Events
Past Event
Wednesdays@NICO Seminar: The Hidden Costs of Requiring Accounts Online: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from Peer Production
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
12:00 PM
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Lower Level Chambers Hall
Details
The Hidden Costs of Requiring Accounts Online: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from Peer Production
Wednesdays@NICO | 12:00-1:00 PM, April 27, 2016 | Chambers Hall, Lower Level
Aaron Shaw, Assistant Professor, School of Communication, Northwestern University
Abstract
Open collaboration in peer production communities like Wikipedia and OpenStreetMap generates public information goods of immense value. Some communities require participants to create accounts and login before contributing whereas others do not. Do these user accounts support cooperation or inhibit greater participation? Prior literature makes divergent predictions, but lacks observational evidence capable of identifying causal effects. In this talk, I report results from an empirical study conducted together with Professor Benjamin Mako Hill (University of Washington). We use exhaustive longitudinal data from 137 natural experiments in a population of wiki communities where would-be contributors were suddenly required to create and login with a user account in order to participate. We estimate the impact of the change and find that requiring user accounts dramatically reduces the number of low quality contributions, deters higher quality participation, and leads to a small increase in the number of contributors creating new accounts. We conclude that user accounts are costly barriers to entry that introduce tradeoffs for public goods production.
Bio:
Aaron Shaw is an Assistant Professor in the Communication Studies Department at Northwestern University, a Faculty Associate of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, and a founder of the Community Data Science Collective. At Northwestern, he is Director of the Media, Technology and Society Program as well as an affiliate of the Institute for Policy Research, the Buffett Institute, and the SONIC research group. Aaron studies the organization of collective action and collaboration online, with a focus on peer production communities. He holds degrees from UC Berkeley and Stanford and has received awards from professional associations including the American Sociological Association, the Association for Computing Machinery, and the American Political Science Association.
Time
Wednesday, April 27, 2016 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Location
Lower Level Chambers Hall Map
Contact
Calendar
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
WED@NICO SEMINAR: Lightning Talks w/ Northwestern Scholars!
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
12:00 PM
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Lower Level, Chambers Hall
Details
Speakers:
Yessica Herrera, Visiting Scholar, Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems
Talk Title: The Body Speaks: Visual Patterns of Psychological Stress
Aakriti Kumar, Post-Doctoral Fellow, Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems
Talk Title: Evaluating Elements of Empathic Communication with Experts, Crowds, and Large Language Models
Tingyu "Mark" Zhao, PhD Student, Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences
Talk Title: Noise Filtering in Complex Networks
Sign Up:
Sign up to present at a future Lightning Talk session. NICO Lightning Talks are open to graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and visiting scholars.
Location:
In person: Chambers Hall, 600 Foster Street, Lower Level
Remote option: https://northwestern.zoom.us/j/95387714084
Passcode: NICO25
About the Speaker Series:
Wednesdays@NICO is a vibrant weekly seminar series focusing broadly on the topics of complex systems, data science and network science. It brings together attendees ranging from graduate students to senior faculty who span all of the schools across Northwestern, from applied math to sociology to biology and every discipline in-between. Please visit: https://bit.ly/WedatNICO for information on future speakers.
Time
Wednesday, May 14, 2025 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Location
Lower Level, Chambers Hall Map
Contact
Calendar
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
WED@NICO SEMINAR: Rosemary Braun, Northwestern University "The Scale of Life"
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
12:00 PM
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Lower Level, Chambers Hall
Details
Speaker:
Rosemary Braun, Associate Professor, Department of Molecular Biosciences, Northwestern University
Title:
The Scale of Life
Abstract:
Living systems exhibit surprising and beautiful self-organization at all scales. At the atomic level, proteins self-assemble into macromolecular complexes. The function of these machines is orchestrated within the cell by regulatory networks, whose activity is in turn dictated by, and coordinated with, the cells environment. This coordination takes place across large spans of space and time: the size and lifetime of organisms as large as the blue whale. Populations and ecosystems of many organisms in turn exhibit remarkable emergent dynamics. Today, advances in single-cell assays enable us to probe the molecular state of every cell in a sample in high-dimensional detail. But is this the correct scale at which to probe living systems? What can we learn from this data, and how can we abstract from the microscopic details to macroscopic phenotypes? In this talk, I will discuss some of our recent work bridging the cell and tissue/organism scales, and discuss some challenges and opportunities for the future.
Speaker Bio:
Rosemary Braun is an Associate Professor of Molecular Biosciences, Applied Mathematics [ESAM], and Physics at Northwestern University. A theoretical physicist by training, she earned her PhD in Physics from the University of Illinois, followed by a Masters in Biostatistics from Johns Hopkins University. She completed her postdoctoral training at the National Cancer Institute (NIH) before joining Northwestern as a faculty member. Today, she works at the intersection of statistics, mathematics, and biology to develop computational tools for analyzing high-dimensional data. In addition to her Northwestern affiliations, she is also Associate Director of the National Institute for Theory and Mathematics in Biology, as well as external faculty of the Santa Fe Institute.
Location:
In person: Chambers Hall, 600 Foster Street, Lower Level
Remote option: https://northwestern.zoom.us/j/97015976754
Passcode: NICO25
About the Speaker Series:
Wednesdays@NICO is a vibrant weekly seminar series focusing broadly on the topics of complex systems, data science and network science. It brings together attendees ranging from graduate students to senior faculty who span all of the schools across Northwestern, from applied math to sociology to biology and every discipline in-between. Please visit: https://bit.ly/WedatNICO for information on future speakers.
Time
Wednesday, May 21, 2025 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Location
Lower Level, Chambers Hall Map
Contact
Calendar
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)