Peer Produced Friction: How Page Protection on Wikipedia Affects Editor Engagement and Concentration

Abstract

Peer production systems have frictions-mechanisms that make contributing more effortful-to prevent vandalism and protect information quality. Page protection on Wikipedia is a mechanism where the platform's core values conflict, but there is little quantitative work to ground deliberation. In this paper, we empirically explore the consequences of page protection on Internet Culture articles on Wikipedia (6,264 articles, 108 edit-protected). We first qualitatively analyzed 150 requests for page protection, finding that page protection is motivated by an article's (1) activity, (2) topic area, and (3) visibility. These findings informed a matching approach to compare protected pages and similar unprotected articles. We quantitatively evaluate the differences between protected and unprotected pages across two dimensions: editor engagement and contributor concentration. Protected articles show different trends in editor engagement and equity amongst contributors, affecting the overall disparity in the population. We discuss the role of friction in online platforms, new ways to measure it, and future work.