We report here on an empirical investigation into emergent collaboration. We developed a webcrawling algorithm and tested its performance on topics volunteered by 30 subjects. Some topics exhibit emergent collaboration, some do not. The presence of commercial sites reduces collaboration. . When sites are linked with other sites, they tend to group into one large, tightly connected component. .
Connectivity can serve as the basis for collaborative filtering.
Human experts rate connected sites as significantly more relevant and of higher quality. This community is defined by but not limited to interest in The Grateful Dead. Loren Terveen and Will Hill. Evaluating emergent collaboration on the web.