This article examines the way Wikipedia authors write their ‘community’ into being. Mobilizing concepts regarding the communicative constitution of communities, the computer-mediated conversation between editors were investigated using Grounded Theory procedures. The analysis yielded an empirically grounded theory of the users’ self-understanding of the Wikipedia community as ethos-action community. Hence, this study contributes to research on online community-building as it shifts the focus from structural criteria for communities to the discursive level of community formation.
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