Motivation Model in Community-Built System - Community-Built Databases: Research and Development - page 188

or other product. Moreover, in order to create the community-built system, we need
a common goal or deliverable [ 33 ]. In the case of the community-built system, the
common goal is to develop an open resource. The open resource contains content
consistent with the concept of community work.
One of the main characteristics of a community-built system is a common
purpose for collaboration. As described in [ 34 ], many activities in the field of
learning, education, and training are collaborative in nature, involving turn-taking,
statement-and-response, or multithread discussions which, in turn, occur among
participants over periods of time ranging from seconds to entire human generations.
Usually, people collaborate because they are assigned tasks that they cannot
perform alone, so they are driven to collaborate with others [ 33 ]. However, in the
case of community-built systems, the social aspect of people gathering in a com-
munity becomes central. The community of collaborators is accelerated by social
context, motivational aspects, distributed cognition, and learning community [ 35 ].
In the community-built system, the main process of knowledge collaboration
involves co-construction of knowledge, collaborative knowledge construction,
and reciprocal sense making [ 36 ].
A community-built system's operational environment is defined as a collabora-
tive service provided within a collaborative workplace supporting the collaborative
activities of a collaborative group [ 34 ]. Collaborative systems, groupware, or
multiuser applications allow groups of users to communicate and cooperate on
common tasks [ 37 ]. Such a system is modeled as a dynamic and interindependent,
diverse, partially self-organizing, fragile, and complex adaptive system [ 38 ].
Based on [ 39 ], we can formulate key assumptions necessary for community-
built system success: (1) knowledge is created as it is shared; (2) individuals have
prior knowledge that they can contribute during a discussion/collaboration; (3)
participation is critical to open resource development; and (4) individuals will
participate, if given optimal conditions. The community-based system operates
asynchronously, and this pattern supports cooperation rather than competition
between individuals [ 40 ].
8.3.1 The Collaboration Process
The collaboration process is the driving force behind the operation of a community-
built system. During the collaboration, individuals work jointly. It is important to
distinguish between processes involving collaboration and coordinated work [ 41 ].
In collaboration, no control element is required. The collaboration between indivi-
duals strongly depends on the relationship's typology [ 42 ]. It is rarely possible to
maintain an all-to-all connectivity pattern. More likely, the connections pattern is
limited to providing regular graphs, lattices, or other similar formats.
The collaboration process might be analyzed from different perspectives that
depend on the context (see Table 8.1 ). Knowledge sharing is the most important
facet of the community-built system. We assume that every individual who takes