OER creation: Community

3. Content

3.4. Community

A functioning community is crucial for both creation and primarily ensuring the sustainability of individual OER WMS operation. Without a functioning community, these resources stagnate and, in the case of vandalism that is not detected by the members of the community, they can be damaged.

A functioning community creates a democratic society in which everyone is equal and ensures the collective review of a given resource. Each member of the community can edit anything. The community also creates an editorial team of the given OER WMS. The editorial team can function in a wholly free manner and anonymously, or is can be partially organized and directed.

An editorial team is the foundation on which OER WMS stands. The members of the editorial staff are responsible for the administration and maintenance of the resource. Their work can be divided into the following points:

Creation of new articles;
Inspection of existing articles for vandalism (i.e. entering vulgar or otherwise unsuitable content);
Updating existing articles by adding new knowledge.

The way the editorial staff works also has a direct influence on the long-term sustainability of the resource. Sustainability is one of the greatest problems in creating OER WMS. At the beginning of the creation of these projects, there may be a certain idealistic enthusiasm, perhaps further supported by targeted financial support provided to create the project. Over the course of time, however, both enthusiasm and finances in many cases begin to dissipate. In a better case scenario, the resource is updated by occasional visitors, and in worse cases it becomes the subject of attacks by vandals, leading to a deterioration in the page’s quality. A good example of ensuring a functional community is by engaging students in the creation of OER WMS. Nonetheless, the best proven method is voluntary cooperation (an example of best practices to ensure the sustainability of a resource is Wikiskripta, which have the largest and best-functioning community of all Czech OER WMS, which functions on a voluntary basis). Communities of resources can be analyzed using the actor analysis method – for an illustration, see the Table below.

Table. Results of OER WMS actor analysis at Charles University focusing on individual aspects of quality (Petiška et al., 2020).

Resource name	WikiSkripta	Wikipedia education program (Students write Wikipedia)	Wikisofia	Wikiknihovna	Enviwiki
Guarantor of quality	Quality is guaranteed by the community, not an expert – the 2.0 approach functions on a community principle – the principle of demand.	In some cases, there is no quality control at all. In other cases, teacher assessment takes place, or by volunteers from the ranks of Wikipedists. The fact that it is written by people who are professionally focused (i.e. their field of study) should act as a guarantee of quality.	The editorial board of Wikisofia (due to capacity reasons, however, it cannot check everything).	Original idea for materials to read and checked mutually by students. This did not materialize.	A quality article is one that is reviewed by an expert. However, there is no “capacity” for articles to be truly reviewed.
Perception of quality	This has developed over time. The general negative evaluation is no longer present; there are more specific objections.	Students attempt to create texts they consider to be of good quality. However, it functions on the basis of internal motivation, not if it is seen as an obligation.	Quality is seen as an attribute of the writer. Quality is supported by methodology, which writers are to adhere to. The final quality is ensured by the coordinator.	The original idea was for students themselves to ensure quality. The project, however, did not manage to build a functional community.	A high-quality text should be approved by an expert in the given field and should be of good quality also in terms of form (formal requirements such as use of references).
Recognition of quality	For example, indirect characteristics: the text is well-organized, readable, and looks good. If the text is not complete, this points to the footprint of a certain author, indicating one should take caution.	If control mechanisms work well: a) there should be no uncited information on Wikipedia that is not generally known (quality is ensured by sources); b) low-quality articles are deleted.	A number of articles lack citations and review and purely stem from students’ internal study materials. However, there are also articles here that fulfill the basic parameters of more scientific texts.	Quality was represented by the fact that the source would be used by students and fulfill their needs.	There is a template (which, in several cases, is placed in the article) that declares the article is of good quality (after it is approved of by an expert), but in practice it is not used.
Reliability of information	Ensured by the community: multiple editors ensure content and form (hyperlinks and references ); multiple people with particular knowledge are able to recognize an error.	In an ideal case, this is taken care of by Wikipedia’s rules (primarily concerning references) and protected by the community. In practice, however, the community’s supervision “sometimes fails”.	In some cases (e.g. psychology), it is monitored by an editorial board. However, the editorial board does not have the capacity to check “everything”.	Influenced by the lack of editors.	The administrator sees it as a “relatively reliable source of information”; also thanks to its connection to Wikipedia via links.

Openness

OER WMS function best on the principle of broad openness. The greater participation they allow for content creation, the better they can make use of the primary commodity of these resources – the possibility of broad cooperation in the collaborative creation of content. However, openness also has its limitations and problems, such as the destruction of content by internet vandals. The general public should therefore be balanced by a properly functioning community, which corrects potential errors and intentional damage to sources.

Motivation

An analysis of actors has showed that, in the case of becoming involved in the community and creating OER WMS, internal motivation functions the best, i.e. when participants become involved on a voluntary basis. On the contrary, any form of coercion, for example the creation of these sources as school obligations, proves to be ineffective. In cases where students are required to be involved in the creation of resources and requested content, they do not remain in the project after their obligation has been completed and thus do not become full-fledged members of the community.

Awards

Internal motivation to create a resource may be supported and awarded by various appraisals that can be given to members of the community within OER WMS. Awards can be given for the result of activity – e.g. evaluating created content in the form of thanks for editing – or by directly thanking a member of the community for his/her long-term activity (various medals and ranks, which they can then place on their user page in the given OER WMS).

Citing authorship

In the creation of articles, it is suitable to judge whether and in what manner authorship or review by an expert is cited. If an author of an article is listed and the source can be continually edited, a problem arises regarding the fact that the article may be significantly changed by a different editor without the original author’s knowledge. Thus, readers may be confused, thinking that the article they have been reading was written by the cited author. Therefore, it is worth thinking about how to solve this problem. If a resource is broadly open (i.e. possibility for anyone to make anonymous changes), it may be better not to list anything under the author’s article, or to notify the reader of what exactly the author has created (e.g. via a link to a specific version that the author has created, or the last version that he/she has checked).

Citing a reviewer

Citing a reviewer of content presents a similar case. If the final content of an article is approved of by an expert in a given field, this can significantly improve its quality and, primarily, its usability, as it makes an anonymous resource (similarly to listing an author) into a non-anonymous and reviewed resource.

Even here, however, care should be taken in making further updates so as not to list the reviewer under a version that he/she has not reviewed. A good example of how to deal with this problem can be green check marks indicating that the given version of an article has been approved of by an expert.