Cross-Cultural Analysis of the Wikipedia Community

This paper reports a cross-cultural analysis of Wikipedia communities of practice (CoPs). First, this paper argues that Wikipedia communities can be analyzed and understood as CoPs. Second, the similarities and differences in norms of behaviors across three different languages (English, Hebrew, and Japanese) and on three types of discussion spaces (Talk, User Talk, and Wikipedia Talk) are identified. These are explained by Hofstede’s dimensions of cultural diversity, the size of the community, and the role of each discussion area. This paper expands the research on online CoPs, which have not performed in-depth examinations of cultural variations across multiple CoPs.