Journal of Current Cultural Research
volvement. However in favouring an open approach to the coding the data using
CGT methods, a more nuanced response from the community emerged from the
conversations, one that did not necessarily always fall in line with the institutional
reaction.
CGT therefore offers insight into how the ideals of Wikipedia are changing as
the internet changes around it. In describing these debates, the study reveals the
tensions that compromise paid advocacy editing and how Wikipedia’s founding
principles are interpreted by those who edit the encyclopaedia a little over a decade later. As Geert Lovink (2011: 1) points out, ‘The participatory crowds suddenly find themselves in a situation full of tension and conflict,’ and these situations can reveal much about how platforms and collaborative projects are evolving.
Three Proposals
The three proposals analysed here are ‘No paid advocacy’ (NPA), ‘Paid editing
policy proposal’ (PEPP) and ‘Conflict of interest limit’ (COIL) (Wikipedia 2013b;
Wikipedia 2013c; Wikipedia 2013a). The three discussions and votes were carried
out on English language Wikipedia in November 2013 in response to the Wiki-PR
controversy. Remaining open to all possible understandings of the data, I undertook a four-stage coding process to ‘separate, sort, and synthesize these data
through qualitative coding ...[and]...emphasise what is happening in the scene’
(Charmaz 2006: 3). Overall, 573 posts were analysed in the study. The first stage
consisted of an initial round of coding where each response was coded as a support, oppose or comment along with short description of the post. In a second
close reading both the posts and the descriptor and a list of key words was formed.
In the third stage the key words were refined to a set of categories, and then finally each post was assigned relevant category tags. In total there were 21 categories
to emerge from the discussion, ten that opposed the formation of a policy, nine
that supported a new policy and two that were neutral (for example where votes
either supported or opposed the policy, but called for a clarification of the policy
wording).
There was a relatively large number of participants with 300 individual contributors to the discussions and proposals regarding paid editing on Wikipedia.
Among the three conversations NPA was the largest vote and involved 256 individual participants contributing 408 posts, PEPP had 86 participants contributing
242 posts and COIL was the smallest discussion with 43 participants contributing
74 posts.
All three discussions were linked by an ‘infobox’ on each page stating that, ‘In
November 2013, there were three main discussions and votes on paid editing’
along with a link to the other two discussions (Wikipedia 2013b). 22% of users
