Webtool for the analysis and visualization of the evolution of wiki online communities

Abstract

Commons-based peer production is a mode of social innovation where communities co-create openly-accessible resources exploiting the network effect of the Internet. Traditionally, research has focused on the successful cases of FLOSS and Wikipedia, whereas other communities such as wikis have not been studied sufficiently in-depth. Moreover, there is a clear lack of analytical tools to facilitate their study. In this paper, we describe WikiChron, a new web-tool for the analysis and visualization of the evolution of wiki online communities. Such tool will facilitate the generation and validation of hypotheses around multiple research questions, for example, those around curves of growth or those about factors of rise and decline of wikis . This work presents two case studies: the analysis of growth curves in similar wikis, and the different evolution of coordination and communication in wiki projects. In sum, we argue WikiChron fills a gap in the software tools available for wiki research.