TY - JOUR
T1 - Stigmergy in Open Collaboration
T2 - An Empirical Investigation Based on Wikipedia
AU - Zheng, Lei
AU - Mai, Feng
AU - Yan, Bei
AU - Nickerson, Jeffrey V.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.
PY - 2023
Y1 - 2023
N2 - Participants in open collaboration communities coproduce knowledge despite minimal explicit communication to coordinate the efforts. Studying how participants coordinate around the knowledge artifact and its impacts are critical for understanding the open knowledge production model. This study builds on the theory of stigmergy, wherein actions performed by a participant leave traces on a knowledge artifact and stimulate succeeding actions. We find that stigmergy involves two intertwined processes: collective modification and collective excitation. We propose a new measure of stigmergy based on the spatial and temporal clustering of contributions. By analyzing thousands of Wikipedia articles, we find that the degree of stigmergy is positively associated with community members’ participation and the quality of the knowledge produced. This study contributes to the understanding of open collaboration by characterizing the spatial-temporal clustering of contributions and providing new insights into the relationship between stigmergy and knowledge production outcomes. These findings can help practitioners increase user engagement in knowledge production processes in order to create more sustainable open collaboration communities.
AB - Participants in open collaboration communities coproduce knowledge despite minimal explicit communication to coordinate the efforts. Studying how participants coordinate around the knowledge artifact and its impacts are critical for understanding the open knowledge production model. This study builds on the theory of stigmergy, wherein actions performed by a participant leave traces on a knowledge artifact and stimulate succeeding actions. We find that stigmergy involves two intertwined processes: collective modification and collective excitation. We propose a new measure of stigmergy based on the spatial and temporal clustering of contributions. By analyzing thousands of Wikipedia articles, we find that the degree of stigmergy is positively associated with community members’ participation and the quality of the knowledge produced. This study contributes to the understanding of open collaboration by characterizing the spatial-temporal clustering of contributions and providing new insights into the relationship between stigmergy and knowledge production outcomes. These findings can help practitioners increase user engagement in knowledge production processes in order to create more sustainable open collaboration communities.
KW - Moran’s I
KW - Open collaboration
KW - Wikipedia
KW - collaboration communities
KW - community participation
KW - information quality
KW - knowledge production
KW - stigmergy
KW - work coordination
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U2 - 10.1080/07421222.2023.2229119
DO - 10.1080/07421222.2023.2229119
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85168673087
SN - 0742-1222
VL - 40
SP - 983
EP - 1008
JO - Journal of Management Information Systems
JF - Journal of Management Information Systems
IS - 3
ER -