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