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WikiCommunity
MeatballWiki | RecentChanges | Random Page | Indices | CategoriesA special form of OnlineCommunity that uses a wiki as its collaboration system. The development since 1995 has shown, that such communities attract only certain netizens and that they cope with the inherent complexity by developing special communication cultures. Although there are many elements common among these communities and cultures, it seems unclear whether these cultures (philosophies, ideologies) will converge or spread.
Dimensions of wiki culture:
- technical simplicity (hundreds of clones add features day by day)
- content ownership (copyright ... OpenContent)
- social rules (anarchy ... constitution)
- authentification
- ...
Compared to other popular and easily available technical systems (Chat, BBS, Blog) the wiki is far more complex and flexible with respect to possible applications. It is also much harder to control or predict the outcome.
Problems in adopting wiki for real-world communities:
- control
- transparency
- identity
- participation
- democracy
- ...
The growing importance and impact of wiki communities will naturally increase the scientific interest (note that Meatball is place where a lot of this has been started in an informal way).
Suggested WikiCommunity / OnlineCommunity science fields:
- observation of OC phenomena and development of a consistent language
- cause-effect relationships of technical features and social behaviour
- the pure Wiki Online Community (unbound to real world organizations)
- the transformation of an RL Community to an OnlineCommunity (CommunityOnline)
- OnlineCommunity as a production system (types of products, efficiency!)
- hierarchical systems and OnlineCommunity (control, transparency)
- democratic systems and OnlineCommunity (identity, participation)
- ...
How does a WikiCommunity contrast with a MeatSpace community?
Suppose a pre-existing non- WikiCommunity wishes to adopt a wiki for collaboration, for example: distributed ProjectManagement. How does the pre-existing external community use a wiki? Or is a WikiCommunity a feature of the media and is incompatible with MeatSpace communities?