Members of highly distributed groups benefit from d eveloping a shared language\, i.e.\, specialized terminology to describe th eir shared work and work situations\, to coordinate their activities. To be tter understand how shared language can emerge in and support the work of d istributed groups\, we review the literature on folksonomies (a kind of sha red language) in crowdsourcing systems (one type of distributed work) and a nalyze three exemplary systems.
The review highlights three inherent tensions associated with the development of folksonomies in crowdsourcing. First\, different users of the language may have different needs. In partic ular\, there might be tension if people labelling objects are not the same as those using these labels to search for content. Second\, projects need t o decide when in the process of language development\, they want to interve ne to maintain a balance between a stable ontology and the ability of the p roject to accommodate ongoing changes. Third\, who gets to decide on adopte d terminology stands as an important problem\, and crowdsourcing projects n eed to decide on a division of power. We illustrate these considerations by reviewing several projects with an emphasis on the Archives of Our Own\, t he citizen science project Gravity Spy\, and the photo-sharing site Flickr.
Kevin Crowston is a Distinguished Professor of Information Scienc
e in the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University. He received
his Ph.D. (1991) in Information Technologies from the Sloan School of Manag
ement\, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). His research examines
new ways of organizing made possible by the extensive use of information an
d communications technology. Specific research topics include the developme
nt practices of Free/Libre Open Source Software teams and work practices an
d technology support for citizen science research projects\, both with NSF
support. His most recent project is a study of the evolution of newswork wi
th new technologies.