Hidden Gems in the Wikipedia Discussions: The Wikipedians' Rationales

This paper presents a series of completed and ongoing studies that are aimed at understanding the role of the Wikipedians’ rationales in the Wikipedia discussions. We define a rationale as one’s justification of her view-point and suggestion. Our studies demonstrate the po-tential of leveraging the Wikipedians’ rationales in the discussions as resources for future decision-makings and as resources for eliciting knowledge about the communi-ty’s norms, practices and policies. Viewed as the rich dig-ital traces in these environments, we consider them to be beneficial for the community members, such as helping newcomers familiarize themselves on the commonly ac-cepted justificatory reasoning styles. We call for more re-search attention to the discussion content from this rationale study perspective.