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Title: Bursty Coordination in Online Communities
The collective intelligence of online communities often depends on implicit forms of coordination, given the fluidity of membership and the lack of traditional hierarchies and associated incentive structures. This coordination drives knowledge production. Studying temporal dynamics may help elucidate how coordination happens. Specifically, the rate of interaction with an artifact such as a Wikipedia page can function as a signal that affects future interactions. Many activities can be characterized as bursty, meaning activity is not evenly spread or random, but is instead concentrated. This study analyzes 3,260 Wikipedia articles and shows that the coordination pattern in the Wikipedia community is mostly bursty. More importantly, the extent of burstiness affects article quality. This work highlights the important role temporal dynamics can play in the coordination process in online communities, and how it can affect the quality of knowledge production.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1717473 1909803
NSF-PAR ID:
10171236
Author(s) / Creator(s):
 ; ; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
ICIS 2019 Proceedings
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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