Inproceedings,
Too Many Cooks Don't Spoil the Broth
Proceedings of Wikimania 2005 - The First International Wikimedia Conference, Frankfurt, Germany, (2005)
Abstract
"Does collaboration in wiki systems cause good quality? Supporters of wiki systems assume that the number of authors and their collaborative work lead to good Wikipedia articles. This study tests this hypothesis using methods of empirical research and media studies. It researches the conditions under which a wiki system produces good quality. Therefore a sample of 450 articles from the German Wikipedia has been researched with a content analysis. The study gives answers to the following questions: * What is the critical mass of users and authors in a wiki system? * What effect have number of edits, authors and discussion edits, traffic, age of the article and backlinks on quality? * What influence does vandalism have on quality? * Do anonymous authors contribute in a positive or negative way? * What is the connection between the relevance of a topic and the quality of the article? * Are there quality differences between topic categories? Furthermore the study proposes a way of measuring quality based on the theories of media and communication science."
