You have a very similar effect in larger Wikipedias. In those ones, there is no very
active, "single bus"-like contributor, but a core of very active users
concentrating about 85% of the total number of edits per month.
It seems that in these languages, though, there is a generational relay in which new
active users jump into the core to substitute those who eventually give up, for any
reason. So, the concentration becomes stable after a couple of years (aprox.) and the
encyclopedia is able to continue growing.
Best.
F.
--- El jue, 23/10/08, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com> escribió:
De: Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com>
Asunto: Re: [Wiki-research-l] "Regular contributor"
Para: "Research into Wikimedia content and communities"
<wiki-research-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Fecha: jueves, 23 octubre, 2008 10:27
Hoi,
I missed that this was the research mailing list.. my
fault. Consequently my
answer was not appropriate. With this in mind, it is
interesting to learn
how the spread is in particularly the smaller projects. In
my opinion there
must be a certain amount of productive people in order to
get to a community
that does not have one person who is the "bus
factor".
Having someone who drives the bus is really important. I
wonder how you can
point this person out. I think that someone who is just
editing is important
but it is not all that builds a community.
Thanks,
GerardM
On the Volapuk wikipedia Smeira was really important. When
he left, I
understand that activity collapsed.
2008/10/22 phoebe ayers <phoebe.ayers(a)gmail.com>
2008/10/21 Gerard Meijssen
<gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com>
> Hoi,
> When you divide people up in groups, when you
single out the ones "most
> valuable", you in effect divide the
community. Whatever you base your
> metrics on, there will be sound arguments to
deny
the point of view. When it
> is about the number of edits, it is clear to
the
pure encyclopedistas that
> most of the policy wonks have not supported
what
is the "real" aim of the
> project.
>
> When you label groups of people, you divide them
and it is exactly the
> egalitarian aspect that makes the community
thrive.
But this isn't about labeling people for the rest
of time and saying that
this is how they are defined *on Wikipedia* --
it's about saying how do you
study people who regularly contribute to
Wikipedia,
and as a part of that
how do you define the group that you are
studying,
which is an important
question for any research study.
Given that it's impossible to study every
contributor to the project in
every study, and since many researchers are
interested
in why people who
spend a lot of time or effort working on
Wikipedia do
so (and what exactly
it is they do), this is a very relevant question
for
this list.
--phoebe
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