Mikhil Masli

Eliciting and focusing geographic volunteer work

Open content communities such as wikis derive their value from the work done by users. However, a key challenge is to elicit work that is sufficient and focused where needed. We address this challenge in a geographic open content community, the Cyclopath bicycle route finding system. We devised two techniques to elicit and focus user work, one using familiarity to direct work opportunities and another visually highlighting them. We conducted a field experiment, finding that (a) the techniques succeeded in eliciting user work, (b) the distribution of work across users was highly unequal, and (c) user work benefitted the community (reducing the length of the average computed route by 1 kilometer).

How should I go from ___ to ___ without getting killed?: motivation and benefits in open collaboration

Many people rely on open collaboration projects to run their computer (Linux), browse the web (Mozilla Firefox), and get information (Wikipedia). While these projects are successful, many such efforts suffer from lack of participation. Understanding what motivates users to participate and the benefits they perceive from their participation can help address this problem. We examined these issues through a survey of contributors and information consumers in the Cyclopath geographic wiki. We analyzed subject responses to identify a number of key motives and perceived benefits. Based on these results, we articulate several general techniques to encourage more and new forms of participation in open collaboration communities. Some of these techniques have the potential to engage information consumers more deeply and productively in the life of open collaboration communities.

An open, social microcalender for the enterprise: timely?

We present the system design and rational for a novel social microcalendar called Timely. Our system has been inspired by previous research on calendaring and popular social network applications, in particular microblogging. Timely provides an open, social space for enterprise users to share their events, socialize, and discover what else is going on in their network and beyond. A detailed analysis of the events shared by users during the sites first 47 days reveals that users willingly share their time commitments despite an existing culture of restricted calendars.

Geowiki + route analysis = improved transportation planning

This poster describes the design of a novel route analysis tool based on a community-driven, geographic wiki to assist transportation planners to make better decisions. We highlight the advantages of our tool over other, similar ones---gained due to the use of a wiki-based platform---through a real-life usage scenario.

Crowdsourcing Maps

Geowikis combine user-contributed content with map-based interactive Web applications.

Influences of Peers, Friends, and Managers on Employee Engagement

Employee engagement is a reflection of an employees experience of work. Previous research has analyzed each employees experience in terms of individual factors. We provide the first report of the influence on engagement of peers (who report to the same manager) and friends (who share social ties in an internal social network), using linear regression to model employee engagement in a sample of more than 44,000 employees. We show that an employees engagement is associated with the engagement of her/his peers, friends, and manager. Our results contribute to analyses of social factors at work, and argue for revisions to existing theories of employee engagement.

What aren't we measuring?: methods for quantifying wiki-work

Wikis and other open collaboration systems rely on the work of contributors to survive. But what is work and how do we quantify it? Answering this question in the right context is essential for attaining robust and generalizable results across open contribution systems. Our goal is to develop a repertoire of metrics and understand their possible dimensions in order to refine our ability as a research community to measure wikis and wiki activity appropriately across a wide range of contexts. This panel explores the current practice of measuring work in wikis, offers perspectives about the limitations of current approaches and suggests new opportunities for measuring contribution behavior.