Share

Share

Share this Publication link

Share on social media