​Hi Everyone,

The next Research Showcase will be live-streamed this Wednesday, January 20, 2016 at 11:30 (PST).

YouTube stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRpUby3MoqU

As usual, you can join the conversation on IRC at #wikimedia-research. You can watch our past research showcases here.

We look forward to seeing you!

Kindly,
Sarah R. Rodlund
Project Coordinator-Engineering, Wikimedia Foundation
srodlund@wikimedia.org

This month:

Anon productivity and productive efficiency in English Wikipedia

​By Aaron Halfaker

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.​