The Shifting Values of Wikipedia Editors
By Kim Osman
2014
Culture Unbound: Journal of Current Cultural Research 6(3) 593-607
http://www.cultureunbound.ep.liu.se
Author Affiliation
ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation
Queensland University of Technology
Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
Publisher
LiU E-Press
Linköping University
Norrköping, Östergötland, Sweden
Abstract
Wikipedia is often held up as an example of the potential of the internet to foster
open, free and non-commercial collaboration. However such discourses often conflate these values without recognising how they play out in reality in a peerproduction community. As Wikipedia is evolving, it is an ideal time to examine
these discourses and the tensions that exist between its initial ideals and the reality
of commercial activity in the encyclopaedia. Through an analysis of three failed
proposals to ban paid advocacy editing in the English language Wikipedia, this
paper highlights the shift in values from the early editorial community that forked
encyclopaedic content over the threat of commercialisation, to one that today values the freedom that allows anyone to edit the encyclopaedia.
Keywords: Wikipedia, encyclopaedias, encyclopaedism, mass collaboration, internet studies, grounded theory, online community.
