Can bots help create knowledge? The effects of bot intervention in open collaboration

Dec. 14, 2021 - Seonjun Kang, Yeongin Kim, Xiaojin Liu, Victoria Yoon

Citation: Kang, S., Liu, X., Kim, Y., & Yoon, V. (2021) Can bots help create knowledge? The effects of bot intervention in open collaboration. Decision Support Systems, 148, 113601. DOI: 10, 1016/j.dss.2021.113601

Research Summary:

Many open collaboration platforms (such as Wikipedia and wikiHow) use bots (automated algorithmic agents). We employed data gathered from an online collaboration site between 2005-2017 and found that bot intervention significantly reduces user participation. However, that negative effect can be alleviated when more active users are engaged. It can also be offset if the covered topics in an article have a higher concentration.