Benjamin Mako Hill's Avatar

Benjamin Mako Hill

@mako.cc

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25.02.2023
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Latest posts by Benjamin Mako Hill @mako.cc

This is the official Google Gemini app on Android on a Google Pixel phone. The text on the screen says, "My name is pronounced GEH-muh-nye." The source is authoritative. I plan to pronounce it correctly going forward.

01.03.2026 19:29 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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May this serve as a corrective for all of us who have apparently been mispronouncing Google chatbot's name. (sound on)

01.03.2026 18:33 👍 46 🔁 17 💬 2 📌 2

Finally blogged about my paper (led by @zarine.net) that seeks to explain why Croatian Wikipedia spent a decade captured by a cabal of political extremists and became a site for Holocaust revisionism, while other similar Wikipedia languages seemed to have fared much better. mako.cc/copyrighteou...

22.02.2026 21:45 👍 11 🔁 4 💬 0 📌 0
Future of the Commons A collective dedicated to exploring, discussing, and shaping the future of shared knowledge and resources, collaborative spaces, and community-driven efforts that foster the digital commons.

I'm doing a talk and panel discussion for Open Knowledge Initiatives - India's "Future of the Commons" program tomorrow in honor of @wikipedia.org's 25th birthday. I'll be talking about some of my research on peer production projects' governance and lifecycles. Join me! foc.oki-india.org

20.02.2026 03:15 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Super interesting blog / paper with a core thesis - that people go to social communities for information, community, or reach, and that social networks generally can deliver only two of these. Good blog by the other Cory here: pluralistic.net/2026/02/16/f...

(h/t @bnewbold.net)

18.02.2026 11:38 👍 7 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0

Cory does a better job of explaining my research than I do. 😅

16.02.2026 20:43 👍 10 🔁 4 💬 1 📌 0
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Why do people participate in similar online communities? Note: I have not published blog posts about my academic papers over the past few years. To ensure that my blog contains a more comprehensive record of my published papers and to surface these for f…

ICYMI: Finally blogged about an old paper (led by @groceryheist.cc) that explains why people often engage in multiple groups with overlapping topic and membership, and which helps explain why competition between online groups seems to be rare. mako.cc/copyrighteou...

16.02.2026 03:26 👍 12 🔁 6 💬 1 📌 1

ICYMI: Finally blogged about an old paper led by @kayleachampion.bsky.social that developed a new method (forensic qualitative analysis) to understand the nature and value of @torproject.org users' contributions to @wikipedia.org. mako.cc/copyrighteou...

01.02.2026 12:34 👍 1 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0

True story!

01.02.2026 09:26 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Me: Do you want your coffee in a Japanese or Western style tea cup?

M: Yunomi.

Me: Apparently not as well as you think I do!

31.01.2026 11:41 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

Totally. I'll be there.

07.01.2026 03:04 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

This is an interesting complement to the finding that even adding fair risk scores can increase human decision bias (dl.acm.org/citation.cfm...).

Context matters and a priori prediction of human-algorithm compositional behavior is difficult.

03.01.2026 13:21 👍 3 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
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Effects of Algorithmic Flagging on Fairness: Quasi-experimental Evidence from Wikipedia Note: I have not published blog posts about my academic papers over the past few years. To ensure that my blog contains a more comprehensive record of my published papers and to surface these for f…

ICYMI: Finally blogged about an "old" paper led by @groceryheist.cc that uses data from a @wikipedia.org system to show how the introduction of a biased AI flagging system can still lead to more fairness because the humans without the system are even more biased. mako.cc/copyrighteou...

03.01.2026 12:54 👍 12 🔁 3 💬 0 📌 1

I'm teaching a course on how to build great online communities and am hoping to pair up a few students with people who want to build, improve, grow, or change a new or existing online group. Drop a DM or email if you'd be interested in having one of my students consult (for free)!

06.11.2025 16:36 👍 13 🔁 6 💬 0 📌 0
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Science of Community Dialogue: The Impacts of Organizational Interventions in Open Source Software Engineering This dialogue will take place on November 7th at 12pm CT and will explore how free/libre and open source software (FLOSS) projects adapt their work processes to recruit new contribut…

Register to join me and @communitydata.science Friday (November 7) for our next free/public science of community dialogue on "The Impacts of Organizational Interventions in Open Source Software Engineering" with talks from Matt Gaughan and Igor Steinmacher: blog.communitydata.science/science-of-c...

05.11.2025 01:23 👍 4 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0


Incorrect in the sense that I'm not joining or in that I'm not looking forward to it?

25.10.2025 20:00 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Poll asking "Will you join us for our Bowling Bash?" With "Yes, looking forward to it" checked and the answer marked "Incorrect".

Poll asking "Will you join us for our Bowling Bash?" With "Yes, looking forward to it" checked and the answer marked "Incorrect".

25.10.2025 20:00 👍 5 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
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Community Dialogue – AI Boundaries: Refusal and Privacy Join the Community Data Science Collective (CDSC) for our 12th Science of Community Dialogue! This Community Dialogue will take place on October 17th, 2025 at 12:00 pm CT. This dialogue explores ho…

Last chance to register for an event my research group (@communitydata.science) is organizing tomorrow on AI chatbots that respect privacy boundaries. Our own Hsuen-Chi (Hazel) Chiu will present along with @JasmineMcNealy. Join us! blog.communitydata.science/community-di...

16.10.2025 16:58 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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Prospective PhD Student Q&A – September 26th Thinking about applying to graduate school? Wonder what it’s like to pursue a PhD or M.S.? Interested in understanding relationships between technology and society? Curious about how to do research…

Interested in doing graduate research with me and the rest of @communitydata.science? My research group (now with faculty at six campuses!) is organizing a PhD and MS recruiting event and Q&A. Join us! Details and a registration link is here: blog.communitydata.science/prospective-...

14.09.2025 19:06 👍 3 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0
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For the cover of my next book? Thanks @mako.cc‬ , who found this while biking, as in like pedaling-biking!, through a big chunk of Africa (pic taken en route into Nairobi from Ngong)

13.08.2025 17:44 👍 9 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0

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

15.06.2025 15:50 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

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!

15.06.2025 15:50 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
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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!

15.06.2025 15:50 👍 28 🔁 8 💬 3 📌 0
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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...

13.06.2025 18:43 👍 7 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0
Online Community Resilience: Governing Public Information Goods Under Attack Online communities steward a complex set of public information goods. These goods face a range of urgent threats: strategic information pollution and governance capture; legitimacy attacks by external...

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...

05.06.2025 21:19 👍 9 🔁 2 💬 1 📌 0

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.

03.04.2025 16:13 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

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.

03.04.2025 16:13 👍 2 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0
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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...

04.03.2025 23:35 👍 25 🔁 10 💬 2 📌 1

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

22.12.2024 20:28 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

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.

21.12.2024 21:28 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0