Don't look now, but we've created a bureaucracy: the nature and roles of policies and rules in wikipedia

  • Authors:

  • Brian Butler;Elisabeth Joyce;Jacqueline Pike

  • Affiliations:

  • University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA;Edinboro University of Pennsylvania, Edinboro, PA, USA;University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
  • Year:
  • 2008

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Abstract

Wikis are sites that support the development of emergent, collective infrastructures that are highly flexible and open, suggesting that the systems that use them will be egalitarian, free, and unstructured. Yet it is apparent that the flexible infrastructure of wikis allows the development and deployment of a wide range of structures. However, we find that the policies in Wikipedia and the systems and mechanisms that operate around them are multi-faceted. In this descriptive study, we draw on prior work on rules and policies in organizations to propose and apply a conceptual framework for understanding the natures and roles of policies in wikis. We conclude that wikis are capable of supporting a broader range of structures and activities than other collaborative platforms. Wikis allow for and, in fact, facilitate the creation of policies that serve a wide variety of functions.