Ofer Arazy | University of Alberta (original) (raw)

Papers by Ofer Arazy

International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media, 2009

Abstract Wikis were originally designed to hide the association between a wiki page and the autho... more Abstract Wikis were originally designed to hide the association between a wiki page and the authors who have produced it. However, there is evidence suggesting that corporate wiki users require an attribution mechanism that would automatically record (and present) the relative contribution of each author. In this paper we introduce an algorithm for assessing the contributions of wiki authors that is based on the notion of sentence ownership. The results of an empirical evaluation comparing the algorithm's output to manual evaluations reveal ...

Management Information Systems Quarterly, 2007

Although the management of information assets-specifically, of text documents that make up 80 per... more Although the management of information assets-specifically, of text documents that make up 80 percent of these assetsan provide organizations with a competitive advantage, the ability of information retrieval (IR) systems to deliver relevant information to users is severely hampered by the difficulty of disambiguating natural language. The word ambiguity problem is addressed with moderate success in restricted settings, but continues to be the main challenge for general settings, characterized by large, heterogeneous document collections.

Traditionally, organizational knowledge bases are created in a highly centralized manner to ensur... more Traditionally, organizational knowledge bases are created in a highly centralized manner to ensure quality. In Open Content Systems (OCS), on the other hand, content is generated in a distributed and decentralized manner. OCS represents a new paradigm for content management, and is founded on the philosophy of the open-source movement. OCS emerged on the internet, with the most noticeable example

Recently, Nature published an article comparing the quality of Wikipedia articles to those of Enc... more Recently, Nature published an article comparing the quality of Wikipedia articles to those of Encyclopedia Britannica (Giles 2005). The article, which gained much public attention, provides evidence for Wikipedia quality, but does not provide an explanation of the underlying source of that quality. Wikipedia, and wikis in general, aggregate information from a large and diverse author-base, where authors are free

Proceedings of the 2010 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work - CSCW '10, 2010

The success of Wikipedia and the relative high quality of its articles seem to contradict convent... more The success of Wikipedia and the relative high quality of its articles seem to contradict conventional wisdom. Recent studies have begun shedding light on the processes contributing to Wikipedia's success, highlighting the role of coordination and contribution inequality. In this study, we expand on these works in two ways. First, we make a distinction between global (Wikipedia-wide) and local (article-specific) inequality and investigate both constructs. Second, we explore both direct and indirect effects of these inequalities, exposing the intricate relationships between global inequality, local inequality, coordination, and article quality. We tested our hypotheses on a sample of a Wikipedia articles using structural equation modeling and found that global inequality exerts significant positive impact on article quality, while the effect of local inequality is indirect and is mediated by coordination.

Proceedings of the 2011 iConference on - iConference '11, 2011

Digital citizen science offers a low-cost way to strengthen the scientific infrastructure, and en... more Digital citizen science offers a low-cost way to strengthen the scientific infrastructure, and engage members of the public in science. It is based on two pillars: (1) a technological pillar, which involves developing computer systems to manage large amounts of distributed resources, and (2) a motivational pillar, which involves attracting and retaining volunteers who would contribute their skills, time, and effort to a scientific cause. While the technological dimension has been widely studied, the motivational dimension received little attention to date. To address this gap, we surveyed volunteers at Stardust@home a digital citizen science project, in which volunteers classify online images from NASA's Stardust spacecraft. We found that collective and intrinsic motivations are the most salient motivational factors, whereas reward motives seem to be less relevant. We also found that intrinsic and normoriented motives are most strongly associated with participation intentions, which were, in turn, found to be associated with participation effort. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

IT Professional, 2009

Recommender systems play a significant role in reducing information overload for people visiting ... more Recommender systems play a significant role in reducing information overload for people visiting online sites. The accuracy of recommender systems could be improved by using data from online social networks and electronic communication tools.

PLoS ONE, 2014

Online citizen science offers a low-cost way to strengthen the infrastructure for scientific rese... more Online citizen science offers a low-cost way to strengthen the infrastructure for scientific research and engage members of the public in science. As the sustainability of online citizen science projects depends on volunteers who contribute their skills, time, and energy, the objective of this study is to investigate effects of motivational factors on the quantity and quality of citizen scientists' contribution.

The Knowledge Engineering Review, 2002

Analysis and design of information systems (IS) is the process of eliciting the system's requirem... more Analysis and design of information systems (IS) is the process of eliciting the system's requirements and transforming them into a model that could be used to develop IS. Analysis and design of agent-oriented information systems (AOIS) relates to the very same process when it is applied to IS that are designed around the multi-agent paradigm.

Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 2011

The notion of information quality (IQ) has been investigated extensively in recent years. Much of... more The notion of information quality (IQ) has been investigated extensively in recent years. Much of this research has been aimed at conceptualizing IQ and its underlying dimensions (e.g., accuracy, completeness) and at developing instruments for measuring these quality dimensions. However, less attention has been given to the measurability of IQ. The objective of this study is to explore the extent to which a set of IQ dimensions-accuracy, completeness, objectivity, and representation-lend themselves to reliable measurement. By reliable measurement, we refer to the degree to which independent assessors are able to agree when rating objects on these various dimensions. Our study reveals that multiple assessors tend to agree more on certain dimensions (e.g., accuracy) while finding it more difficult to agree on others (e.g., completeness). We argue that differences in measurability stem from properties inherent to the quality dimension (i.e., the availability of heuristics that make the assessment more tangible) as well as on assessors'reliance on these cues. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 2010

Wikis are designed to support collaborative editing, without focusing on individual contribution,... more Wikis are designed to support collaborative editing, without focusing on individual contribution, such that it is not straightforward to determine who contributed to a specific page. However, as wikis are increasingly adopted in settings such as business, government, and education, where editors are largely driven by career goals, there is a perceived need to modify wikis so that each editor's contributions are clearly presented. In this paper we introduce an approach for assessing the contributions of wiki editors along several authorship categories, as well as a variety of information glyphs for visualizing this information. We report on three types of analysis: (a) assessing the accuracy of the algorithms, (b) estimating the understandability of the visualizations, and (c) exploring wiki editors' perceptions regarding the extent to which such an approach is likely to change their behavior. Our findings demonstrate that our proposed automated techniques can estimate fairly accurately the quantity of editors' contributions across various authorship categories, and that the visualizations we introduced can clearly convey this information to users. Moreover, our user study suggests that such tools are likely to change wiki editors' behavior. We discuss both the potential benefits and risks associated with solutions for estimating and visualizing wiki contributions.

Journal of Management Information Systems, 2011

the success of Wikipedia demonstrates that self-organizing production communities can produce hig... more the success of Wikipedia demonstrates that self-organizing production communities can produce high-quality information-based products. research on Wikipedia has proceeded largely atheoretically, focusing on (1) the diversity in members' knowledge bases as a determinant of Wikipedia's content quality, (2) the task-related conflicts that occur during the collaborative authoring process, and (3) the different roles members play in Wikipedia. We develop a theoretical model that explains how these three factors interact to determine the quality of Wikipedia articles. the results from the empirical study of 96 Wikipedia articles suggest that (1) diversity should be encouraged, as the creative abrasion that is generated when cognitively diverse members engage in task-related conflict leads to higher-quality articles, (2) task conflict should be managed, as conflict-notwithstanding its contribution to creative 72 ArAzy, NOV, PAttErSON, AND yEO abrasion-can negatively affect group output, and (3) groups should maintain a balance of both administrative-and content-oriented members, as both contribute to the collaborative process.

Volunteer computing is a powerful way to harness distributed resources to perform large-scale tas... more Volunteer computing is a powerful way to harness distributed resources to perform large-scale tasks, similarly to other types of community-based initiatives. Volunteer computing is based on two pillars: the first is computational -allocating and managing large computing tasks; the second is participative -making large numbers of individuals volunteer their computer resources to a project. While the computational aspects of volunteer computing received much research attention, the participative aspect remains largely unexplored. In this study we aim to address this gap: by drawing on social psychology and online communities research, we develop and test a three-dimensional model of the factors determining volunteer computing users' contribution. We investigate one of the largest volunteer computing projects -SETI@home -by linking survey data about contributors' motivations to their activity logs. Our findings highlight the differences between volunteer computing and other forms of community-based projects, and reveal the intricate relationship between individual motivations, social affiliation, tenure in the project, and resource contribution. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

Management Information Systems Quarterly, 2007

Although the management of information assets—specifically, of text documents that make up 80 per... more Although the management of information assets—specifically, of text documents that make up 80 percent of these assets— an provide organizations with a competitive advantage, the ability of information retrieval (IR) systems to deliver relevant information to users is severely ...

in Proceeding of the 1st Design Science Research in Information Systems and Technology conference (DESRIST), Claremont, California, USA, 2006

Recommendation systems, and specifically Social Filtering (SF) systems, play a significant role i... more Recommendation systems, and specifically Social Filtering (SF) systems, play a significant role in reducing information overload and providing users with information relevant to their specific interest. For over a decade now, the ad-hoc standard in social filtering employed an approach, where recommendations were generated by computing "shared interests" based on users' preferences for items. The rapid growth in online social

Third Annual Chicago Colloquium on Digital Humanities and Computer Science (DHCS 2008), Chicago, IL, 2008

The past few years have seen a proliferation of collaborative writing and editing projects using ... more The past few years have seen a proliferation of collaborative writing and editing projects using wikis, which are a class of online tools designed for fast production and publication of digital text. The word “wiki” is in fact from the Hawaiian word for “fast.” The most well‐known wiki is arguably Wikipedia, but wikis are also widely used in educational and corporate settings (Majchrzak et al. 2006; Giordano 2007; Arazy et al. forthcoming). In these environments, the generally anonymous nature of wikis can be at odds with the ...

Journal of The Ais, 2010

Social recommender systems utilize data regarding users' social relationship... more Social recommender systems utilize data regarding users' social relationships in filtering relevant information to users. To date, results show that incorporating social relationship data–beyond consumption profile similarity–is beneficial only in a very limited set of cases. The main conjecture of this study is that the inconclusive results are, at least to some extent, due to an under-specification of the nature of the social relations. To date, there exist no clear guidelines for using behavioral theory to guide systems design. Our primary ...

In Wikipedia, volunteers collaboratively author encyclopedic entries, and therefore managing conf... more In Wikipedia, volunteers collaboratively author encyclopedic entries, and therefore managing conflict is a key factor in group success. Behavioral research describes three conflict types: taskrelated, affective, and process. Affective and process conflict have been consistently found to impede group performance; however, the effect of task conflict is inconsistent. We propose that these inconclusive results are due to under-specification of the task conflict construct, and focus on the transition phase where task-related disagreements escalate into affective and process conflict. We define these transitional phases as distinct constructs: task-affective and taskprocess conflict, and develop a theoretical model that explains how the various task-related conflict constructs, together with the composition of the wiki editor group, determine the quality of the collaboratively-authored wiki article. Our empirical study of 96 Wikipedia articles involved multiple data-collection methods, including the analysis of Wikipedia system logs, manual content analysis of article's discussion pages, and a comprehensive assessment of articles' quality using the Delphi method. Our results show that when group members' disagreements -originally task-related -escalate into personal attacks or hinge on procedure, these disagreements impede group performance. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

IEEE Technology and Society Magazine, 2000

International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media, 2009

Abstract Wikis were originally designed to hide the association between a wiki page and the autho... more Abstract Wikis were originally designed to hide the association between a wiki page and the authors who have produced it. However, there is evidence suggesting that corporate wiki users require an attribution mechanism that would automatically record (and present) the relative contribution of each author. In this paper we introduce an algorithm for assessing the contributions of wiki authors that is based on the notion of sentence ownership. The results of an empirical evaluation comparing the algorithm's output to manual evaluations reveal ...

Management Information Systems Quarterly, 2007

Although the management of information assets-specifically, of text documents that make up 80 per... more Although the management of information assets-specifically, of text documents that make up 80 percent of these assetsan provide organizations with a competitive advantage, the ability of information retrieval (IR) systems to deliver relevant information to users is severely hampered by the difficulty of disambiguating natural language. The word ambiguity problem is addressed with moderate success in restricted settings, but continues to be the main challenge for general settings, characterized by large, heterogeneous document collections.

Traditionally, organizational knowledge bases are created in a highly centralized manner to ensur... more Traditionally, organizational knowledge bases are created in a highly centralized manner to ensure quality. In Open Content Systems (OCS), on the other hand, content is generated in a distributed and decentralized manner. OCS represents a new paradigm for content management, and is founded on the philosophy of the open-source movement. OCS emerged on the internet, with the most noticeable example

Recently, Nature published an article comparing the quality of Wikipedia articles to those of Enc... more Recently, Nature published an article comparing the quality of Wikipedia articles to those of Encyclopedia Britannica (Giles 2005). The article, which gained much public attention, provides evidence for Wikipedia quality, but does not provide an explanation of the underlying source of that quality. Wikipedia, and wikis in general, aggregate information from a large and diverse author-base, where authors are free

Proceedings of the 2010 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work - CSCW '10, 2010

The success of Wikipedia and the relative high quality of its articles seem to contradict convent... more The success of Wikipedia and the relative high quality of its articles seem to contradict conventional wisdom. Recent studies have begun shedding light on the processes contributing to Wikipedia's success, highlighting the role of coordination and contribution inequality. In this study, we expand on these works in two ways. First, we make a distinction between global (Wikipedia-wide) and local (article-specific) inequality and investigate both constructs. Second, we explore both direct and indirect effects of these inequalities, exposing the intricate relationships between global inequality, local inequality, coordination, and article quality. We tested our hypotheses on a sample of a Wikipedia articles using structural equation modeling and found that global inequality exerts significant positive impact on article quality, while the effect of local inequality is indirect and is mediated by coordination.

Proceedings of the 2011 iConference on - iConference '11, 2011

Digital citizen science offers a low-cost way to strengthen the scientific infrastructure, and en... more Digital citizen science offers a low-cost way to strengthen the scientific infrastructure, and engage members of the public in science. It is based on two pillars: (1) a technological pillar, which involves developing computer systems to manage large amounts of distributed resources, and (2) a motivational pillar, which involves attracting and retaining volunteers who would contribute their skills, time, and effort to a scientific cause. While the technological dimension has been widely studied, the motivational dimension received little attention to date. To address this gap, we surveyed volunteers at Stardust@home a digital citizen science project, in which volunteers classify online images from NASA's Stardust spacecraft. We found that collective and intrinsic motivations are the most salient motivational factors, whereas reward motives seem to be less relevant. We also found that intrinsic and normoriented motives are most strongly associated with participation intentions, which were, in turn, found to be associated with participation effort. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

IT Professional, 2009

Recommender systems play a significant role in reducing information overload for people visiting ... more Recommender systems play a significant role in reducing information overload for people visiting online sites. The accuracy of recommender systems could be improved by using data from online social networks and electronic communication tools.

PLoS ONE, 2014

Online citizen science offers a low-cost way to strengthen the infrastructure for scientific rese... more Online citizen science offers a low-cost way to strengthen the infrastructure for scientific research and engage members of the public in science. As the sustainability of online citizen science projects depends on volunteers who contribute their skills, time, and energy, the objective of this study is to investigate effects of motivational factors on the quantity and quality of citizen scientists' contribution.

The Knowledge Engineering Review, 2002

Analysis and design of information systems (IS) is the process of eliciting the system's requirem... more Analysis and design of information systems (IS) is the process of eliciting the system's requirements and transforming them into a model that could be used to develop IS. Analysis and design of agent-oriented information systems (AOIS) relates to the very same process when it is applied to IS that are designed around the multi-agent paradigm.

Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 2011

The notion of information quality (IQ) has been investigated extensively in recent years. Much of... more The notion of information quality (IQ) has been investigated extensively in recent years. Much of this research has been aimed at conceptualizing IQ and its underlying dimensions (e.g., accuracy, completeness) and at developing instruments for measuring these quality dimensions. However, less attention has been given to the measurability of IQ. The objective of this study is to explore the extent to which a set of IQ dimensions-accuracy, completeness, objectivity, and representation-lend themselves to reliable measurement. By reliable measurement, we refer to the degree to which independent assessors are able to agree when rating objects on these various dimensions. Our study reveals that multiple assessors tend to agree more on certain dimensions (e.g., accuracy) while finding it more difficult to agree on others (e.g., completeness). We argue that differences in measurability stem from properties inherent to the quality dimension (i.e., the availability of heuristics that make the assessment more tangible) as well as on assessors'reliance on these cues. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 2010

Wikis are designed to support collaborative editing, without focusing on individual contribution,... more Wikis are designed to support collaborative editing, without focusing on individual contribution, such that it is not straightforward to determine who contributed to a specific page. However, as wikis are increasingly adopted in settings such as business, government, and education, where editors are largely driven by career goals, there is a perceived need to modify wikis so that each editor's contributions are clearly presented. In this paper we introduce an approach for assessing the contributions of wiki editors along several authorship categories, as well as a variety of information glyphs for visualizing this information. We report on three types of analysis: (a) assessing the accuracy of the algorithms, (b) estimating the understandability of the visualizations, and (c) exploring wiki editors' perceptions regarding the extent to which such an approach is likely to change their behavior. Our findings demonstrate that our proposed automated techniques can estimate fairly accurately the quantity of editors' contributions across various authorship categories, and that the visualizations we introduced can clearly convey this information to users. Moreover, our user study suggests that such tools are likely to change wiki editors' behavior. We discuss both the potential benefits and risks associated with solutions for estimating and visualizing wiki contributions.

Journal of Management Information Systems, 2011

the success of Wikipedia demonstrates that self-organizing production communities can produce hig... more the success of Wikipedia demonstrates that self-organizing production communities can produce high-quality information-based products. research on Wikipedia has proceeded largely atheoretically, focusing on (1) the diversity in members' knowledge bases as a determinant of Wikipedia's content quality, (2) the task-related conflicts that occur during the collaborative authoring process, and (3) the different roles members play in Wikipedia. We develop a theoretical model that explains how these three factors interact to determine the quality of Wikipedia articles. the results from the empirical study of 96 Wikipedia articles suggest that (1) diversity should be encouraged, as the creative abrasion that is generated when cognitively diverse members engage in task-related conflict leads to higher-quality articles, (2) task conflict should be managed, as conflict-notwithstanding its contribution to creative 72 ArAzy, NOV, PAttErSON, AND yEO abrasion-can negatively affect group output, and (3) groups should maintain a balance of both administrative-and content-oriented members, as both contribute to the collaborative process.

Volunteer computing is a powerful way to harness distributed resources to perform large-scale tas... more Volunteer computing is a powerful way to harness distributed resources to perform large-scale tasks, similarly to other types of community-based initiatives. Volunteer computing is based on two pillars: the first is computational -allocating and managing large computing tasks; the second is participative -making large numbers of individuals volunteer their computer resources to a project. While the computational aspects of volunteer computing received much research attention, the participative aspect remains largely unexplored. In this study we aim to address this gap: by drawing on social psychology and online communities research, we develop and test a three-dimensional model of the factors determining volunteer computing users' contribution. We investigate one of the largest volunteer computing projects -SETI@home -by linking survey data about contributors' motivations to their activity logs. Our findings highlight the differences between volunteer computing and other forms of community-based projects, and reveal the intricate relationship between individual motivations, social affiliation, tenure in the project, and resource contribution. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

Management Information Systems Quarterly, 2007

Although the management of information assets—specifically, of text documents that make up 80 per... more Although the management of information assets—specifically, of text documents that make up 80 percent of these assets— an provide organizations with a competitive advantage, the ability of information retrieval (IR) systems to deliver relevant information to users is severely ...

in Proceeding of the 1st Design Science Research in Information Systems and Technology conference (DESRIST), Claremont, California, USA, 2006

Recommendation systems, and specifically Social Filtering (SF) systems, play a significant role i... more Recommendation systems, and specifically Social Filtering (SF) systems, play a significant role in reducing information overload and providing users with information relevant to their specific interest. For over a decade now, the ad-hoc standard in social filtering employed an approach, where recommendations were generated by computing "shared interests" based on users' preferences for items. The rapid growth in online social

Third Annual Chicago Colloquium on Digital Humanities and Computer Science (DHCS 2008), Chicago, IL, 2008

The past few years have seen a proliferation of collaborative writing and editing projects using ... more The past few years have seen a proliferation of collaborative writing and editing projects using wikis, which are a class of online tools designed for fast production and publication of digital text. The word “wiki” is in fact from the Hawaiian word for “fast.” The most well‐known wiki is arguably Wikipedia, but wikis are also widely used in educational and corporate settings (Majchrzak et al. 2006; Giordano 2007; Arazy et al. forthcoming). In these environments, the generally anonymous nature of wikis can be at odds with the ...

Journal of The Ais, 2010

Social recommender systems utilize data regarding users' social relationship... more Social recommender systems utilize data regarding users' social relationships in filtering relevant information to users. To date, results show that incorporating social relationship data–beyond consumption profile similarity–is beneficial only in a very limited set of cases. The main conjecture of this study is that the inconclusive results are, at least to some extent, due to an under-specification of the nature of the social relations. To date, there exist no clear guidelines for using behavioral theory to guide systems design. Our primary ...

In Wikipedia, volunteers collaboratively author encyclopedic entries, and therefore managing conf... more In Wikipedia, volunteers collaboratively author encyclopedic entries, and therefore managing conflict is a key factor in group success. Behavioral research describes three conflict types: taskrelated, affective, and process. Affective and process conflict have been consistently found to impede group performance; however, the effect of task conflict is inconsistent. We propose that these inconclusive results are due to under-specification of the task conflict construct, and focus on the transition phase where task-related disagreements escalate into affective and process conflict. We define these transitional phases as distinct constructs: task-affective and taskprocess conflict, and develop a theoretical model that explains how the various task-related conflict constructs, together with the composition of the wiki editor group, determine the quality of the collaboratively-authored wiki article. Our empirical study of 96 Wikipedia articles involved multiple data-collection methods, including the analysis of Wikipedia system logs, manual content analysis of article's discussion pages, and a comprehensive assessment of articles' quality using the Delphi method. Our results show that when group members' disagreements -originally task-related -escalate into personal attacks or hinge on procedure, these disagreements impede group performance. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

IEEE Technology and Society Magazine, 2000