I don't know if you have heard of WikiMania conferences. Wikimania 2006 [1], the second annual international Wikimedia conference, was held August 4–6 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, hosted by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at the Harvard Law School campus. The list of presentations is online [2]. People in this list might be interested in the Track "Wiki Social Science" [3]. The meta page at wikimedia "Power structure" [4] is also very interesting, reporting the Wikipedia's (balanced?) mix of Anarchy, Precedent (tradition), Despotism, Democracy, Republic, Meritocracy, Plutocracy, Technocracy and more. If I might add some more links, a bit less about "social structure" and a bit more about "experts/non experts" issues, I suggest everybody to read "The Early History of Nupedia and Wikipedia: A Memoir" [5] [6] written by Larry Sanger, one of the moving forces behind the Nupedia project, from which Wikipedia originated. And also the comments of Clay Shirky about Sanger's new recent project, Citizendium, "Larry Sanger, Citizendium, and the Problem of Expertise" [7] and Sanger's response [8]. Well, I guess I included too many links but all of them are very intersting, IMHO. P. [1] http://wikimania2006.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page [2] http://wikimania2006.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proceedings:Index [3] http://wikimania2006.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wiki_Social_Science [4] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Power_structure [5] http://features.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/18/164213 [6] http://features.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/19/1746205&tid=95 [7] http://many.corante.com/archives/2006/09/18/larry_sanger_citizendium_and_the... [8] http://many.corante.com/archives/2006/09/20/larry_sanger_on_me_on_citizendiu... On 10/7/06, Barry Wellman <wellman@chass.utoronto.ca> wrote:
Having had several experiences with Wikipedia entries and edits this week, I am curious if anyone is doing research on:
the social structure and reward structure of Wikipedists -- item enterers, editing others, administrators, etc. (I don't know the structure well enough to know the nomenclature).
Barry Wellman _____________________________________________________________________
Barry Wellman S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology NetLab Director Centre for Urban & Community Studies University of Toronto 455 Spadina Avenue Toronto Canada M5S 2G8 fax:+1-416-978-7162 wellman at chass.utoronto.ca http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman for fun: http://chass.utoronto.ca/oldnew/cybertimes.php _____________________________________________________________________
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