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Socialization tactics in wikipedia and their effects

Published: 06 February 2010 Publication History

Abstract

Socialization of newcomers is critical both for conventional groups. It helps groups perform effectively and the newcomers develop commitment. However, little empirical research has investigated the impact of specific socialization tactics on newcomers' commitment to online groups. We examined WikiProjects, subgroups in Wikipedia organized around working on common topics or tasks. In study 1, we identified the seven socialization tactics used most frequently: invitations to join, welcome messages, requests to work on project-related tasks, offers of assistance, positive feedback on a new member's work, constructive criticism, and personal-related comments. In study 2, we examined their impact on newcomers' commitment to the project. Whereas most newcomers contributed fewer edits over time, the declines were slowed or reversed for those socialized with welcome messages, assistance, and constructive criticism. In contrast, invitations led to steeper declines in edits. These results suggest that different socialization tactics play different roles in socializing new members in online groups compared to offline ones.

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cover image ACM Conferences
CSCW '10: Proceedings of the 2010 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work
February 2010
468 pages
ISBN:9781605587950
DOI:10.1145/1718918
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 06 February 2010

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  1. socialization
  2. wikipedia
  3. wikiproject

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February 6 - 10, 2010
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  • (2024)Uncovering Peer Production's Homogeneity: A Synthesis of Serious Information and EntertainmentProceedings of the 35th ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media10.1145/3648188.3675145(369-375)Online publication date: 10-Sep-2024
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