This article is a summary of an academic paper about the Wikipedia community.

Phantom authority - self-selective recruitment and retention of members in virtual communities: The case of Wikipedia by Andrea Ciffolilli

This article from First Monday addresses the sociological underpinnings of the Wikipedia community and its attributes as a virtual community of practice. Ciffolilli asks fundamental questions regarding the authority, not only of the content of the encyclopedia as a viable body of knowledge, but also of the intra-community leadership structures that drive the project forward and guide its progress through a potentially hostile online world. These questions follow a line of reasoning centered around the aspects of Wikipedia's continued success and sustainability.

• Self-organization
• Emergence
• Social capital

Internal sources

• Wikipedian Culture - http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/
• Wikipedian Wikipedian objective self-analysis group - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Wikidemia

• Club Good theory - http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue8_12/ciffolilli/
• Actor Network theory - http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue6_1/tuomi/#t10