Chapter 1 Information Sharing and Social Computing. Why, What, and Where?

Why do people share content, metainformation, and programming knowledge with people they don't know, in return for no money? In a series of studies, the different drivers for information sharing in social computing systems are identified, and the effect of these drivers on actual levels of sharing is estimated, using a combination of survey and system data from Wikipedia, Flickr and a number of open source software projects. This way, we gain deeper understanding of why people share information, what types of information they share, and what are the venues used for the different types of sharing.