1 5 Liquid collaboration Dariusz Jemielniak and Tomasz Raburski

Introduction Zygmunt Bauman is highly critical of the social media and the digital information technologies. He observed, for example, that ‘authoritarian, nay tyrannical regimes may beat the alleged freedom fighters at their own game, using the technology in which the apostles and panegyrists of the internet ’s democratic bias vested their hopes ’ (Bauman 2012 n.p.). In his work on ethics Bauman has also claimed that the ‘adiaphorization of human action seems to be a necessary constitutive act of any supra-individual, social totality; of all social organization for that matter ’ (ibid. 1991: 146), highlighting the ‘use of technology as a form of societal rule ’ (ibid.: 150) as an example. Sceptical of the ‘net delusion ’ (Morozov 2012), he perceives the development of pseudo- egalitarian, but inherently corporate and profit-oriented, social networks as rapidly advancing the liquid surveillance (Bauman and Lyon 2013) of the contemporary world. With this critique in mind, we believe that the Baumanian concepts of liquid modernity (Bauman 1998) and liquid life (ibid. 2005) – liquid as in uncertain and insecure modernity (especially with regard to ethics and trust); flexible work-life and organizational forms; global-local economy and politics – offer an attractive interpretive key for studying open collaboration communities. Open collaboration communities, including expert-driven projects such as the FLOSS (Free/Libre/Open Source Software) movement, as well as non- expert-driven projects such as those developed by Wikimedia, are often more successful in the open capitalist market than their commercial counterparts (Weber 2004; Benkler 2011). And yet, they partly evolve from the radically anti-capitalist and anti-consumer culture (Lessig 2001; Berry 2008; Zittrain 2008), and they openly question the neo-liberal economic paradigm of self- interest (Ostrom 2000; Benkler 2011), even though they sometimes rely lar- gely also on a radically libertarian ideology (Stallman and Gay 2009; Ritzer and Jurgenson 2010) and use market metaphors (Raymond 1999). In this chapter we would like to present the results of an analysis of the social organization of , the largest collaborative movement of humankind, based on the theoretical framework offered by Bauman. The

86 Dariusz Jemielniak and Tomasz Raburski development of an info-communal approach (Barbrook 2000; Hardt and Negri 2001; O ’Neil 2011; Firer-Blaess and Fuchs 2012) is possible as a result of what we propose to call ‘liquid collaboration ’, which relies on short-term fragile interactions, and non-personal and transient cooperation, all directly related to virtual and liquid identities (Bauman 1982; Clegg and Baumeler 2010). The bulk of content development is carried out without any interac- tions. Contrary to popular belief, the urge to cooperate in Wikipedia often arises as a result of the beginning of a conflict, and ebbs away on its conclu- sion. As hypothesized by Bauman, the liquid mode of work and social inter- action is also marked by peer control and organizational surveillance. Moreover, as Pariser ’s (2011) recent work points out, the idea of free access to information via the Internet is threatened by ‘filter bubbles ’ which monopolize the distribution of knowledge. Yet, as already noted, the Internet is still championed as being deeply rooted in the ideology of freedom and anti- capitalism (Coleman 2013).

Wikipedia as an open collaboration project Virtual open collaboration communities are a relatively new phenomenon, yet they have been a subject of inquiry in organizations studies, especially in comparisons to their commercial counterparts (Weber 2004; Benkler 2011). The evolution of the FLOSS movement has been a particular focus of aca- demic inquiry (Raymond 1999; Ciesielska 2010). Its influence on culture, copyrights, consumer co-production, as well as on boundaries of public and private spheres is di fficult to ignore (Lessig 2001; Coleman and Hill 2004; Berry 2008; Lessig 2008; Potts et al . 2008; Hill and Monroy-Hernández 2013). Yet, although expert open collaboration communities have been studied in some depth (Hippel 1988; Lakhani and Von Hippel 2003; Dahlander et al . 2008), the non-expert ones, such as Wikipedia, have only recently become the topic of academic research. They are unique in many respects. For instance, even though experts participating in open collaboration projects, such as open source software development, often do not receive any financial benefits for their contributions, they may still benefit from their work professionally in terms of recognition, professional networking, or possibilities to build a solid resumé (Wasko and Faraj 2000). This is not the case with non-expert com- munities, such as Wikipedia, which cannot be regarded as a guaranteed per- manent source of work or income. As a result, the motives to participate in Wikipedia, as well as collaboration strategies and trajectories, are significantly distinctive (Ci ffolilli 2003; Yang and Lai 2010; Sun et al . 2011). Although cooperation practices in FLOSS have been analysed, the conclusions do not apply to non-expert communities in general, and Wikipedia in particular, especially when qualitative methods are employed. As we will show in this chapter, the development of Wikipedia cannot be construed as a consistently collaborative endeavour, nor is it a solitary task. It

Liquid collaboration 87 is driven by contingent, short-term, transient, and often random alliances and collaborations. The collaborative development of content is fuelled by con- flicts and by other people ’s mistakes. Additionally, collaboration is typical for interactions aimed at establishing rules (bureaucratization), rather than at writing articles (developing content). We believe that the notion of ‘liquid collaboration ’, drawing on Bauman ’s concept, helps to explain this phenomenon better than the above-mentioned somewhat one-sided interpretations of the social order of Wikipedia.

Research methods Wikipedia was inaugurated in January 2001 and was an almost instant suc- cess. The , which operates some of the largest colla- boratively edited reference projects in the world, has launched hundreds of foreign-language versions of Wikipedia, as well as other projects (, , etc.). The largest and the oldest version of Wikipedia was devel- oped in English, has over four million articles, contains 50 times more words than the Encyclopedia Britannica (Wikipedia 2013i), and maintains a com- parable editorial quality (Reavley et al . 2012). However, the total number of pages on the English-language version of Wikipedia exceeds 23 million (Wikipedia 2013j). This includes discussion pages of articles, redirects, as well as cate- gories, but still the majority of this content is community life. Wikipedians discuss, joke, quarrel, dispute rules and create them. They even have a regular online newspaper (ibid. 2013h)! Hundreds of millions of words represent an online culture, where interactions are almost entirely textual. Studying it is theoretically possible without insider knowledge; however, the practicalities of choosing the important debates, understanding their context, as well as the specificity of this online community make it di fficult for non-Wikipedians. For this reason, this chapter is based on a longitudinal, ethnographic study of the Wikipedia community conducted by two researchers, who became Wikipedians themselves (and in doing so took on several community roles within the project as well as becoming elected administrators with five-digit edit counts, etc.) Although we are aware of the risks of ‘going native ’ (Lobo 1990; Walsh 2004) and of the advice to be ‘professional strangers ’ (Agar 1980), we recognize the methodological benefits of conducting research from within the studied culture (Hayano 1979; Tresch 2001; Sperschneider and Bagger 2003), while keeping an ‘anthropological frame of mind ’ (Czarniawska- Joerges 1992), and the orientation on reflexive practice (Czarniawska 2001; Jemielniak 2006). Even though some researchers insist that the study of online communities is fundamentally di fferent from that of standard ethnographies (Buchanan 2004), we believe that ‘qualitative researchers who have thought carefully about internet ethnography accept that it should be employed and understood as part of a commitment to existing theoretical traditions ’ (Travers 2009: 172). While di fferences do exist, similarities prevail and, ‘virtual

88 Dariusz Jemielniak and Tomasz Raburski ethnographies are just ethnographies ’ (Randall et al . 2007: 293), although they require adaptation of tools (Hine 2008; Hancock et al . 2010), which is a characteristic of traditional ethnographies as well. Our project disciplinary affiliation is the ethnography of organization (Schwartzman 1993; Wright 1994; Watson 1995; Kostera 2007), and typically for this field we relied on a triangulation of methods. In particular, we relied on carefully selected case studies (Eisenhardt 1989; Denzin and Lincoln 2003; Stake 2005), exemplifying the phenomena noted by us in the process of con- ducting participant and non-participant observations within the studied community (Emerson et al . 2001; Delamont 2004). This chapter forms part of a larger project, which also involved open, unstructured interviews (Alvesson 2003; Darlington and Scott 2003). How- ever, they have been used only for grounding our findings and directing our research, and were not carried out especially for this volume.

‘Late Modernity ’: a case study In this analysis, we examine the development of an article that has been published in the English-language version of Wikipedia entitled ‘Late Modernity’. The article is neither too long nor overly controversial, and provides a good starting point for studying the patterns of content creation in this online encyclopedia. We are not interested in the quality of the article, nor whether it has been completed. Instead, we focus on interactions between the individuals who took part in its development. Our observations are not anecdotal, since they are part of a larger ethnographic study, and we believe that the presented case is a good example of processes taking place within the Wikipedia community. ‘Late Modernity ’ was created on 12 February 2006. Initially, it was very short, comprising only two sections and a list of references (Beck, Giddens and Lash). Its creator, Vir, was a newcomer. His entries, although academi- cally correct, did not meet the standards of formatting and style required by Wikipedia. Additionally, ‘Late Modernity ’ lacked internal links and was not properly categorized. In Wikipedian parlance such an article is known as a ‘stub ’ – a flawed and incomplete work, which requires further improvement or attention from more experienced editors (in Wikipedia, anyone who con- tributes to an article, either by writing the content, rephrasing, or removing it, as well as making any other alterations, is called an ‘editor ’ – including anonymous users). Since its creation, ‘Late Modernity ’ has been edited 67 times, by 40 distinct authors (including six bots). 2 As a result of gradual development, in its pre- sent form it is six times longer than the initial version. More than 3,000 readers visit the page monthly. However, so far, only five editors have made substantial contributions to its content. In Wikipedia, each entry creates a new version of an article. Most of the entries develop or correct previous ones. Entries that rewrite the entire article are rare. In the case of ‘Late Modernity ’ there has only been one such major revision.

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Most of the edits were minor and stylistic, involving corrections to the spelling and punctuation, or changing the formatting. At the time of its creation, ‘Late Modernity ’ was an orphaned article, linked to only two other Wikipedia articles (about modernity and postmodernity), and had no backlinks. As a consequence, it was very di fficult to find and was situated on the margins of Wikipedia. In years that followed, the number of links grew, and the article was gradually drawn deeper and deeper into the web of Wikipedia. What is interesting here, throughout this period there was not a single trace of collaboration between the editors. The quality of the article was not dis- cussed anywhere. No collective action was undertaken in order to develop it. The article seems to be the result of the combined efforts of multiple editors working alone, with no communication between them, and only reacting to the actions of others. This lack of interaction may have its roots in the non- controversiality of the topic. Controversies and conflicts attract editors as well as public attention, and may result in the rapid development of such articles. This means that parts of Wikipedia, where conflicts are concentrated (reli- gious and political issues, celebrities, culture wars, national identities) draw more tra ffic and in consequence are better developed. The majority of articles, e.g. those about biological species, villages, or sportsmen raise no controversy and their development is highly dependent on the individual efforts of a few editors. Most contributions are asynchronous in the sense that they are per- ceived as being non-interactive (an editor often makes changes that she or he believes will simply improve the article and does not expect a follow-up dis- cussion), and even if they are considered to be potentially interactive, the time span for any reply is infinite. However, the divisive topics are edited with high frequency, interactivity, and sometimes are close to a synchronous collaborative/ disruptive work. In the given example, in June 2010 user Andregoes declared on the article talk page that he was willing to write a section about Zygmunt Bauman, and asked for help. This made perfect sense: after all, as Wikipedia is a colla- borative project, it would be reasonable to assume that editors announce their editing intentions and gather cooperators. However, what Andregoes may have been unaware of, even though several thousand visitors view the dis- cussed article every month, very few visit the talk page. It should not be sur- prising, then, that nobody answered his appeal, and as a result he never started the planned revision. This example shows a common misconception about Wikipedia shared by visitors and novice editors, who initially still believe in the collaborative nature of the project. Yet, a vast number of cooperation requests remain not only unaddressed, but often even unanswered, and the editors are left to their own devices. As a result, most of the work in the project is done by indivi- duals working alone. This, though, does not mean that Wikipedia is created by solitary individuals who are free agents. The bulk of social interactions and collaboration takes place elsewhere, outside of the articles and their talk

90 Dariusz Jemielniak and Tomasz Raburski pages. What is most important, is that Wikipedia ’s technology and institu- tions provide the means for aggregation and structuration of individuals ’ work (Geiger 2011). This process is invisible to outsiders or beginners, and to trace it we have to delve a little deeper into the history of Wikipedia articles, taking into consideration the broader context. Entries follow entries, in a harmony of action and reaction. Erroneous entries are followed by corrections. Editors draw the attention of other edi- tors, who perform checks on them and react. It is particularly noteworthy that edits carried out by anonymous users or newcomers are the object of intense scrutiny by the more experienced users. This process can be described by the formula ‘entries beget entries ’ (Wilkinson and Huberman 2007). In the case of ‘Late Modernity ’, two of the five leading contributors were newcomers, not fully socialized into the Wikipedia community, and were not aware of the standards. The creation of the article by inexperienced Vir was followed by the sequence of minor edits by several users and by one major development by an experienced editor, Piotrus (Wikipedia 2006 – 9). After these corrections had been made, ‘Late Modernity ’ was two times longer and much improved in keeping with Wikipedia ’s standards. Internal links, categories, references and redirections (e.g. from liquid moder- nity) were added and the article became well integrated with the rest of Wikipedia. There are several systems of internal quality evaluation in Wikipedia. One of them is based on the infrastructure of WikiProjects – voluntary groups of editors who want to work together in teams in order to develop specific topic areas (Wikipedia 2013k). Many WikiProjects have their own systems of eva- luation, ranking the articles according to their quality and importance to the project. WikiProjects and evaluation systems are supposed to foster coopera- tion and to guide the development of the articles. However, they are highly ine ffective, due to the contingent and transient nature of its members (typi- cally, most people who sign up for WikiProjects do not inform the other col- laborators when they reduce their level of activity on Wikipedia, and as a result many WikiProjects are active only in theory). In the case of ‘Late Modernity ’, soon after its creation one of the members of the WikiProject on ‘Sociology ’ included an evaluation template on its dis- cussion page (Wikipedia 2007). It was the only sign of action from this WikiProject. Since then, the template has not been updated, even though the article was completely rewritten and clearly should have been re-evaluated. This situation is by no means unusual. WikiProjects are platforms for discussion about general issues, rather than cooperation and coordination centres. Wikipedia policies recommend that editors consult other collaborators on a project before writing about con- troversial subjects or making sweeping changes to important articles. How- ever, editors often do not follow this recommendation, because the institutional structures of WikiProjects are very weak, and heavily dependent on constantly changing engagement of individuals.

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Wikipedia is a project run by volunteers. The population of editors and the intensity of their engagement are constantly changing (Bryant et al . 2005). Therefore, one can never be sure who is active, and who can be asked for help or advice. For experienced users it is often much easier and faster to communicate directly with each other without the mediation of WikiProjects. Successful WikiProjects rely on small, tightly knit groups of users, accompanied by a wider circle of more occasional editors at large. Managing a WikiProject requires more work than developing articles. It is more about setting standards, making technical corrections, and organizing existing content. Most of the heavy edits are made by the experienced and regular users (Panciera et al . 2009). There are relatively few such editors and they are prone to burnout. Therefore, only the largest editions of Wikipedia (the English-, German- or French-language versions) carry active WikiProjects covering all the major topic areas. In the smaller language versions, collaboration is uncommon and highly unstable, and even when WikiProjects are created, their potential remains largely unfulfilled. 3 There are other tools geared at fostering cooperation, but they are similarly ine fficient. For instance, editors can use alert templates to inform other read- ers that an article has some issues (e.g. it is not written from a neutral point of view or it contains dubious facts). The articles with the same templates appear in the administrative categories (e.g. articles requiring cleanup). Templates are supposed to be instruments of cooperation: some editors include them in the articles, so that others know what requires attention. However, this procedure is very ine ffective. One of the alert templates was included in ‘Late Modernity ’. In June 2009 user Febles90 added a long passage about modernity (Wikipedia 2009). This was his only contribution to Wikipedia and it bore all the hallmarks of being that of a newcomer. The text was not formatted and lacked the internal links. Febles90 did not care to integrate the new section into the existing article. Following his (or her) edit, ‘Late Modernity’ consisted of two separate sections. By adding new information, Febles90 significantly lowered the article ’s overall encyclopedic quality. The first reaction appeared some three months later, when an anonymous user added a template informing readers that the article should be cleaned up. However, there is no sign that adding this template helped in any way to improve the article. In 2010 ‘Late Modernity ’ was edited many times, and the ill-fitting section remained untouched. Eventually, in August of that year Omnipaedista, a very experienced and active user, deleted it, making the article a harmonious whole again. However, he did not remove the template. We can assume then, that it was not necessarily the template that made Omnipaedista clean up ‘Late Modernity ’. The template remained in the article for another year, until it was removed by user Jabobisq, who made significant changes to the text. As can be seen from this case (typical of the editing pattern on Wikipedia), the article ’s and user ’s discussion pages, WikiProjects and templates are

92 Dariusz Jemielniak and Tomasz Raburski ine ffective as instruments of cooperation. Cooperation on Wikipedia rarely takes place, and relies on the vast number of edits and active users: it is con- tingent rather than embedded in the social structure of the medium. Although many of the editors remain silent, and although the institutional instruments of fostering cooperation are ine ffective, the huge tra ffic on Wikipedia is su ffi- cient to make development possible. Cooperation, whenever it does occur, is unstable and short-lived. This is not to say that the Wikipedia community lacks interaction. Quite on the contrary: most of the interactions take place outside of articles and their talk pages, on the Wikipedia metapages, which are intended for the dis- cussion of policies, rules, community elections, etc. Users taking part in these discussions have at least some editing experience and knowledge about the community. They are also well socialized into the consensually established rules and standards, which play an important role in the development of the articles. These participatively established rules and policies constitute the fra- mework within which individuals work. Deciding which topics are encyclo- pedic, which formats they should adhere to, how the information should be presented etc. is a participative process. Wikipedians spend a lot of time dis- cussing these issues and some of the debates on rules extend to hundreds of thousands of words, the sheer number of rules is also astonishing (there are more than 2,000 in the English-language edition of Wikipedia, 50 core poli- cies, and a word count of close to 150,000 words – Wikipedia 2013f). It seems that while article collaboration involves solitary work, the development of rules and procedures, and general the bureaucratization of organization is collaborative, and provides the social glue for the community. However, a side effect of this is that newcomers find themselves in a highly institutionalized environment; while they can freely choose which topics to edit, they are still told how to do it (Halfaker et al . 2011), and may perceive the established system as being arbitrary and exclusive (Stegbauer and Currie 2011). Quite clearly, the effective channels of collaboration are not easily obser- vable by outsiders. They are also far from what the prophets of Web 2.0 are suggesting (Tapscott and Williams 2006). New forms of online cooperation as exemplified by Wikipedia, may be better described as individual work carried out in a shared environment. This common environment structures the edits, making constant communication unnecessary, and is itself collaboratively developed. This constitutes a system of liquid collaboration, whereby tran- sient and short-term collaboration patterns occur on the meta level, while developing the encyclopedia is mainly individual. The nature of cooperation in online communities has been an object of close scrutiny and ongoing debate. It is widely acknowledged that the Internet may be considered an experimental field for the new forms of organization, information management or power structures. In his highly influential essay, Eric S. Raymond compared two forms of organization in the software industry: cathedral and bazaar (Raymond [1999] 2004). The cathedral model was implemented by the commercial software corporations, whereby the final product

Liquid collaboration 93 is developed by hierarchical and closed groups. Raymond contrasted it with the model implemented by the Linux communities. These open collaboration projects are decentralized, inclusive and teeming with social life. Although Raymond ’s terms originally referred only to the organization of software development, his texts were read in a wider context, and the bazaar became a common metaphor for other open collaboration projects. Some authors claim that Wikipedia should be considered to be an example of the bazaar model (Poe 2006). We posit that this metaphor is misleading, and that the forms of collaboration in Wikipedia are unique to this community. It is true that Wikipedia is decentralized and inclusive, although there are severe entry barriers, power disparities and vague, liquid hierarchies (Jemielniak 2014). However, in contrast to the bazaar model, editing Wikipedia is much more ordered. Although editors are free to choose what to edit, the how is highly structured. Wikipedia ’s rules and technology form the backbone of the project. New editors are forced to coexist and socialize, or they are marginalized or exclu- ded. Forks (alternative versions of open collaboration projects launched by dissenting editors), although technically and legally possible, are socially unworkable. The most famous fork (of Spanish Wikipedia, the Enciclopedia Libre Universal ) was actually an act of dissent, and remained much less developed (Enyedy and Tkacz 2011). The power of social norms and techno- logical infrastructure is becoming ever stronger as the project grows older. They are the most solid part of the project, as the human element is in constant motion. Raymond ’s bazaar evokes the image of Levantine communities, vibrant with life, and leaving much space for individual negotiations and arrangements. Wikipedia resembles a modern marketplace, where sellers may choose what to sell, but the organization of the place is hard to change. The liquid character of Wikipedia work is further deepened by the system of social control used in this community. Every change in Wikipedia is documented, and is closely watched by other editors. All changes appear in the ‘Recent Changes ’ log, which is patrolled by bots and editors searching for acts of vandalism (Wikipedia 2013g). Furthermore, every Wikipedian can easily keep track of changes on the pages she or he has on his or her watch list. Wikipedia is thus a perfect example of panoptic mechanisms in modern societies (Foucault 1977). Everything is visible and everybody is watched. The system of universal surveillance is one of the fundamental inner mechanisms of Wikipedia and the cornerstone of its success. Looking through the history of ‘Late Modernity ’, we can observe how important the mechanism was to the development of the article. Most entries stem from other entries (Wilkinson and Huberman 2007). Typically, major developments trigger a series of minor edits, especially if they are carried out by the newcomers, who may not be aware of the internal rules and standards of editing, or not necessarily accept them. Newcomers to Wikipedia do not format their edits properly, do not add internal links, and do not correctly categorize new content (all in the sense of compliance with

94 Dariusz Jemielniak and Tomasz Raburski the standards agreed upon by the experienced editors), but even the more experienced editors frequently make minor errors to larger edits, which are later corrected by others. The flawed entries draw the attention of the watch- ers, who are more in touch with such issues. Some even specialize in mon- itoring pages rather than writing new content. However, as they react to errors in an article, they still seldom interact with others. Seemingly, in such projects as Wikipedia, people do not have to commu- nicate about the knowledge they produce. Individual edits are aggregated and formed by the shared institutional and technological structures. Instead of interacting with people, users react to their entries. Users are not compelled to engage with the community. Technology is the lynchpin of Wikipedia’s stabi- lity and continuity. As long as the tra ffic is high, social ties may remain weak. Liquid modernity marks an era of loneliness, when individuals follow their individual goals, and most relationships are superficial (Bauman 2003, 2005). Even more interestingly, the main incentive to collaborate comes not from a will to achieve a common goal, but from the conflicts. To understand this, we have to leave ‘Late Modernity ’ as a studied example and move to cases that are more complicated, to show other possible collaborative trajectories. Con- flicts in the community were the object of numerous studies in recent years (Famiglietti 2011b; Niesyto 2011; Jemielniak 2014). However, it must be recalled that they constitute only a fraction of the edits. Conflicts arise in many areas of Wikipedia, but they are endemic to the controversial issues, recent information, and some meta pages (e.g. the pages where the possible deletion of articles is discussed. See, for example, Famiglietti 2011a: 203 –50; Keegan et al . 2011; Wikipedia 2013e). Wikipedia conflicts vary substantially in depth and scale. The conflicts on the meta pages resemble those that can be found on the Internet forums; however, their content is curbed and watched diligently by administrators. Conflicts arise from divergent perceptions, values and worldviews. Most of them are based on users ’ offline identities. Despite the fact, that the policy of neutrality is one of the fundamental principles of Wikipedia, political ideol- ogies, ethnicity, religious beliefs or even economic interests play a crucial role in the way articles are developed (Hafner 2007). In the case of a conflict, the like-minded editors tend to take a common stand, e.g. supporting each other in discussions. This is one of the scenarios when temporary cooperation is highly probable. As well as the proactive editors who take the lead in discus- sions, there are always many more editors, who make occasional comments or edits and the wider, silent audience. However, it would be wrong to assume that offline identities determine the online behaviour of users, because they are mediated by the social institutions and online roles and identities (Welser et al . 2011). Editors have strong opi- nions about Wikipedia, its future and their involvement in its development. These opinions provide a strong basis for group identities. For example, the most notable tensions exist between the proponents of ‘deletionism ’ and ‘inclusionism ’ (Carr 2011; Wikipedia 2013a). According to the former, the

Liquid collaboration 95 notability standards of Wikipedia should be very liberal. According to the latter, Wikipedia should have clear and strict policies about accepting articles. Users also vary in their understanding of some of Wikipedia ’s substantial principles and policies (in particular its neutral point of view policy and ver- ifiability policy, see ibid. 2013c). These opinions about Wikipedia are very important factors, and play a pivotal role in many discussions. Another impor- tant factor is what motivates editors to participate in Wikipedia (Rafaeli and Ariel 2008). On this basis ephemeral parties, factions and coalitions emerge, some of them exotic and unusual. A long-standing conflict existed between a small number of highly prolific editors, working on the Polish-language edition of Wikipedia, who were Jehovah ’s Witnesses, and a loose coalition comprising the members of several Christian denominations, atheists, deletionists and the advocates of the high quality standards of Wikipedia (2009 –12). The mem- bers of the coalition highlighted the scandalous errors, misrepresentations and distortions of the opposite party, which successfully led to the removal of many of its contributions. This effort consisted of checking dubious content, confronting the references (which included searching the library archives in several cities), correcting some of the articles, and advocating for the dele- tion of the rest. At some point, another Jehovah ’s Witness joined the coalition, claiming that his/her denomination should not be regarded as responsible for the harmful edits of some of its members. Some of the members of the coa- lition dropped their support fearing that it would turn into an anti-religious crusade. Some of the most interesting cases of conflicts on the English-language edition of Wikipedia are listed on the ‘lamest edit wars ’ page (Wikipedia 2013b). In many of these cases, the di fferences between the parties are deeply rooted in their worldviews and there is no hope for conflict resolution. The examples include the numerous disputes about the nationality of great his- torical figures (Chopin, Freddie Mercury or Orpheus), names of the places (Gdan´ sk/Danzig, Derry/Londonderry, Sea of Japan/East Sea). In most of these cases cooperation means support for the conflict. It does not necessarily result in the development of an article. In time, conflicting parties may find a way out from the vicious circle of mutual reversions and write a detailed sec- tion in the article, describing the controversies in detail. The most fierce con- flicts can result in hundreds of pages of discussion. In ‘The Iraq War: A Historiography of Wikipedia Changelogs ’, James Bridle (2013), a writer and publisher, gathered all changes made in the ‘Iraq War ’ article which appeared on English Wikipedia from December 2004 to November 2009 and published it in a book consisting of 12 volumes (7,000 pages). The purpose of this artistic project was to show the complexity and agonistic nature of the process of knowledge production in contemporary times. Finally, some major edit wars also engage the non-Wikipedians. 4 An edit war over the nationality of Nicolaus Copernicus is ongoing. Three main standpoints are represented: that he was Polish, German, and that the

96 Dariusz Jemielniak and Tomasz Raburski concept of nationality is irrelevant in this context (Wikipedia 2013d). Conflict has spread to other foreign-language editions (mainly the Polish and German ), and has been publicized outside the community, attracting the self- proclaimed defenders of national interest (Wolski 2012). These anon- ymous users did not communicate and collaborate with other users, but were important as supporters of their respective causes.

Conclusions There is a common perception of Wikipedia as strongly oriented towards collaboration and collective production (Tapscott and Williams 2006). Its collaborative organization is even described as a model for a new form of social interaction, possibly leading to a redefinition of basic economic assump- tions (Benkler 2006; Shirky 2009). We believe that such a view is overly sim- plified. There is scarcely a common denominator or ideology, shared by all the editors. Their identities, motivations and goals are highly diverse. Wikipedia is yet another example of late modern individualization, whereby communities are loosely knitted together by technological structures (Bauman 1998). However, we also view the interpretation of open collaboration as a form of ‘networked individualism ’ (Wellman 2002), relying mainly on collected indi- vidual contributions, but which are equally misleading. Conflicts and con- troversies are not destructive to the community, but they contribute greatly to the quality and neutrality of the content. The analysis in this chapter shows that orderly collaboration in Wikipedia is a rare event, especially in the case of article development. WikiProjects, coordination through discussion pages, systems of warning and evaluation templates, are important in the development of the project, but are highly ine ffective. In contrast to the more solid forms of collaboration, Wikipedia does not require lasting commitments, and ties with other users may be very weak. Thousands of entries are introduced by anonymous or casual editors. Even the most active or recognized editors may easily quit the project or change their editing patterns without giving notice of their intentions. Liquidity applies not only to the collaboration, but also to the ever changing content of Wikipedia. Each editor has to confront the uncertainty of whether his input will be revised or whether his work will be futile. Wikipedia is a work in progress, a constant flow of edits and editors. The activity of the editors is constantly fluctuating. Although a large pro- portion of the contributions comes from experienced and regular editors, newcomers and anonymous users also play a very important role. Yet, their activities are hard to predict. Communication with them is di fficult or impossible. However, their edits contribute to the development of the articles, because they are ordered and aggregated by the common technological and institutional framework, rather than thanks to any collaborative efforts. Most of the edits in Wikipedia come from solitary work of individuals. Editors do not communicate with each other, and do not make collective

Liquid collaboration 97 plans about content development. Cooperation in article development, when it occurs, is a result of two main reasons: errors and conflicts. Errors give rise to series of corrections, coordinated through the recent changes log. The deeper collaboration develops in the situations of conflict, when opposing factions arise and there is a need for establishing a temporary political sup- port for represented viewpoints. In these conflicts, editors indeed consistently support each other, although the alliances are transient in their nature, and even though some marks of the division of labour may be observed, the parties remain highly unstable. All these observations lead to the conclusion that cooperation on Wikipedia has a liquid character. The social system of Wikipedia is so successful pre- cisely because it is neither traditionally collaborative nor traditionally individual. Instead, it relies on what we propose to call a liquid collaboration. Wikipedia is a highly collaborative community in terms of the establishment of rules and structures. In this sense, it is radically participative, but also radically bureaucratized. It alienates outsiders and is detached from common sense (Bauman [1989] 2000). At the same time, Wikipedia is a highly individualistic community of atomized editors, marked by the frailty of social bonds (ibid. 2003). Hidden behind their avatar personas, and marked by late modern contingency (ibid. 1998), the ‘collaborators ’ cannot predict if their supporters will consistently continue to edit (people cease to edit Wikipedia without saying good-bye), or even whether their questions and comments are going to be read by the addressees, leaving them in a state of high uncertainty (ibid. 2007). In a community where there is no sure expectation of a reply, identities are fluid and most of the work is solitary, and the technological interface of interac- tions highly determines a low trust environment (Latusek and Jemielniak 2007), the only source of stability is introduced by rules, and the collaborative process of their development. Yet, this liquidity determines also the attractiveness of such a form of cooperation. We believe that this liquid collaboration model of Wikipedia may be characteristic of a new form of social cooperation, emerging in late modernity, and calls for further research in the area.

Notes 1 This paper was originally developed with Lena Olaison and Bent Meier Sørensen, who could not carry on due to other commitments. The authors would like to thank them sincerely for their ideas, input and generosity in allowing us to continue the development of the paper. Dariusz Jemielniak ’s participation in the project was made possible thanks to a research grant from the Polish National Science Centre (no. UMO-2012/05/E/HS4/01498). 2 Many Wikipedia articles are much more complex. E.g. World War II has been edited more than 22,000 times by more than 7,000 users. The problems and con- troversies pertaining to its content have been extensively discussed. However inter- esting such discussions and conflicts might be, they are not typical of the content of most articles.

98 Dariusz Jemielniak and Tomasz Raburski 3 This has been the fate of the WikiProject on anthropology in the Polish-language edition of Wikipedia, for example, which was initiated by one of the authors of this chapter. 4 On a side note, there are also cases of cooperation that start and are coordinated beyond Wikipedia. The Postcolonial Digital Humanities is an interesting example of such an undertaking. One of its goals is to rewrite Wikipedia articles in order to increase the presence of non-European and American global regions. See: http:// dhpoco.org/rewriting-wikipedia.

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