Using the simple technology of the wiki allowed Wikipedia’s founders to focus on the encyclopedia’s content — to focus on soliciting article contributions rather than building technology.
Wikipedia offered low transaction costs to participation, and it de-emphasized the social ownership of content. Editing Wikipedia is easy, and instant, and virtually commitment-free. ”You can come along and do a drive-by edit and never make a contribution again,” Hill pointed out. And the fact that it’s difficult to tell who wrote an article, or who edited it—rather than discouraging contribution, as you might assume—actually encouraged contributions, Hill found. ”Low textual ownership resulted in more collaboration,” he put it.
(From Niemanlab.org)
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hstryqt reblogged this from museum-meanderings and added:
This is an interesting take on the incentives to contributing to Wikipedia, as it looks more at the ease of contributing...
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