The activity theory framework of the human activity system (see Figure 1) allowed us to dissect and
reason about Wikipedia’s quality assurance work in a conceptually systematic way. It suggests where and
how variance can be introduced in an article’s IQ as well as the relationships and points of integration
among those variances.
1. Activity: Activity is the atomic unit, collective in nature and driven by a complex motive of
which the individual actors are seldom aware.
2. Actions: Activity manifests itself in the form of goal-oriented individual actions in which the
subject is consciously aware of what he or she is trying to accomplish.
3. Automatic operations: Actions in turn rely on automatic, routinized operations, dependent on the
conditions at hand.
4. There are continuous two-way transformations between these levels: actions are internalized and
become automatic operations through repeated practice, on the other hand, actions may also be
expanded into novel collective activities