Producer Conflict Management Approaches in Online Peer Production Communities – Case Study of OpenStreetMap

Abstract

Producers of online peer-production communities (OPPCs) regularly experience conflicts with other producers. A deeper understanding of the producer conflict management approaches employed by community members could help OPPCs improve their conflict management tools. In this paper, we analyze the effectiveness of conflict management approaches employed by producers. Using OpenStreetMap (OSM) as a case study, we manually annotate OSM mappers’ conflict management approaches from 384 online discussion threads contained in one of OSM’s public communication channels. We investigate the effectiveness of conflict management by verifying whether producer discussions led to a solution. Our results show that online producer conflict management approaches with empathetic and proactive listening behaviors were more likely to reach a productive solution, whereas those approaches with negative online behaviors were less likely to do so. Based on these results, we reflect on how the user interface of OSM’s public online communication channels could better support producers to manage conflict behaviors.