On Sunday 12 October 2008, nsk wrote:
I regard the use of the red links for identifying
articles most needed
to be written as an example of communication through stigmergy in
Wikipedia. I am, however, somewhat concerned about whether most
Wikipedians prefer to get this information from the articles themselves
or from the MostWanted MediaWiki/Wikipedia features, and whether this
could affect the stigmergic nature of the communication. I feel that
they probably get this information from the articles themselves
spontaneously, and in that case it very much looks like stigmergy; but
if they get the information from the centralised MostWanted page, is it
still stigmergy? I would think yes, albeit the stigmergic nature of the
communication may appear to be somewhat more weak than in the other
case. What do other subscribers in the wiki-research-l mailing list
think?
I think this question would require a very clear understanding/definition of stigmergy,
and how it is differentiated from communication. On p.53 of my dissertation I noted:
[[
Stigmergy is a term coined by Pierre-Paul Grasse to describe how wasps and termites
collectively build complex structures; as Istvan Karsai (2004, p. 101) writes, it
“describes the situation in which the product of previous work, rather than direct
communication among builders, induces [and directs how] the wasps perform additional
labor.” In addition to my proposal that this notion might be helpful in understanding
Wikipedia collaboration (Reagle, 2005b), Mark Elliott (2006) has also, more thoroughly,
argued the same: “As stigmergy is a method of communication in which individuals
communicate with one another by modifying their local environment. . . the concept of
stigmergy therefore provides an intuitive and easy-to-grasp theory for helping understand
how disparate, distributed, ad hoc contributions could lead to the emergence of the
largest collaborative enterprises the world has seen” (p. 4).
]]
So then the question becomes what constitutes "direct" communication versus
environmental modification in the wiki context.