Pathways to Community Success

This page documents work related to the NSF Cyber-Human Systems award Pathways to Community Success: Advancing a Comparative Science of Online Collaborative Organization (IIS-1617129, IIS-1617468). In particular, the work seeks to understand the factors that encourage success in computer-supported peer production—the form of online collaborative organization used to create public information goods like Wikipedia and Linux. In particular, the work seeks to use longitudinal comparative analysis of populations of peer production communities to elaborate a pathways to effective collaborative organization by exploring three central facets of peer production:

1. the relationship between participation equality and growth;
2. the extent to which community effectiveness is limited by competition for volunteer resources;
3. the role of social interaction and coordination in productive collaboration.

Although the work has drawn from a range of empirical settings, much of the core of the empirical project has involved drawing from wikis hosted by Fandom/Wikia and the Wikimedia Foundation. The project has supported a big part of the core of the work of the CDSC over the first few years of its life.

Six examples of wikis from the Wikia/Fandom datasets from which much of the data for this project has been drawn.

Products

Publications

• Hill, Benjamin Mako, and Aaron Shaw. 2020. “The Hidden Costs of Requiring Accounts: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from Peer Production.” Communication Research, May, 0093650220910345. https://doi.org/10.1177/0093650220910345. [Preprint]
• Kiene, Charles, Jialun “Aaron” Jiang, and Benjamin Mako Hill. 2019. “Technological Frames and User Innovation: Exploring Technological Change in Community Moderation Teams.” Proceedings of the ACM: Human-Computer Interaction 3 (CSCW): 44:1-44:23. https://doi.org/10.1145/3359203. [Preprint]
• Narayan, Sneha, Nathan TeBlunthuis, Wm Salt Hale, Benjamin Mako Hill, and Aaron Shaw. 2019. “All Talk: How Increasing Interpersonal Communication on Wikis May Not Enhance Productivity.” Proceedings of the ACM: Human-Computer Interaction 3 (CSCW): 101:1-101:19. https://doi.org/10.1145/3359203. [Preprint]
• Gan, Emilia F., Benjamin Mako Hill, and Sayamindu Dasgupta. 2018. “Gender, Feedback, and Learners’ Decisions to Share Their Creative Computing Projects.” Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 2 (CSCW): 54:1-54:23. https://doi.org/10.1145/3274323.
• Kiene, Charles, Aaron Shaw, and Benjamin Mako Hill. 2018. “Managing Organizational Culture in Online Group Mergers.” Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 2 (CSCW): 89:1-89–21. https://doi.org/10.1145/3274358. [Preprint] (Awards: CSCW '18 Best Paper Honorable Mention Award)
• Foote, Jeremy, and Noshir Contractor. 2018. “The Behavior and Network Position of Peer Production Founders.” In Transforming Digital Worlds, edited by Gobinda Chowdhury, Julie McLeod, Val Gillet, and Peter Willett, 99–106. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78105-1_12.
• TeBlunthuis, Nathan, Aaron Shaw, and Benjamin Mako Hill. 2018. “Revisiting ‘The Rise and Decline’ in a Population of Peer Production Projects.” In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’18), 355:1–355:7. New York, New York: ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/3173574.3173929.
• Foote, Jeremy, Darren Gergle, and Aaron Shaw. 2017. “Starting Online Communities: Motivations and Goals of Wiki Founders.” In Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’17), 6376–6380. New York, NY: ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/3025453.3025639.
• Narayan, Sneha, Jake Orlowitz, Jonathan Morgan, Benjamin Mako Hill, and Aaron Shaw. 2017. “The Wikipedia Adventure: Field Evaluation of an Interactive Tutorial for New Users.” In Proceedings of the 20th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing (CSCW ’17). New York, New York: ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/2998181.2998307.

Posters & Extended Abstracts

• Kiene, Charles, and Benjamin Mako Hill. 2020. “Who Uses Bots? A Statistical Analysis of Bot Usage in Moderation Teams.” In Extended Abstracts of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA ’20), 1–8. New York, New York: ACM Press. https://doi.org/10.1145/3334480.3382960.
• TeBlunthuis, Nathan, Aaron Shaw, and Benjamin Mako Hill. 2017. “Density Dependence Without Resource Partitioning: Population Ecology on Change.Org.” In Companion of the 2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW ’17 Companion), 323–326. New York, New York: ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/3022198.3026358.

Theses

• Kiene, Charles. 2020. “Challenges and Adaptations to Technological Change in Online Communities.” Master of Arts Thesis, Seattle, Washington: University of Washington. https://digital.lib.washington.edu:443/researchworks/handle/1773/45469.
• Foote, Jeremy D. 2019. “The Formation and Growth of Collaborative Online Organizations.” PhD dissertation, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University. https://www.proquest.com/docview/2359334683?accountid=14784.
• Narayan, Sneha. 2019. “Three Studies on Technological Support for Participation in Volunteer Communities.” PhD dissertation, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University. https://www.proquest.com/docview/2314065372?accountid=14784.
• TeBlunthuis, Nathan. 2017. “Density Dependence without Resource Partitioning on an Online Petitioning Platform.” Master of Arts Thesis, Seattle, Washington: University of Washington. https://digital.lib.washington.edu:443/researchworks/handle/1773/41690.

Book Chapters

• Hill, Benjamin Mako, and Aaron Shaw. 2020. “The Most Important Laboratory for Social Scientific and Computing Research in History.” In Wikipedia @ 20: Stories of an Incomplete Revolution, edited by Joseph M. Jr. Reagle and Jackie L. Koerner. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. [Preprint]
• Hill, Benjamin Mako, and Aaron Shaw. 2020. “Studying Populations of Online Communities.” In The Oxford Handbook of Networked Communication, edited by Brooke Foucault Welles and Sandra González-Bailón, 174–93. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190460518.013.8. [Preprint]

Datasets

• Hill, Benjamin Mako, and Aaron Shaw. 2020. “Replication Data and Online Supplement for: The Hidden Costs of Requiring Accounts: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from Peer Production.” Harvard Dataverse. https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/CLSFKX.
• TeBlunthuis, Nathan, Aaron Shaw, and Benjamin Mako Hill. 2018. “Replication Data for Revisiting `The Rise and Decline’ in a Population of Peer Production Projects.” Harvard Dataverse. https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/SG3LP1.
• Narayan, Sneha, Jake Orlowitz, Jonathan T. Morgan, Aaron Shaw, and Benjamin Mako Hill. 2017. “Replication Data for: The Wikipedia Adventure: Field Evaluation of an Interactive Tutorial for New Users.” Harvard Dataverse. https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/6HPRIG.
• Foote, Jeremy D., Gergle, Darren, Shaw, Aaron. 2017. “Replication Data for: Starting online communities: motivations and goals of wiki founders.” Harvard Dataverse. V2. https://dx.doi.org/10.7910/DVN/YG9IID.

Software

• Hill, Benjamin Mako. 2017. “Mediawiki Dump Tools: Python software for quickly parsing MediaWiki dumps.” https://code.communitydata.cc/mediawiki_dump_tools.git

Peer-reviewed conference paper presentations

• Foote, Jeremy D., Benjamin Mako Hill, Nathan TeBlunthuis. “An agent-based model of online community joining.” Organizational Communication Mini-Conference (OCMC). New Brunswick, NJ, October 5, 2018.
• Shaw, Aaron. 2018. "Openness and closure in online commons." Boston, MA: Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association.
• Shaw, Aaron. 2018. "Openness and closure in online commons." Cambridge, MA: International Conference on Complex Systems (ICCS 2018).
• Hill, Benjamin Mako. 2018. "Whither Peer Production, Keynote Address." Cambridge, MA: LibrePlanet.
• TeBlunthuis, Nathan, Aaron Shaw, and Benjamin Mako Hill. “Revisiting ‘The Rise and Decline’ in a Population of Peer Production Projects.” 2018. Prague, Czechia: Information Systems, International Communication Association Annual Meeting (ICA 2018).
• TeBlunthuis, Nathan, Aaron Shaw, and Benjamin Mako Hill. “Revisiting ‘The Rise and Decline’ in a Population of Peer Production Projects.” 2018. Evanston, IL: International Conference on Computational Social Science (IC2S2 2018).
• Shaw, Aaron and Benjamin Mako Hill. May 28, 2018. “Theory Building Beyond Communities: Population-Level Research.” Session on Communication in the Networked Age: A Discussion of Theory Building through Data-Driven Research. Prague, Czechia: Computational Methods, International Communication Association Annual Meeting (ICA 2018).
• Foote, Jeremy D., Nathan TeBlunthuis, and Benjamin Mako Hill. May 25, 2018. “An Agent-Based Model of Online Community Joining.” Session on Agent-based Modeling for Communication Research. Computational Methods, International Communication Association Annual Meeting (ICA 2018), Prague, Czechia, May 25, 2018.
• Foote, Jeremy D., Nathan TeBlunthuis, and Benjamin Mako Hill. July 2018. “An Agent-Based Model of Online Community Joining.” Session on Agent-based Modeling for Communication Research. International Conference on Computational Social Science (IC2S2 2018).
• Gan, Emilia F., Sayamindu Dasgupta and Benjamin Mako Hill. October 6, 2017. “Gender Differences in Patterns of Project Sharing on the Scratch Online Programming Community.” University of California, Irvine: Session on Cultivating Computational Thinking: Developing Computational Identities Through Scratch and Apps. Digital Media and Learning (DML 2017).
• Hill, Benjamin Mako, Aaron Shaw. 2017. The Hidden Costs of Requiring Accounts Online: Quasi-experimental Evidence From Peer Production, International Communication Association Annual Meeting (ICA). San Diego, CA. May 27, 2017
• TeBlunthuis, Nate, Aaron Shaw, Benjamin Mako Hill. 2017. Density Dependence Without Resource Partitioning: A Population Ecology of Change.org. International Communication Association Annual Meeting (ICA). San Diego, CA. May 29, 2017
• TeBlunthuis, Nathan, Benjamin Mako Hill, Aaron Shaw. “Resource Partitioning and Density Dependence on a Digital Mobilization Platform.” Internet, Politics, and Policy Conference (IPP 2016), Oxford University, Oxford, UK, September 23, 2016.
• Foote, Jeremy D., Shaw, Aaron, Hill, Benjamin Mako. Social structures of productive online volunteer communities. 2016. Organizational Communication Mini-Conference (OCMC). Evanston, IL, October.
• Foote, Jeremy D,, Shaw, Aaron, Hill, Benjamin Mako. Social structures of productive online volunteer communities. 2017. Collective Intelligence Conference (CI). Brooklyn, NY.

Links and Resources

• Public project summary on the NSF website (Page for NU; Page for UW)
• Project description and references included in the original NSF application

People

• Carl Colglazier (Northwestern)
• Jeremy Foote (Purdue; Northwestern)
• Wm Salt Hale (UW)
• Emilia Gan (UW)
• Benjamin Mako Hill (UW) [PI]
• Charles Kiene (UW)
• Sneha Narayan (Carleton College; Northwestern)
• Aaron Shaw (Northwestern) [PI]
• Nathan TeBlunthuis (UW)

Biographies of everyone working on the award on the People page in this wiki.

Funding and Disclaimer

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Number IIS-1908850.

Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.