The influence of network structures of Wikipedia discussion pages on the efficiency of WikiProjects

Abstract

Publication informationSocial Networks, 43 : 1-15Publisher Elsevier Item record/more information http://hdl.handle.net/10197/9073 Publisher's statementThis is the author's version of a work that was accepted for publication in Social Networks. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Social Networks (43 (2015) AbstractAs a platform for discussion and communication, talk pages play an essential role in Wikipedia to facilitate coordination, sharing of information and knowledge resources among Wikipedians. In this work we explore the influence of network structures of these pages on the efficiency of WikiProjects. Project efficiency is measured as the amount of work done by project members in a quarter. The study uses the comments on WikiProject talk pages to construct communication networks. The structural properties of these networks are studied using ideas from social network theory. We develop three hypotheses about how network structures influence project effectiveness and examine the hypotheses using a longitudinal dataset of 362 WikiProjects. The evaluation suggests that an intermediate level of cohesion with a core of influential users dominating network flow improves effectiveness for a WikiProject, and that greater average membership tenure relates to project efficiency in a positive way. We discuss the implications of this analysis for the future management of WikiProjects.

Communication networks do not predict success in attempts at peer production

“…There have been exceptions to this limitation, and a few papers have compared community structures across projects. In this research, equality of participation and network density typically have a negative relationship with performance and community growth (D. Hinds & Lee, 2009;Qin, Cunningham, & Salter-Townshend, 2015;Roth, Taraborelli, & Gilbert, 2008).…”

“…How might we expect coordination and social integration processes to occur in early-stage CBPP and what sorts of communication structures would reflect productive and long-lasting communities? The empirical evidence, primarily from lage-scale CBPP projects, suggests that dense communication networks are weakly, but negatively, associated with performance (Qin et al, 2015;Roth et al, 2008). While it is tempting to assume that these findings are common to all CBPP, there are a number of theoretical and empirical reasons to believe that early-stage projects have a different composition of members and different objectives than mature projects.…”

“…When a few people are much more connected than others, centralization is high. While higher variance in contributions correlates with CBPP community productivity (Kittur & Kraut, 2010;Qin et al, 2015), theories of group formation suggest that highly centralized communities will have difficulty in forming shared norms and coordinating who knows what.…”

Mining team characteristics to predict Wikipedia article quality

“…Evidence from Wikipedia collaboration has shown that, although old-timers have the experience and skills to contribute, their effort or motivation is generally lower than that of newcomers [41]. However, [25] showed that greater average membership tenure relates to project efficiency in a positive way. Our results do not show that experience, or tenure, in terms of the amount of time that an individual has been part of the Wikipedia community, has any effect on article quality.…”

Examining Collective Memory Building in Wikipedia: A Multilevel Network Approach

“…Moreover, preexisting social capital, operationalized as the proportion of collaborators being members of a pre-existing network and the overall cohesiveness of a pre-existing network, increased the efficiency of collaboration among Wikipedia contributors [16]. A recent study further suggested that an intermediate level of cohesion in the collaboration network improved WikiProject efficiency [17].…”