User:Teratornis/Theory of Wikipedia

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

This user

subpage
contains notes about books, lectures, videos, etc. from people who study how mass collaboration in general and Wikipedia in particular work.

The nature of my interest

06:57, 11 August 2008 (UTC): I'm interested in Wikipedia because I spend a fair amount of time editing on it. I'm also interested in

telecommuting, reduce petroleum consumption and traffic congestion
, etc.

I have yet to see a prominent commentator who discusses the potential for Web 2.0 mass collaboration to reduce travel and hence petroleum consumption. Most people who write about peak oil don't seem to understand anything about information technology (although they all use it), and most people who understand information technology seem unaware of peak oil.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky has some interesting insights into organization and cooperative behavior among humans. He wrote Here Comes Everybody and A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy.

Yochai Benkler

Yochai Benkler wrote The Wealth of Networks. He talks about the emergence of social production.

Howard Rheingold

Howard Rheingold wrote the book Smart Mobs.

This is an interesting video about cooperation.

Tragedy of the Commons (he's the only TED talker I've seem who mentions it, so far) and the Prisoner's dilemma. He talks about how new forms of communication from prehistoric to modern times have led to new social arrangements. He mentions a bit of sociobiology, how people appear motivated to punish cheaters even at cost to themselves, and how brain scans show the brain's reward center activates when someone punishes a cheater. He mentions Wikipedia as a novel example of cooperative success. He also mentions the open source
movement.

Signpost

The

Wikipedia Signpost
has some articles that summarize research papers about Wikipedia. For example:

The Black Swan

The black swan theory by Nassim Nicholas Taleb refers to a large-impact, hard-to-predict, and rare event beyond the realm of normal expectations. I think Wikipedia is a great example of this. Marshall Poe seems to agree:

The Atlantic Monthly. Retrieved 2008-08-25.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link
)

I first heard of black swan theory by watching this Google Tech Talks video by Hunter Lovins:

I will have to read Nassim Nicholas Taleb's books:

See a short clip from a lecture by Taleb:

Marshall Poe

As I implied above by quoting from Marshall Poe's essay, I like it:

  • The Atlantic Monthly. Retrieved 2008-10-14. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help
    )

Jimmy Wales

As the co-founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales has some thoughts about it.

My Help desk comments

Occasionally I theorize about Wikipedia in my replies to questions on the Help desk.

See also
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