DocumentCode :
2412436
Title :
Collaborative Authoring on the Web: A Genre Analysis of Online Encyclopedias
Author :
Emigh, William ; Herring, Susan C.
Author_Institution :
Indiana University Bloomington
fYear :
2005
fDate :
03-06 Jan. 2005
Abstract :
This paper presents the results of a genre analysis of two web-based collaborative authoring environments, Wikipedia and Everything2, both of which are intended as repositories of encyclopedic knowledge and are open to contributions from the public. Using corpus linguistic methods and factor analysis of word counts for features of formality and informality, we show that the greater the degree of post-production editorial control afforded by the system, the more formal and standardized the language of the collaboratively-authored documents becomes, analogous to that found in traditional print encyclopedias. Paradoxically, users who faithfully appropriate such systems create homogeneous entries, at odds with the goal of open-access authoring environments to create diverse content. The findings shed light on how users, acting through mechanisms provided by the system, can shape (or not) features of content in particular ways. We conclude by identifying sub-genres of web-based collaborative authoring environments based on their technical affordances.
Keywords :
Books; Control systems; Dictionaries; Encyclopedias; Humans; Internet; Online Communities/Technical Collaboration; Terminology; Web sites; Wikipedia;
fLanguage :
English
Publisher :
ieee
Conference_Titel :
System Sciences, 2005. HICSS '05. Proceedings of the 38th Annual Hawaii International Conference on
ISSN :
1530-1605
Print_ISBN :
0-7695-2268-8
Type :
conf
DOI :
10.1109/HICSS.2005.149
Filename :
1385436
Link To Document :
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