EFFICIENT COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT IN AN INDUSTRIAL

DESIGN ENGINEERING WIKI

Distributed Leadership

Regine W. Vroom, Adrie Kooijman and Raymond Jelierse

Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands

Keywords: Industrial Design Engineering Wiki, Community Base of a Wiki, Trusting the Wiki Concept, Community

Management of a Wiki.

Abstract: Industrial design engineers use a wide variety of research fields when making decisions that will eventually

have significant impact on their designs. Obviously, designers cannot master every field, so they are

therefore often looking for a simple set of rules of thumb on a particular subject. For this reason a wiki has

been set up: www.wikid.eu. Whilst Wikipedia already offers a lot of this information, there is a distinct

difference between WikID and Wikipedia; Wikipedia aims to be an encyclopaedia, and therefore tries to be

as complete as possible. WikID aims to be a design tool. It offers information in a compact manner tailored

to its user group, being the Industrial Designers. The main subjects of this paper are the research on how to

create an efficient structure for the community of WikID and the creation of a tool for managing the

community. With the new functionality for managing group memberships and viewing information on

users, it will be easier to maintain the community. This will also help in creating a better community which

will be more inviting to participate in, provided that the assumptions made in this area hold true.

1 INTRODUCTION

Industrial design engineers are constantly searching

for information. Usually these designers turn to

technical literature or special websites provided by

developers or suppliers and more and more Wikipe

dia is used. When using books, they are often con-

fronted with a recurring problem: the information

found in technical literature (or many websites for

that matter) is often too detailed and sometimes out

dated. Industrial design engineers use a wide variety

of research fields when making decisions that will

eventually have significant impact on their designs.

Obviously, designers cannot master every field, so

they are therefore often looking for a simple set of

rules of thumb on a particular subject (Chowdhury,

2001), (Vroom et al., 2004). For this need C-DET

(acronym for Conceptual Design Engineering

Toolbox), an information database, has been set up

to accommodate the vast amount of information an

industrial design engineer might need, and aims to

do this in a way to help designers find information

more easily (Vroom, 2003). To enable quick navi-

gation an appropriate entrance structure in C-DET is

required. After several studies for determining the

knowledge structure for C-DET (Vroom et al., 2005

& 2006a), we decided to include at least the

following entrance categories to the database:

• Design Process Phases for including: Design

theories, techniques and Design tools

• Design aspects (such as Ergonomics,

Materials, Aesthetics, etc.),

• Product domains (Children, Medical, etc.)

Besides these categories, C-DET includes a search

function using keywords (search engine). Three

prototypes for C-DET were built, tested and

evaluated. These evaluations have shown that a few

major issues remained. The main issue was the

labour consuming nature of collecting, selecting,

structuring and updating the knowledge for the

database. Several studies have been carried out

addressing a variety of solution directions for this

contents issue. Amongst these were the use of so-

called start-pages (Vroom et al., 2006b), and the use

of tools such as web robots, agents and spiders

(Legerstee et al., 2004).

In 2006 the decision was made to use wiki-

software for building and maintaining the database

so that the users themselves could select and

190

W. Vroom R., Kooijman A. and Jelierse R. (2009).

EFFICIENT COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT IN AN INDUSTRIAL DESIGN ENGINEERING WIKI - Distributed Leadership.

In Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - Databases and Information Systems Integration, pages

190-195

DOI: 10.5220/0002006801900195

 SciTePress

maintain the contents of the design knowledge base

(Zinkstok et al., 2007). A prototype of C-DETwiki

has been built using MediaWiki software. After

evaluating and testing the prototype a number of

research questions arose including: 1) What is the

most convenient lay-out for the materials section 2)

Other wiki projects show that approximately 1 to 2

percent of the users contribute to the wiki (Usemod,

2007) and therefore a main issue is how to reach a

critical mass for the viability.

For studying these issues, we used a question

naire amongst 70 respondents. The results of this

questionnaire gave us a clear idea of the elements

that need to be implemented in a template. Further

more we found that our targeted user group is

willing to use a Wiki based Database, and has

limited fears of finding faulty information.

The results of these studies are implemented in

C-DETwiki. And because a wiki can only be a real

wiki when users are able to access and edit the

contents, the wiki is put online: www.wikid.eu. For

the online version the name WikID (a portmanteau

of wiki and industrial design) is used.

Figure 1: The main page of the industrial design

engineering wiki: WikID.

WikID is an Industrial Design Engineering Wiki that

aims to offer information in a compact manner,

especially targeted at industrial designers. Whilst

Wikipedia already offers a lot of this information,

there is a distinct difference between WikID and

Wikipedia; Wikipedia aims to be an encyclopaedia,

and therefore tries to be as complete as possible.

WikID aims to be a design tool. It offers information

in a compact manner tailored to its user group, being

the Industrial Designers.

2 PROBLEM AREA

When creating an industrial design engineering wiki,

certain problems arise; such as how to reach a large

enough user base or how to manage the community

once it has been established, although it will also

need managing during the process of establishing a

community. A problem indicated by the results of a

recent questionnaire states that people are somewhat

conservative in trusting information found on a wiki

(Jelierse et al., 2008), so it will be necessary to

establish a base of trust to the visitors of such a wiki,

in our case WikID, which is something that should

be looked into as well.

Also, since MediaWiki - the software used for

Wikipedia (amongst others) and WikID (after a

selective study) - is not by default equipped to easily

manage a user base, it will be necessary to create a

new tool for managing users and their rights. Along

with said tool, an efficient structure for defining

groups needs to be established. It is also necessary to

determine how the different rights within WikID

should be distributed amongst the groups.

Along the course of this paper, several

assumptions will be made, which will have to be

reviewed in a later stage. That, however, goes

beyond the scope of this paper.

The main subjects of this paper are the research

on how to create an efficient structure for the

community of WikID and the search for – or the

creation of – a tool for managing the community.

3 METHOD

For this research, a search has been conducted for

articles already published on this subject, and some

related areas. Most conclusions and assumptions will

be made in comparison to Wikipedia and its sister

projects within Wikimedia, since this family of

wikis is the most successful. Because of its success,

its policies and structures have been tested

extensively and a lot a research on that subject is

available. What also has a factor in the relevance of

the Wikimedia software is that WikID uses the same

wiki-software: MediaWiki.

Alongside the research on creating an efficient

structure for the WikID community, the options for a

tool for managing user rights were evaluated, by

searching for already existing extensions for

MediaWiki and investigating into creating custom

options, which will then be tested and evaluated by a

small group of users (known as the Pioneer Group

on WikID).

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4 USER RIGHTS IN WIKIPEDIA

All visitors of Wikipedia are considered to be

potential contributors to the encyclopaedia; therefore

the threshold to edit an article has been kept low.

Even anonymous users are able to edit articles, only

registering their IP-address as the author’s name.

Because everyone is able to edit articles, provided

they are not locked by the administrators, and some

subjects inhibit a certain amount of controversy,

people can become active in so-called edit wars

(Kittur et al., 2007). Mostly these edit wars are

simply resolved through discussion and mediation

from the community itself; should the dispute be

irresolvable by the community, it can be put through

arbitration with a special board appointed for such

cases. Their ruling is binding. (Kriplean et al., 2007)

Whereas all users can edit and reverse each

other’s edits, it may be necessary to remove multiple

edits by a user at once, or even block a user due to

multiple attempts of abuse. For this reason, a group

of administrators, known as sysops in default Media

Wiki installations, has been created. Among other

technical abilities, administrators can protect and

delete pages, block other editors, and undo these

actions as well (Wikipedia contributors, 2008).

Some rights can also be granted individually, such as

the right to rollback several edits by the same user

(rollbacker) or the right to view and remove

revisions of an article (oversight).

5 GROUP STRUCTURE IN

WIKIPEDIA

Figure 2: Schematic representation of hierarchy in

Wikimedia-projects.

During the years, as Wikipedia evolved and

spawned various sister-projects, the way rights were

granted has changed as well (Butler et al., 2008).

Currently a number of user levels exist within the

Wikimedia-projects: Stewards have the ability to

grant and also remove bureaucrat, oversight, check

user and several other rights to users after their

application has been approved. They also function as

bureaucrat within the Wikimedia-projects where no

bureaucrats have been appointed. Bureaucrats have

the ability to grant but not remove sysop-rights to

users that had their application approved. They can

also mark accounts as bots or rename accounts.

Administrators those that have been granted the

sysop-right are the users that moderate the workings

of the project that they were appointed on. They

should not be seen as different from regular users,

they merely have more technical abilities to maintain

a functional wiki (Wales, 2003). Next to these main

groups within the hierarchy, a few small groups

exist, which are used to grant only a single right to a

user. For example, the right to view all known IP-

addresses used by a certain user of Wikimedia.

These rights are bound to very strict policy and are

only granted after a thorough review by the

stewards. (Reagle et al., 2007), (Roth et al., 2007).

6 USER RIGHTS IN WikID

Whereas Wikipedia depends on the users to correct

almost all of the erroneous input by other users, it is

assumed that in WikID certain groups of users may

prefer to have extra rights in securing their

contributions, as some of them may have obligations

against the editing of their writings by users with

less experience with or knowledge about the subject.

This assumption was formulated after orientating

talks with a number of potential users of WikID,

who would like to use certain sections in the wiki to

refer to in their own tools, and stated their fear that

some relevant information might be deleted by edits

from others. Since we are looking towards having

contributors from the academic field, we want to

make sure that they find it worthy to invest their

time into writing and updating articles, something

that could be improved by offering this ability. This

should also help in getting the other visitors of

WikID to trust the content of an article; in a

questionnaire conducted for a previous research

subject, several respondents indicated that they were

afraid to find unreliable information in a wiki

(Jelierse et al., 2008). However, no matter how well

protected the wiki content may be, no guarantees can

ever be given on the correctness of any given article.

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7 WikID’S GROUP STRUCTURE

In WikID, the group structure will have some

similarity with the hierarchy of Wikipedia, but there

will also be some major differences.

Figure 3: Schematic representation of proposed hierarchy

in WikID.

7.1 Staff

The staff is the group that will incorporate some of

the functions of bureaucrats in Wikipedia, as well as

the stewards of the Wikimedia-projects. They will

guide the project, especially during the first period,

in which WikID will be growing. As WikID grows

on, it will become harder to control for the staff,

creating the need for a group of global moderators,

allowing the staff to operate more in the background.

In the beginning the staff will establish most of the

policies, which will later become something that will

be directed by the community as a whole; however,

the final saying over these matters lies by the staff.

When it comes to distributing rights, they will be the

only group with full authority over WikID, like the

stewards on Wikipedia.

7.2 Global Moderators

This group should be consisting of at least one

highly regarded member of each research area, and,

as WikID grows and the group needs to expand. The

global moderators are somewhat similar to the

administrators of Wikipedia in some ways. They

have the authority to intervene in serious disputes

and mediate between the parties in the dispute, but

they will also function as the arbitration committee.

Unlike the role of administrators in Wikipedia, the

global moderators should not be viewed as normal

users with more advanced technical abilities. They

are an authoritative group created to uphold the

policies as established by the community. They are

also involved in managing group memberships. It is

their task to monitor the members of the research

area groups and ascertain that they are acting

according to policy, not abusing their given rights. If

the situation requires it, they will be able to remove

misbehaving users from the specific research group.

7.3 Special Groups

These groups will serve a motivational measure in

WikID, appealing to users for the status that comes

along with membership to a group in this category.

Work on wikis is voluntary, and this is a way of

rewarding people that have put a lot of effort in

WikID. For example, before WikID was announced

to the public, a group of pioneers was established,

which would help fill the wiki with content. In order

to honour their contribution, a special group was

created for them, which, so it was assumed, would

motivate them to contribute. As WikID will

eventually grow, this would still be a way for the

members of the group to attain a special status

within the community, commemorating their

contributions to bring the wiki to where it is. Other

reasons for creating such a group may also come

along. Membership of these groups, however, does

not give the user extra rights in WikID, they

function merely as a reward.

7.4 Groups for Research Areas

Groups will be created based on industrial design

engineering specific areas, such as ergonomics,

mechanics and production. The members of these

groups should have a certain authority based on their

position within their area of research. In the first

stages of WikID, they will be appointed by the staff,

but eventually these groups will become self-

sustaining, with the ability for the members of the

group to grant membership to other users as well.

Members of these groups will have the role of

moderator within their respective area of expertise,

as they are considered experts in their field and will

therefore be able to correct erroneous content more

easily than a standard user. For this to function

correctly, they will receive the rights for protecting

pages and performing rollbacks. They will not be

able to remove users from their group, an option that

only staff and global moderators have.

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8 MANAGING USER RIGHTS

For efficiently managing the rights of all users in

WikID, an interface is required that is easy to use

and understand by an average user. It would also be

useful to directly view which users have registered

recently. The default tools supplied by MediaWiki,

Special:Listusers and Special:Userrights, do not

suffice. They are not user friendly and require too

much effort for doing something as simple as

changing the group membership of a user (see

Figure 4). Also, the default list of users in

MediaWiki does not show anything about when the

user has registered.

Figure 4: The interface for modifying group memberships

in MediaWiki 1.12.0 with Special:Userrights.

When looking through the extensions on the

MediaWiki-website, no existing solutions were

found to resolve the encountered problems with the

default situation. Therefore, it was decided to write a

custom extension for WikID. This new extension

should have at least the following features: 1) It

should have a more intuitive system for settings

group memberships. 2) It should present the

community as a list of users with multiple options

for sorting and filtering. 3) It should have the pos-

sibility of adding multiple users to a group at once.

Work was started on writing the extension, first

by browsing through the manual, the API-reference

and, later, the source of MediaWiki. During review

of the source, it was discovered that even the authors

of MediaWiki themselves were not particularly

happy with the current user rights page: @todo Use

checkboxes or something, this list thing is incompre-

hensible to normal human beings, (MediaWiki

Source, 2008)

The main entry point in the draft of the new

extension Special:Advanced-Userrights had become

a sortable list of users, with a pager for improved

manageability when having a large community.

Features already include more intuitive group

membership management (see Figure 5) and the

ability to view extra information about a user.

Also, to increase the usability of the extension, a

patch had been written for the Skin-Template-class,

adding a hook to the build-NavUrls-function,

allowing for the modification of the array containing

the navigation URLs. This was then used to add

extra toolbox items in the User-namespace to link to

the user information and group membership pages,

providing anyone with the necessary rights a direct

link to the newly created functionality of the

extension.

During the first few weeks the new tools have

been available to the WikID staff it has already

proven itself worthy in the process of building the

community. The new list interface provides the

ability to quickly see whether new users have

registered with WikID, allowing the staff to monitor

the growth of the community as well as checking the

validity of the newly created accounts.

Figure 5: Interface for modifying group membership in MediaWiki 1.12.0, Special:AdvancedUserrights.

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9 DISCUSSION

Several assumptions have been made during the

research on this subject, most of which have yet to

be tested. For example, misuse of the protect-right

could lead to stagnation in the use of WikID and

should be carefully monitored. Actions to be taken

accordingly can be either diminishing the amount of

users with access to the right or better instruction on

when to use it for the users that have the right.

Also, users should be made aware of the fact that

they can request groups for a certain research area, if

it does not yet exist. The process of joining an

existing group could also be more concrete.

During the writing of this paper, version 1.13.0

of MediaWiki was being developed. Upon reviewing

the changes to the software, it was discovered that

the user rights management system had been over

hauled (MediaWiki source, trunk, 2008), and that

the system as implemented by MediaWiki somewhat

resembles the system as implemented by the newly

written extension.

10 CONCLUSIONS

Through the creation of a clear hierarchical structure

for WikID, several issues concerning the quality of

the content as well as the ability to modify the

content will, at least partially, have been resolved.

With the new functionality for managing group

memberships and viewing information on users, it

will be easier to maintain the community. This will

help in creating a better community which will be

more inviting to participate in, provided that the

assumptions made in this area hold true.

For the correct functioning of the system, several

policies on the usage of certain rights will have to be

drafted. For examples on what they might look like,

Wikipedia can serve as an interesting example, as

their policies seem to work quite well.

Also of importance to the correct functioning of

the system is the way users with extended rights

behave towards each other and regular users.

Especially in the early stages of WikID it will be of

utmost importance that every event of abuse will

result in action taken by the staff.

The functionality of the created extension can

also be expanded further; several demands have not

yet been met. Conjoined with the work on this, it

will also be interesting to see how MediaWiki can be

extended to have moderators that can only operate

on certain sections of WikID instead of the current

situation where every moderator is allowed to

exercise their rights site-wide.

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