The effects of group composition on decision quality in a social production community

Online social production communities allow efficient construction of valuable and high-quality information sources. To be successful, community members must be effective at collaboration, including makink collective decisions in the presence of disagreement. We examined over 100,000 decisions made by small working groups in Wikipedia, and analyzed how decision quality in these online groups is influenced by four group composition factors: the size of the group, how members were invited to the group, the prior experience of group members, and apparent bias shown by the group administrator. Our findings lead us to recommendations for designers of social production communities.

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