Revisiting "The rise and decline" in a population of peer production projects

Nathan TeBlunthuis, Aaron Shaw, Benjamin Mako Hill

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

23 Scopus citations

Abstract

Do patterns of growth and stabilization found in large peer production systems such as Wikipedia occur in other communities? This study assesses the generalizability of Halfaker et al.'s influential 2013 paper on "The Rise and Decline of an Open Collaboration System." We replicate its tests of several theories related to newcomer retention and norm entrenchment using a dataset of hundreds of active peer production wikis from Wikia. We reproduce the subset of the findings from Halfaker and colleagues that we are able to test, comparing both the estimated signs and magnitudes of our models. Our results support the external validity of Halfaker et al.'s claims that quality control systems may limit the growth of peer production communities by deterring new contributors and that norms tend to become entrenched over time.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationCHI 2018 - Extended Abstracts of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Subtitle of host publicationEngage with CHI
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
ISBN (Electronic)9781450356206, 9781450356213
DOIs
StatePublished - Apr 20 2018
Event2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2018 - Montreal, Canada
Duration: Apr 21 2018Apr 26 2018

Publication series

NameConference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings
Volume2018-April

Other

Other2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2018
Country/TerritoryCanada
CityMontreal
Period4/21/184/26/18

Keywords

  • Governance
  • Online communities
  • Peer production
  • Quality control
  • Replication
  • Retention
  • Wikipedia
  • Wikis

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Software
  • Human-Computer Interaction
  • Computer Graphics and Computer-Aided Design

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