Benjamin Mako Hill

I'm going to presenting about this work at #IASC in Amherst this weekend as part of the knowledge commons track! I'd love to connect and talk! #IASC2025

Thanks to everybody at @communitydata.science for inspiring and helping carry out all the work. Also thanks to Nancy Joseph and the UW College of Arts & Science for writing such a clear description of my research!

The Challenge of Peer-Produced Websites | UW College of Arts & Sciences Communication professor Benjamin Mako Hill studies why successful peer-produced websites (like Wikipedia) eventually struggle to maintain their openness to new contributors.

UW published this really nice article about my work on governance challenges and lifecycles faced by peer-produced online communities—the work supported by my NSF CAREER grant. Check it out if you want to know what I've been thinking about and working on!

Come check out the CDSC at ICA 75! A number of our CDSC folks will be attending the 75th Annual International Communication Association Conference “Disrupting and Consolidating Communication Research” in Denver, Colorado…

If you're in Denver for the International Communication Association's annual meeting, see work by and connect with CDSC people. @yibin.bsky.social, @callofdyuti.bsky.social, @mako.cc, Haomin Lin, and Jeremy Foote are all around! #ICA25 blog.communitydata.science/come-check-o...

a new short research brief with @mako.cc and @aaronshaw.bsky.social synthesizes some of the work I presented at @communitydata.science Science of Community Dialogues back in April! zenodo.org/records/1560...

If you can't attend, there's also information on how to sign up for information about future events in the series and/or get information about recordings and other material after the event.

Last chance to register for this public event on online governance that my research group (@communitydata.science) is organizing tomorrow as part of our Science of Community Dialogues series.

Elon Musk Also Has a Problem with Wikipedia Lately, Musk’s beef has merged with a general conviction on the right that the site is biased against conservatives.

The New Yorker says Wikipedia is a beacon of hope, with quotes from me and @mako.cc www.newyorker.com/news/the-led...

No. I took this picture a year or so ago, I think. I'll let you know next time I'm in town!

I am bagel in the sense that having eaten bagel I am constituted, in small part, by the knowledge of bagel. But I am not bagellike.

My current playlist is this diorama of Lulu the Piggy channeling Tupac Shakur in a toy vending machine in the basement of New World Mall in Flushing Chinatown.

Logo for "SHE's BAGLE COFFEE" with a graphic picture symbolizing a bagel sandwich, the name, and the phrase "Why so serious? It's SHE's BAGEL!"

"It's SHE's BAGEL." 😂

Picture of Mika looking concerned next a sign that says, "I'm donut ?"

Brown paper bag with the phrase "I am bagel" written on it. Under in smaller text it says "Your Daily Meal | Since 2012"

While in Tokyo, nutritional epidemiologist @mikazilla.bsky.social realizes that "if I am what I eat..." The situation in Seoul is similar, albeit less fried and more confident.

Another one for your collection @enfascination.bsky.social.

Governance Capture in a Self-Governing Community: A Qualitative Comparison of the Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian, and Serbo-Croatian Wikipedias | Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction What types of governance arrangements make some self-governed online groups more vulnerable to disinformation campaigns? We present a qualitative comparative analysis of the Croatian and Serbian Wikip...

i guess "governance capture" may be kind of relevant these days... i'll be at CSCW this week presenting our paper with @mako.cc and @katestarbird.bsky.social exploring why some self-governing online communities are more vulnerable to capture than others: dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...

My research group @communitydata.science will host a public/free workshop on research into online community governance as part of our Science of Community Dialogue Series: https://wiki.communitydata.science/Dialogues/Complexities_of_Community_Governance (register at the link!).

I realize that because I have several chairs, the phrase "my chair" is ambiguous. To reduce confusion, I will refer to the head of my academic department as "my office chair" going forward.

"If you'd like to be even more confused, click here!" (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antipope)

Abbott should have a deferred payment plan for its COVID tests and call it BinaxNOW™ PaynaxLATER™.

Two people in front of a large banner that says FIRST DAY in large orange and black letters.

Wrapped up an awesome first day at Princeton's Center for Information Technology Policy where I'm honored to be part of an awesome class of fellows for 23-24 (w/ @alicetiara.bsky.social as you can see).

Excited to be back on the east coast and to (re)connecting w/ many of you! #sabbatical

I think I control the DNS. @els.bsky.social: HMU if you want to set that up.

Turns out out that my house is on here (@els.bsky.social ), already followed by 66 people, and has posted pictures from events I was present for!

Intentionally not mentioning @mikazilla.bsky.social?

Which I did! If you want, you can follow me there at: www.inaturalist.org/people/makos...

Bag of Japanese biscuits in a supermarket with the word Macrobiotic (in Japanese) followed "Biscuits" (in English) followed by "Be a Naturalist" in Italics.

Japanese macrobiotic biscuits reminding me to upload my plant and animal photos to iNaturalist.

Garbage can with the text "Would you like to review what your life could be...?" written on it.

Tokyo garbage can asking me the big questions.

An app called Assign had an ad where Assign was misspelled as Assing...

An ad for an app to look for new jobs...

#ohnojp

Community Data Science Collective at ICA 2023 The International Communication Association (ICA)’s 73nd annual conference is coming up soon. This year, the conference takes place in Toronto, Canada, and a subset of our collective is showing up …

I'll be at #ICA23 with a big chunk of the Community Data Science Collective. Check out this blog post that documents all the great stuff that folks from my research collective will be doing and presenting. https://blog.communitydata.science/community-data-science-collective-at-ica-2023/