Wikipedian Self-Governance in Action: Motivating the Policy Lens

While previous studies have used the Wikipedia dataset to provide an understanding of its growth, there have been few attempts to quantitatively analyze the establishment and evo- lution of the rich social practices that support this editing community. One such social practice is the enactment and creation of Wikipedian policies. We focus on the enact- ment of policies in discussions on the talk pages that ac- company each article. These policy citations are a valuable micro-to-macro connection between everyday action, com- munal norms and the governance structure of Wikipedia. We find that policies are widely used by registered users and ad- ministrators, that their use is converging and stabilizing in and across these groups, and that their use illustrates the growing importance of certain classes of work, in particular source at- tribution. We also find that participation in Wikipedia's gov- ernance structure is inclusionary in practice.