Research
Our research supports the group's overarching goals of identifying best practices and designing virtual tools to support work activities in contemporary organizations. Current projects for the group include:
Use of Publicly Available Online Services among Knowledge Workers
Our group implements an annual national survey to understand how publicly available online services support knowledge workers in the workplace. Future work will focus on the development of techniques for using computer-use data to create visualizations for supporting reflective knowledge work, investigation and development of tools for automating the documentation of work, and evaluation of existing research on work in virtual environments.
Open Reputations – Dimensions of Wikiwork Survey
Our research seeks to better understand the relationships among the various dimensions of work in an online community. We are in development of a survey to uncover how Wikipedians interpret the online actions of others and which types of work contribute most significantly to a Wikipedian's reputation. By understanding how individuals interpret and understand the online actions of the others, we hope to help design online systems that assist users to more effectively judge the reputation of others and decide which users are worthy of trust.
Visualization of Reputations in Collaborative Systems
We are exploring how to leverage social translucence to make social networking sites or cooperative work projects more productive. Social translucence is a conceptual framework for thinking about how social actions in an online community facilitate future social interaction. This particular research focuses on how to visualize the different types of work present in the Wikipedia community and is geared towards creating a visualization, based on data, that will help Wikipedians recognize and value work in the Wikipedia community.
Negotiating with Strangers
In investigating how collaborative authoring projects are regulated and negotiated in open online environments, we are exploring the discursive (rhetorical) moves Wikipedia editors make when trying to persuade unknown others about the shape an article should take. Our current work is focused on how Wikipedia policies, guidelines and essays serve to regulate editor behavior on Wikipedia talk pages.
Linguistic Cues of Roles in Conversational Exchanges (LiCORICE)
As part of an interdisciplinary team of linguists, engineers and social scientists, identify linguistic and rhetorical cues in online discourse that correlate with social moves of consensus and control. Currently, we are exploring the way Wikipedia users make claims of expertise and authority on talk pages.
Expression of Identity in Wikipedia with Userboxes
Our research explores the subject of online identity; how do people present themselves? Given a semi-structured environment like Wikipedia, what information do editors choose to disclose? Through a content analysis of Wikipedia userboxes – small colored boxes designed to communication a single characteristic or attribute of an editor – we reveal the multiple categories of self expression that people choose to disclose. By analyzing the frequency and studying the wide range of userboxes, we seek to understand the alignment between structured and unstructured profiles. Our findings provide a better understanding of the information elements that may support more effective collaboration in large online communities.
Dispute Resolution in Online Systems
This research project is the first part of a three-part study called Dispute Resolution Techniques in Wikipedia. It it involves semi-structured interviews with Wikipedia contributors in administrator positions who are experienced in conflict mediation. The questions aim to identify common types of disputes, typical mediation techniques for resolving disputes, how the wiki technology enables or prohibits successful resolution of conflicts, and users' thoughts on promising resolution techniques.