Good Faith Collaboration: The Culture of Wikipedia

by Joseph Michael Reagle Jr.

Book Overview

Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, is built by a community--a community of Wikipedians who are expected to assume good faith when interacting with one another. In Good Faith Collaboration, Joseph Reagle examines this unique collaborative culture. Wikipedia, says Reagle, is not the first effort to create a freely shared, universal encyclopedia; its early twentieth-century ancestors include Paul Otlet's Universal Repository and H. G. Wells's proposal for a World Brain. Both these projects, like Wikipedia, were fuelled by new technology--which at the time included index cards and microfilm. What distinguishes Wikipedia from these and other more recent ventures is Wikipedia's good-faith collaborative culture, as seen not only in the writing and editing of articles but also in their discussion pages and edit histories.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0262014475
• ISBN13: 9780262014472
• Release Date: January 2010
• Publisher: MIT Press (MA)
• Length: 244 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.4" x 9.2"