Date: Wednesday, April 2; 4:00 - 5:00p

Location: 301 College Ave, Seminar Rm.

Note: 3:45 - 4:00p will be our reception, in the Snap Lab of 301 College Ave. After the talk, there will be a follow-up reception from 5:00 - 5:15p, also in the Snap Lab.

Abstract:

When online communities grow, ensuring collaboration and cooperation among all of the members is nearly impossible. Differences in perspectives, beliefs, and attitudes ensure that the multivalent character of our social relations emerge. Wikipedia is an exemplary online community attempting to create a free, open, collaborative encyclopedia. In order to facilitate their work, the Wikipedian community has responded with an evolving body of policies that provide shared principles, processes, and strategies for collaboration.

This talk describes two studies that illustrate one way that computational methods and grounded methods for studying mass collaboration data sets complement each other to extend our understanding of complex online behavior. The first study examines a principled sample of Wikipedia talk pages to characterize how policy is employed when Wikipedia contributors work toward consensus. The second study examines the way that policy is applied over Wikipedia as a whole to illustrate a trend toward self-governance. The results of these studies inform the design of online communities that afford better awareness of the community, the reputations of its members and that enable consensual self-governance.

Bio:

Dr. David W. McDonald joined The Information School faculty at the University of Washington in January 2002. He has active research projects on digital devices and media use in the home and Wikipedia as an online community. He has published research on collaborative authoring, social interaction in online communities, recommendation systems, and public use of large screen displays. His research contributes to the areas of Computer-Supported Cooperative Work
(CSCW) and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). David earned his Ph.D.
in Information and Computer Science at the University of California, Irvine while a member of the CORPS (Computing, Organizations, Policy and Society) research group. David previously worked at FX Palo Alto Laboratory in the Personal and Mobile technology group and at AT&T Labs in the Human-Computer Interaction group.

For more information, please contact Jeremy Birnholtz

[schedule]

4-1-2008 Sarah