Database Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 14
Trust in Online Collaborative IS
Sara Javanmardi and Cristina Lopes
14.1
Introduction
Collaborative systems available on the Web allow millions of users to share
information through a growing collection of tools and platforms such as wikis,
blogs, and shared forums. Simple editing interfaces encourage users to create and
maintain repositories of shared content. Online information repositories such as
wikis, forums, and blogs have increased the participation of the general public in
the production of Web content through the notion of social software [
1
-
3
]. The
open nature of these systems, however, makes it difficult for users to trust the
quality of the available information and the reputation of its providers. Online
information repositories, especially in the form of wikis, are widely used on the
Web. Wikis were originally designed to hide the association between a wiki page
and the authors who have produced it [
4
]. The main advantages of this feature are as
follows: (a) it eliminates the social biases associated with group deliberation, thus
contributing to the diversity of opinions and to the collective intelligence of the
group, and (b) it directs authors toward group goals, rather than individual benefits
[
5
]. In addition, one of the key characteristics of wiki software is its very low-cost
collective content creation, requiring only a regular Web browser and a simple
markup language. This feature makes wiki software a popular choice for content
creation projects where minimizing overhead is of high priority, especially in
creating new or editing already existing content. “Wikinomics” is a recent term
that denotes the art and science of peer production when masses of people collabo-
rate to create innovative knowledge resources [
6
].
The most well-known example of a public collaborative information repository
is Wikipedia, which has a traffic rank of six worldwide.
1
Usually, people trust user-
generated content in Wikipedia for learning purposes or decision-making without
validating its information [
7
]. Therefore, the highly desirable properties of wikis or
1
According to traffic report by Alexa.com in April 2010.
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