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This chapter introduces open-collaboration communities in general and Wikipedia studies in particular. It describes Wikipedia as a unique phenomenon: the largest collaborative project of humankind, sustained by a vibrant and active global community of editors who act without direct financial or professional incentives.

This chapter presents the major internal stakeholders of the Wikimedia movement: the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF), the local chapters, and the Wikipedia communities. It describes the power struggles between them and explains their resources as well as cultural and ideological backgrounds. It reveals the drive of the chapters to professionalize their staff and operations as natural, even if at some point they fill the niche already occupied by the WMF. The chapter shows that even though to a common bystander they may seem as if they were on the verge of splitting (“forking”), the high number of disputes is actually typical for open-collaboration communities, as there is no fear of hierarchy to prevent people from freely expressing their opinions.

This chapter draws on the previous considerations about organization and management in open-collaboration movements to analyze the phenomenon of personal leadership, examining the example of Jimmy Wales, cofounder of Wikipedia. It shows the evolution of his role and the reasons why his influence on the movement could only increase when he stepped down from operational, daily activities and stopped his attempts at direct management. It makes some conclusions about modes of leadership in open-collaboration organizations and suggests that both an authoritative, single-handed style of leadership and a subservient, supportive one can work but must be in line with the leader's level of engagement in the community. The chapter also shows that the lack of formal leadership only makes it more difficult for natural leaders to legitimize their role.

This chapter is dedicated to conflicts on Wikipedia. It explains that while egregious errors are easily dealt with, when more fundamental and nontrivial details are under consideration, conflicts on Wikipedia abound; thus, Wikipedia cannot be perceived as mainly collaboration driven; it is also dissent driven. By analyzing one of the biggest edit wars in Wikipedia history (Gdańsk/Danzig), it shows that traditional methods for dispute resolution on Wikipedia are often ineffective, and consensus is often impossible to reach. While presenting possible alternatives (by seeking analogies with other participative organizations), it shows that a major reduction in the scale of conflicts is unlikely, as conflicts play a crucial role in motivating people to participate (by increasing their involvement and fueling engagement).

The “mass” replications of multiple studies, some employing dozens of investigators distributed among myriad sites, is unique to the reproducibility movement. The most impressive of these initiatives was employed by the Open Science Collaboration directed by Brian Nosek, who recruited 270 investigators to participate in the replication of 100 psychological experiments via a very carefully structured, prespecified protocol that avoided questionable research practices. Just before this Herculean effort, two huge biotech firms (Amegen and Bayer Health Care) respectively conducted 53 and 67 preclinical replications of promising published studies to ascertain which results were worth pursuing for commercial applications. Amazingly, in less than a 10-year period, a number of other diverse multistudy replications were also conducted involving hundreds of effects. Among these were the three “many lab” multistudy replications based on the Open Science Model (but also designed to ascertain if potential confounders of the approach itself existed, such as differences in participant types, settings, and timing), replications of social science studies published in Science and Nature, experimental economics studies, and even self-reported replications ascertained from a survey. Somewhat surprisingly, the overall successful replication percentage for this diverse collection of 811 studies was 46%, mirroring the modeling results discussed in Chapter 3 and supportive of John Ioannidis’s pejorative and often quoted conclusion that most scientific results are incorrect.

The chapter describes the amount of peer control that all Wikipedians experience, the Panopticon-like recording of all behaviors, and the control of participation through a high degree of regulation and procedures. It explains how the iron cage of bureaucracy on Wikipedia is tightening as a result of the community's need to stratify users and to create barriers to entry for newcomers. It shows that the bureaucratic creed is only one of Wikipedia's many ways of introducing informal strategies of domination and differentiation of user status.

This chapter discusses three major changes resulting from the emerging communication technologies. It addresses the new forms of shaping relations online. Friendships, intimacy, the rise of weak ties, as well as an increased fluidity of relations are discussed. Next, the chapter addresses the demise of expert knowledge. Starting with McDonaldization of higher education and the rise of anti-intellectual sentiments, the chapter addresses the new trends in democratizing knowledge. While recognizing highly positive aspects of the turn, such as citizen science, Wikipedia, or free/open source movement, it also addresses the darker and more troubling processes, such as anti-scientific sentiments, pseudotheories, and the takeover of knowledge production and distribution by quacks. Finally, the chapter focuses on sharing economy. By problematizing the “sharing” premise, as well as by showing the impact of the ongoing change reaching far beyond economy itself, the chapter introduces the notion of collaborative society, as better covering the social change we witness.