Wikimania

Internal:Speakers/YA1

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YA1: Yaron Ariel et. al

http://en.wikibooks.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimania05/Paper-YA1 Title: "Wikipedians’ sense of community, motivations, and knowledge building: a cross-cultural study" (ID YA1)

  • Language: English | License: normal copyright
  • Room size:
  • Category: SOCIOLOGY
  • type: Paper/Presentation
  • Budget requirements: {{{budgetrequire}}}
  • Budget priority: {{{budget}}}

Author[s]: Sheizaf Rafaeli, Tsahi Hayat, Yaron Ariel; The Center for the Study of the Information Society, University of Haifa.

  • Contact: yariel@com.haifa.ac.il [OTRS]
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Abstract

This paper presents a cross-cultural study of Wikipedia, exploring Wikipedians’ conceptions of Wikipedia knowledge, sense of community and motivations for participating in Wikipedia. Previous studies concerning Wikipedia investigated its functions as an on-line volunteer-contributed encyclopedia [1], as a community [2], the value of its content [3] and its co-authoring [4]. We offer the constructivist approach to knowledge [5] as a theoretical framework to understand the co-building knowledge in Wikipedia. This process can be examined according to the organizational knowledge creation model as proposed by Nonaka & Takeuchi [6]. For the adaptation of this model to Wikipedia we emphasize the importance of the context, using the “Ba” concept [7]. We suggest that key factors of the knowledge building are the users' sense of community and the processes of interactivity [8] that is enabled by Wikipedia. A central tenet of wiki community is users' motivation to contribute. Sangwan [9] suggests the 'Uses & Gratifications' framework to study users' motivations in online community as a mean to understand its success. Uses & Gratifications research investigates how people use the media to gratify their needs. Sangwan identifies three key motivators for virtual community use: Functional, Emotive and Contextual. Stafford et al. [10] found that a number of cognitive gratifications are used as motivators for virtual community usage. We studied Wikipedians’ motivations using these perspectives, thus highlighting the user's cognitive and integrative gratifications. In order to focus on highly involved Wikipedians in Wikipedia community, we conducted an online web questionnaire in the 'Community Portal' of a specific language group. We then repeated this procedure in several language-based Wikipedia to search for cultural biased differences. Nonaka & Takeuchi’s model is revisited in relation to Wikipedia community. Some preliminary cross-cultural survey data will be presented.

About the author[s]:


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  • accept: AB (much better than AL1), JV (dito), PD(okay is realy better)
  • reject:
  • comment: very similar to AL1. if we have to accept a sociology presentation under hard copyright, I'd like it to be only one of the two.-EM
  • status:
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