WikipediaOS

Purpose of this wikiresearch
Detecting and validating the parallelisms between Wikipedia's peer-production model and the way programmers and developers interact and work together in collaborative Open Source environments.

Main question: aka Central Hypothesis
The dynamics of interaction among participants in Wikipedia replicate the system of relations, values, processes, channels and other key aspects in communities and groups of open source development.

Methodology: for those about to rock contribute
The following table differentiates the 17 hypotheses that compound this thesis in a modular way: for validating, discussing or dismissing similar features, routines, proceedings and characteristics between Wikipedia and some OS projects, one by one and independently.

If you're familiar with OS development and Wikipedia (or wikis in general), please add your feedback inside any of the secondary pages accordingly. Regardless of your opinion, I would like to consider you then as a member of the Distributed Thesis Committee below :)

Thank you in advance!

Distributed Committee
This is a list in progress of the people helping to demonstrate that the central hypothesis of this wikiresearch is right (or not, we'll see :)


 * Abd
 * Erkan Yilmaz
 * Fasten Specially for his comments at the discussion page :)
 * Dave Braunschweig For adding the gender variable to the table..

Further questions

 * Are the technical features of wiki tools making possible the rapid adoption of this type of development strategies for collaborating?
 * The possibility of vandalism, inherent to every wiki editing philosophy, could work as a spur for integrating and bonding the community of participants for their merits?
 * Did the initial strategies for spreading the Wikipedia project and philosophy lead to a significant participation of users closely related to open source development?

About the researcher
Enric Senabre Hidalgo (user:esenabre): I did my PhD courses at the Open University of Catalonia (where I teach Multimedia now) and my final research seminar with Professor Manuel Castells.

This collaborative research process is based on a presentation I did back in 2007 at Wikimania in Taipei. I had the idea of this implementation since then, but you know work, family and life in general didn't let me have time for doing it until now :)

I'm twittering here You can contact me at esenabre[at]uoc.edu More info about me here