Community, consensus, coercion, control: cs*w or how policy mediates mass participation

  • Authors:

  • Travis Kriplean;Ivan Beschastnikh;David W. McDonald;Scott A. Golder

  • Affiliations:

  • University of Washington, Seattle, WA;University of Washington, Seattle, WA;University of Washington, Seattle, WA;HP Labs, Palo Alto, CA

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 2007 international ACM conference on Supporting group work
  • Year:
  • 2007

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Abstract

When large groups cooperate, issues of conflict and control surface because of differences in perspective. Managing such diverse views is a persistent problem in cooperative group work. The Wikipedian community has responded with an evolving body of policies that provide shared principles, processes, and strategies for collaboration. We employ a grounded approach to study a sample of active talk pages and examine how policies are employed as contributors work towards consensus. Although policies help build a stronger community, we find that ambiguities in policies give rise to power plays. This lens demonstrates that support for mass collaboration must take into account policy and power.