Hi folks,
I am the lead author on two wiki research papers my group at the University of Minnesota is publishing this fall.
The first focuses on Wikipedia:
* Reid Priedhorsky, Jilin Chen, Shyong (Tony) K. Lam, Kathering Panciera, Loren Terveen, John Riedl. "Creating, Destroying, and Restoring Value in Wikipedia." To appear in Proc. GROUP 2007. 10 pages.
* Link: http://www.cs.umn.edu/~reid/papers/group282-priedhorsky.pdf
* Abstract: Wikipedia’s brilliance and curse is that any user can edit any of the encyclopedia entries. We introduce the notion of the impact of an edit, measured by the number of times the edited version is viewed. Using several datasets, including recent logs of all article views, we show that an overwhelming majority of the viewed words were written by frequent editors and that this majority is increasing. Similarly, using the same impact measure, we show that the probability of a typical article view being damaged is small but increasing, and we present empirically grounded classes of damage. Finally, we make policy recommendations for Wikipedia and other wikis in light of these findings.
The second is not Wikipedia-focused, and as such not really on topic for this list, but as I'm already sending a mail, I thought I'd include it. If you are interested only in research directly related to Wikipedia, you can stop reading now.
* Reid Priedhorsky, Benjamin Jordan, Loren Terveen. "How a Personalized Geowiki Can Help Bicyclists Share Information More Effectively." Short paper. To appear in Proc. WikiSym 2007. 6 pages.
* Link: http://www.cs.umn.edu/~reid/papers/wiki09s-priedhorsky.pdf
* Abstract: The bicycling community is focused around a real-world activity - navigating a bicycle - which requires planning within a complex and ever-changing space. While all the knowledge needed to find good routes exists, it is highly distributed. We show, using the results of surveys and interviews, that cyclists need a comprehensive, up-to-date, and personalized information resource. We introduce the personalized geowiki, a new type of wiki which meets these requirements, and we formalize the notion of geowiki. Finally, we state some general prerequisites for wiki contribution and show that they are met by cyclists.
Questions and comments welcome.
Take care,
Reid Priedhorsky Graduate Research Assistant GroupLens Research, http://www.grouplens.org