Purpose -Social media platforms allow near-unfettered creation and exchange of user generated content (UGC). Drawing from network science, the purpose of this paper is to examine whether high and low quality UGC differ in their connectivity structures in Wikipedia (which consists of interconnected user generated articles). Design/methodology/approach -Using Featured Articles as a proxy for high quality, a network analysis was undertaken of the revision history of six different language Wikipedias, to offer a network-centric explanation for the emergence of quality in UGC. Findings -The network structure of interactions between articles and contributors plays an important role in the emergence of quality. Specifically the analysis reveals that high-quality articles cluster in hubs that span structural holes.Research limitations/implications -The analysis does not capture the strength of interactions between articles and contributors. The implication of this limitation is that quality is viewed as a binary variable. Extensions to this research will relate strength of interactions to different levels of quality in UGC. Practical implications -The findings help harness the "wisdom of the crowds" effectively. Organisations should nurture users and articles at the structural hubs from an early stage. This can be done through appropriate design of collaborative knowledge systems and development of organisational policies to empower hubs. Originality/value -The network centric perspective on quality in UGC and the use of a dynamic modelling tool are novel. The paper is of value to researchers in the area of social computing and to practitioners implementing and maintaining such platforms in organisations.

Wikipedia, the user led and monitored "open" encyclopedia has been an undoubted popular success. Of particular interest are the diffusion process of the innovation throughout the "contributor" community, and the question as to why unpaid, often well qualified, volunteers contribute content and time. Explanations for 'altruistic' contributor behavior based on the positivistic paradigm, and with roots in organizational psychology, while heavily researched and documented, have not been readily transferable to quantitative models of sufficient predictive value, in relation to Wikipedia's metrics. For despite the wide range of types, ages, locations and motivations of its contributors and seekers, investigators on Wikipedia have identified certain definite and often surprisingly universal trends ('laws') in its overall growth curve, organization structure, community and article formation.Models based on aggregated top-level relationships between entities on and around wikipedia suffer from assuming relationships between these entities as inputs to the wikipedia process, rather than emergent phenomena that evolve and change with the output. We argue for an Agent Based Model of Wikipedia, with the end objective of our work being a tool with diagnostic and/or prescriptive value for decision makers in organizations using or planning to use Knowledge Management Systems.

Automation and Information Systems (IS) implementation in the construction industry have evolved in scope and scale of effects over the years. With their growing importance, there is a need for a more practical IS planning approach. Along with the alignment of Information Technology Strategy with the overall corporate strategy of the firm, the Critical Success Factor method, the Value Chain method and other Opportunity frameworks emphasize the prioritization of the key processes for Information Systems planning. The effects of information technology on organizational hierarchy, internal power structures and control flows have been well documented. In the specifics pertaining to the construction industry, this involves a considerably risky transition from a multilevel hierarchy organizational structure to a relatively decentralized, flat organization. This paper presents a decision theoretic framework for Information Systems planning in the construction industry. The objective is to provide a comprehensive and unified approach for analysis and evaluation of the roles, scale and scope of Information Technology in the construction firm. This presupposes elicitation of requirements from a diverse set of stakeholdersmanagers, workers, suppliers and so on. One common problem is the difficulty in maintaining a sufficient degree of formalization and uniformity of structure to ensure effective communication across distributed design teams, while also ensuring adaptability and flexibility in the approach to accurately capture requirements elicitations of different users. The Cognitive Dimensions framework is an approach to analyzing the usability of information artifacts: Here, we apply it to the requirements elicitation process for IS planning in the Construction Industry.