Logo image
Becoming Wikipedian: transformation of participation in a collaborative online encyclopedia
Conference proceeding

Becoming Wikipedian: transformation of participation in a collaborative online encyclopedia

Susan Bryant, Andrea Forte and Amy Bruckman
Proceedings of the 2005 international ACM SIGGROUP conference on supporting group work, pp 1-10
06 Nov 2005

Abstract

Wiki Wikipedia legitimate peripheral participation community activity theory
Traditional activities change in surprising ways when computer-mediated communication becomes a component of the activity system. In this descriptive study, we leverage two perspectives on social activity to understand the experiences of individuals who became active collaborators in Wikipedia, a prolific, cooperatively-authored online encyclopedia. Legitimate peripheral participation provides a lens for understanding participation in a community as an adaptable process that evolves over time. We use ideas from activity theory as a framework to describe our results. Finally, we describe how activity on the Wikipedia stands in striking contrast to traditional publishing and suggests a new paradigm for collaborative systems.

Metrics

13 Record Views
566 citations in Scopus

Details

Logo image