Who Write Wikipedia? Understanding how WOM spreads
There's a fascinating article this morning on Aaron Swartz's blog, examing the question of who writes Wikipedia. I love this kind of stuff. As more communities are built online, we get a new opportunity to monitor and understand how communication occurs. This new study of Wikipedia entry authorship sheds some new light on the subject.
Swartz found that most entries follow a similar pattern, split among two groups of people:
Outsiders: people who infrequently contribute and may not have accounts
Insiders: people who frequently contribute, have accounts and are often on the site
Ends up that most entries are begun by outsiders, then added to, modified and generally tweaked (ie: fixing typos or formatting issues) by the insiders. The Outsiders (it seems to me) are interested primarily in the information itself. That is, they may be experts about a particular subject and want to share their knowledge. The insiders are more concerned with the Wikipedia itslef. That is, they want to make sure that the Wikipedia is complete.
This is good learning for WOM. This may, in fact, serve as the basis for a hypothesis about how information may spread within a particular group ("clique through"). A group's influencers may, in fact, be external to the group. But the information they bring is vetted and ultimately accepted or declined inside the group.
