Social Research

convener Bruce Mason

participants Jochen "Jeff" Rick Kate Milberry Ted Ernst

Convenor's notes

I had been inspired by a previous session on "viability of communities" to suggest this session. What I was interested in exploring centred on methods that could be used to investigate social behaviour in wikis.

I initially flagged 3 topic areas:

1. Tools
2. Methods
3. Theories

From Kate

Some interesting aspects of this discussion, for me, as a researcher:

• What theories/methods can be applied to a study of a wiki project (e.g. Bruce's One Million Penguins)
• Can "offline" anthropological/sociological methods be translated intact online?
• A converse question (from Bruce) is what is new about online environments, in this case wikis, that allow us to do things that we can't do offline.
• Wikis are data rich, from the perspective of an academic researcher: how best to tap/analyze that data?

Some of Ted's comments/insights resonated with me, particularly around the meaning of wikis. It is not the definition of wiki but the practice it engenders that is most significant; that is, "how we work together."

Also from Ted: wiki's "link as you think" function is a powerful metaphor for imagining the future. Esp. with camelcase, you create a concept when you create a page; the page describes the concept. We create the future by imagining it!

Reflections from Bruce

As was noted, it is probably the case that offline methods can be used in wiki research. The same methodological rigour that should underpin offline social research should also underpin online research. However issues in online vs. offline information are pertinent. E.g. how much of a person's offline activity informs what they do on wikis.

There may be some new tools that can help come to terms with wiki behaviour. IBM's "History Flow" visualiser could be used to help analyse behaviour; at the very least it might suggest questions that could be asked.

Jochen made a fascinating suggestion about the potential for studying the history of individual wiki pages.Through tracing its edit history and interviewing the people involved in its editing it would be possible to analyse specific instances of collaboration and creativity that wouldn't be possible in any other circumstance. Kate mentioned a video of this "The History of the Heavy Metal Umlaut".

Two things did occur to me as this session transpired.

1. was the issue of linking. This is pertinent to the discussion of camelcase. Most wikis tend to be heavily text linked in a way that many other web pages aren't; what does this say about the practice of linking.
2. was a phrase that kept popping up "Someone'll fix it later." This is the notion that it doesn't matter whether your work is perfect because someone else may come along and correct it. The more I hear this phrase, the more important I suspect it is.

Jochen mentioned the importance of linking and his belief that in order to make a new page you must make a link to it first. This prevents unlinked pages (at least in theory). I find this interesting though I don't necessarily agree. I suspect that people will just find their way around it, if required, and I do know that some wikis (e.g. Peanut Butter wiki) have a "new page" button front and centre. Jochen's viewpoint though speaks to a belief about wikis should be.