Dear all,

As many researchers are currently investigating how the COVID-19 pandemic affected contribution and collaboration on Wikipedia, I thought I'd share the preprint of our quantitative analysis of editor contributions during the pandemic, which suggests encouraging findings for the Wikimedia volunteer community (see abstract below):

"Volunteer contributions to Wikipedia increased during COVID-19 mobility restrictions" https://arxiv.org/abs/2102.10090

best, thorsten

------------------

Authors: Thorsten Ruprechter, Manoel Horta Ribeiro, Tiago Santos, Florian Lemmerich, Markus Strohmaier, Robert West, Denis Helic

Abstract: Wikipedia, the largest encyclopedia ever created, is a global initiative driven by volunteer contributions. When the COVID-19 pandemic broke out and mobility restrictions ensued across the globe, it was unclear whether Wikipedia volunteers would become less active in the face of the pandemic, or whether they would rise to meet the increased demand for high-quality information despite the added stress inflicted by this crisis. Analyzing 223 million edits contributed from 2018 to 2020 across twelve Wikipedia language editions, we find that Wikipedia's global volunteer community responded remarkably to the pandemic, substantially increasing both productivity and the number of newcomers who joined the community. For example, contributions to the English Wikipedia increased by over 20% compared to the expectation derived from pre-pandemic data. Our work sheds light on the response of a global volunteer population to the COVID-19 crisis, providing valuable insights into the behavior of critical online communities under stress.