Models for Understanding Collective Intelligence on Wikipedia
Social Science Computer Review
Published online on June 26, 2015
Abstract
Through examining established and evolving conceptions of intelligence across natural and social science and applying them to Wikipedia, this article argues that the world’s largest encyclopedia and broadest implementation of the wiki is an online instance of collective intelligence (CI), as it fits key models for this concept. Further, by relying on sociotechnical ensembles of human intelligence, programmed bots, social bureaucracy, and software protocols, a more humanistic CI, as proposed by Lévy, is realized in a virtual knowledge space that embodies information as both product and process while empowering its community to explore the cultural possibilities of its collectivism.