The People's Encyclopedia Under the Gaze of the Sages: a Systematic Review of Scholarly Research on Wikipedia
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View metadata,Downloaded citation and from similar orbit.dtu.dk papers on:at core.ac.uk Dec 20, 2017 brought to you by CORE provided by Online Research Database In Technology The People’s Encyclopedia Under the Gaze of the Sages: A Systematic Review of Scholarly Research on Wikipedia Okoli, Chitu; Mehdi, Mohamad; Mesgari, Mostafa; Nielsen, Finn Årup; Lanamäki, Arto Link to article, DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.2021326 Publication date: 2012 Document Version Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Link back to DTU Orbit Citation (APA): Okoli, C., Mehdi, M., Mesgari, M., Nielsen, F. Å., & Lanamäki, A. (2012). The People’s Encyclopedia Under the Gaze of the Sages: A Systematic Review of Scholarly Research on Wikipedia. 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The people’s encyclopedia under the gaze of the sages: A systematic review of scholarly research on Wikipedia Chitu Okoli John Molson School of Business, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada [email protected] Mohamad Mehdi Computer Science, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada [email protected] Mostafa Mesgari John Molson School of Business, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada [email protected] Finn Årup Nielsen DTU Informatics, Technical University of Denmark, Kongens Lyngby, Denmark [email protected] Arto Lanamäki Information Science and Media Studies, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway [email protected] Abstract Wikipedia has become one of the ten most visited sites on the Web, and the world’s leading source of Web reference information. Its rapid success has inspired hundreds of scholars from various disciplines to study its content, communication and community dynamics from various perspectives. This article presents a systematic review of scholarly research on Wikipedia. We describe our detailed, rigorous methodology for identifying over 450 scholarly studies of Wikipedia. We present the WikiLit website (http://wikilit.referata.com), where most of the papers reviewed here are described in detail. In the major section of this article, we then categorize and summarize the studies. An appendix features an extensive list of resources useful for Wikipedia researchers. Keywords: Wikipedia, systematic literature review, encyclopedias, Web 2.0, social media, online collaboration, mass collaboration, information retrieval, information extraction, natural language processing, ontologies, open content, Creative Commons, motivations, online culture, Web references Table of Contents The people’s encyclopedia under the gaze of the sages: A systematic review of scholarly research on Wikipedia ...................................................................................................................................................... 1 Abstract ......................................................................................................................................................... 1 Table of Contents .......................................................................................................................................... 1 Introduction ................................................................................................................................................... 4 Earlier Literature Reviews of Wikipedia Research ....................................................................................... 5 Early Review of Wikipedia as a Nascent Phenomenon (2006) ................................................................ 6 Wikipedia as a Textual Corpus (2009) ..................................................................................................... 6 Attempted Frontend to a Mathematical Dissertation (2010) ..................................................................... 7 Bibliometric Analysis of Research Related to Wikipedia (2011) ............................................................. 7 Wikipedia as an Input-Process-Output System (2012) ............................................................................. 8 Quantitative Studies of Wikipedia Participation (2012) ........................................................................... 8 Wikimedia Research Newsletter (Since 2011) ......................................................................................... 9 Future Literature Reviews (After 2012) .................................................................................................... 9 Systematic Review Methodology ................................................................................................................. 9 Research Questions ................................................................................................................................... 9 Protocol and Training ............................................................................................................................. 10 Practical Screen ....................................................................................................................................... 10 Searching for the Literature .................................................................................................................... 11 Supplementary Literature Searches ........................................................................................................ 13 Selective Search of Relevant Papers ................................................................................................... 13 Backward Citations ............................................................................................................................. 13 Conference Papers .............................................................................................................................. 13 Data Extraction ....................................................................................................................................... 14 Synthesis ................................................................................................................................................. 14 WikiLit: A Semantic MediaWiki of Wikipedia Research .......................................................................... 14 Extracted Research Data from the Publications ...................................................................................... 15 Navigating the WikiLit Site .................................................................................................................... 18 Using the WikiLit Site for Literature Reviews and Forward Citations................................................... 19 Findings from Scholarly Research on Wikipedia ....................................................................................... 20 General: About Wikipedia in General .................................................................................................... 22 Encyclopedia ....................................................................................................................................... 22 Epistemology ...................................................................................................................................... 23 Ethics................................................................................................................................................... 25 Literature Review ................................................................................................................................ 26 Research Platform ............................................................................................................................... 26 Wikipedia as a System ........................................................................................................................ 27 Miscellaneous Topics .......................................................................................................................... 27 Content: The Content of Wikipedia ........................................................................................................ 27 Quality................................................................................................................................................. 28 Size of Wikipedia ................................................................................................................................ 35 Other Content Topics .......................................................................................................................... 36 Corpus: Use of Wikipedia as a Textual Corpus ...................................................................................... 36 Information Retrieval .........................................................................................................................