[wiki-research] Related Literature

[Derek Hansen]

I am curious what non-wiki research studies others are using to help
explain the use of wikis. Clearly this will depend upon our
disciplinary backgrounds and the specific research questions we are
addressing, but I am curious if there are certain papers or concepts
that are particularly applicable to wikis.

I'll start off with a few of my favorite non-wiki, but related papers.

Benkler, Y. (2002). Coase's Penguin, or, Linux and the Nature of the
Firm. http://www.inf.ufsc.br/~delucca/CoasesPenguin-LinuxAndTheNatureOfTheFirm.pdf

I like Benkler's broad framework of "commons-based peer production"
and feel that many wiki research projects fall into this category due
to the fact that there are many participants who voluntarily
contribute their effort to a project that is not owned by any one of
them. On a more detailed level, his discussions encouraging both
micro- and macro-contributions and the difficulty of integrating
information from disparate people with different agendas are also
worth noting.

Catherine C. Marshall, Frank M. Shipman III, and Raymond J. McCall
(1995). Making Large-Scale Information Resources Serve Communities of
Practice. http://www.csdl.tamu.edu/~marshall/jmis/jmis.html

This is an older article with a CSCW feel to it (i.e., it uses the
design and testing of new collaborative systems to help understand
various social and technical phenomena). Many design principles they
discussed have been hallmarks of the success of wikis (especially
those that serve communities of practice). For example, they argue for
incremental formalization of information, seeding & evolution of
content, and flexibile representations.

There are other articles I could list, but I'll let others share their
favorites.

Derek Hansen
School of Information
University of Michigan