User:Teratornis/Theory of Wikipedia

This user subpage contains notes about books, lectures, videos, etc. from people who study how mass collaboration in general and Wikipedia in particular work.

The nature of my interest
06:57, 11 August 2008 (UTC): I'm interested in Wikipedia because I spend a fair amount of time editing on it. I'm also interested in bicycling and Peak oil. Therefore, I'm interested in the potential of systems like Wikipedia to replace large amounts of physical travel. Wikipedians are able to organize a project of stupendous complexity without any of the trappings of traditional organizations (commutes to physical offices, business meetings, dress codes, etc.). If we can build Wikipedia this way, what can't we build this way? It seems that most traditional organized human activity involves a large component of information-oriented work susceptible to abstraction via the wiki model. This could greatly increase the scope for telecommuting, reduce petroleum consumption and traffic congestion, etc.

I have yet to see a prominent commentator who discusses the potential for Web 2.0 mass collaboration to reduce travel and hence petroleum consumption. Most people who write about peak oil don't seem to understand anything about information technology (although they all use it), and most people who understand information technology seem unaware of peak oil.

Clay Shirky
Clay Shirky has some interesting insights into organization and cooperative behavior among humans. He wrote Here Comes Everybody and A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy.


 * at TED 2005
 * at TED 2005
 * at TED 2005
 * at TED 2005

Yochai Benkler
Yochai Benkler wrote The Wealth of Networks. He talks about the emergence of social production.


 * at TED

Howard Rheingold
Howard Rheingold wrote the book Smart Mobs.


 * (February, 2005)

This is an interesting video about cooperation. Howard Rheingold mentions the Tragedy of the Commons (he's the only TED talker I've seem who mentions it, so far) and the Prisoner's dilemma. He talks about how new forms of communication from prehistoric to modern times have led to new social arrangements. He mentions a bit of sociobiology, how people appear motivated to punish cheaters even at cost to themselves, and how brain scans show the brain's reward center activates when someone punishes a cheater. He mentions Wikipedia as a novel example of cooperative success. He also mentions the open source movement.

Signpost
The Wikipedia Signpost has some articles that summarize research papers about Wikipedia. For example:


 * Wikipedia Signpost/2008-08-11/Growth study

The Black Swan
The black swan theory by Nassim Nicholas Taleb refers to a large-impact, hard-to-predict, and rare event beyond the realm of normal expectations. I think Wikipedia is a great example of this. Marshall Poe seems to agree:

I first heard of black swan theory by watching this Google Tech Talks video by Hunter Lovins: I will have to read Nassim Nicholas Taleb's books: See a short clip from a lecture by Taleb:
 * Fooled by Randomness
 * The Black Swan

Marshall Poe
As I implied above by quoting from Marshall Poe's essay, I like it:



Jimmy Wales
As the co-founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales has some thoughts about it.



My Help desk comments
Occasionally I theorize about Wikipedia in my replies to questions on the Help desk.
 * WP:HD (permanent link) (Help_desk/Archives/2008 October 14)