Finding social roles in strongWikipediastrong - Cornell University.pdfVIP

1 Finding social roles in Wikipedia 1 Howard T. Welser, Dan Cosley, Gueorgi Kossinets, Austin Lin, Fedor Dokshin, Geri Gay, and Marc Smith Abstract: The concept of social role has long been used in social science describe the intersection of behavioral, meaningful, and structural attributes that emerge regularly in particular settings and institutions. We use structural signature methods to identify key roles in a large distributed collaboration system (Wikipedia) by examining the distribution of edits across types of pages and the structure of relationships between editors. We distinguish between technical editors, substantive experts, vandal fighters, and social networkers and demonstrate key ways that their patterns of interaction and contribution differ. We conclude by considering how differential entry into and retention in particular roles may affect the operation of the large social system. 1. Introduction It is difficult to gauge the social significance of Wikipedia, other than to say that, like Google, Wikipedia has forever changed how we use, find and think about information. Both pundits (like Stephen Colbert) and researchers (Stvilia et al. 2005, Giles 2005) have been pre-occupied with the question of whether the product of Wikipedia is of sufficient quality, or whether its pages constitute legitimate references (Read 2006). Others argue that the project will never achieve a sufficient level of quality relying on non-expert volunteers of unknown identity (Chesney). Instead of prognosticating about the potential of the Wikipedia project we contend that scholars should be more focused on understanding how Wikipedia has achieved the success that it has: a “pretty good” resource for a basic