I agree that this is an interesting question. We have been working on a few related questions, and I have a few thoughts.
First, inequality of participation can have many causes. In the new communities that I have been looking at, high inequality is often the sign of a dedicated core of contributors, willing to do maintenance and administrative work. In other cases, high inequality may result from newcomers being driven away, for example, or technological constraints that restrict who can contribute. My (untested) guess is that inequality interacts with community age, such that higher inequality is (generally) positive for new/small communities and negative for more established communities.
Rather than trying to directly tie inequality to outcomes, our approach has been to look at measures that are a closer to mechanisms (e.g., our working paper at https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/g95pr/, where we look at network measures). Indeed, if you are interested in the influence of technological interventions, it seems like focusing on something like newcomer retention might be more appropriate?
Best, Jeremy
On Thu, Jan 23, 2020 at 7:04 AM Dariusz Jemielniak darekj@alk.edu.pl wrote:
Hi Jan,
The question about steepness of the curve across different projects is indeed fascinating!
You can find my analysis of inequalities in open source software here: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0152976
Best,
Dj
On Wed, Jan 22, 2020, 23:23 Pine W <wiki.pine@gmail.commailto: wiki.pine@gmail.com> wrote: Hi Jan,
I think that we may have given you a lot more than you had in mind when you asked your question. I'm aware that you were thinking of "power law" in a way that can be very different than "power dynamics", but I have the latter more on my mind, partially because of recent discussions on Wikimedia-l related to strategy.
I remain interested in knowing what the goal of your research is.
I'll be busy with non-Wikimedia activities for the next few days, but I'll try to get back to the Wikiverse by this Saturday. If you don't hear back from me after about two weeks then please feel free to email me off list if you'd like me to follow up. In the meantime, Kerry and other capable people may be able to help with any further questions regarding your research interests.
Best wishes,
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