CONFLICT MANAGEMENT PROCESS FOR VIRTUAL
COMMUNITIES
Juliana de Melo Bezerra and Celso Massaki Hirata
Computer Science Department, Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronautica, S. J. Campos, Brazil
Keywords: Conflict, Virtual community, Conflict management process.
Abstract: Through the participation on collaborative tasks in virtual communities, members can express their
divergences during discussions, which characterize conflicts. Conflicts can contribute positively creativity,
innovation and quality of decisions. However, if not managed, conflicts can negatively impact community
performance and members’ satisfaction. We propose a conflict management process for virtual
communities. The process is useful to design new virtual communities because it allows to bring conflict
management mechanisms, and also to improve mechanisms of existent virtual communities by correctly
addressing the causes and consequences of conflicts.
1 INTRODUCTION
Virtual community is a group of people, who come
together for a purpose online, and who are governed
by norms (Preece, 2000). To accomplish the online
tasks collaboratively, members are in general
involved in discussions, where conflicts can arise.
Virtual communities are likely to experience greater
coordination and communication restrictions, due to
the missing of context and social cues on online
enviroments (Cramton, 2001). This fact can
contribute to misunderstandings during discussions,
and consequently it can lead to conflicts.
Conflict is a disagreement, both manifest and
latent, among members and implies incompatible
goals and interests (Robbins, 1974). Conflict is
practically intrinsic to the life and dynamics of
groups. Conflicts can be beneficial, because they
contribute to creativity, innovation, and quality
improvement of decisions. Conflicts can also be
dysfunctional, when they produce tension and
distract members from performing the task (Medina,
2005); in this case, impacting negatively on
community performance and members’ satisfaction.
If conflicts are managed properly in virtual
communities, the community can take advantage of
the benefits of conflicts and reduce the negative
impacts. So, a process of management conflicts in
virtual communities is of interest. A better
understanding of the factors that contribute to
conflicts and the related impacts can help the
conflict management.
A conflict can have many causes, which are
driven by human and task factors. Liu et al. (2008)
discuss about factors that contribute to conflicts in
work groups, such as group diversity and conflict
resolution styles. Paul et al. (2005) study the use of
distinct conflict resolution styles during the
decision-making processes in virtual teams.
Kankanhalli et al. (2006) propose that, besides the
human factors, some task characteristics, such as
interdependence and routeness, also contribute to
conflicts. The related work is mainly concerned
about the factors that contribute to conflicts, and not
to the conflict management. Conflict resolution
styles refer to behaviors that a member can have
during a conflict. It is an individual response of a
member. We are concerned about responses made
by the community itself, in order to manage conflicts
accordingly.
In other research (Viégas et al., 2004; Kittur and
Kraut, 2008), conflicts in virtual communities based
on wikis, which have Wikipedia (in English version)
as the application, are investigated. Wikipedia is a
free online encyclopaedia driven by volunteer
contributions. It has been studied by many
researchers due to its popularity. Viégas et al. (2004)
use a visualization method to study cooperation and
conflict between authors of articles. Kittur and Kraut
(2008) suggest that conflicts depend not only on the
number of contributors involved, but also on the
33
de Melo Bezerra J. and Massaki Hirata C..
CONFLICT MANAGEMENT PROCESS FOR VIRTUAL COMMUNITIES.
DOI: 10.5220/0003453500330042
In Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS-2011), pages 33-42
ISBN: 978-989-8425-56-0
Copyright
c
2011 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)
density of members in an information space. Their
work characterize conflict by reverts in articles,
which represent how competing perspectives
negotiate their differences. We are particularly
interested on the conflicts that arise during the
discussions among members, and how the
community manages them.
We propose a process of conflict management in
virtual communities. The proposal is based on the
processes of risk managament in projects, described
in PMBoK (2004). The objective of the conflict
management includes an early recognition of
conflicts and their causes, and an appropriate level
of intervention, aiming to advance the quality of
discussions in virtual communities. We believe that
the proposed process is useful for designing new
virtual communities and re-evaluating existent ones,
in order to define and improve, respectively,
mechanisms of conflict response.
The article is organized as follows. Section 2
provides a discussion about conflicts, describing the
human and task factors that can contribute to
conflicts. In Section 3, we propose a conflict
managament process for virtual communities, and
explain it using examples of conflicts investigated in
Wikipedia. Section 4 concludes our work and
indicates future work.
2 CONFLICTS
Conflict refers to the awareness by various parties of
their differences, discrepancies, incompatible wishes
or irreconcilable desires (Mannix et al., 2002). Jehn
(1995) distinguishes two types of conflict: task and
relationship. Task conflict is generally task oriented
and arises from differences in judgement and
perspective. It reflects disagreements in viewpoints,
ideas and opinions concerning to tasks and
decisions. Relationship conflict is emotional and
arises from incompatibilities or disputes among
members, which typicaly includes tension, friction
and animosity. It involves personal issues such as
mutual dislike, personal clashes, and annoyance
among members.
Task and relationship conflicts are positively
correlated (Amason, 1996; Kankanhalli et al., 2006;
Medina et al., 2005), and in this article we consider
both types of conflict. Below we discuss about the
two factors that can contribute to conflicts: human
and task factors.
2.1 Human Factors
The human factors that can contribute to conflicts
are group diversity and individual conflict behavior.
Group diversity is defined as any attribute that
people use to tell themselves that another person is
different (Pelled, 1996). It involves surface-level and
deep-level dimensions. Surface-level diversity is
related to demographic characteristics, such as age,
sex, ethnicity, education, and function. Deep-level
diversity includes cognitive and relational diversity.
Cognitive diversity reflects differences in beliefs and
preferences of group member about group goal.
Relational diversity is based on psychological
perceptions of interpersonal relationship (Liu et al.,
2008).
Group diversity is intrinsic to virtual
communities, because members can be from
different countries or regions, and have distinct
interests and experiences. Sometimes the diversity is
not explicit in virtual communities, especially when
members use logins to represent their identity and do
not detail their profile, as occurs in forums and
Wikipedia. Group diversity stimulates creativity and
allows a variety of skills to be brougth during
discussions, however it can also reduce group
cohesion and increase conflict (Kankanhalli et al.,
2006).
Other human factors that can contribute to
conflicts are the individual behaviors under
conflicts. It means the distinct forms of behavior that
members involved in discussion can perform
individually. It is also known as conflict resolution
styles (Paul et al,. 2005) or conflict management
behaviors (Liu et al., 2008). Typically members
respond to conflict by using one of the five modes:
avoiding, accomodating, competing, compromising,
and collaborating (Thomas and Kilmann, 1974).
Avoiding behavior refers to intentional withdraw
from a conflict situation. Accomodating behavior
seeks for agreement by attemping to smooth out
differences. In competing behavior, member
enforces the own view on others. Compromising
behavior includes to find a middle ground solution
or a common solution that addresses members’
interests. Collaborating behavior concerns to the
achievement of the best solution, by integrating all
views in order to generate a creative new one (Paul
et al. 2005; Foundation Coalition, 2010).
None of these individual behaviors is wrong to
use, but there are better times to use each depending
on the situational realities (Liu, 2008). During
discussions in a virtual community, members can
opt by these distinct individual behaviors. Due to
ICEIS 2011 - 13th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems
34
group diversity and the chosen behavior, the way
that members express themselves can lead to
misunderstandings and aggravate the conflict.
2.2 Task Factors
Kankanhalli et al. (2006) propose that, besides the
human factors, some task characteristics
(interdependence and routeness) are also factors that
contribute to conflicts. Interdependence is intrinsic
to the collaborative characteristic of virtual
communities. Routeness appears in tasks depending
on its type and life timing. In this article, we discuss
three main aspects of a task as contributors to
conflicts: timing, subject and level.
Task timing is related to the timeline of the task
being developed by members. There are some
moments that are critical to the task
accomplishment, requiring the involvement of
members in discussions of important issues and
decisions. It can occur, for example, due to the
approximation of the deadline for the task
conclusion. In these critical moments, the occurance
of conflicts can be accelerated.
Another factor that can contribute to conflicts is
the task subject. Depending on the subject being
debated, conflicts are more likely to occur, for
instance, polemic themes, such as religion and
politics can easily generate controversy. In general,
these conflicts are part of the quotidian of members,
and are also debated in the virtual world.
The last task factor is the task level. The
identified levels are operational, procedural and
normative. The operational level includes the
activities developed in community and aligned to its
main objective. The procedural and normative levels
refer, respectively, to procedures and norms of
community. As norms regulate the people
relationships and activities, a change in a norm
affects the community. Besides the norms, there are
the procedures, which detail the operational
participation of the members in order to guide the
accomplishment of norms. The task level factor is
particularly interesting to a special kind of virtual
communities called self-organizing virtual
communities (Bezerra and Hirata, 2011). In self-
organizing virtual communities, members are
expected to participate not only in the execution of
the community operational activities, but also in the
definition of norms and in the accomplishment of
related procedures. To execute activities, members
are involved in dicussions and conflicts can happen.
3 CONFLICT MANAGEMENT
PROCESS
In this section we propose a conflict management
process, which aims to both take advantage of the
benefits of conflicts and reduce some dysfunctional
effects of them.
We conjecture that risk management processes as
described in PMBoK (2004) are a sound basis to
conflict management. The reason is that conflict as
well as risk is a situation that has to be planned
before occur, in order to be correctly addressed.
However, there are some differences. For instance,
identifying conflicts depends on considering human
factors, such as culture, experience, and behavior of
members, which are essentially abstract factors. We
believe that the processes and activities are not that
different. We elaborate the customization on the
descriptions of the conflict management activities.
We also conjecture that similar inputs, tools,
techniques, and outputs described in PMBoK can be
used for conflict management. For example, the
techniques to collect information, such as
brainstorming and interviews can be widely used.
The proposed activities for the conflict
management process are: Identification of Conflicts
and Causes, Analysis of Conflicts, Conflict
Response Planning, and Monitoring and Control of
Conflicts. It is important to understand that the three
first activities are concerned to planning. The last
activity is related to manifested conflicts that occurs
in community and they are generally handled
according to the planning made before.
We perform a study about conflicts in Wikipedia
in order to gather examples to better explain our
process of conflict management. Wikipedia is an
online encyclopaedia where content can be added or
changed at any time by anyone on Internet. During
the process of content edition, there can be some
discussions among members, which are held in the
talk pages associated to the content pages. There are
also discussions regarding the edition of norms and
the accomplishment of procedures, due to the self-
organizing characteristic of the community (Bezerra
and Hirata, 2011). As consequence of active
discussions, conflicts can happen. Conflicts are
known as disputes in Wikipedia. In the next
sections, we explain each conflict managemenent
activity.
3.1 Identification of Conflicts
and Causes
The Identification of Conflicts and Causes activity
CONFLICT MANAGEMENT PROCESS FOR VIRTUAL COMMUNITIES
35
refers to the determination of which conflicts are
likely to occur in virtual communities and which are
the potential causes for them. It can be made using
lists of conflicts and causes previously identified in
other similar analysis. It can also be made through
an inquiry into the factors that contribute to
conflicts, which are human and task factors
described in Section 2.
We analysed twenty conflict cases in Wikipedia
from the human and task factors’ perspectives. The
conflicts about general articles in Wikipedia, we
retrieved from those reported in a mechanism called
“Editor Assistance”. For further reference, we
provide a code to identify each analysed conflicts,
namely: A query on space Quest 4 (A1), Stealth
Game' reverting disputes (A2), Maine
Gubernatorial election, 2010 candidate (A3), Anna
Nicholas (A4), Album genre disputes (A5), Geoffry
Thomas (A6), Share international article citations
(A7), Lanark-Frontenac-Lennox and Addington
(A8), COI and addressing inaccuracies (A9),
Seeking dispute resolution (A10), Copy-editing of
everclear (alcohol) (A11), and Dispute regarding
quotations from the Australian politician Adam
Bandt (A12). The conflicts about the definition and
maintenance of norms, we retrieve from the
discussions about the Civility norm in Wikipedia.
For further reference, we provide a code to identify
each analysed conflict, namely: Don't be a dick
(N1), Merge with WP:LIE (N2), Blocking for
incivility (N3), Polite provocation (N4), Changes to
this policy (N5), Is there any consensus for this
addition? (N6), Policy or guideline? (N7), and Drop
this principle (N8).
Through the investigation of conflict cases in
Wikipedia, we identified seven main conflicts,
which are shown in Table 1. We also identified
some causes of conflicts, which are listed in Table 2.
Some discussions regarding the lists are provided
below.
The task level factor (operational, procedural,
and normative) helps the identification of conflicts.
In the operational level, conflicts can occur
frequently, because the members diverge about the
content of the article being edited (C1). This kind of
misunderstandings can happen between general
members, but can also involve members in
administrative positions (C3). We call administrator
a member with any administrative function, which
include the following roles in Wikipedia:
“administrators”, “bureaucrats”, “stewards”
“checkusers”, “reviewers”, “account creators”,
“oversighters”, and “rollbackers”. An example of
conflict C3 is the case A4, where a member argues
about a new page that he created and was deleted
without further explanation. The other cases A1 to
A3, and A5 to A12 are examples of conflict C1.
Table 1: Conflicts in Wikipedia.
Id Conflict
C1
Divergence between editors about the content of
an article
C2
Divergence between editors about the
presentation of an article
C3
Divergence between editor and administrator
about the content of an article
C4
Divergence between editor and administrator
about the presentation of an article
C5
Divergence regarding the decision to be taken
during the execution of a procedure
C6 Divergence about the content of a norm
C7 Divergence about the presentation of a norm
In the procedure level, there are difficult cases to
handle and consequently critical decisions to make,
which can contribute to conflicts (C5). For example,
“Articles for Deletion” is a board that discusses if a
page has to be deleted; and “Administrators’
Noticeboard/Incidents” is a board that discusses
cases about incorrect conduct of members, such as
vandalism and uncivil behavior.
In the normative level, discussions about changes
in the content of norms (C6) can have divergences,
and consequently conflicts, because norms affect
substantially the community. The following cases
are examples of C6: N3, N4, N5, N6, N7 and N8.
For instance in N3, members discuss about a change
of the way the blocking for incivility is performed.
Another example is N8, where a criticism regarding
the norm provoked an inflamed conflict.
The conflicts C1, C3, and C6 comprise of
divergences regarding content. However there are
also divergences about the presentation of articles
and norms. The presentation includes text
comprehension, text formatting, and organization of
subsections. This fact leads to the identification of
conflicts C2, C4 and C7. Some examples of C7 are
the cases N1 and N2.
The human and task factors also help during the
identification of the causes of conflicts. It is
important to observe that a conflict is not driven by
just one cause. Many causes can contribute to a
conflict. For instance, A3 is an example of conflict
C1. This conflict involves a polemic theme, politics,
which characterizes the cause CA13. This conflict
also has signs of incorrect use of emphasis during
ICEIS 2011 - 13th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems
36
the discussion, as illustrated in the comment
(1),
which characterizes the cause CA10.
“If you're going to scream at me via edit
summary, you could at least be more specific. I
have no idea what "YOU CAN'T!" is referring
to.” (comment found in A3)
(1)
Table 2: Causes of conflicts in Wikipedia.
Id Cause of conflicts
CA1 Missing of explanation about taken actions
CA2 Distinct interpretations about contents
CA3 Distinct interpretations about norms
CA4 Difficult to explain the issue to be discussed
CA5 Lack of context
CA6 Persistance when expressing opinion
CA7 Difficult to express an opinion
CA8 Missing explanation about an opinion
CA9 Missing member identification
CA10 Incorrect use of emphasis
CA11 Personal attacks and judgments
CA12 Critical timing of task accomplishment
CA13 Polemic subjects
Some discussions about the identified causes of
conflicts, presented in Table 2, are provided next.
Members often complain when someone else
reverts or changes what they have made without
making clear the reason (CA1). Conflict can happen
due to differences in interpretation of the issue
(CA2). It can be explained by the group diversity
factor that impacts the understanding of contents,
due to ambiguities in text, cultural singularities in
language, and differences of members’ experiences.
In Wikipedia, it can also be verified regarding the
interpretation of norms (CA3).
The group diversity influences the way people
express themselves in spoken and written language.
It can be noted in Wikipedia by the name of the
topic discussed that sometimes does not reflect the
real problem to be handled (CA4). There are cases
where the discussion title is adequate, however the
problem to be handled and the initial proposal is not
clear (CA5). It can generate misunderstandings and
even the loss of direction in discussions. To express
persistently the same opinion (CA6) can be
perceived by other members as a competing
behavior and negative reactions can occur, which
generates conflicts.
During discussions, it can be difficult to
understand ones’ opinion (CA7) without reading all
the conversation, especially if the sentence mentions
some particular point of the conversation. So, some
misunderstandings can occur, consequently
contributing to conflicts. Besides a member correctly
expresses an opinion during a discussion, it is
desired that he explains his point of view (CA8).
The explanation of opinion can enrich the
discussion, by giving additional information. It can
help to reduce conflicts, because an opinion without
a reason can be interpreted as a tentative to impose
someone’s view in a competing behavior.
Conflicts occur among members. It is important
for members to know the contributions of each
participant of the conflict, in order to be able to
analyze the distinct views and form an opinion. So,
the correct identification of the contributions is
desired (CA9). The heated discussions, characterized
by personal attacks and judgments (CA11), are
particularly related to conflicts, because they are
used to criticize, offend and expose members.
The use of emphasis, such as capital letters, italic
format and quotation marks, in written language can
contribute to conflicts, when they are used to express
negative feelings (CA10). For example, a sentence
in capital letter can be understood as a scream, and
the italic format can express angry. The use of
emphasis is not always harmful, for example capital
letters can be used to write an abbreviation, and
quotation marks can be used to identify the name of
an article section.
To reason about the timing factor in conflicts, the
number of archived discussions regarding the
Civility norm in Wikipedia was analysed according
its life cycle. The high number of comments in
discussions indicates possible conflicts during a
period. We observe a peak of possible conflicts
during 2008. In this period some inflamed
discussions can be identified, for example N4, N5,
N6, and N7. It is not clear the reasons for this
intense period. It can be related to the crescent
number of articles and members in Wikipedia
(Kittur and Kraut, 2010), which can have caused the
need of additional discussions about this norm and
its application. It characterizes the cause CA12.
The timing factor is also noted in Wikipedia by
analysing the number of visualizations of a page. We
analyse the number of accesses to an article called
“Maine gubernatorial election, 2010” since its
creation. This article is about an event happened on
November/2010. Two peaks of visualization in 2010
were identified: one near July/2010 and other near
November/20010. There is also a reported conflict in
CONFLICT MANAGEMENT PROCESS FOR VIRTUAL COMMUNITIES
37
A3. The first peak can be related to the preparation
and final adjustments of the article for the event; and
the second peak can be related to the event
occurrence itself. It also characterizes the cause
CA12.
In Wikipedia, the task subject factor is
represented by the article subject. There can be
conflicts when members discuss about any subject,
for example, A1 to A12 illustrates cases of conflicts
about games, politics, music, place, etc. However,
there can be a high number of conflicts about
specific subjects, in general polemic subjects
(CA13) as politics, religion, and war.
Although the identified conflicts and causes are
for a particular community, the Wikipedia, we
believe that they are quite general and can be used as
suggestions for the conflict management of other
communities. With the conflicts and causes
identified, we can proceed to the next activity of the
conflict management process.
3.2 Analysis of Conflicts
This activity includes methods to priorize the
identified conflict for the Conflict Response
Planning. We understand that the community can
improve its performance by focusing on high
priority conflicts. The priority of conflicts can be
evaluated considering two main aspects: the
probability of occurence and the impact in
community if the conflict occurs.
The probability of occurrence of a conflict is
related to the probability of occurrence of its causes,
which were already identified in the previous
activity of the conflict managament process.
Some identified impacts of conflicts are on
performance and members’ satisfaction (De Dreu
and Weingart, 2003). Performance is mostly related
to task quality and effectiveness. Reduced quality of
tasks can expose the community credibility. The
dissatisfaction of members can provoke hard
consequences, such as disturbance of members’ trust
on community, reduction of members’ participation,
and even the loss of members. For example, in
comment
(2) a member reports the displeasure of
being in an endless conflict and criticises the
community. It reveals a negative impact on the
confidence and admiration of members on
community. In the comments (3) and (4), members,
who reported the conflict, became so unsatisfied that
mention to not contribute anymore. It represents a
negative impact on the commitment of members in
community.
“Let us end this petty, ridiculousness which
makes Wikipedia an ugly rather than useful
place.” (comment found in A3)
(2)
“Well since you put it that way, I think I'm
done with this article.” (comment found in A1)
(3)
“I was hoping to expand upon this article, but
I'd like to know ahead of time if it's going to be
a waste of time.” (comment found in A2)
(4)
The probability and impact of each conflict has to be
evaluated. The definition of the distinct levels of
probability and impact depends on each community.
There can be defined a relative scale of probability,
including for example the levels “not probable”,
“probable” and “high probable”. It is also possible to
use numeric probabilities, for instance 0.1; 0.3; 0.5;
0.7 and 0.9. The scale about impact has to reflect its
importance, and it can be relative or numeric.
PMBoK suggests a matrix of probability and
impact, which we adopt for priorizing conflicts for
the Wikipedia analysis. It is illustrated in Table 3.
The priorization is made according to zones: high
priority (hard gray), medium priority (light gray) and
low priority (medium gray).
Table 3: Matrix of probability and impact (PMBoK).
Probability
0.90
0.05 0.09 0.18 0.36 0.72
0.70
0.04 0.07 0.14 0.28 0.56
0.50
0.03 0.05 0.10 0.20 0.40
0.30
0.02 0.03 0.06 0.12 0.24
0.10
0.01 0.01 0.02 0.04 0.08
0.05 0.10 0.20 0.40 0.80
Impact
Using the conflicts in Table 1, and the
probability and impact scales in Table 3, we make
an analyze of conflicts in Wikipedia. The result is
shown in Table 4. For each conflict, we indicate
probability, impact, and priority. It reflects our
interpretation about the conflicts in Wikipedia.
Table 4: Analysis of conflicts in Wikipedia.
Conflict Id Probability Impact Prority
C1 0.90 0.40 high
C2 0.50 0.10 low
C3 0.50 0.20 medium
C4 0.30 0.10 low
C5 0.50 0.20 medium
C6 0.30 0.80 medium
C7 0.30 0.10 low
ICEIS 2011 - 13th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems
38
The conflict C1 is very probable considering the
number of contributors, because many members are
involved in the edition of contents, which is the
main activity in Wikipedia. C1 has a considerable
impact, due to the direct relation with the quality of
articles, and consequently with the credibility of the
community. Besides, C1 can impact members’
motivation to contribute.
The conflict C3, although similar to C1, has an
important difference that is the involvement of an
administrator in the conflict. This kind of conflict
occurs mainly because a general member does not
agree with the attitude or guidance of the
administrator. The impact of C3 is the decrease of
confidence of members on the community, because
general members see administrators as community
representatives. In discussions of the procedure
level, it is common for the members to express an
opinion in a clear way using statements as “oppose”,
“support” for the initial proposal. This practice helps
to reduce the probability of the conflict C5. The
impact of C5 is related to the confidence of members
on the decisions made during the procedure
execution.
We consider a low probability for conflict C6
due to the high maturity of the community, which
already has established its norms. However, the
associated impact is very high, because modification
of norms can configure a significant change in the
way the community operates, so conflicts regarding
this topic are critical. The conflicts C2, C4, and C7,
regarding the presentation of articles and norms can
occur, however they have low impact to the task
quality. The low impact contributes to the low
priority of these conflicts.
One technique to evaluate the probability of a
conflict is to evaluate the probability of its causes. A
conflict can have many causes with distinct
criticality. Besides, some causes are likely to
generate a specific conflict. The evaluation of
causes’ probabilities is not trivial due to the
correlation among the causes, for instance CA4 is in
general correlated to CA5. So this evaluation may
require the assistance of experts in community.
Given a conflict, we can assign the probability of
occurrence for each cause listed in Table 2, and then
define the probability of the conflict.
The probabilities of some causes are particular
interesting to discuss. The cause CA1 (missing of
explanation about taken actions) is quite probable in
C1 due to the nature of the community that is to edit
the content without a previous validation or
discussion. The same cause in C6 is less probable,
because members in general discuss the proposal
before change the norm. Although the fact that in
Wikipedia the identification of members in
discussions is not required, members are used to
provide this information. It contributes to the low
probability of CA9 (missing of member
identification). In C3, C5 and C6, CA9 is rarely
perceived, however in C1 it can occur. Causes with
high probabilities for all conflicts are in general
concerned about how a member informs the
community what he desires to discuss (CA4 and
CA5), and how he express and justify his opinion
(CA7 and CA8). Other critical cause is the presence
of personal attacks and judgments (CA11). The
cause CA12 (critical timing for task
accomplishment) is very probable in C5, because
decisions have to be taken in a short time in order to
address the cases promptly, for example cases of
vandalism require a quick response by the
community.
The priorization of conflicts allows to list which
conflicts have to be addressed first. The relation
between a conflict and its causes is useful both to
evaluate the probability of the conflict, and also to
address the response for the conflict. The Analysis
of Conflicts activity is not a trivial activity, because
it needs a considerable understanding of the
members’ roles and community work. The next
section details the forms to respond to conflicts.
3.3 Conflict Response Planning
The Conflict Causes Response Planning refers to the
development of options and the determination of
actions to reduce the occurrence of conflicts. It deals
with conflicts considering their priority. In general it
is necessary to choose some suitable responses
among all the possible ones. We present three
approaches for conflict response, namely avoidance,
transference and mitigation, based on the strategies
for risk response in project management proposed in
PMBoK (2004).
The avoidance approach refers to the impediment
of the emergence of conflicts, for example by
blocking discussions. During the investigation of
conflicts in Wikipedia, a mechanism of the
avoidance approach is identified. It is called page
protection mechanism and it is responsible for
blocking changes in articles. By eliminating new
editions in articles, the mechanism eliminates
disagreements among members and consequently
avoids conflicts. It is important to note that an
adopted mechanism may have other consequences
on the community. In this case, for instance, other
members who are not involved in the conflict may
CONFLICT MANAGEMENT PROCESS FOR VIRTUAL COMMUNITIES
39
not agree with the adopted mechanism (page
protection), because they desire to contribute to the
article while the editions are blocked.
The transference approach is to assign to an
entity, outside the virtual community, the negative
impact of a conflict as well as the right to give to it a
proper response. For example, if a conflict involves
serious threats, such as death threats, some justice
entity outside the virtual community can be called to
investigate the case.
To mitigate a conflict, it is possible to reduce its
probability and/or to reduce its impact. The
reduction of the conflict probability is related to the
reduction of the probabilities of the causes that
generate the conflict.
In Wikipedia some actions are perceived aiming
to decrease the probability of conflicts. One example
is that some expert members help general members
with the article edition, trying to improve content
and assure quality. These expert members have more
experience in Wikipedia and can contribute to the
interpretation of general contents (CA2) and norms
(CA3). For instance, in comment
(5), an assistant of
the “Editor Assistance” mechanism remembers the
importance of the contributions made by the member
X (the real identification is omitted).
“Please see the latest comments on the article
talk page by X, an experienced Wikipedia
editor and administrator.” (comment found in
A12)
(5)
Other way to mitigate conflicts in Wikipedia by
decreasing their probabilities is the existence of
specialized boards to discuss critical themes (CA13).
An example is provided in
(6).
“I would suggest that you ask this question at
WT:WikiProject Electoral districts in Canada
as they are probably best placed to proffer
useful advice.” (comment found in A8)
(6)
The mitigation approach to conflict includes
mechanisms to address and reduce impact of
conflicts. One example is to inform the community
the status of a task that is under conflict, in a way to
indicate its reliability. In Wikipedia an article can
receive templates that indicate unsolved conflicts
about the content. The templates have associated
symbols and notes. Some examples are: POV
(Symbol: balance. Note: The neutrality of this article
is disputed), and Pp-dispute (Symbol: lock. Note:
This page is currently protected from editing until
disputes have been resolved).
Some mitigation mechanisms can be used to help
members in conflicts to reach a conclusion, which
aim to reduce the negative impact of members’
dissatisfaction. Some examples of such mechanisms
are facilitation, mediation, and arbitration (Lewicki
et al., 1992). A voting system in some decision
making process can also be used. In Wikipedia we
identify the following mechanisms: “Editor
Assistance”, “Third Opinion”, “Request
Comments”, “Mediation Cabal”, “Mediation
Committee” and “Arbitration”. Each mechanism has
its own characteristics, which defines how cases are
accepted and dealt. For example, “Third Opinion”
mechanism is indicated to disputes between two
editors with observance of good faith and civility.
Other example is “Arbitration” mechanism, which is
the last step of dispute resolution on Wikipedia, and
has the authority to impose binding solutions to
disputes between editors.
We identify that some mechanisms could be
proposed to mitigate the identified conflicts by
addressing the probability of related causes in
Wikipedia. For instance, the explanation of a change
performed by a member in an article or norm could
be required. Members should be obliged to explain
the issue to be debated, providing the proper
references to establish the context. Members should
provide their opinion and explanation in an
organized way during discussions. The identification
of members should be required during discussions.
The use of personal pronouns (which can indicate
personal attacks and judgements) and language
emphasis (which can be used to incivility) should be
regulated.
Depending on the severity of a conflict, a
mechanism cannot be effective, so it is necessary to
use other mechanisms. In Wikipedia there are
evidences the use of multiple mechanisms to a
conflict, for example in
(7) and (8) an assistant of
“Assistance Request” mechanism comments that the
conflict should be handled by the “Request
Comments” mechanism (also known as WP:RfC or
just RFC). In comment
(8) there is also a mention
regarding the previous submission of the issue in
conflict to a specialized board called WikiProject.
“Well probably an WP:RfC is the next step.”
(comment found in A10)
(7)
“Not an easy dispute... And it looks like
it's gotten involved on the WikiProject
talk page too... I'd suggest starting an
"arbitrary break" subsection and
proposing that an RFC be started.”
(comment found in A3)
(8)
The community should propose response
mechanisms to cover all the conflicts and their
relevant causes, especially the conflicts with high
ICEIS 2011 - 13th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems
40
priorities. It is also important to evaluate the cost to
develop such mechanisms in order to choose the
appropriated ones. In the next section, we detail the
last activity of the process that deals with manifested
conflicts.
3.4 Monitoring and Control
of Conflicts
This activity deals with real instances of conflicts
that occur in the virtual community. In order to deal
with manifested conflicts, we propose two activities:
monitoring and control. Monitoring refers to the
detection of the conflict, and control consists in
addressing the correct response to the conflicts, in
this situation the previous planning made can be
used.
When a conflict arises in Wikipedia and cannot
be handled by the involved members, some member
requests the use of a mechanism. So, there is no
automatic detection in the monitoring phase in
Wikipedia. Regarding the control of conflicts in
Wikipedia, frequently the own members are aware
of the adequate mechanism to help them during
conflicts, as reported in comments
(9) and (10),
where the “Third Opinion” and “Mediation”
mechanisms are respectively mentioned. However
sometimes members are really confused about which
is the suitable mechanism to manage the current
conflict, as illustrated in
(11).
“I am fine with seeking a definitive 3rd opinion
on the issue.” (comment found in A3)
(9)
“I assume this issue is not resolved, so I'm
going to research how to start a dispute
mediated by someone on Wikipedia.”
(comment found in A7)
(10)
“Also, I oppose bringing in a binding third-
party; I think the informal, unbinding
Mediation Cabal would be a much better start.”
(comment found in A3)
(11)
If a higher instance resolution mechanism is
required, the need of additional intervention by
members during the transference from the lower
instance to higher has to be analysed. For instance,
in Wikipedia when another mechanism is needed,
the involved members have to agree with that and
submit the case again to the new mechanism, and
sometimes it requires extra discussions and opens
the possibility to new conflicts.
The control activity should have tasks to track a
conflict in order to know its status and the
mechanisms used during its life cycle. This track in
Wikipedia may be difficult, as expressed by the
comment
(12) of an assistant who has doubt about
the real situation of the conflict A3.
“Not sure what's going on presently in this
situation.” (comment found in A3)
(12)
The suitable response for a conflict is based on the
mechanisms planned in the previous activities of the
conflict management process. The mechanisms have
to work properly or handle conflicts in an acceptable
deadline. Not addressing conflicts properly and
promptly can damage the members’ trust in the
community mechanisms. So, some additional
recommendations are to monitor the efficiency and
efficacy of the mechanisms.
4 CONCLUSIONS
During discussions in virtual communities, conflicts
can arise due to divergences among members.
Conflicts are part of communities’ life and are more
likely to occur in virtual communities due to the
communication restrictions. Unhandled conflicts can
impact negatively in community.
We proposed a process for conflict management
with the activities considering the identification and
prioritization of conflicts, the response planning for
the critical conflicts, and the monitoring and control
of conflicts when they occur in community. As new
situations can occur due to the community evolution,
generating new kinds of conflicts not already
identified, it can be necessary to review the planning
and adapt response mechanisms along the
community life cycle.
In order to describe the proposed process, we
used it for Wikipedia. The investigation leads us to
some future work, which includes the study of
automatic mechanisms to both reduce the probability
of occurrence of conflicts and detect conflicts during
the monitoring activity.
As conflicts are beneficial to communities, due
to the presence of distinct contributions to enhance
the decision, the participation of members in
discussions has to be stimulated. Then, we believe
that the study of incentive methods to increase
members’ in discussions is also an interesting future
work.
To experiment the proposed process in a real
community is not a simple task, because it depends
on the community objectives and maturity, as well
as individual characteristics of members. So, a
future work is to use multi-agents system in order to
simulate the proposed process for conflict
management.
CONFLICT MANAGEMENT PROCESS FOR VIRTUAL COMMUNITIES
41
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