“edit this page”: the power of editing affordances

An interesting paper on the minimalist approach to editing interfaces on Wikipedia.

Networked environments, such as wikis, are commonly used to support work, including the collaborative authoring of information and “fact-building.” In networked environments, the activity of fact-building is mediated not only by the technological features of the interface, but also by the social conventions of the community it supports. This paper examines the social and technological features of a Wikipedia article in order to understand how these features help mediate the activity of fact-building and highlights the need for communication designers to consider the goals and needs of the communities for which they design.

via “edit this page”.