Project Management in the Wikipedia Community

Project Management in the Wikipedia Community - scientific work related to Wikipedia quality published in 2010, written by Hang Ung and Jean-Michel Dalle.

Overview

A feature of online communities and notably Wikipedia is the increasing use of managerial techniques to coordinate the efforts of volunteers. In this short paper, authors explore the influence of the organization of Wikipedia in so-called projects. Authors examine the project-based coordination activity and find bursts of activity, which appear to be related to individual leadership. Using time series, authors show that coordination activity is positively correlated with contributions on articles. Finally, authors bring evidence that this positive correlation is relying on two types of coordination: group coordination, with project leadership and articles editors strongly coinciding, and directed coordination, with differentiated online roles.