Becoming Wikipedian: Transformation of Participation in a
Collaborative Online Encyclopedia
GROUP '05: Proceedings of the 2005 international ACM SIGGROUP conference on Supporting group work, page 1--10. New York, NY, USA, ACM Press, (2005)DOI: http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1099203.1099205
Abstract
Traditional activities change in surprising ways when computer-mediated communication becomes a component of the activity system. In this descriptive study, we leverage two perspectives on social activity to understand the experiences of individuals who became active collaborators in Wikipedia, a prolific, cooperatively-authored online encyclopedia. Legitimate peripheral participation provides a lens for understanding participation in a community as an adaptable process that evolves over time. We use ideas from activity theory as a framework to describe our results. Finally, we describe how activity on the Wikipedia stands in striking contrast to traditional publishing and suggests a new paradigm for collaborative systems.
