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Coordinating the Commons: Diversity & Dynamics in Open Collaborations

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Coordinating the Commons: Diversity & Dynamics in Open Collaborations Coordinating the Commons: Diversity & Dynamics in Open Collaborations Jonathan T. Morgan A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Washington 2013 Reading Committee: Dr. Mark Zachry, Chair Dr. Cecilia R. Aragon, Member Dr. Robert M. Mason, Member Dr. David W. McDonald, Member Program Authorized to Offer Degree: Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering ©Copyright 2013 Jonathan T. Morgan 2 University of Washington Abstract Coordinating the Commons: Diversity & Dynamics in Open Collaborations Jonathan T. Morgan Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Associate Professor Mark Zachry Human Centered Design & Engineering The success of Wikipedia demonstrates that open collaboration can be an effective model for organizing geographically- distributed volunteers to perform complex, sustained work at a massive scale. However, Wikipedia’s history also demon- strates some of the challenges that large, long-term open collaborations face: the core community of Wikipedia editors—the volunteers who contribute most of the encyclopedia’s content and ensure that articles are correct and consistent—has been gradually shrinking since 2007, in part because Wikipedia’s social climate has become increasingly inhospitable for new- comers, female editors, and editors from other underrepresented demographics. Previous research studies of change over time within other work contexts, such as corporations, suggests that incremental processes such as bureaucratic formalization can make organizations more rule-bound and less adaptable—in effect, less open—as they grow and age. There has been little research on how open collaborations like Wikipedia change over time, and on the impact of those changes on the social dy- namics of the collaborating community and the way community members prioritize and perform work. Learning from Wik- ipedia’s successes and failures can help researchers and designers understand how to support open collaborations in other domains—such as Free/Libre Open Source Software, Citizen Science, and Citizen Journalism. In this dissertation, I examine the role of openness, and the potential antecedents and consequences of formalization, within Wikipedia through an analysis of three distinct but interrelated social structures: community-created rules within the Wikipedia policy environment, coordi- nation work and group dynamics within self-organized open teams called WikiProjects, and the socialization mechanisms that Wikipedia editors use to teach new community members how to participate. To inquire further, I have designed a new editor peer support space, the Wikipedia Teahouse, based on the findings from my empirical studies. The Teahouse is a vol- unteer-driven project that provides a welcoming and engaging environment in which new editors can learn how to be produc- tive members of the Wikipedia community, with the goal of increasing the number and diversity of newcomers who go on to make substantial contributions to Wikipedia. 3 4 For Davis E. Keeler 5 As conditions are equalized in a people, individuals appear smaller and society seems greater, or rather, each citizen, having become like all the others, is lost in the crowd, and one no longer perceives anything but the vast and magnificent image of the people itself. Alexis de Tocqueville Democracy in America, Volume II, Part II: On the Influence the Democratic Ideas and Sentiments Exert on Political Society Even though you try to put people under control, it is impossible. You cannot do it. The best way to control people is to en- courage them to be mischievous. Then they will be in control in a wider sense. To give your sheep or cow a large spacious meadow is the way to control him. So it is with people: first let them do what they want, and watch them. This is the best policy. To ignore them is not good. That is the worst policy. The second worst is trying to control them. The best one is to watch them, just to watch them, without trying to control them. Shunryu Suzuki Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind 6 Acknowledgements This work would not have been possible without the support of many individuals and several organizations. I have been for- tunate in my academic career so far; I have had a number of excellent mentors. First, I would like to thank my advisor, Mark Zachry, not only for teaching me how to be a better researcher, but also for serving as a Socrates to my Meno—patiently shepherding my vague, sometimes disjointed notions into research questions and helping me reign in my rambling manu- scripts (to some extent anyway). I would also like to thank all members of my dissertation committee, past and present: Ce- cilia Aragon, Robert Mason, David McDonald, Adam Moore, Karine Nahon, and Judy Ramey. And I would also like to ex- press my gratitude to Dan Cosley, Andrea Forte, Sean Goggins, Travis Kriplean, Cliff Lampe, Katie Panciera, and John Riedl, who provided feedback, intellectual guidance, and inspiration on this and other research projects. All of the research that contributed to and culminated in this dissertation was collaborative in nature. I couldn’t have accom- plished any of it without the dedication and intellectual contributions of numerous collaborators. I would first like to thank my collaborators from the University of Washington: Emily Bender, Lance Bennett, Alan Borning, Deen Freelon, Michael Gilbert, Jeff Hemsley, Mari Ostendorf, Meghan Oxley, Behzod Sirjani, Stephanie Steinhardt, and many others with whom I’ve worked, learned, and schemed along the way. A great deal of the research in this dissertation was performed with collab- orators outside of UW as well. I thank my colleagues at the Wikimedia Foundation, especially the Teahouse team—Siko Bouterse, Sarah Stierch, and Heather Walls—and everyone who participated in the 2011 Wikimedia Summer of Research, especially Stuart Geiger, Aaron Halfaker, Melanie Kill, and Maryana Pinchuk. I would also like to thank the Foundation it- self for providing me with countless opportunities to translate my geeky academic interests into real world impact. And of course, I offer my sincere gratitude to the Wikipedians I have known and worked with—I look forward to continuing our important work together. The entire faculty and staff of the UW Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering have made my graduate school experience easier and more engaging in countless ways. I would like to thank them all for supporting me in my transfor- mation from a clueless n00b to a bona fide HCI researcher. I also wish to acknowledge several other institutional sources of support. Thanks to the University of Washington College of Engineering for providing me with early support through a 2008 Clairmont L. Egtvedt Fellowship, and to IARPA and the National Science Foundation (Grants #IIS-0811210 and #IIS- 1162114) for funding that supported my research. Finally, I thank my family and friends, especially my mother and father, Diane Lantz and Barry Morgan, for encouraging me from an early age to look, learn, and ask questions. Thanks to my first mentor, Davis Keeler, for showing me how I might think, write, and live. Thanks to Alena Benson, Doug Divine, Toni Ferro, Karl Frantz, Elly Searle and all my other HCDE peeps, whose friendship has kept me relatively sane over the past five years. And finally my deepest thanks to Allison Kil- gore for her patience, companionship, intellectual curiosity, and sharp editor’s eye. 7 Table of contents ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .................................................................................................................................................... 7 TABLE OF CONTENTS ....................................................................................................................................................... 8 LIST OF TABLES ................................................................................................................................................................ 12 LIST OF FIGURES .............................................................................................................................................................. 13 CHAPTER 1 ......................................................................................................................................................................... 14 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................................................................ 14 SITUATING OPEN COLLABORATION ...................................................................................................................................................... 15 Defining open collaboration ............................................................................................................................................................ 16 Designing for openness ...................................................................................................................................................................... 17 RELATED WORK ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 18 Pitfalls and Unintended Consequences ....................................................................................................................................... 21 RESEARCH GOALS ...................................................................................................................................................................................
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