One of the most prominent examples of mass collaboration is Wikipedia. According to Alexa, Wikipedia is the 8th most visited website in the world. Playing a role in Wikipedia’s high ranking is the up-to-date information provided by the community of contributors.

The contributors provide the  content and ultimately what why visitors turn to Wikipedia for knowledge. Therefore, the importance of having a community of willing contributors is essential to the livelihood of any mass collaboration project. The question remains, why do people participate in such projects?

As of December 21 2008, statistics provided by Wikipedia shows that the encyclopedia has 8,540,976 registered users of whom 156,430 are regarded as active. A user is deemed active if they have performed an action in the past 30 days. These users have created a staggering 15,679,892 pages. In Charles Leadbeater’s book, We Think,  he finds that a majority of participants contribute in order to gain recognition from their peers which achieves a feeling of achievement. A study of the open source world by Hars & Ou finds that a motivational factor is altruism; doing something that would be of benefit to others. These communities also provide sense of belonging.

People who participate in these mass collaboration communities are essential to the success. It is therefore vital to fulfill the needs of participants. If not then the benefits of such projects like Wikipedia will not be realised.

Related Posts

1. Innovation in the age of Mass Collaboration
2. Crowdsourcing Example – People Participation in Crowdsourcing Platforms
3. Symbian and Nokia Go Open Source
4. Architecture for Humanity’s Open Architecture Network
5. Wikipedia For Schools