How Structure Shapes Dynamics: Knowledge Development in Wikipedia - A Network Multilevel Modeling Approach

Halatchliyski, Iassen; Creß, Ulrike

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0111958

Cited by 10 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 40 publications

(36 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…A large body of social network research has already found that having many relations to people is beneficial in terms of social capital (Coleman, 1988;Gasevic et al, 2013), Turning groups inside out: a social network perspective 26 gaining access to new information (Borgatti & Cross, 2003;Granovetter, 1973;Halatchliyski & Cress, 2014), and learning in particular (Baldwin et al, 1997;Hernandez-Nanclares et al, 2017;Hommes, Arah, et al, 2014;Hommes et al, 2012). This was again confirmed in our study (H1, H2, H4).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 84%

“…While the majority of group research analysis has focussed on the unit of the group and/or its group members (Akkerman & Bakker, 2011;Decuyper et al, 2010;Kimmel & Volet, 2010), students and groups can gain competitive advantages by crossing the boundaries of their own group (Akkerman & Bruining, 2016;Hernandez-Nanclares et al, 2017;Hommes, Arah, et al, 2014). In our naturalistic setting, we used longitudinal social network analyses (Author A, 2014c;Bevelander & Page, 2011;Emery et al, 2011;Halatchliyski & Cress, 2014) amongst 683 students in four modules who were working within 132 groups to analyse whether students primarily learned within or outside their groups, as measured with self-reported closed SNA questionnaires, and whether this influenced (short-and long-term) academic performance.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Turning Groups Inside Out: A Social Network Perspective

Rienties

Tempelaar

2017

Journal of the Learning Sciences

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 84%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Turning Groups Inside Out: A Social Network Perspective

Rienties

Tempelaar

2017

Journal of the Learning Sciences

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…We test these predictions using data that we have collected on articles in the English-language Wikipedia, the “free encyclopedia that anyone can edit” (en.wikipedia.org). Wikipedia is currently attracting considerable attention as an example of open knowledge production and organization system [ 37 , 38 ], and as an empirical setting for studying how network structure affects knowledge creation [ 39 ], and knowledge search strategies [ 40 ].…”

Section: Theoretical Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

Knowledge categorization affects popularity and quality of Wikipedia articles

Lerner

Lomi

2018

PLoS ONE

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The existence of a shared classification system is essential to knowledge production, transfer, and sharing. Studies of knowledge classification, however, rarely consider the fact that knowledge categories exist within hierarchical information systems designed to facilitate knowledge search and discovery. This neglect is problematic whenever information about categorical membership is itself used to evaluate the quality of the items that the category contains. The main objective of this paper is to show that the effects of category membership depend on the position that a category occupies in the hierarchical knowledge classification system of Wikipedia—an open knowledge production and sharing platform taking the form of a freely accessible on-line encyclopedia. Using data on all English-language Wikipedia articles, we examine how the position that a category occupies in the classification hierarchy affects the attention that articles in that category attract from Wikipedia editors, and their evaluation of quality of the Wikipedia articles. Specifically, we show that Wikipedia articles assigned to coarse-grained categories (i. e., categories that occupy higher positions in the hierarchical knowledge classification system) garner more attention from Wikipedia editors (i. e., attract a higher volume of text editing activity), but receive lower evaluations (i. e., they are considered to be of lower quality). The negative relation between attention and quality implied by this result is consistent with current theories of social categorization, but it also goes beyond available results by showing that the effects of categorization on evaluation depend on the position that a category occupies in a hierarchical knowledge classification system.

show abstract

“…Some kind of moderate controversy or disagreement may be even necessary in order to stimulate a collective of individuals to construct new knowledge [ 36 – 39 ]. For example, by analyzing the Wikipedia pages of two domains (psychology and education) with methods of social network analysis (SNA), Halatchliyski and Cress [ 40 ] as well as Halatchliyski, Moskaliuk, Kimmerle, and Cress [ 41 ] have shown that new knowledge (new edits, new neighboring articles, edits in neighbors) did not only occur in the most central articles of each domain, but also in the border-crossing articles that linked both domains, that is, at the location where authors from different camps meet.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A productive clash of perspectives? The interplay between articles’ and authors’ perspectives and their impact on Wikipedia edits in a controversial domain

et al. 2017

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This study examined predictors of the development of Wikipedia articles that deal with controversial issues. We chose a corpus of articles in the German-language version of Wikipedia about alternative medicine as a representative controversial issue. We extracted edits made until March 2013 and categorized them using a supervised machine learning setup as either being pro conventional medicine, pro alternative medicine, or neutral. Based on these categories, we established relevant variables, such as the perspectives of articles and of authors at certain points in time, the (im)balance of an article’s perspective, the number of non-neutral edits per article, the number of authors per article, authors’ heterogeneity per article, and incongruity between authors’ and articles’ perspectives. The underlying objective was to predict the development of articles’ perspectives with regard to the controversial topic. The empirical part of the study is embedded in theoretical considerations about editorial biases and the effectiveness of norms and rules in Wikipedia, such as the neutral point of view policy. Our findings revealed a selection bias where authors edited mainly articles with perspectives similar to their own viewpoint. Regression analyses showed that an author’s perspective as well as the article’s previous perspectives predicted the perspective of the resulting edits, albeit both predictors interact with each other. Further analyses indicated that articles with more non-neutral edits were altogether more balanced. We also found a positive effect of the number of authors and of the authors’ heterogeneity on articles’ balance. However, while the effect of the number of authors was reserved to pro-conventional medicine articles, the authors’ heterogenity effect was restricted to pro-alternative medicine articles. Finally, we found a negative effect of incongruity between authors’ and articles’ perspectives that was pronounced for the pro-alternative medicine articles.

show abstract

How Structure Shapes Dynamics: Knowledge Development in Wikipedia - A Network Multilevel Modeling Approach

Cited by 10 publications

References 40 publications

Turning Groups Inside Out: A Social Network Perspective

Turning Groups Inside Out: A Social Network Perspective

Knowledge categorization affects popularity and quality of Wikipedia articles

A productive clash of perspectives? The interplay between articles’ and authors’ perspectives and their impact on Wikipedia edits in a controversial domain

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About