Stay on the Wikipedia task: When task-related disagreements slip into personal and procedural conflicts

In Wikipedia, volunteers collaboratively author encyclopedic entries, and therefore managing conflict is a key factor in group success. Behavioral research describes three conflict types: task-related, affective, and process. Affective and process conflict have been consistently found to impede group performance; however, the effect of task conflict is inconsistent. We propose that these inconclusive results are due to under-specification of the task conflict construct, and focus on the transition phase where task-related disagreements escalate into affective and process conflict. We define these transitional phases as distinct constructs: task-affective and task-process conflict, and develop a theoretical model that explains how the various task-related conflict constructs, together with the composition of the wiki editor group, determine the quality of the collaboratively-authored wiki article. Our empirical study of 96 Wikipedia articles involved multiple data-collection methods, including the analysis of Wikipedia system logs, manual content analysis of article's discussion pages, and a comprehensive assessment of articles' quality using the Delphi method. Our results show that when group members' disagreements – originally task-related – escalate into personal attacks or hinge on procedure, these disagreements impede group performance. Implications for research and practice are discussed.