Unpublished,
Why Do People Write for Wikipedia? Incentives to Contribute to Open-Content Publishing
(2005)
Abstract
When people learn that we have spoken to individuals who spend up to 30 hours a week volunteering their time to research and write for an open-content encyclopedia, we often hear the same question: "Why do they do it?" The fact that this encyclopedia does not provide bylines to credit authors for their hard work makes the scenario still less fathomable. Two rounds of interviews with 22 volunteer encyclopedia writers in the fall of 2004 and spring of 2005 revealed that, in some respects, the incentive system that motivates contributions to the open-content encyclopedia Wikipedia resembles that of the scientific community. Like scientists, contributors to Wikipedia seek to collaboratively identify and publish true facts about the world. Research on the sociology of science provides a useful touchstone for considering the incentive systems embedded in the technology and culture of online communities of collaborative authorship.
