The Rise and Decline of an Open Collaboration System: How Wikipedia's Reaction to Popularity Is Causing Its Decline
The Rise and Decline of an Open Collaboration System: How Wikipedia's Reaction to Popularity Is Causing Its Decline
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DOI：
10.1177/0002764212469365
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发表时间：
2013-05-01
影响因子：
3.2
通讯作者：
Riedl, John
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Halfaker, Aaron;Geiger, R. Stuart;Riedl, John
开放的协作系统，如维基百科，需要维护一批志愿者贡献者才能保持相关性。维基百科是通过数百万贡献者的大量贡献而创建的。然而，最近的研究表明，多年来维基百科的活跃贡献者数量一直在稳步下降，这表明新来者的留存率急剧下降是原因。这篇文章提供的数据显示，面对参与度的大幅增长，维基百科社区在管理质量和一致性方面所做的几项改变，讽刺的是，却削弱了他们本来要管理的增长。具体地说，百科全书的主要质量控制机制和用于拒绝投稿的算法工具的限制性被认为是新人留存率下降的关键原因。此外，社区规范表达的正式机制已经被证明对变化，特别是新编辑提出的变化已经僵化。
Open collaboration systems, such as Wikipedia, need to maintain a pool of volunteer contributors to remain relevant. Wikipedia was created through a tremendous number of contributions by millions of contributors. However, recent research has shown that the number of active contributors in Wikipedia has been declining steadily for years and suggests that a sharp decline in the retention of newcomers is the cause. This article presents data that show how several changes the Wikipedia community made to manage quality and consistency in the face of a massive growth in participation have ironically crippled the very growth they were designed to manage. Specifically, the restrictiveness of the encyclopedia's primary quality control mechanism and the algorithmic tools used to reject contributions are implicated as key causes of decreased newcomer retention. Furthermore, the community's formal mechanisms for norm articulation are shown to have calcified against changesespecially changes proposed by newer editors.