View source for Hackers, Cyborgs, and Wikipedians: the Political Economy and Cultural History of Wikipedia

'''Hackers, Cyborgs, and Wikipedians: the Political Economy and Cultural History of Wikipedia''' - scientific work related to Wikipedia quality published in 2011, written by Andrew A. Famiglietti.

== Overview ==
Victoria Smith Ekstrand, Advisor This dissertation explores the political economy and cultural history of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. It demonstrates how Wikipedia, an influential and popular site of knowledge production and distribution, was influenced by its heritage from the hacker communities of the late twentieth century. More specifically, Wikipedia was shaped by an ideal Author call, “the cyborg individual,” which held that the production of knowledge was best entrusted to a widely distributed network of individual human subjects and individually owned computers. Author trace how this ideal emerged from hacker culture in response to anxieties hackers experienced due to their intimate relationships with machines. Author go on to demonstrate how this ideal influenced how Wikipedia was understood both those involved in the early history of the site, and those writing about it. In particular, legal scholar Yochai Benkler seems to base his understanding of Wikipedia and its strengths on the cyborg individual ideal. Having established this, Author then move on to show how the cyborg individual ideal misunderstands Wikipedia’s actual method of production. Most importantly, it overlooks the importance of how the boundaries drawn around communities and shared technological resources shape Wikipedia’s content. Author then proceed to begin the process of building what Author believe is a better way of understanding Wikipedia, by tracing how communities and shared resources shape the production of recent Wikipedia articles.