Challenges and opportunities for open collaboration

In this talk, I explore the possibilities and limits of open collaboration through the lens of citizen science. I begin with the premise that while open models—like Wikipedia or open source software—demonstrate the potential of mass collaboration, they also present challenges in access, coordination, and meaning-making. My goal is to examine how we can better understand and design for collaboration when volunteers work on complex scientific tasks.

I draw on two extended case studies. The first is Gravity Spy, a project that engages volunteers in classifying noise artifacts (or "glitches") in data from the LIGO gravitational wave observatory. While the task is framed as classification, I show that volunteers also play a generative role in creating new glitch categories. I explore how shared language and structures emerge from volunteer interaction, using structuration theory to analyze how meaning-making both guides and results from action. I describe how "folksonomies" evolve from individual tag use (“personomies”) to community-wide labeling practices, highlighting both the collaborative potential and the coordination breakdowns these systems face.

The second case, Galaxy Zoo Quench, pushes further into co-creation by involving volunteers in data analysis and scientific paper writing. Here, I show how coordination theory helps diagnose where the project ran into difficulties. Despite strong enthusiasm, volunteers struggled not with the mechanics of participation, but with understanding what outputs would be scientifically interesting or credible. I argue that successful open collaboration requires not just openness, but also feedback, visibility, and support for shared sense-making and governance.

I conclude by reflecting on the design implications for socio-technical systems: we need to create spaces for negotiation of meaning, surface emergent consensus, and empower participants to shape shared norms. Open collaboration holds promise, but realizing it demands thoughtful attention to the invisible work of coordination and communication.