From libre software to Wikipedia:From libre software to Wikipedia:A tour of open collaborationA tour of open collaboration

Felipe Ortega Libresoft, Universidad Rey Juan Carlose-mail: jfelipe@libresoft.es Twitter | Identi.ca: @jfelipe

Xerox PARCJune 14, 2011

By Diego GrezCC-BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons

© 2011 Felipe Ortega.

Some rights reserved.

This document is licensed under a

Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License

(Logos on first slide are (TM) of their respective organizations)

Open collaborationOpen collaboration

“Think of how Wikipedia works, how Amazon harnesses user annotation on its site, the way photo-sharing sites like Flickr are bleeding out into other applications... We're entering an era in which software learns from its users and all of the users are connected”.

Tim O'Reilly.TIME Magazine, 24 October 2005.

By Felipe Ortega, CC-BY-SA 3.0

In the beginning...In the beginning...

● ...all started with “real programmers” and FLOSS.

● FSF, GNU, free licenses.

● Open source goes into industry.

● Libre software becomes ubiquitous.

● However

● Crowdsourced ! = Open source

● Much betters if results encourage reusing and

distribution of derivative works.

The “paradox” of open collaborationThe “paradox” of open collaboration

“Wikipedia is the best thing ever. Anyone in the world can write anything they want about any subject, so you know you are getting the best possible information.”.

Michael Scott (played by Steve Carell)The Office, "The Negotiation" [3.18], 5 April 2007

3 lessons from libre software3 lessons from libre software

● Onion model.

● Generational relay.

● Lasting participation.By El_T, Public Domain,

from Wikimedia Commons

Onion modelOnion model

The Social Structure of Free and Open Source Software DevelopmentCrowston & Howison, 2005

Generational relayGenerational relay

Robles, González-Barahona. Contributor Turnover in Libre Software Projects. OSS 2006.

Lasting participationLasting participation

● Robles, González-Barahona and Michlmayr.

Evolution of Volunteer Participation in Libre Software

Projects: Evidence from Debian. OSS 2005.

Half-life ratio = 7.5 years!

+50% maintainers in Debian 2.0 still present in Debian 3.1

Thesis. Wikipedia: A quantitative Thesis. Wikipedia: A quantitative analysis.analysis.

● Apply lessons from libre software to under-

stand open collaborative process in Wikipedia.

● Content production.

● Effort distribution.

● Implications for quality.

● Participation and sustainability.

Tool: WikiXRayTool: WikiXRay

Compressed DB dumps

Wikimedia DownloadCenter

Downloaddumps

Preparation fordata mining

Results evaluation

Local MySQLServer

Analysis (scripts + GNU R)

WIKIXRAY

Automated analysis of Wikipedia dumps.http://git.libresoft.es/WikiXRay

New articles created in WikipediaNew articles created in Wikipedia

Entered steady-state in 2006, before graph of monthly edits

became stable (2007)

Interaction: talk pagesInteraction: talk pages

EN DE FR PL JA NL IT PT ES SV0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

no-talktalk

0.0086% (old talk pages deleted)

Contributions per editorContributions per editor

● Upper truncated Pareto distribution.

● Limit in max. number of revisions by human editors.

● Better to have more editors rather than increasing contributions per editor.

Effort distribution: Gini coefficientEffort distribution: Gini coefficient

Monthly effort distribution WikipediaMonthly effort distribution Wikipedia

Constant over the whole history!

Ortega, F., González-Barahona, J., Robles, G.On the inequality of contributions to Wikipedia.HICSS 2008.

Profile editors in Featured ArticlesProfile editors in Featured Articles

● Most Featured Articles are at least 1,000 days old.

● 10 times more editors in FAs than in non-FAs,

almost 200 times in EN (!!).

● FAs reviewed by significantly older authors

(+3 years actively contributing to Wikipedia).

FAs non-FAs

The Digital PotlatchThe Digital Potlatch

● Book with J. Rodríguez (in Spanish).

● Ed. Cátedra, expected September 2011.

● Interdisciplinary.

● Anthropology + Engineering.

● Meritocracy in Wikipedia.

● Effort recognition.

● Motivations.

● Implications for quality.Public Domain, from Wikimedia Commons

Future lines of workFuture lines of work

● Study causes of change in evolution patterns and reverts.

● “The singularity is not near”

ASC @PARC, WikiSym 2009.

● Edit diffs to study contribution patterns.

● Different types of content.

● Cross-relation with traffic patterns.

By Bios, CC-BY-SA 3.0, from Wikimedia Commons