Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems (지능정보연구)

Korea Intelligent Information System Society (한국지능정보시스템학회)
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Participation Level in Online Knowledge Sharing: Behavioral Approach on Wikipedia

온라인 지식공유의 참여정도: 위키피디아에 대한 행태적 접근

  • Received : 2013.12.10
  • Accepted : 2013.12.20
  • Published : 2013.12.31
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Abstract

With the growing importance of knowledge for sustainable competitive advantages and innovation in a volatile environment, many researches on knowledge sharing have been conducted. However, previous researches have mostly relied on the questionnaire survey which has inherent perceptive errors of respondents. The current research has drawn the relationship among primary participant behaviors towards the participation level in knowledge sharing, basically from online user behaviors on Wikipedia, a representative community for online knowledge collaboration. Without users' participation in knowledge sharing, knowledge collaboration for creating knowledge cannot be successful. By the way, the editing patterns of Wikipedia users are diverse, resulting in different revisiting periods for the same number of edits, and thus varying results of shared knowledge. Therefore, we illuminated the participation level of knowledge sharing from two different angles of number of edits and revisiting period. The behavioral dimensions affecting the level of participation in knowledge sharing includes the article talk for public discussion and user talk for private messaging, and community registration, which are observable on Wiki platform. Public discussion is being progressed on article talk pages arranged for exchanging ideas about each article topic. An article talk page is often divided into several sections which mainly address specific type of issues raised during the article development procedure. From the diverse opinions about the relatively trivial things such as what text, link, or images should be added or removed and how they should be restructured to the profound professional insights are shared, negotiated, and improved over the course of discussion. Wikipedia also provides personal user talk pages as a private messaging tool. On these pages, diverse personal messages such as casual greetings, stories about activities on Wikipedia, and ordinary affairs of life are exchanged. If anyone wants to communicate with another person, he or she visits the person's user talk page and leaves a message. Wikipedia articles are assessed according to seven quality grades, of which the featured article level is the highest. The dataset includes participants' behavioral data related with 2,978 articles, which have reached the featured article level, with editing histories of articles, their article talk histories, and user talk histories extracted from user talk pages for each article. The time period for analysis is from the initiation of articles until their promotion to the featured article level. The number of edits represents the total number of participation in the editing of an article, and the revisiting period is the time difference between the first and last edits. At first, the participation levels of each user category classified according to behavioral dimensions have been analyzed and compared. And then, robust regressions have been conducted on the relationships among independent variables reflecting the degree of behavioral characteristics and the dependent variable representing the participation level. Especially, through adopting a motivational theory adequate for online environment in setting up research hypotheses, this work suggests a theoretical framework for the participation level of online knowledge sharing. Consequently, this work reached the following practical behavioral results besides some theoretical implications. First, both public discussion and private messaging positively affect the participation level in knowledge sharing. Second, public discussion exerts greater influence than private messaging on the participation level. Third, a synergy effect of public discussion and private messaging on the number of edits was found, whereas a pretty weak negative interaction effect of them on the revisiting period was observed. Fourth, community registration has a significant impact on the revisiting period, whereas being insignificant on the number of edits. Fifth, when it comes to the relation generated from private messaging, the frequency or depth of relation is shown to be more critical than the scope of relation for the participation level.

급변하는 환경 속에서 지속적인 경쟁우위와 혁신을 위한 지식의 중요성이 증대되면서, 그 동안 지식공유에 관한 많은 연구들이 있었다. 그런데, 이러한 연구들의 대부분이 응답자의 인지오차가 내재된 서베이에 의존해왔다. 본 연구는 대표적인 온라인 지식협업 커뮤니티인 위키피디아 유저들의 온라인 행위만을 토대로 지식공유 참여정도에 대한 행위 특성들간의 관계를 도출하였다. 그런데, 유저들의 편집 참여 패턴이 서로 다르기 때문에 편집횟수는 같아도 재방문기간은 달라질 수 있고 이에 따라 지식공유 결과가 달라질 수 있으므로, 지식공유 참여정도를 아티클 편집 참여횟수와 재방문기간의 두 가지 관점에서 접근하였다. 지식공유 참여정도에 영향을 미치는 행위특성으로는 위키 플랫폼에서 관찰이 가능한, 공적인 토론툴인 아티클 톡과 사적인 메시징 툴인 유저 톡 참여여부 및 정도, 그리고 커뮤니티 등록여부를 사용하였다. 행위 분석은 먼저, 행위특성 차원에 의한 유저 카테고리별 참여정도를 비교하였고, 행위 특성의 정도를 반영하는 독립변수들과 참여정도를 나타내는 종속변수간의 관계에 대한 로버스트 회귀분석을 수행하였다. 특히, 연구가설을 설정하는 단계에서 온라인 환경에 적합한 모티베이션 이론을 도입함으로써, 온라인 지식공유 참여정도에 관한 이론적인 설명 모델을 제시하였다. 결론적으로, 본 연구는 이론적인 시사점 외에 다음과 같은 실제적인 행위 결과를 얻었다. 첫째, 공적인 토론 및 사적인 메시징 참여와 지식공유 참여정도간에는 양의 관계가 성립한다. 둘째, 공적인 토론이 사적인 메시징 보다 지식공유 참여정도에 더 큰 영향력을 미친다. 셋째, 아티클 편집 참여횟수에 대해서는 공적인 토론과 사적인 메시징의 시너지 효과가 존재하는 반면에, 재방문기간에 대해서는 아주 약한 음의 상호작용효과를 나타낸다. 넷째, 커뮤니티 등록 여부는 재방문기간에 대해서는 절대적인 양의 영향력을 미치지만, 실질적인 편집 참여횟수에 대해서는 유의한 영향력을 나타내지 않는다. 다섯째, 사적인 메시징에 의한 관계성을 고려할 때, 관계의 범위보다는 빈도 또는 깊이가 더 중요한 것으로 보인다.

Keywords

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