Jamie's super page

**Notes on Kaplan and Haenlein's// Collaborative Projects: About Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia**

**1.Overview**

-Age of printed books for transmitting truth is coming to an end-collaborative projects are taking their place.

-Wikipedia is a collaborative project. Highly influential in terms of knowledge distribution. High on search engines.

-Article illuminates how businesses can use collaborative projects.

-classifies each type of collaborative projects

-discusses theoretical basis

-discusses user characteristics.

-how to enhance employee to employee activity ...(this is important for application)

**2.Theoretical Concepts**

-Collaborative Projects (CPs) enable joint and simultaeneous creation of knowledge content by many users/possibly most democratic form of social media

-Typologies of CPs:(4 categories) wikis,social bookmarking sites, online forums, review sites

-Typologies grouped on two dimensional quadrant matrix: (objective/subjective) + (Independence/dependence of contributions)

-objective+dependent=**wikis**; objective+independent=**social bookmarking**; subjective+dependent=**forums**; subjective+independent=**review sites**

**Wisdom of crowds**

-Wikipedia is empirically shown to be at least as accurate as encyclopedias. Joint effort of a large number of people can lead to better outcomes than each actor could achieve independently: wisdom of the crowds.

-In order to be wise the crowd needs to fulfill 3 criteria:

(1) be sufficently large (2) consist of a diverse set of actors that (3) act independently of each other

-Wikipedia violates the last factor (3) because each contributor builds off of the previous. Balanced out by requirement of sources and references.

**Readers and Contributors**

-Two groups of Users: content consumers & content contributors

-Wikipedia necessitates reading before contributing (except for new article creation) therefore in both groups

-Contributors trust in the project and the quality of information

-Contributors must also trust administrators, Wikipedia is a non-profit org

-Demographics of Wikipedia: 1.7 million contributors 4.5%(75,000) make 5 edits per month. 10,000 users make more than 100 edits per month. Male , around 30, US , college educated. Wikipedia looking for more diversity (see criteria above (2))

-Reasons for contribution: altruism, reciprocal exchange, self-presentation, pleasure seeking, opportunism.

-Big reason for contribution: being part of a community-share ideological, functional, content based beliefs. Commons based governance.

**3. Corporate Use of Wikipedia**

**Policies**

-High in search engines therefore crucial to firm's presence.

-Wikipedia is neutral, should not be used for advertising

**The 3 bases of getting in**

3 rules for getting established on Wikipedia

1st: Be visible and of interest

Have secondary sources ready. Good PR can accomplish this. Be a topic of discussion in social media space. Maximize mentions in other wikipedia entries.

2nd: Be associated with serious contributors

If you are not known there will be a high chance of getting deleted. Edit and write other articles. leverage the the reputation of an employee who already has a wikipedia presence. Or meet at a wikipedian event.

3rd: Be careful about what you write

remain objective and neutral. Don't advertise or link to sales sites. Verify often to avoid bad surprises.

**Crisis management for Wikis**

As time progresses, an article is likely to get negative-involve legal concerns and scandals

. how to respond

1: Edit yourself-use the talk page. be neutral. Follow the rules of social media -be interesting, humble and honest. Don't try to be anonymous- it could backfire.

2: Put into perspective-add positive elements about firm. Add pictures. change numerals into letters. Address the root of the problem.

3: Get help from family and friends-enlist people to help out.

**4.Other uses of Wikipedia**

**Intra-company collaborative projects**

Use for knowledge management within a company.

Cheaper than a commercial solution.

Nokia, Adobe, Dell, Shell use collaborative projects to find solutions. Entice employees to join rather than force them.

**Own vs. 3rd party collaborative**

P&G created a forum for menstruating girls

Starbucks made a forum for new service ideas

B2B share info and reviews.

**Other types of collaborative projects**

pinterest-share visuals and organize into clusters-act as storefronts

forums-specialized

**Further reading**

susceptibility to manipulating truth but outweighed by popular dissemination of knowledge.