Wikipedia Beyond the English Language Edition: How do Editors Collaborate in the Farsi and Chinese Wikipedias?

DOI

Do models of collaboration among contributors of Wikipedia generalize beyond the larger, western editions of the encyclopedia? In this study, we expanded upon the known collaborative mechanisms on the English Wikipedia and demonstrated that the collaboration model is best captured through the interplay of these mechanisms. We annotated talk page conversations for types of power plays or vies for control over edits they make to articles, to understand how policy and power play mechanisms in editors’ discussions accounts for behavior in English (EN), Farsi (FA), and Chinese (ZH) language editions of Wikipedia. Our findings show that the same power plays used in EN exist in both FA and ZH but the frequency of their usage differs across the editions. This suggests that editors in different language communities value contrasting types of policies to compete for power while discussing editing an article. This study contributes to a deeper understanding of how collaboration models developed from a western perspective translate to non-western languages.