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  • From: "Ben Yates" <ben.louis.yates AT gmail.com>
  • To: WikiWorld <wikiworld AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Wiki World] a metric for community
  • Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2007 00:35:40 -0400

A significant fraction of wikipedia's content was added "drive-by" --
by users who didn't register or come back to edit again.

On 10/3/07, Nick Jenkins <nickpj AT gmail.com> wrote:
> > OK, so another interesting thing is: how many *active community
> > members* are needed for an *active community*?
>
> Perhaps:
> One active member = a soliloquy
> Two active members = a conversation
> >= Three active members = a community
>
> (i.e. maybe an early sign of a community is that someone says something,
> then
> someone corrects them, and then someone else tells them that they're both
> wrong!)
>
> When a community goes from being a community to an *active* community is
> pretty subjective. Maybe it's when sub-communities start to appear? I.e.
> when
> the original single community is sufficiently broad and noisy that people
> feel the
> desire to break it out into different parts / interests.
>
> > Is there more to an active community than a collection of active
> > community members?
>
> Yes - interaction between the members. A site with people working off on
> separate
> areas and never interacting is not an active community. It's just a group
> of people
> who happen to share a wiki.
>
> > > > * Should the metric be proportional to the size of the wiki? Is that
> > > > sensible?
> > >
> > > I don't think that it is relevant. If English Wikipedia has 2M
> > > articles and 100 edits per minute, it doesn't makes it equal with some
> > > other project which has 20K of articles and 1 edit per minute.
> >
> > That's not what I meant. What I meant was maybe on a tiny wiki, 5
> > edits makes you an active community member. On English Wikipedia,
> > maybe it is 100? Or is it still the same 5?
>
> Isn't that partially also a metric for how "sticky", and how much
> interesting content,
> and how old the site is? Also maybe people see themselves relative to other
> people
> in terms of determining whether they're an active community member or not -
> so
> 5 edits on a very small wiki probably does make you an active member, and
> on EN
> Wikipedia it probably is 100 edits - because "active" can be a relative
> measure -
> i.e. active compared to whom - and I think the normal answer is "compared
> to most
> other people using the wiki".
>
> -- All the best,
> Nick.
> _______________________________________________
> wikiworld mailing list
> wikiworld AT lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/wikiworld
>


--
Ben Yates
Wikipedia blog - http://wikip.blogspot.com




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