10.1184/R1/6470099.v1
Aniket Kittur
Aniket
Kittur
Robert E. Kraut
Robert E.
Kraut
Harnessing the Wisdom of Crowds in Wikipedia: Quality through Coordination
Carnegie Mellon University
2008
Wikipedia
wiki
collaboration
coordination
social computing
2008-01-01 00:00:00
Journal contribution
https://kilthub.cmu.edu/articles/journal_contribution/Harnessing_the_Wisdom_of_Crowds_in_Wikipedia_Quality_through_Coordination/6470099
Wikipedia’s success is often attributed to involving large numbers of contributors who improve the accuracy, completeness and clarity of articles while reducing bias.
However, because of the high coordination needed to collaboratively write an article, increasing the number of contributors is costly. We examined how the number of
editors in Wikipedia and the coordination methods they use affect article quality. We distinguish between explicit coordination, in which editors plan the article through
communication, and implicit coordination, in which a subset of editors set direction by doing the majority of the work. Adding more editors to an article improved article quality
only when they used appropriate coordination techniques and was harmful when they did not. Implicit coordination through concentrating the work was more helpful when many editors contributed, but explicit coordination through communication was not. Both types of coordination improved quality more when an article was in a formative
stage. These results demonstrate the critical importance of coordination in effectively harnessing the “wisdom of the crowd” in online production environments.