Emerging Norms at Wikipedia

How do social norms form? How do they change?

These are important questions because the behavioral effects on individuals that come from normative influence often occur at a level that never reaches consciousness. We simply follow the norm. Like the force of gravity, we don’t even notice; it’s just there.

A recent study by researchers at the Santa Fe Institute looked at how Wikipedia has developed its editorial “rules of the road”.

The study looks at how a disconnected community of editors have managed to interact over decades to build the the Wikipedia phenomenon by developing an evolving set of norms to guide editorial policy.

http://www.csmonitor.com/layout/set/print/Science/Complexity/2016/0324/The-source-code-of-political-power