Benjamin Mako Hill

May this serve as a corrective for all of us who have apparently been mispronouncing Google chatbot's name. (sound on)

Finally blogged about my paper (led by Zarine Kharazian) that seeks to explain why Croatian Wikipedia spent a decade captured by a cabal of political extremists and became a site for Holocaust revisionism while other similar Wikipedia languages seemed to have fared much better. https://mako.cc/copyrighteous/what-makes-online-groups-vulnerable-to-governance-capture

I'm doing a talk and panel discussion for Open Knowledge Initiatives - India's "Future of the Commons" program tomorrow in honor of @wikipedia@wikis.world's 25th birthday. I'll be talking about some of my research on peer production projects' governance and lifecycles. Join me! https://foc.oki-india.org/

ICYMI: Finally blogged about an old paper (led by @groceryheist@social.coop) that explains why people often engage in multiple groups with overlapping topic and membership, and which helps explain why competition between online groups seems to be rare. https://mako.cc/copyrighteous/why-do-people-participate-in-similar-online-communities

ICYMI: Finally blogged about an old paper led by Kaylea Champion that developed a new method (forensic qualitative analysis) to understand the nature and value of @torproject@mastodon.social users' contributions to @wikipedia@wikis.world. https://mako.cc/copyrighteous/what-do-people-do-when-they-edit-wikipedia-through-tor

Me: Do you want your coffee in a Japanese or Western style tea cup?

M: Yunomi.

Me: Apparently not as well as you think I do!

ICYMI: Finally blogged about an "old" paper led by @groceryheist@social.coop that uses data from a @wikipedia@wikis.world system to show how the introduction of a biased AI flagging system can still lead to more fairness because humans without the system are even more biased. https://mako.cc/copyrighteous/effects-of-algorithmic-flagging-on-fairness-quasi-experimental-evidence-from-wikipedia

I'm teaching a course on how to build great online communities and am hoping to pair up a few students with people who want to build, improve, grow, or change a new or existing online group. Drop a DM or email if you'd be interested in having one of my students consult (for free)!

Register to join me and @communitydata@social.coop this Friday (November 7) for our next free/public science of community dialogue on "The Impacts of Organizational Interventions in Open Source Software Engineering" with talks from @mgone@hci.social and Igor Steinmacher: https://blog.communitydata.science/science-of-community-dialogue-the-impacts-of-organizational-interventions-in-open-source-software-engineering/