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Recent News and Articles on the Keywords: motivates wikipedians + survey + review  Related to the article below (Last Update: 5/5/2008)

Exploring motivations for contributing to open source initiatives: The roles of contribution context …
S Oreg, O Nov - Computers in Human Behavior, 2007 - Elsevier
... The prospect of gaining reputation motivates people as it ... these, a random sample
of 354 Wikipedians were emailed ... request to participate in a web-based survey. ...

Motivations of contributors to Wikipedia -
S Kuznetsov - ACM SIGCAS Computers and Society, 2006 - portal.acm.org
... recognized and valued that often motivates people to ... Wikipedia defines Wikipedians
as ?the people who write ... Kuznetsov, Stacey, ?An Informal Survey of New ...

Innovating Collaborative Content Creation: The Role of Altruism and Wiki Technology -
C Wagner, P Prasarnphanich - Proceedings of the 40th Annual Hawaii International …, 2007 - doi.ieeecomputersociety.org
... Nupedia) with a traditional editorial process of writing and peer review. ... The study
employed an email-based survey, sent to 140 Wikipedians in March 2006. ...

[PDF] A Survey of Web-based Collective Decision Making Systems -
JH Watkins, MA Rodriguez - soe.ucsc.edu
A Survey of Web-based Collective Decision Making Systems ... of the project, most of
these problems are handled by the vigilance of other Wikipedians, a collective ...

[PDF] Explaining quality in internet collective goods: Zealots and good samaritans in the case of …
D Anthony, SW Smith, T Williamson - Retrieved from http://web. mit. edu/iandeseminar/Papers/ …, 2005 - mit.edu
... those with many contributions (ie, Wikipedians, whether registered or not ... about
open-source production that motivates these ... ?The Orbiten free software survey. ...

[PDF] A Window on Wikibookians: Surveying their Statuses, Successes, Satisfactions, and Sociocultural … -
S Sajjapanroj, CJ Bonk, MM Lee, MFG Lin - vcolr.org
... What motivates Wikibookians to collaborate with others in the development of a wikibook ...
This study included survey and interview data from those who had already ...

[PDF] The Quality of Open Source Production: Zealots and Good Samaritans in the Case of Wikipedia
D Anthony, SW Smith, T Williamson - ists.dartmouth.edu
... Reputation mechanisms motivate participation in open ... Wikipedians, whether registered
or not) will contribute high quality ... ?The Orbiten free software survey. ...

The Visual Side of Wikipedia -
FB Vi?gas - Proceedings of the 40th Annual Hawaii International …, 2007 - doi.ieeecomputersociety.org
... last portion of the survey asked questions about the ... of insects is something I adopted
from other Wikipedians. ... think this is selfish, but if it motivates us to ...

Investigating recognition-based performance in an open content community: A social capital … -
C Okoli, W Oh - Information & Management, 2007 - Elsevier
... of studies have considered what incentives motivate participants in ... factors, based
on a Web-survey of 141 ... the edits of over 80,000 Wikipedians (not counting ...
-

[PDF] KNOWLEDGE CONTRIBUTION IN WIKIPEDIA
SR Hong - www-appn.comp.nus.edu.sg
... contribution. Using survey and archival data, a model of knowledge contribution
based on the ... 2 1.3 Organisation of the Report 2 Chapter 2 LITERATURE REVIEW 3 ...

Source: Google Scholar

"What Motivates Wikipedians": review of a survey

A recent article titled "What Motivates Wikipedians?" (written by Oded Nov in Communications of the ACM, November 2007, Vol. 50, No. 11, pp. 60-64) attracted my eye because I've been doing similar research on why people write computer documentation. Back in June I published the results of a survey that over 350 people filled out. I wanted to see what more rigorous research would turn up.

Professor Nov, an information systems expert, produced a nice data point that seems to be methodologically sound, covering eight different motivations for contributing to Wikipedia. But I thought of one more (and when I wrote him, he was gracious enough to suggest it "should be included in a future empirical study of contribution motivations").

The article is not available to the general public online, but I can summarize the motivations Nov tested in his survey:

  • Altruism and humanitarian concerns
  • Responding to requests by friends or attempting to engage in an activity viewed favorably by important others
  • Chances to learn new things
  • Preparing for a new career or signaling knowledge to potential employers
  • Addressing personal problems, such as guilt at being more fortunate than others
  • Ego needs and public exhibition of knowledge
  • Ideological concerns, such as belief that information should be free
  • Fun

This is a pretty comprehensive list of personal reasons for doing something that doesn't offer any immediate personal payback. But what's missing from this list? The motivation that means the most to me personally, and probably to many people who write: they actually have something to say!

I can see why the motivations in the previous list would be prominent for a professor adding details about, say, the ancient Battle of Salamis. It's hard to imagine how the professor could benefit from other people having the correct facts.

But there are lots of urgent social issues where someone feels he or she benefits from other people having the correct facts: political controversies, public health problems whose cures depend on widespread compliance, and so on. In my own field, people are writing computer documentation because they want to promote the software they're writing or using. The intrinsic motivations in the list may add a bit of extra incentive, but the main goal is to get one's point of view heard. And the Wikipedia's fame, along with the high rankings it receives in web searches, ensures that lots of casual web users will read its entries. If you care about people hearing your point of view, you'd better damn well write for Wikipedia.

Wikipedia reflects a new information environment that flattens the status of information providers. Whether you're Encyclopedia Britannica, the New York Times, or O'Reilly Media, you're competing with anyone who can fill out a form online or write an email message. Millions of people who used to gripe over their beer glasses are taking advantage of the medium to get their voice heard more widely--and that's enough motivation for many.

 
 
 
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