This paper sets out a methodology for, and the preliminary results of, an examination into the mechanisms by which community arises and is maintained around the task of producing the open source knowledge base that is Wikipedia. The methodology incorporates activity theory and analysis of speech acts as a means for studying the interplay between technical and social artefacts. The methodology was designed to collect data which lends itself to subsequent computer simulation of institutional emergence, in particular for surfacing the interplay between individual agency and social structure. This is part of work being undertaken by a European collaboration titled 'Emergence in the Loop'.