Janitors of knowledge: Constructing knowledge in the everyday life of Wikipedia editors

Journal of Documentation

Volumn 67, Issue 5, 2011, Pages 840-862

  Sundin, Olof ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF BORÅS   (Sweden)

Author keywords

Credibility; Information; Knowledge management; Online ethnography; Science and technology studies (STS); Web sites; Wikipedia

Indexed keywords

EID: 80053072675     PISSN: 00220418     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1108/00220411111164709     Document Type: Article

References (48)

1. Alexandersson, M. and Limberg, L. (2003), "Constructing meaning through information artefacts" in The New Review of Information Behaviour Research, Vol. 4, pp. 17-30.
2. Bryant, S.L., Forte, A. and Bruckman, A. (2005), "Becoming Wikipedian: transformation of participation in a collaborative online encyclopedia", GROUP'05, November 6-9, 2005, Sanibel Island, FL, available at http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1099203.1099205 (accessed 10 February 2007).
3. Callon, M. (1986), "Some elements of a sociology of translation: domestication of the scallops and the fishermen of St Brieux Bay" in Law, E. (Ed.), Power, Action and Belief: A New Sociology of Knowledge, Routledge, London, pp. 196-233.
4. Chesney, T. (2005), "An empirical examination of Wikipedia's credibility by Thomas Chesney", First Monday, Vol. 11, No. 11, available at http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue11_11/chesney/index.html (accessed 10 January 2008).
5. Cross, T. (2006), "Puppy smoothies: improving the reliability of open, collaborative wikis", First Monday, Vol. 11, No. 9, available at www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue11_9/cros (accessed 10 July 2010).
6. Ess, C. and AoIR Ethics Working Committee (2002), Ethical Decision Making and Internet Research: Recommendations from the AoIR Ethics Working Committee, available at: www.aoir.org/reports/ethics.pdf (accessed 16 October 2009).
7. Fallis, D. (2008), "Toward an epistemology of Wikipedia" in Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Vol. 59, No. 10, pp. 1662-74.
8. Forte, A. and Bruckman, A. (2005), "Why do people write for Wikipedia? Incentives to contribute to open-content publishing", GROUP'05, Sanibel Island, FL., available at: www-static.cc.gatech.edu/~aforte/ForteBruckmanWhyPeopleWrite.pdf (accessed 10 July 2010).
9. Francke, H. and Sundin, O. (2010), "An inside view: credibility in Wikipedia from the perspective of editors", Information Research, Special Supplement: Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Conceptions of Library and Information Science, London, 21-24 June 2010, Vol. 15, No. 3, available at http://informationr.net/ir/15-3/colis7/colis702.html (accessed 10 October 2010).
10. Frohmann, B. (2004), Deflating Information: From Science Studies to Documentation, University of Toronto Press, Toronto.
11. Garcia, A.C., Standlee, A.I., Bechkoff, J. and Cui, Y. (2009), "Ethnographic approaches to the internet and computer-mediated communication" in Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Vol. 38, No. 1, pp. 52-84.
12. Giles, J. (2005), "Internet encyclopedias go head to head" in Nature, Vol. 438, No. 7070, pp. 900-1.
13. Haider, J. and Sundin, O. (2010), "Beyond the legacy of the enlightenment? Online encyclopedias as digital heterotopias", First Monday, Vol. 15, No. 1, available at: http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/2744/2428 (accessed 10 July 2010).
14. Kittur, A., Chi, E.H., Pendleton, B.A., Suh, B. and Mytkowicz, T. (2007), "Power of the few vs wisdom of the crowd: Wikipedia and the rise of the bourgeoisie", Proceedings of the 25th Annual Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2007), San Jose, CA.
15. Latour, B. (1987), Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society, Open University Press, Milton Keynes.
16. Latour, B. (2005), Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
17. Latour, B. and Woolgar, S. (1986), Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, (originally published in 1979).
18. Lave, J. and Wenger, E. (1991), Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
19. Luyt, B. and Tan, D. (2010), "Improving Wikipedia's credibility: references and citations in a sample of history articles" in Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Vol. 61, No. 4, pp. 715-22.
20. Luyt, B., Aaron, T.C.H., Thian, L.H. and Hong, C.K. (2008), "Improving Wikipedia's accuracy: is edit age a solution?" in Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Vol. 59, pp. 318-30.
21. McGrady, R. (2009), "Gaming against the greater good", First Monday, Vol. 14, No. 2, available at: http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/2215/2091 (accessed 10 July 2010).
22. McGuinness, D., Zeng, H., da Silva, P.P., Li, D., Narayanan, D. and Bhaowal, M. (2006), "Investigations into trust for collaborative information repositories: a Wikipedia case study", 15th International World Wide Web Conference (WWW2006), available at: www.l3s.de/olmedilla/events/MTW06_papers/paper23.pdf (accessed 10 July 2010).
23. Mager, A. (2009), "Mediated health: sociotechnical practices of providing and using online health information" in New Media and Society, Vol. 11, No. 7, pp. 1123-42.
24. Magnus, P.D. (2009), "On trusting Wikipedia" in Episteme: A Journal of Social Epistemology, Vol. 6, No. 1, pp. 74-90.
25. Niederer, S. and van Dijck, J. (2010), "Wisdom of the crowd or technicity of content? Wikipedia as a sociotechnical system" in New Media & Society, Vol. 12, pp. 1368-87.
26. Palmer, C.L. and Cragin, M.H. (2008), "Scholarship and disciplinary practices" in Cronin, B. (Ed.), Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, Vol. 42, Information Today, Medford, NJ, pp. 163-212.
27. Rector, L.H. (2008), "Comparison of Wikipedia and other encyclopedias for accuracy, breadth, and depth in historical articles" in Reference Services Review, Vol. 36, No. 1, pp. 7-22.
28. Schatzki, T.R. (2001), "Introduction: practice theory" in Schatzki, T.R., Knorr Cetina, K. and von Savigny, E. (Eds.), The Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory, Routledge, London, pp. 1-14.
29. Sundin, O. and Francke, H. (2009), "In search of credibility: pupils' information practices in learning environments", Information Research, Vol. 14, No. 4, available at: http://InformationR.net/ir/14-4/paper418.html (accessed 10 July 2010).
30. Surowiecki, J. (2004), The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter than the Few and how Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Societies and Nations, Doubleday, New York, NY.
31. Svenningsson Elm, M. (2009), "How do various notions of privacy influence decisions in qualitative internet research?" in Markham, A.N. and Baym, N.K. (Eds.), Internet Inquiry: Conversations about Methods, Sage Publications, Los Angeles, CA, pp. 69-87.
32. Swedish Wikipedia (2009a), "Kategori: Alla artiklar som behöver källor (Category: all articles which need sources)", 4 April, available at http://sv.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kategori:Alla_artiklar_som_beh%C3%B6ver_k%C3%A4lloroldid=8969627 (accessed 4 January 2010).
33. Swedish Wikipedia (2009b), "Bybrunnen/Arkiv/2009/September (Village pump/Archive/September)", 1 October, available at http://sv.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Bybrunnen/Arkiv/2009/Septemberoldid=10166639 (accessed 5 January 2010).
34. Swedish Wikipedia (2009c), "Veckans nyskrivna artiklar (The new articles of the week)", 6 November, available at http://sv.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Veckans_nyskrivna_artiklaroldid=10442100 (accessed 6 November 2009).
35. Swedish Wikipedia (2009d), "Veckans tävling/Källor behövs fortfarande (The competition of the week/Sources are still needed!)", 9 November, available at http://sv.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Veckans_t%C3%A4vling/K%C3%A4llor_beh%C3%B6vs_fortfarandeoldid=10460162 (accessed 4 January 2010).
36. Swedish Wikipedia (2009e), "Ingen original forskning (No original research)", 13 December, available at http://sv.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Ingen_originalforskningoldid=10675492 (accessed 4 January 2010).
37. Swedish Wikipedia (2009f), "Neutral synvinkel (Neutral point of view)", 13 December, available at http://sv.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Neutral_synvinkeldirection=prevoldid=10986988 (accessed 4 January 2010).
38. Swedish Wikipedia (2009g), "Trovärdiga källor (Identifying reliable sources)", 13 December, available at http://sv.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:P%C3%A5litliga_k%C3%A4llordirection =prevoldid=11028634 (accessed 4 January 2010).
39. Swedish Wikipedia (2009h), "Policy och riktlinjer (Policies and Guidelines)", 15 December, available at http://sv.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Policy_och_riktlinjerdirection=prevoldid=10960530 (accessed 4 January 2010).
40. Swedish Wikipedia (2009i), "Källhänvisningar (Citing sources)", 21 December, available at http://sv.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:K%C3%A4llh%C3%A4nvisningaroldid=10728995 (accessed 4 January 2010).
41. Swedish Wikipedia (2009j), "Relevanskriterier (Notability)", 22 December, available at: http://sv.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Relevanskriterieroldid=10731553 (accessed 4 January 2010).
42. Swedish Wikipedia (2010), "Verifierbarhet (Verifiability)", 2 January, available at: http://sv.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Verifierbarhetdirection=prevoldid=10977640 (accessed 4 January 2010).
43. Todd, R.J. (2006), "From information to knowledge: charting and measuring changes in students' knowledge of a curriculum topic", Information Research, Vol. 11, No. 4, available at: http://InformationR.net/ir/11-4/paper264.html (accessed 4 January 2010).
44. Viegas, F., Wattenberg, M. and Kushal, D. (2004), "Studying cooperation and conflict between authors with history flow visualizations", Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, available at http://alumni.media.mit.edu/fviegas/papers/history_flow.pdf (accessed 4 July 2010).
45. Weinberger, D. (2007), Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder, Times Books, New York, NY.
46. Wilkinson, D.M. and Huberman, B.A. (2007), "Assessing the value of cooperation in Wikipedia", First Monday, Vol. 12, No. 4, available at: http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/1763/1643 (accessed 7 July 2010).
47. Wilson, P. (1983), Second-hand Knowledge: An Inquiry into Cognitive Authority, Greenwood Press, Westport, CT and London.
48. Zachte, E. (2010), "Wikipedia statistics: very active Wikipedians", WikiMedia, available at: http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediansEditsGt100.htm (accessed 7 July 2010).