[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia's Success Factors

[Cormac Lawler]

On 4/24/06, Hagen Böttcher <h.boettcher at iu-bremen.de> wrote:
> Dear everybody,
>
> I am new to this list, but I need your help, as I am currently busy with my
> B.A.Thesis on Wikipedia's Success Factors.
> I would very much appreciate your comments and critique on the following:
>
> Wikipedia's success mainly depend on its users - the Wikipedians. In
> theory, everybody can be a Wikipedian. This thread is supposed to find
> out if the theory holds true in practice.


Hi Hagen,

I once wrote an essay on Wikipedia's success factors - you can read this at:
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/A_small_scale_study_of_Wikipedia
Probably more interesting than the essay itself are the responses I
got to my questionnaire, which are available in the appendices to the
essay.

Joseph Reagle has written some excellent papers on Wikipedia - the
first one here is a historical background to the development of
encyclopedias leading to Wikipedia:
http://reagle.org/joseph/2005/historical/digital-works.html
http://reagle.org/joseph/2004/agree/wikip-agree.html

There is really plenty written on Wikipedia (and its success) and you
can find these from wiki bibliographies, such as:
http://bibliography.wikimedia.de/
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Research_Bibliography
(you will be able to access far more papers than I can, seeing as you
speak German).

For me, the success of Wikipedia is based on its openness, ie. anyone
can edit (this is how people get involved, and thereby join the
community). But even this can be problematised - putting the focus on
Wikipedians, as you are doing, openness could also be viewed as how
open we are to criticism from other points of view, and how well we
work in a collaborative space. Pretty much any of your factors could
be the work of a BA/Master's/PhD dissertation in themselves :-)

You will have to decide how much and in what detail you want to focus
on any of these issues, based on your time and words available. All
the best with it..

Cormac (User:Cormaggio)


>
> The idea is that the Wiki-community of Wikipedians is a special group
> of people, who have special characteristcs. To account for these
> special characteristics, I have provided the following Factor
> Model:
>
> User factors: - Openness - Neutrality -
> Flat hierarchy- Computer Skills - Motivation -
>
> Knowledge factors: - Tacit & Explicit knowledge - Fast changing rate - Peer
> review
>
> Technology factors: - Easy usability - Fast access - Infinite reach,
> multilingual - Flexible structure - Safe
>
> All these factors play together to accomplish the goal of succesful
> knowledge creation and knowledge sharing.
>
> See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Success_factors
>
> Comments, feedback and own ideas are very welcome!
>
> Thank you very much in advance for your time,
> Hagen
>
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