Hi Jan,
There are many issues involved in power dynamics. I would prefer to look at
this issue from a wide angle perspective.
How do you define "community health"?
Are the people who have power competent and focused on public service, are
they incompetent and selfish, or some other combination of those factors?
There are also powerful non-community forces such as paid editors who have
conflicts of interest, nations which make legal and political decisions
that affect the community, trolls, political activists, WMF, and more.
These can have significant effects for better and for worse. I suggest that
you take these into your account in analyzing power dynamics.
I also suggest taking into account that even if someone is high on the
power curve, that doesn't mean that they are necessarily having a good time
at others' expense. I think that some people such as English Wikipedia
functionaries are sometimes under a lot of stress, and are subject to
criticism and scrutiny from many directions. Also, there may be good
reasons for not distributing power more widely in some cases, such as with
the Checkuser tool.
I worry that someday the community will be overwhelmed by organizations
and/or nations which want to alter Wikimedia content for selfish reasons
and who can afford to hire or manipulate large numbers of people into doing
what they want.
What is the goal of your research?
Pine
(
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
On Wed, Jan 22, 2020 at 10:31 AM Jan Dittrich <jan.dittrich(a)wikimedia.de>
wrote:
Hello Researchers,
Contribution patterns in online communities follow a power distribution
which is known as the 1% rule [1], as Wikipedia told me.
However, the steepness of the distribution can be more or less strong: 50%
of your edits could be contributed by 2% or by 0.002%, the latter showing a
stronger imbalance.
I wonder if there are any estimates/rules-of-thumb of what imbalance is
problematic when seen from the perspective of community health.
I also wonder if there is research on how technology contributes to such
imbalances and how it might be mitigated – e.g training, user-friendliness,
documentation…
(based on my assumption that a steep curve is less desirable, since the
power is more concentrated, the system more fragile and the redistribution
of power more constrained)
Jan
[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture)
--
Jan Dittrich
UX Design/ Research
Wikimedia Deutschland e. V. | Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24 | 10963 Berlin
Tel. (030) 219 158 26-0
https://wikimedia.de
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