A Million Penguins (analysis)
On February 1st, 2007, Penguin Books working in partnership with De Montfort University launched "A Million Penguins" (AMP) - a wiki in which the public would be invited to write a novel collaboratively. The wiki was scheduled to be open for submissions throughout February 2007. The results were staggering; within 3 weeks the wiki had received around 250,000 page views and 9,000 edits. Clearly there is a significant interest in this form of mass collaboration.
The object of this research project is to perform an analysis of the cultural text that is "A Million Penguins" in order to derive some guidelines for future attempts at mass, collaborative authoring. The main focus of the research will be on the people who contributed to AMP: not just the staff of Penguin but a wide range of those involved. I want to know how they got involved, why they got involved, what they did and how, looking back, they feel about it.
Download the full research report (PDF, 800kb)
For further information please contact:Prof Andrew Hugill
Email: ahu [at] dmu.ac.uk