TY - JOUR
T1 - What motivates Wikipedians?
AU - Nov, Oded
PY - 2007/11/1
Y1 - 2007/11/1
N2 - Wikipedia is a web based collaborative, user-generated content sharing outlet, which is based on open source model. It is important to understand the factors responsible for motivating the volunteers in contributing their content to such outlets. A questionnaire survey was conducted to identify the factors of motivation and establish the correlation between the level of motivation and the level of contribution. Fun and Ideology were most significant motivations, although the high ranking of Ideology did not show positive correlation with the contribution level. Age was also found to positively correlate with the contribution level because with age, people have higher motivation levels of the Enhancement, Fun, and Protective motivations. The findings indicate that the user-generated content outlet's organizers should increase efforts towards increasing the fun and age aspects of contributing. Women's contribution to Wikipedia also is a significant area that needs further exploration.
AB - Wikipedia is a web based collaborative, user-generated content sharing outlet, which is based on open source model. It is important to understand the factors responsible for motivating the volunteers in contributing their content to such outlets. A questionnaire survey was conducted to identify the factors of motivation and establish the correlation between the level of motivation and the level of contribution. Fun and Ideology were most significant motivations, although the high ranking of Ideology did not show positive correlation with the contribution level. Age was also found to positively correlate with the contribution level because with age, people have higher motivation levels of the Enhancement, Fun, and Protective motivations. The findings indicate that the user-generated content outlet's organizers should increase efforts towards increasing the fun and age aspects of contributing. Women's contribution to Wikipedia also is a significant area that needs further exploration.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=36049016076&partnerID=8YFLogxK
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U2 - 10.1145/1297797.1297798
DO - 10.1145/1297797.1297798
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:36049016076
SN - 0001-0782
VL - 50
SP - 60
EP - 64
JO - Communications of the ACM
JF - Communications of the ACM
IS - 11
ER -