Title: Social patterns and dynamics of creativity in Wikipedia

Authors: Pentti Launonen; Sanna Tiilikainen; K.C. Kern

Addresses: School of Business, Aalto University, Runeberginkatu 14-16, 00100 Helsinki, Finland ' School of Business, Aalto University, Runeberginkatu 14-16, 00100 Helsinki, Finland ' Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, 02139-4307 Cambridge, MA, USA

Abstract: Our paper explores contribution and self-organising patterns of creative collaboration among Wikipedia editors as manifestations of social dynamics between the editors. We collect contribution data from a random sample of Wikipedia articles and use a novel approach of analysing the correlations between editors' contribution patterns over the life-time of the articles. We find support for the existence of four socially conditioned personas among the editors and statistical difference in distribution of personas in articles of different qualities. Our findings add domain-specific details, features and attributes to the existing knowledge on editor roles and personas. Contributions to theories of the implicit self-organisation of collaborative innovation networks and creativity as well as implications for practise are discussed.

Keywords: collaborative innovation networks; COINs; swarm creativity; oscillation; editor roles; editor personas; Wikipedia; social dynamics; implicit self-organising; work organisation; virtual teams; data mining; volunteerism; open source; collaboration; contribution patterns; creativity dynamics.

DOI: 10.1504/IJODE.2016.080170

International Journal of Organisational Design and Engineering, 2016 Vol.4 No.1/2, pp.137 - 152

Received: 10 Sep 2015
Accepted: 30 May 2016
Published online: 06 Nov 2016 *

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