The Dynamics of Knowledge Social Sharing in the Major Wikipedia Language Versions

Abstract

The creation of Wikipedia, which is the most popular free culture project, involves the sharing of knowledge by hundreds of thousands of volunteers. In general, Wikipedia as a virtual community of practice is inclusive space and open to anyone who has access to the Internet. Active Wikipedians, however, try to control the contribution to the common work, referring to the developed rules, including those related to the verifiability of content, while maintaining a neutral point of view and respecting copyright. Nevertheless, in communities, the problem of limiting editing for users who often act against these rules sometimes comes to the fore. In some language versions, the possibilities of co-creating knowledge for unregistered users have been limited. There is no general plan for actions taken in relation to the amount and type of content posted on it. Despite this, certain regularities can be observed. The article presents an analysis of the dynamics of user activity, which influences into the growth of content in the largest language versions of this project. Previous studies have shown a number of factors that can affect the involvement of Wikipedians. In most cases, these were limited to the analysis of the state in a short period. In the presented article, the author tried to capture certain regularities occurring over a longer period. For this purpose, a statistical analysis was made of the number of edits (content modifications); the number of active users; the size of added content; and the number of edited pages over 8 years in 50 largest language versions of Wikipedia. The statistical data was not limited to a specific sample of users but covered the entire database of these language versions. The initial analysis of the results prompted the author to undertake a further part of the study, of a qualitative nature. A sentiment analysis was made for 240 comments in the English and Polish versions: 50 comments from registered users and 50 comments from anonymous users were compared in both versions, as well as 20 discussions on technical topics and general issues. Statistical data analysis shows that despite very significant differences between the individual language versions in terms of activity and the amount of content provided, the amount of content per edit is more or less constant. On average, it is between 200 and 700 bytes, with larger deviations occurring in the case of edits by anonymous users and those made by bots. Moreover, it was observed that the largest versions of Wikipedia studied are characterized by lower variability, taking into account the number of edits per article. It was also assumed that anonymous edits and automation of actions may be perceived as less predictable and therefore more likely to evoke negative emotions. However, sentiment analysis did not confirm this hypothesis in relation to the two selected language versions studied. The results of the presented research may be useful for virtual communities of practice in the context of creating policy regarding automated and anonymous actions.