Is Wikipedia Inefficient? Modelling Effort and Participation in Wikipedia

Presented at HICSS 2013

10 Pages Posted: 17 Nov 2011 Last revised: 22 Jan 2013

See all articles by Kevin Crowston

Kevin Crowston

Syracuse University - School of Information Studies

Nicolas Jullien

M@rsouin (Môle Amoricain de Recherche sur la Société de l'information et les Usages d'Internet); IMT Atlantique

Felipe Ortega

Charles III University of Madrid - GSyC/Libresoft

Date Written: August 31, 2012

Abstract

Concerns have been raisedabout the decreased ability of Wikipedia to recruit editors and in to harness the effort of contributors to create new articles and improve existing articles. But, as Marwell & Oliver explained,in collective projects, in the initial stage of the project, people are few and efforts costly; in the diffusion phase, the number of participants grows as their efforts are rewarding; and in the mature phase, some inefficiency may appear as the number of contributors is more than the work requires. In this paper, thanks to original data we extract from 36 of the main language projects, we compare the efficiency of Wikipedia projects in different languages and at different states of development to examine this effect.

Keywords: Wikipedia, Data Envelopment Analysis, efficiency

JEL Classification: C67, D29, L23, L86

Suggested Citation

Crowston, Kevin and Jullien, Nicolas and Jullien, Nicolas and Ortega, Felipe, Is Wikipedia Inefficient? Modelling Effort and Participation in Wikipedia (August 31, 2012). Presented at HICSS 2013, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1960696 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1960696

Kevin Crowston

Syracuse University - School of Information Studies ( email )

Hinds Hall 348
Syracuse, NY 13244
United States
+1 315 443-2911 (Phone)
+1 315 443-5806 (Fax)

HOME PAGE: http://ischool.syr.edu/

Nicolas Jullien (Contact Author)

M@rsouin (Môle Amoricain de Recherche sur la Société de l'information et les Usages d'Internet) ( email )

France

IMT Atlantique ( email )

Technopole de Brest Iroise
Brest, 29238
France

Felipe Ortega

Charles III University of Madrid - GSyC/Libresoft ( email )

Mostoles, Madrid
Spain

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
190
Abstract Views
3,456
Rank
286,584
PlumX Metrics