Wikimedia Research/Showcase/Archive/2016/01

January 2016

January 20, 2016 Video: YouTube

Anon productivity and productive efficiency in English Wikipedia

slides

By Aaron Halfaker (Halfak/EpochFail)

Building from a call to action around measuring value-adding behavior in Wikipedia from Wikimania 2014, I'll show preliminary results of measuring editor productivity in English Wikipedia. From this analysis some surprising results have emerged: (1) IP editors contribute about 20% of good new content to Wikipedia articles, (2) the overall productivity of registered editors has been holding constant since 2007 -- despite declines in the community and labor hours invested in editing. (1) suggests that we should consider better supporting editing without an account and (2) suggests that Wikipedians are somehow contributing more efficiently than they used to.

Cooperation in a Peer Production Economy

Experimental Evidence from Wikipedia

By Jérôme Hergueux

Relying on the behavior of Wikipedia contributors in a (game-theoretic) social experiment, I will seek to engage the community in a reflection about ways to create a more inclusive Wikipedia. First, I will identify the underlying demographic and social determinants of anti-social behavior within Wikipedia -- an often cited driver of its declining retention rates. Second, I will study the relationship between Wikipedia administrators' trust in anonymous strangers and their policing activity patterns, asking the question of the optimal level of trust that admins should exhibit in order to efficiently protect Wikipedia from malicious users while avoiding to drive well-intentioned ones away from the project.