A Data-Driven Sketch of Wikipedia Editors

A Data-Driven Sketch of Wikipedia Editors - scientific work related to Wikipedia quality published in 2012, written by Robert West, Ingmar Weber and Carlos Castillo.

Overview

Who edits Wikipedia? Authors attempt to shed light on this question by using aggregated log data from Yahoo!'s browser toolbar in order to analyze Wikipedians' editing behavior in the context of their online lives beyond Wikipedia. Authors broadly characterize editors by investigating how their online behavior differs from that of other users; e.g., authors find that Wikipedia editors search more, read more news, play more games, and, perhaps surprisingly, are more immersed in pop culture. Then authors inspect how editors' general interests relate to the articles to which they contribute; e.g., authors confirm the intuition that editors show more expertise in their active domains than average users. Authors results are relevant as they illuminate novel aspects of what has become many Web users' prevalent source of information and can help in recruiting new editors.