1© FZI Research Center for Information Technologies Karlsruhe, Germany | Information Process Engineering | www.fzi.de/ipe

Wikis as a Technology Fostering Knowledge Maturing:

What we can learn from Wikipedia

FZI Research Center for Information TechnologiesDept. Information Process Engineering

Karlsruhe, GERMANY

{braun|aschmidt}@fzi.dehttp://www.fzi.de/ipe

Simone BraunAndreas Schmidt

2FZI Research for Information Technologies | Information Process Engineering | www.fzi.de/ipe

Outline

Overview of Knowledge Maturing theory

Goals of study

Qualitative study

Quantitative study

Transferability to enterprise context

Conclusions

3

Motivation

New paradigm of work-integrated learning• learning and working are interwoven• beyond one-way training• learning is an active and creative process

The Knowledge Maturing theoryviews individual learning processes as interlinked• at the heart: co-creation of artefacts

4

Knowledge Maturing Process

Criteria (from Maier & Schmidt 2007)• teachability• legitimation & commitment• explicit linkage/implicit contextualization• hardness

5

Workplace learningsupport byrecommending learningopportunities in theform of microcontent

Appropriateness can bedecided based on competencies and maturity level

One Vision: Maturity Awareness

from: Schmidt (2007): Microlearning and the knowledgematuring process, Microlearning 2007

6

The Study

7

Goals of our study

Knowledge Maturing theory so far is based only on anecdotal evidence

Why Wikipedia• largest social experiment related to knowledge maturing

where we have all the data (artefacts, history)

Hypotheses qualitative study• knowledge maturing actually takes place in wikis

(including criteria from Maier & Schmidt 2007 make sense)• socio-technical wiki systems have brought forth instruments overcoming

barriers in the maturing processes

Hypotheses quantitative study• criteria like teachability, and explicit linkage increase along the maturing

process• maturity of articles can be measured in an automated way

8

Qualitative Study (1)

Artefact Layer (= wiki pages)• predicates representing the legitimation by the Wikipedia community

o good article (“lesenswert”), featured article (“exzellente Artikel”), but also “stub” and “needs review”

• definitions for the level of quality• candidate lists implementing a limited and very loose form of transition

workflowo also encouraging maturing

Knowledge Layer• use of categories to organize articles• links among articles that are not directly tied to the occurrence of the

article name• disambiguation pages.

=> contribute to improving the decontextualization process

9

Qualitative Study (2)

Social Layer• “Wikiquette”• discussion pages • changes are visible in a global as well as in a local change log• user identity, watchlists• limit of activities by technical means (edit wars, write-protected

articles)

10

Quantitative Study

Basis:German Wikipedia, full XML dump with history (Jan 24, 2007)

Operationalization of criteria• teachability: readability score, structuredness (words per headline etc.), images• linkage: (unique) link count, (unique) link per words

Two types of study• snapshot study:

o all articles at a certain point in timeo significant differences among different maturity levels

• longitudinal studyo article history over their lifetime, estricted to featured and excellent articleso developments of criteria over time

11

Snapshot studyStub Normal Good Featured

#articles 19852 28763 612 343

#words p. article 43 (4) 60 1196 (753) 1359

5386 (4580) 3428

6689 (5952) 3561

readability p. article

35 (41) 32 50 (53) 35 55 (55) 7 54 (54) 6

#headlines p. art. 0 (0) 1 7 (5) 8 21 (18) 13 24 (22) 14

#images p. article

0 (0) 0 2 (0) 6 8 (6) 10 11 (8) 13

#words p. headline

105 (96) 50 198 (157) 198 391 (229) 880 438 (249) 883

#words p. image 132 (138) 45

747 (493) 827 1289 (722) 1897 1181 (647) 1633

#(unique) internal links

6 (1) 9 6 (1) 9

75 (55) 71 82 (58) 87

212 (170) 144 238 (188) 171

240 (213) 137 272 (233) 169

#words p. int. link

5 (3) 5 16 (13) 17 29 (21) 25 31 (24) 26

link density (%) 31 (33) 16 9 (8) 4 5 (5) 2 4 (4) 2

(mean (median) σ)

12

Longitudinal Study (1)

13

Longitudinal Study (2)

14

Longitudinal Study (3)

15

Transferability and Conclusions

16

Wikipedia vs. Enterprise Wikis

Wikipedia Enterprise wikis

Size of community

large numbers limited to (parts of) the organization

Goal general public encyclopaedia

persistence and exchange of experiences

Type of knowledge

rather mature knowledge (at least ad-hoc training)

immature knowledge (mostly distribution in communities and formalization, up to ad-hoc-training)

Maturing focus

artefact level (knowledge is considered to be sufficiently mature)

knowledge level (artefacts are considered to be facilitating the collaboration and exchange)

Motivation idealism and identification with Wikipedia goals, quest for social esteem

work process needs, professional esteem, organizational goals

17

Conclusions

Knowledge maturing theory confirmed by qualitative and quantitative study• several instruments at artefact, knowledge and social level identified

Quantitative study confirmed criteria on average• but: high standard deviation

=> no automated computation of maturity

Limited transferability to enterprise wikis• but problem of automation becomes even harder (less homogeneous)• additional problem: maturing on knowledge layer

Future steps:• explore additional information like creation/usage context• large-scale empirical study (together with University of Innsbruck) in

enterprise context

18FZI Research for Information Technologies | Information Process Engineering | www.fzi.de/ipe

Contact

Andreas Schmidt

Department Manager

FZI Research Center for Information Technologies

Information Process Engineering

Andreas.Schmidt@fzi.de

http://andreas.schmidt.name

Upcoming FP7 Integrating Project:

http://mature-ip.eu

http://www.im-wissensnetz.de