The Social Network Analysis Of Wiki Community

The virtual community has become an important platform for knowledge sharing. Through networks, people can construct the social connection among individuals. Thus, the social networks come into being, which is the basis of the virtual community. It can support people when they are having information exchange and knowledge sharing in the virtual community.The thesis discussed the forming of social network of virtual community from the angles of elements of virtual community, knowledge management and social software. The elements include the motive of members of virtual community, the satisfication of the members and the loyalty of the members. These elements can promote the forming of virtual community. An important task of the community is knowledge management and knowledge sharing of the organization. And social software provides a platform for the members in community to have negotiation, information exchange and knowledge sharing.Social network analysis (SNA) has been intorduced to study social network in detail. It can be used to describe and measure the relationship among the members and relationships among all the visible and invisible thing, such as information, resources and knowIedge.The thesis also discussed the characteristics of virtual community structure.The thesis also introduced the history, feature and usage of Wiki and illustrated the advantages of Wiki when it is used in virtual community knowledge sharing. A platform-Wentry Wiki has been built. Social network analysis has been used to study the network connection in the virtual community. The structure in community and the information flow among the members has been analyzed too. The relationship between the scale and intensity of nerwork connection, the loyalty of community, and the satisfaction of community is also analyzed. Some user surveys have been used to verify these relationships.