Abstract
IntroductionMobilizing hundreds of contributors, as in the case of Linux, to thousands of contributors, as in the case of Wikipedia, open online communities are viewed as a central point for innovative generation of new knowledge (Chesbrough, 2003; Mahr and Lievens, 2012). Open source initiatives are numerous and they span various industries (Balka et al., 2009). The success
Highlights
Mobilizing hundreds of contributors, as in the case of Linux, to thousands of contributors, as in the case of Wikipedia, open online communities are viewed as a central point for innovative generation of new knowledge (Chesbrough, 2003: tinyurl.com/ce6bsy8; Mahr and Lievens, 2012: tinyurl.com/akozt3b)
We present the data and our current results. We discuss these results in the last section and present some conclusions that can be useful for practitioners, managers, and facilitators in these kind of open communities to assess their current evolution and prevent negative factors that could influence proper development of these communities in due course. This analysis focuses on a comparison of the 39 largest Wikipedias
The work presented here provides an initial step to identifying differences in the work practices of the various Wikipedia projects, shedding light on the sustainability of such collective intelligence projects, and it proposes a way to extend the work initiated by Stvilia, Al-Faraj and Yi (2009; tinyurl.com/bdlounp), Hara, Shachaf, and Hew (2010; tinyurl.com/aajhf93), and Callahan and Herring (2011; tinyurl.com/b3pjrff)
Summary
Sustainability of Open Collaborative Communities: Analyzing Recruitment Efficiency. The influence of recruitment and retention of participants in these projects has received comparatively less attention from researchers. These concerns are significant for practitioners, especially regarding the apparently decreasing ability of the main open online projects to attract and retain new contributors. We use original data from 36 Wikipedias in different languages to compare their efficiency in recruiting participants. We can draw interesting conclusions that can be useful for practitioners, facilitators, and managers of collaborative projects in order to identify key factors potentially influencing the adequate development of their communities over the medium-to-long term
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