Blockchain Papers

Yiwei Gong, Sélinde van Engelenburg, Marijn Janssen

Companies increasingly tender knowledge-intensive tasks using crowdsourcing platforms to gain access to scarce knowledge and skills otherwise out of reach, and in this way, gaining competitive advantage. Despite its potential, existing crowdsourcing platforms encounter several challenges, including (1) fragmentation of expertise, as there are many platforms, (2) distrust between task providers and crowdsourcing participants, as identity and past performance are often not known, and (3) inability to learn from experience due to a lack of openness. A reference architecture for blockchain-based knowledge-intensive crowdsourcing platforms to mediate transactions between demand and supply of knowledge is designed in this paper to overcome these challenges. A design science research method is followed to develop the architecture. The reference architecture shows how blockchain and smart contract components can be integrated to support and coordinate knowledge-intensive crowdsourcing activities. By removing traditional e-commerce intermediaries, blockchain reduces search friction, knowledge transfer costs, and cheating by task providers or crowdsourcing participants.

Saori Costa, Allyson Allex Araújo, Jerffeson Souza

A adoção de blockchain e contratos inteligentes tem se demonstrado uma opção valiosa para organizações inovarem em seus sistemas de informação. Nesse sentido, presencia-se também uma adesão ao desenvolvimento open source por parte dos envolvidos em tal ecossistema de soluções, especialmente com base na plataforma Ethereum e no uso do GitHub. Porém, apesar da presença de pesquisas prévias com foco na manutenção de contratos inteligentes, constata-se uma lacuna de pesquisa quanto 1) a análise do efeito que o processo de deploy na Ethereum exerce sobre os projetos open source em termos colaborativos e 2) na compreensão sobre o que efetivamente mudou nos repositórios após tal processo. Como fruto de uma pesquisa em andamento, este artigo contribui ao discutir um desenho de pesquisa exploratório pautado em Mineração em Repositórios de Software para compreender o efeito do processo de deploy na Ethereum em repositórios open source de contratos inteligentes.

Wulf A. Kaal

No abstract is available for this record.

Eleu Wong Ellinger, Tobias Mini, Robert Wayne Gregory, Thomas Widjaja

An increasing number of platform organizations are run by agentic algorithms. While much is known about algorithmic management on centralized platform organizations such as Uber, where human agency is limited through data-driven surveillance and control, decentralized organizing has begun to emerge in agentic IS platforms, characterized by conjoined human and algorithmic agency. We examine this shift toward decentralized organizing by analyzing multiple cases of decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) that leverage blockchain technology and seek to expand, not limit, collective human action while being run by agentic algorithms. The phenomenon of DAOs gives rise to a puzzle: How is collective action facilitated in agentic IS platforms when they are increasingly run by algorithms? Our findings show that agentic algorithms have the ability to facilitate collective action that is aligned around a common human purpose dynamically negotiated through adaptation of the set of algorithms running the organization. We explain how collective action is enacted in DAOs, as an example of agentic IS platforms, presenting a grounded model developed inductively based on our multiple-case study. Our study complements and extends the work of Baird and Maruping (2021) by expanding the focus of analysis of agentic IS artifacts to agentic IS platforms and considering facilitation as well as delegation. Our detailed findings about decentralized algorithmic management and decentralized management of algorithms in DAOs extend the literature on platform organizing, which thus far has paid only limited attention to the unique mechanisms at play in the context of conjoined agency.

Gerald B. Imbugwa, Manuel Mazzara, Salvatore Distefano

Abstract In this paper, we envision to illustrate the process to be used in developing a mobile application on the smart contract. We start by looking at what other researchers have accomplished and how we can improve on what already exists. The paper highlights the requirement gathering process, the methodology for data collection to streamline and validate the requirement, the architecture and implementation phase by analyzing the technological stack to achieve the business goal.

Jens Ducrée, Max Gravitt, Ray Walshe, Sönke Bartling · 6 authors

We outline the concept of an open technology platform which builds upon a publicly accessible library of fluidic designs, manufacturing processes and experimental characterisation, as well as virtualisation by a ‘digital twin”. Backed by the rapidly emerging Web3 technology “Blockchain”, we significantly extend traditional approaches to effectively incentivise broader participation by an interdisciplinary ‘value network’ of diverse players. Ranging from skilled individuals and more established research institutions to companies with their infrastructures, equipment and services, the novel platform approach enables all stakeholders to jointly contribute to value creation along more decentralised supply chain designs. Blockchain-enabled “Wisdom of the Crowds” and “Skin in the game” mechanisms secure “trust” and transparency between participants. Prediction markets are created for guiding decision making, planning and allocation of funding; competitive parallelisation of work and its validation from independent participants substantially enhances quality, credibility and speed of project outcomes along the entire path from RTD, fabrication and testing to eventual commercialisation. This novel, Blockchain-backed concept can be led by a corporation, academic entity, a loosely organised group, or even a Decentralised Autonomous Organisation (DAO). The proposed strategy is particularly attractive for highly interdisciplinary fields like Lab-on-a-Chip systems in the context of manifold applications in the Life Sciences. Rather than engaging in all sub-disciplines themselves, many smaller, highly innovative actors can focus on strengthening the product component distinguishing their unique selling point (USP). In this effort, system integrators access underlying commons like fluidic design, manufacture, instrumentation and software from a more resilient and diversified supply chain.

Ulrich Schmitt

The predicted embracing of thriving knowledge societies is increasingly compromised by threatening perceptions of information overload and attention poverty, opportunity divides and career uncertainties. By integrating system dynamics, discrete-event, and agent-based modeling, this paper traces the roots of these symptoms back to their causes of information entropy and structural holes, invisible private and undiscoverable public knowledge which together characterize the sad state of our current knowledge management (KM) and creation practices. Looking forward, it proposes a decentralized generative KM approach that prioritizes the capacity development of autonomous individual knowledge workers not at the expense but as a viable means to foster a fruitful co-evolution with traditional organizational KM systems. As part of an ongoing design science research and prototyping project, this systems thinking and hybrid model perspective complements a succession of prior multidisciplinary publications on the subject.

Roman Zeiß, Anne Ixmeier, Jan Recker, Johann Kranz

Abstract One of today's grand societal challenges is to replace the current ‘take‐make‐waste’ economic model with a circular economic model that allows a gradual decoupling of economic activities from the consumption of finite virgin resources. While circular economy (CE) scholars have long lauded digital technologies such as sensors, distributed ledgers, or platforms as key enablers, our own community has not fully explored the potentials of information systems (IS) for a CE. Considering recent technological advances in software and hardware and our history of helping address wicked challenges, we believe the time is ripe to mobilise IS scholarship for a CE. Our findings from an interdisciplinary literature review show that research has primarily examined IS potentials for increasing efficiency of isolated intra‐organisational processes while neglecting the larger sustainability potential of IS to establish circular material flows—that is, slow down and close material loops across entire product lifecycles. In response, we propose directions for IS research that develop our knowledge of how IS can help understand and enact circular material flows to intensify and extend use of products and components and recycle waste materials. Our directions offer pathways to building and evaluating the problem‐solution pairing that could characterise a prolific CE‐IS relationship.

Makoto Yano, Chris Dai, Kenichi Masuda, Yoshio Kishimoto

The Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry regards the process of incorporating new information technology, such as artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), and big data analysis into society as the Fourth Industrial Revolution. This view is reflected in the Fifth Science and Technology Basic Plan. The plan advocates Society 5.0, in which cyber space and physical space are integrated to support an affluent and human-friendly society.

Raisul Rashu

Cryptocurrency development has continuous escalation in the past years and holds its presence significantly in open source development. Online collaborative software development platforms such as GitHub offer us an opportunity to observe developer effort, activity and software growth. Cryptocurrency has enabled various applications such as smart contracts, electronically decentralized payments, etc. Since, prices of each cryptocurrency are driven by many factors, we are interested in investigating how various characteristics of cryptocurrency's codebase development affect market capitalization price. Thus, we conduct a study on a panel dataset containing nearly a year of daily observations of development activity, popularity, and market capitalization for over two hundred open source cryptocurrencies.

Naoki Kobayakawa, Mitsuyoshi Imamura, Kei Nakagawa, Kenichi Yoshida

Open source software (OSS) has become indispensable to our society. The success of OSS depends on the participation of a large number of developers or maintainers (contributors). Shedding light on the mechanisms of their participation has been an important academic and practical matter. One aspect to decide participation is the future prospects of a project. However, the causal mechanism behind participation has yet to be studied exhaustively and remains unclear. In this study, we used cryptocurrency projects, many of them were developed on GitHub, to better understand this mechanism. Both GitHub and cryptocurrencies are highly transparent, i.e., information is fully disclosed; we can analyze relevant information on a project, such as the contributors' activities, financial information, and development status. We adopted market capitalization as the substitution index of future prospects and the number of contributors and analyzed the relationship using time series analysis techniques, such as the Granger causality test and regression. We found that the number of contributors increases two months after market capitalization increases. This quantifies the impact of the future prospects of the project, i.e., of the market capitalization of a cryptocurrency, on the participation of contributors.

Emil Gustavsson, Gabriel Ellebrink

Denna studie undersöker huruvida avsiktligt implementerad friktion inom interaktionsdesign kan minska antal användarfel vid insatsprocessen för blockkedjor med Proof-of-Stake teknik. Friktion som avsiktligt implementerats har tidigare visats kunna leda till färre användarfel. Det spekuleras i att blockkedjor kan komma att användas i större utsträckning i framtiden. Eftersom fel i insatsprocessen för en blockkedja med Proof-of-Stake teknik kan leda till att pengar går förlorade valdes det området för att undersökas närmare om friktion kan leda till färre användarfel. Studien avgränsas till en typ av avsiktlig friktion som kallas design for pauses som syftar till att få användaren att tillfälligt stanna upp med sin interaktion. I studien skapades två versioner av en prototyp på en insatsprocess till blockkedjan Ethereum som testades på två olika testgrupper. Ena versionen av prototypen innehöll avsiktligt implementerad friktion och i den andra versionen adderades ingen friktion avsiktligt. Deltagarna i testet ombads utföra insatsprocessen i prototypen där deras interaktioner granskades och statistik fördes på antal användarfel. Användarfelen delades upp i två kategorier: slarvfel och misstag. Resultaten från testerna visar på att avsiktlig friktion av typen design for pauses minskar antal användarfel av typen misstag. Ytterligare forskning krävs för att besvara om design for pauses kan bidra till att minska antal användarfel av typen slarvfel.

Yury Zhauniarovich, Yazan Boshmaf, Husam Al Jawaheri, Mashael Al Sabah

Web-based hosting services for version control, such as GitHub, have made it easier for people to develop, share, and donate money to software repositories. In this paper, we study the use of Bitcoin to make donations to open source repositories on GitHub. In particular, we analyze the amount and volume of donations over time, in addition to its relationship to the age and popularity of a repository. We scanned over three million repositories looking for donation addresses. We then extracted and analyzed their transactions from Bitcoin's public blockchain. Overall, we found a limited adoption of Bitcoin as a payment method for receiving donations, with nearly 44 thousand deposits adding up to only 8.3 million dollars in the last 10 years. We also found weak positive correlation between the amount of donations in dollars and the popularity of a repository, with highest correlation (r=0.013) associated with number of forks.

Balázs Bodó, Αλεξάνδρα Γιαννοπούλου

Decentralization is heralded as the most important technological design aspect of distributed ledger technologies (DLTs). In this chapter we’ll analyze the concept of decentralization, with the goal to understand the social, legal, and economic forces that produce more or less decentralized techno-social systems. We first give an overview of decentralization as a political ideology and as an ideal and natural endpoint in the development of digital technologies. We then move beyond this discourse and treat decentralization, its extent, its mode, and the systems which it can refer to as the products of particular economic, political, and social dynamics around and within these techno-social systems. We then point at the concrete forces that shape the actual degree of (de)centralization. Through this, we show that the extent to which a techno-social system is (de)centralized at any given moment should not be measured by its distance from an ideological ideal of total decentralization but should be seen as the sum of all the social, economic, political, and legal forces that impact a techno-social system.

Michel Rauchs, Andrew Glidden, Brian Gordon, Gina Pieters · 8 authors

The DLT ecosystem is plagued with the use of incomplete and inconsistent definitions and a lack of standardised terminology, creating a needlessly complicated landscape for everyone from experienced policymakers and developers to individuals venturing into the field for the first time. This study sets out to contribute to international discussions to create a shared, common language around DLT systems to clarify terminology and concepts.

Ying‐Ying Hsieh, Jean‐Philippe Vergne, Philip C. Anderson, Karim R. Lakhani · 5 authors

Bitcoin represents the first real-world implementation of a “decentralized autonomous organization” (DAO) and offers a new paradigm for organization design. Imagine working for a global business organization whose routine tasks are powered by a software protocol instead of being governed by managers and employees. Task assignments and rewards are randomized by the algorithm. Information is not channeled through a hierarchy but recorded transparently and securely on an immutable public ledger called “blockchain.” Further, the organization decides on design and strategy changes through a democratic voting process involving a previously unseen class of stakeholders called “miners.” Agreements need to be reached at the organizational level for any proposed protocol changes to be approved and activated. How do DAOs solve the universal problem of organizing with such novel solutions? What are the implications? We use Bitcoin as an example to shed light on how a DAO works in the cryptocurrency industry, where it provides a peer-to-peer, decentralized, and disintermediated payment system that can compete against traditional financial institutions. We also invited commentaries from renowned organization scholars to share their views on this intriguing phenomenon.

Simone Porru, Andrea Pinna, Michele Marchesi, Roberto Tonelli

The Blockchain technology is reshaping finance, economy, money to the extent that its disruptive power is compared to that of the Internet and the Web in their early days. As a result, all the software development revolving around the Blockchain technology is growing at a staggering rate. In this paper, we acknowledge the need for software engineers to devise specialized tools and techniques for blockchain-oriented software development. From current challenges concerning the definition of new professional roles, demanding testing activities and novel tools for software architecture, we take a step forward by proposing new directions on the basis of a curate corpus of blockchain-oriented software repositories, detected by exploiting the information enclosed in the 2016 Moody's Blockchain Report and teh market capitalization of cryptocurrencies. Ensuring effective testing activities, enhancing collaboration in large teams, and facilitating the development of smart contracts all appear as key factors in the future of blockchain-oriented software development.

Gianluca Miscione, Rafael Ziolkowski, Liudmila Zavolokina, Gerhard Schwabe

The blockchain technology offers a novel mode of distributed authentication, which does not depend on a central authority. We consider this novelty against established governance modes. We illustrate our argument by paying special attention to blockchain-based authentication functions in the empirical domain of land registries across the world. Based on interviews with representatives from organizations deploying blockchain, and con-tent analysis of related grey literature, we discuss established governance idealtypes against what the rivalry that cryptocurrencies and blockchains bring to digital settings. After referring to market, hierarchy, network, and bazaar, we conclude outlining the prospects of a different, blockchain-related governance mode called -˜tribal’ that better captures the -˜togetherness’ which rivalry originates.

Tua Björklund

Making a series of small bets rather than one large gamble is at the core of experimentation, thereby scaling down what is at stake. Less effortful and more specific behaviors are more likely to be followed through, so making things tangible increases your odds of translating intentions into actions. Small wins mark progress and offer proof-of-concept, opportunities for feedback, and opportunities for joining development efforts.

Matthias Stuermer, Gabriel Abu-Tayeh, Thomas Myrach

The modern age has heralded a shift from the industrial society, in which natural resources are crucial input factors for the economy, towards a knowledge society. To date, sustainability literature has treated knowledge-and in particular digital artifacts-mainly as a means to the end of achieving sustainable development. In this conceptual paper, we argue that digital artifacts themselves ought also to be considered as resources, which also need to be sustainable. While over-consumption is a problem facing natural resources, with sustainable digital artifacts, underproduction, and underuse are the biggest challenges. In our view, the sustainability of digital artifacts improves their potential impact on sustainable development. A theoretical foundation for digital artifacts and their ecosystem allows us to present the relevant research on digital information, knowledge management, digital goods, and innovation literature. Based on these insights, we propose ten basic conditions for sustainable digital artifacts and their ecosystem to ensure that they provide the greatest possible benefit for sustainable development. We then apply those characteristics to four exemplary cases: Linux kernel development, Bitcoin cryptocurrency, the Wikipedia project, and the Linking Open Drug Data repositories. The paper concludes with a research agenda identifying topics for sustainability scholars and information systems academics, as well as practitioners. A number of suggestions for future studies on digital sustainability are also put forward.

Huaiqing Wang, Kun Chen, Dongming Xu

The rapid development of the blockchain technology and its various applications has rendered it important to understand the guidelines for adopting it. The comparative analysis method is used to analyze different dimensions of the maturity model, which is mainly based on the commonly used capability maturity model. The blockchain maturity model and its adoption process have been discussed and presented. This study serves as a guide to institutions to make blockchain adoption decisions more systematically.

Hanieh JavadiKhasraghi, Shahriar Mohammadi

Web2 and the evolving vision of Web3 have a great effect on facilitation of information sharing, information aggregation, interoperability, user-centered design, collaboration on the World Wide Web, and crowd-centered services. New concept of Web is the intuition that drives crowdsourcing, crowd servicing, and crowd computing. With crowdsourcing emergence people get motivated to work through internet without being limited by time or geographical location. On the other hand employers could have their jobs done faster and cheaper. This paper is going to introduce an innovative approach for Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT) crowdsourcing marketplace. In current AMT marketplace, workers especially new ones need to qualify themselves for each requester that has submitted Human Intelligence Tasks (HITs) in AMT, and there is lack of shared reputation system; some workers may cheat on tasks in order to maximize their income, as a result requesters are uncertain of the quality of results, so they offer lower rewards and consequently qualified workers leave the marketplace.

Dieter Zinnbauer

No abstract is available for this record.

Randall M. Livingstone

Although I'm a rich white guy, I'm also a feminist anti-racism activist who fights for the rights of the poor and oppressed. (Carl Kenner)Systemic bias is a scourge to the pillar of neutrality. (Cerejota)Count me in. Let's leave the bias to the mainstream media. (Orcar967)Because this is so important. (CuttingEdge)These are a handful of comments posted by online editors who have banded together in a virtual coalition to combat Western bias on the world’s largest digital encyclopedia, Wikipedia. This collective action by Wikipedians both acknowledges the inherent inequalities of a user-controlled information project like Wikpedia and highlights the potential for progressive change within that same project. These community members are taking the responsibility of social change into their own hands (or more aptly, their own keyboards).In recent years much research has emerged on Wikipedia from varying fields, ranging from computer science, to business and information systems, to the social sciences. While critical at times of Wikipedia’s growth, governance, and influence, most of this work observes with optimism that barriers to improvement are not firmly structural, but rather they are socially constructed, leaving open the possibility of important and lasting change for the better.WikiProject: Countering Systemic Bias (WP:CSB) considers one such collective effort. Close to 350 editors have signed on to the project, which began in 2004 and itself emerged from a similar project named CROSSBOW, or the “Committee Regarding Overcoming Serious Systemic Bias on Wikipedia.” As a WikiProject, the term used for a loose group of editors who collaborate around a particular topic, these editors work within the Wikipedia site and collectively create a social network that is unified around one central aim—representing the un- and underrepresented—and yet they are bound by no particular unified set of interests. The first stage of a multi-method study, this paper looks at a snapshot of WP:CSB’s activity from both content analysis and social network perspectives to discover “who” geographically this coalition of the unrepresented is inserting into the digital annals of Wikipedia.Wikipedia and WikipediansDeveloped in 2001 by Internet entrepreneur Jimmy Wales and academic Larry Sanger, Wikipedia is an online collaborative encyclopedia hosting articles in nearly 250 languages (Cohen). The English-language Wikipedia contains over 3.2 million articles, each of which is created, edited, and updated solely by users (Wikipedia “Welcome”). At the time of this study, Alexa, a website tracking organisation, ranked Wikipedia as the 6th most accessed site on the Internet. Unlike the five sites ahead of it though—Google, Facebook, Yahoo, YouTube (owned by Google), and live.com (owned by Microsoft)—all of which are multibillion-dollar businesses that deal more with information aggregation than information production, Wikipedia is a non-profit that operates on less than $500,000 a year and staffs only a dozen paid employees (Lih). Wikipedia is financed and supported by the WikiMedia Foundation, a charitable umbrella organisation with an annual budget of $4.6 million, mainly funded by donations (Middleton).Wikipedia editors and contributors have the option of creating a user profile and participating via a username, or they may participate anonymously, with only an IP address representing their actions. Despite the option for total anonymity, many Wikipedians have chosen to visibly engage in this online community (Ayers, Matthews, and Yates; Bruns; Lih), and researchers across disciplines are studying the motivations of these new online collectives (Kane, Majchrzak, Johnson, and Chenisern; Oreg and Nov). The motivations of open source software contributors, such as UNIX programmers and programming groups, have been shown to be complex and tied to both extrinsic and intrinsic rewards, including online reputation, self-satisfaction and enjoyment, and obligation to a greater common good (Hertel, Niedner, and Herrmann; Osterloh and Rota). Investigation into why Wikipedians edit has indicated multiple motivations as well, with community engagement, task enjoyment, and information sharing among the most significant (Schroer and Hertel). Additionally, Wikipedians seem to be taking up the cause of generativity (a concern for the ongoing health and openness of the Internet’s infrastructures) that Jonathan Zittrain notably called for in The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It. Governance and ControlAlthough the technical infrastructure of Wikipedia is built to support and perhaps encourage an equal distribution of power on the site, Wikipedia is not a land of “anything goes.” The popular press has covered recent efforts by the site to reduce vandalism through a layer of editorial review (Cohen), a tightening of control cited as a possible reason for the recent dip in the number of active editors (Edwards). A number of regulations are already in place that prevent the open editing of certain articles and pages, such as the site’s disclaimers and pages that have suffered large amounts of vandalism. Editing wars can also cause temporary restrictions to editing, and Ayers, Matthews, and Yates point out that these wars can happen anywhere, even to Burt Reynold’s page.Academic studies have begun to explore the governance and control that has developed in the Wikipedia community, generally highlighting how order is maintained not through particular actors, but through established procedures and norms. Konieczny tested whether Wikipedia’s evolution can be defined by Michels’ Iron Law of Oligopoly, which predicts that the everyday operations of any organisation cannot be run by a mass of members, and ultimately control falls into the hands of the few. Through exploring a particular WikiProject on information validation, he concludes:There are few indicators of an oligarchy having power on Wikipedia, and few trends of a change in this situation. The high level of empowerment of individual Wikipedia editors with regard to policy making, the ease of communication, and the high dedication to ideals of contributors succeed in making Wikipedia an atypical organization, quite resilient to the Iron Law. (189)Butler, Joyce, and Pike support this assertion, though they emphasise that instead of oligarchy, control becomes encapsulated in a wide variety of structures, policies, and procedures that guide involvement with the site. A virtual “bureaucracy” emerges, but one that should not be viewed with the negative connotation often associated with the term.Other work considers control on Wikipedia through the framework of commons governance, where “peer production depends on individual action that is self-selected and decentralized rather than hierarchically assigned. Individuals make their own choices with regard to resources managed as a commons” (Viegas, Wattenberg and McKeon). The need for quality standards and quality control largely dictate this commons governance, though interviewing Wikipedians with various levels of responsibility revealed that policies and procedures are only as good as those who maintain them. Forte, Larco, and Bruckman argue “the Wikipedia community has remained healthy in large part due to the continued presence of ‘old-timers’ who carry a set of social norms and organizational ideals with them into every WikiProject, committee, and local process in which they take part” (71). Thus governance on Wikipedia is a strong representation of a democratic ideal, where actors and policies are closely tied in their evolution. Transparency, Content, and BiasThe issue of transparency has proved to be a double-edged sword for Wikipedia and Wikipedians. The goal of a collective body of knowledge created by all—the “expert” and the “amateur”—can only be upheld if equal access to page creation and development is allotted to everyone, including those who prefer anonymity. And yet this very option for anonymity, or even worse, false identities, has been a sore subject for some in the Wikipedia community as well as a source of concern for some scholars (Santana and Wood). The case of a 24-year old college dropout who represented himself as a multiple Ph.D.-holding theology scholar and edited over 16,000 articles brought these issues into the public spotlight in 2007 (Doran; Elsworth). Wikipedia itself has set up standards for content that include expectations of a neutral point of view, verifiability of information, and the publishing of no original research, but Santana and Wood argue that self-policing of these policies is not adequate:The principle of managerial discretion requires that every actor act from a sense of duty to exercise moral autonomy and choice in responsible ways. When Wikipedia’s editors and administrators remain anonymous, this criterion is simply not met. It is assumed that everyone is behaving responsibly within the Wikipedia system, but there are no monitoring or control mechanisms to make sure that this is so, and there is ample evidence that it is not so. (141) At the theoretical level, some downplay these concerns of transparency and autonomy as logistical issues in lieu of the potential for information systems to support rational discourse and emancipatory forms of communication (Hansen, Berente, and Lyytinen), but others worry that the questionable “realities” created on Wikipedia will become truths once circulated to all areas of the Web (Langlois and Elmer). With the number of articles on the English-language version of Wikipedia reaching well into the millions, the task of mapping and assessing content has become a tremendous endeavour, one mostly taken on by information systems experts. Kittur, Chi, and Suh have used Wikipedia’s existing hierarchical categorisation structure to map change in the site’s content over the past few years. Their work revealed that in early 2008 “Culture and the arts” was the most domin