Matt Billings
Leon A. Watts
ABSTRACT
Conflict is a natural part of human communication with implications for the work and well-being of a community. It can cause projects to stall or fail. Alternatively new insights can be produced that are valuable to the community, and membership can be strengthened. We describe how Wikipedia mediators create and maintain a 'safe space'. They help conflicting parties to express, recognize and respond positively to their personal and substantive differences. We show how the 'mutability' of wiki text can be used productively by mediators: to legitimize and restructure the personal and substantive issues under dispute; to actively and visibly differentiate personal from substantive elements in the dispute, and to maintain asynchronous engagement by adjusting expectations of timeliness. We argue that online conflicts could be effectively conciliated in other text-based web communities, provided power differences can be controlled, by policies and technical measures for maintaining special 'safe' conflict resolution spaces.
- Billings, M. and Watts, L.A. A safe space to vent: Conciliation and conflict in distributed teams. European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, Springer Verlag, Limerick, Ireland, (2007), 139--158.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Bruckman, A., Danis, C., Lampe, C., Sternberg, J. and Waldron, C. Managing deviant behavior in online communities. Extended Abstracts of CHI2006, ACM Press, New York, (2006), 21--24. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Burke, M. and Kraut, R. Taking up the mop: identifying future wikipedia administrators. Proceedings of CHI2008, ACM Press, New York, (2008), 3441--3446. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Bush, R.A.B. and Folger, J.P. The Promise of Mediation. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, 2005.Google Scholar
- Butler, B., Joyce, E. and Pike, J. Don't look now, but we've created a bureaucracy: the nature and roles of policies and rules in wikipedia. Proceedings of CHI2008, ACM Press, New York, (2008), 1101--1110. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Carnevale, P.J. and Probst, T.M. Social Values and Social Conflict in Creative Problem Solving and Categorisation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 4 7(1998).Google Scholar
- Clark, H.H. Using Language. CUP, Cambridge, 1996.Google Scholar
- Cosley, D., Frankowski, D., Kiesler, S., Terveen, L. and Riedle, J. How oversight improves member-maintained communities. Proceedings of CHI2005, ACM Press, New York, (2005), 11--20. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Daft, R. and Lengel, R.H. A proposed integration among organizational information requirements, media richness, and structural design. Management Science, 321986). 554--571. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Deutsch, M. A Theoretical Perspective on Conflict and Conflict Resolution. Conflict Management and Problem Solving: interpersonal to international applications., Pinter, London, (1987), 38--44.Google Scholar
- Easterbrook, S. (ed.), CSCW: Cooperation or conflict? Springer Verlag, London, 1993. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Erickson, T. Persistent Conversation: Discourse as Document. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 4 4(1999).Google Scholar
- Honeyman, C., Baker, M.F., Bellman, H.S., Bradley, S., Honoroff, B., Lewis, M.K., Maida, P.R., McEwan, C.A., McKnight, M., Goulet-Orenstein, S., Pou Jr., C., Riskin, L.L., Sander, F.E., Singer, L.R. and Smith, M. Performance-based assessment: A methodology for use in selecting, training and evaluating mediators. National Institute for Dispute Resolution, Washington, DC, 1995.Google Scholar
- Jehn, K.A. A Multi-Method Examination of the Benefits and Detriments of Intragroup Conflict. Administrative Science Quarterly, 401995). 256--282.Google Scholar
- Katash and Rifkin Online Dispute Resolution: resolving conflict in cyberspace. Jossey-Bass Publishers, San Fransisco, 2001. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Kiesler, S., Siegal, J. and McGuire, T.W. Social psychological aspects of computer-mediated communication. American Psychologist, 39 10(1984). 1123--1134.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Kittur, A., Suchman, L., Pendleton, B.A. and Chi, E. He says, she says: conflict and coordination in Wikipedia. Proceedings of CHI2007, ACM Press, New York, (2007), 453--462. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Kressel, K. Mediation. Handbook of Conflict Resolution: Theory and Practice, Jossey-Bass, (2000).Google Scholar
- Kriplean, T., Beschastnikh, I., McDonald, D.W. and Golder, S.A. Community, consensus, coercion, control: cs*w or how policy mediates mass participation. Proceedings of GROUP2007, ACM Press, New York, (2007), 167--176. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Lampe, C. and Johnston, E. Follow the (slash) dot: effects of feedback on new members in an online community. Proceedings of GROUP 2005, ACM Press, New York, (2005), 11--20. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Lampe, C. and Resnick, P. Slash(dot) and burn: distributed moderation in a large online conversation space. Proceedings of CHI2004, ACM Press, New York, (2004), 543--550. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Laue, J. The Emergence of Institutionalisation of Third-Party Roles in Conflict. Conflict Management and Problem Solving: interpersonal to international applications., Pinter, London, (1987), 17 -- 29.Google Scholar
- Picard, C., Bishop, P., Ramkay, R. and Sargent, N. The Art and Science of Mediation. Emond Montgomery Publications, Toronto, 2004.Google Scholar
- Poole, M.S., Homes, M. and Desanctis, G. Conflict management and group decision support systems. Proceedings of ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, ACM Press, Oregon, (1988), 227--243. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Spears, R., Lea, M. and Postmes, T. Social psychological theories of computer-mediated communication: social pain or social gain? The handbook of language and social psychology, Wiley, Chichester, (2000).Google Scholar
- Thom-Santelli, J., Cosley, D. and Gay, G. What's mine is mine: territoriality in collaborative authoring. Proceedings of CHI2009, ACM Press, New York, (2009), 1481--1484. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Walther, J.B. Computer-mediated communication: Impersonal, interpersonal, and hyperpersonal interaction. Communication Research, 23 1(1996). 3--43.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Walther, J.B. and Parks, M.R. Cues Filtered-Out, Cues Filtered-In: Computer-Mediated Communication and Relationships. Handbook of Interpersonal Communication, Sage, (2002).Google Scholar
- Winslade, J. and Monk, G. Narrative Mediation: A New Approach to Conflict Resolution. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, 2000.Google Scholar
Index Terms
- Understanding dispute resolution online: using text to reflect personal and substantive issues in conflict
Recommendations
Fight club: culture, conflict and everyday life amongst an online 'community'
This paper examines a specific online community and the degree to which participants' association is constituted and reinforced through conflict. We sample the existing literature regarding online communities in an historical sense and critique the ...
Swimming with mermaids: Communication and social density in the Second Life merfolk community
Highlights- The merfolk community of Second Life is made of ultra-specialized avatars.
- In ...
AbstractWhile individuals are solicited by a growing number of online networks and virtual communities, human cognitive resources are still limited in terms of the number of fruitful interactions a given individual can sustain. With a high ...
Swimming with mermaids
The merfolk community of Second Life is made of ultra-specialized avatars.In order not to become isolated, merfolks of Second Life have developed strategies to keep social bonds.The merfolk community is a good model to study internal communication ...
Comments