Social capital increases efficiency of collaboration among Wikipedia editors

In this study we measure the impact of pre-existing social capital on the efficiency of collaboration among Wikipedia editors. To construct a social network among Wikipedians we look to mutual interaction on the user talk pages of Wikipedia editors. As our data set, we analyze the communication networks associated with 3085 featured articles - the articles of highest quality in the English Wikipedia, comparing it to the networks of 80154 articles of lower quality. As the metric to assess the quality of collaboration, we measure the time of quality promotion from when an article is started until it is promoted to featured article. The study finds that the higher pre-existing social capital of editors working on an article is, the faster the articles they work on reach higher quality status, such as featured articles. The more cohesive and more centralized the collaboration network, and the more network members were already collaborating before starting to work together on an article, the faster the article they work on will be promoted or featured.

[1]  Bernardo A. Huberman,et al.  Cooperation and quality in wikipedia , 2007, WikiSym '07.

[2]  P. Bourdieu.  Forms of Capital , 2002 .

[3]  Jon M. Kleinberg,et al.  Feedback effects between similarity and social influence in online communities , 2008, KDD.

[4]  Cliff Lampe,et al.  Bowling online: social networking and social capital within the organization , 2009, C&T.

[5]  Jan W. van Deth,et al.  Measuring Social Capital , 2019, Demanding Development.

[6]  Jonathon N. Cummings,et al.  Structural properties of work groups and their consequences for performance , 2003, Soc. Networks.

[7]  Jock Given,et al.  The wealth of networks: How social production transforms markets and freedom , 2007, Inf. Econ. Policy.

[8]  Aniket Kittur,et al.  Harnessing the wisdom of crowds in wikipedia: quality through coordination , 2008, CSCW.

[9]  Eric A. von Hippel,et al.  How Open Source Software Works: 'Free' User-to-User Assistance? , 2000 .

[10]  Robert E. Tarjan,et al.  Depth-First Search and Linear Graph Algorithms , 1972, SIAM J. Comput..

[11]  Peter Cebon,et al.  Swarm Creativity: Competitive Advantage Through Collaborative Innovation Networks , 2006 .

[12]  Mark Aberdour.  A people-focused , 2022 .

[13]  R. Putnam.  Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital , 1995, The City Reader.

[14]  John Riedl,et al.  Creating, destroying, and restoring value in wikipedia , 2007, GROUP.

[15]  Tom A. B. Snijders,et al.  Social Network Analysis , 2011, International Encyclopedia of Statistical Science.

[16]  Luca de Alfaro,et al.  A content-driven reputation system for the wikipedia , 2007, WWW '07.

[17]  Aniket Kittur,et al.  He says, she says: conflict and coordination in Wikipedia , 2007, CHI.

[18]  Peter A. Gloor,et al.  Correlating temporal communication patterns of the Eclipse open source community with performance and creativity , 2007, Comput. Math. Organ. Theory.

[19]  Franco Malerba,et al.  Clusters, networks, and innovation , 2005 .

[20]  Sudha Ram,et al.  Who does what: Collaboration patterns in the wikipedia and their impact on data quality , 2009, International Conference on Wireless Information Technology and Systems.

[21]  John Scott.  What is social network analysis , 2010 .

[22]  Aniket Kittur,et al.  Us vs. Them: Understanding Social Dynamics in Wikipedia with Revert Graph Visualizations , 2007, 2007 IEEE Symposium on Visual Analytics Science and Technology.

[23]  Kathleen M. Carley,et al.  Network Structure in Virtual Organizations , 1999, J. Comput. Mediat. Commun..

[24]  Duncan J. Watts,et al.  Collective dynamics of ‘small-world’ networks , 1998, Nature.

[25]  Tom A. B. Snijders,et al.  The Resource Generator: social capital quantification with concrete items , 2005, Soc. Networks.

[26]  Sean W. Smith,et al.  Quality in Internet Collective Goods : Zealots and Good Samaritans in the Case of Wikipedia , 2005 .

[27]  Mary Kay Gugerty,et al.  MEASURING SOCIAL CAPITAL: , 2001 .

[28]  E. Hippel.  Innovation by User Communities: Learning From Open-Source Software , 2001 .

[29]  B. Uzzi,et al.  Collaboration and Creativity: The Small World Problem1 , 2005, American Journal of Sociology.

[30]  J. Richardson.  Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education , 1986 .

[31]  John Riedl,et al.  Is Wikipedia growing a longer tail? , 2009, GROUP.

[32]  D.,et al.  Regression Models and Life-Tables , 2022 .