Recent research WP governance informal; community as social network; efficiency of recruitment and content production; Rorschach news2012-10-29
A paper in the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, coming from the social control perspective and employing the repertory grid technique, has contributed interesting observations about the governance of Wikipedia.
News and notes Wikimedians get serious about women in science2012-10-22
It is well known that women are underrepresented in the sciences, and that high-achieving female scientists have often been excluded from authorship lists and passed over for awards and honours solely on the basis of gender. Also significant has been the underplaying in the academic literature, news reporting, and online, of women's current and historical contributions to science.
In the media Wikipedia's language nerds hit the front page2012-10-15
This week saw a front-page story in the Wall Street Journal on editorial debates in Wikipedia. The story focused on the title-naming dispute surrounding the Beatles article, and specifically the RfC on whether the 'the' in the band's name should be capitalized or not.
Recent research "Rise and decline" of Wikipedia participation, new literature overviews, a look back at WikiSym 20122012-09-24
A paper to appear in a special issue of American Behavioral Scientist describes how "several changes that the Wikipedia community made to manage quality and consistency in the face of a massive growth in participation have led to a more restrictive environment for newcomers" and points to three factors contributing to the increasingly "restrictive environment" they face.