Dear Peeter,

I agree that Editors' motivation is multi-layered. There has been research on it since 2005 or 2007. Sometimes by means of surveys addressing the different categories or motives, while in other occasions they are complemented by computational analysis. I had to review the motivation for my phd thesis I am currently doing, so here are some of the main studies I found:

O. Nov. 2007. What motivates Wikipedians? CACM 50, 11 (2007), 60–64. DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/1297797.1297798

S. Kuznetsov. 2006. Motivations of contributors to Wikipedia. ACM SIGCAS computers and society 36, 2 (2006), 1.

B. Xu and D. Li. 2015. An empirical study of the motivations for content contribution and community participation in Wikipedia. IAM 52, 3 (April 2015), 275–286. DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.im.2014.12.003

X. Zhang and F. Zhu. 2006. Intrinsic motivation of open content contributors: The case of Wikipedia. Workshop on Information Systems and Economics (2006), 1601–1615.

H.-L. Yang and C.-Y. Lai. 2010. Computers in Human Behavior. Computers in Human Behavior 26, 6 (November 2010), 1377–1383. DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2010.04.011

In case you can't find one, just e-mail me. 
Best regards,

Marc Miquel
ᐧ

2016-02-21 9:39 GMT+01:00 Peeter Tinits <peeter.tinits@gmail.com>:

Dear Wiki-research list members,


I am new to the list, so I hope this is the right place.


I'm looking for studies or good sources on what motivates the volunteer Wikipedians to become involved and stay involved in writing articles to and editing Wikipedia?


This motivation is probably quite multi-layered ranging from wider goals (that may be sometimes post-hoc rationalizations) and shorter goals and incentives (that may be less easily rationalized). E.g. for me, I believe somewhat in the mission, but what gets me going probably is more if I see someone being wrong on the public part of the internet.


What motivates the wikipedians? What do the wikipedians get out of this for themselves? What are the proximal motivations that get them going? If you know any sources, sending them to my personal e-mail as well as to the list is ok.


Many thanks!



Best regards,

Peeter Tinits


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