Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2015 13:02:16 -0700 From: Pine W Subject: [Wiki-research-l] Motivations for editing Wikipedia

Has there been research done on what "sells" people into getting started on Wikipedia in the first place, particularly for editors who to on to make >5 edits?

As others have noted, motivation for Wikipedia is one of the more studied topics: dozens of papers, plus papers on motivations for related kinds of projects, e.g., open source software.

Most of the work has looked at motivations as homogeneous, with participants having more or less or a different mix of them. In contrast, a colleague and I have a paper in which we argue that the motivations for getting started with projects like Wikipedia are different than the motivations for continuing to participate. The difference in motivations explains why there are a large number of people with just one edit: they had the first kind of motivations but not the second, so they tried it but didn’t stick.

You can find the paper here: http://crowston.syr.edu/node/254

Kevin Crowston Syracuse University Phone: +1 (315) 443-1676 School of Information Studies Fax: +1 (815) 550-2155 348 Hinds Hall Web: http://crowston.syr.edu/ Syracuse, NY 13244-4100 USA