Critical Mass of What? Exploring Community Growth in Wikiprojects
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Proceedings of the Eighth International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media Critical Mass of What? Exploring Community Growth in WikiProjects Jacob Solomon and Rick Wash Michigan State University 404 Wilson Rd. Room 409 Communications Arts & Sciences Building East Lansing, MI 48824-1212 Abstract In this paper, we conduct an exploratory analysis of over 1000 communities within Wikipedia known as WikiProjects Fledgling online communities often hope to achieve critical and analyze how they grow in order to better understand crit- mass so that the community becomes sustainable. This con- ical mass and how it develops. The goal of our analysis is cept however is not well understood. At what point does a community achieve critical mass, and how does the commu- to answer two questions about WikiProjects. Does the con- nity know this? Furthermore, online communities become cept of critical mass really apply to these kinds of distributed sustainable when they achieve a mass of what? We explore peer-production communities? And if so, what kind of mass this question by analyzing growth in a large number of online needs to be accumulated to generate community sustainabil- communities on Wikipedia. We find that individual commu- ity? Is it raw content or participation independent of the nities often have different patterns of growth of membership people who provide it? Or does a community need a certain from its pattern of growth of contribution or production. We mass of individuals that are independent of the quantity of also find that in the early stages of community development, content provided? building membership has a greater impact on community pro- duction and activity in later periods than accumulating many contributions early on, and this is especially true when there Background is more diversity in the early participants in a community. Theory We also show that participation from a community’s ”power users” in its early stage is not as valuable to sustainability Oliver and Marwell (Oliver, Marwell, and Teixeira 1985; as the collective contributions of those who make only small Oliver and Marwell 1988; Marwell, Oliver, and Prahl 1988) contributions. We argue that critical mass is established by have applied the concept of critical mass to ”collective ac- developing a diverse set of community members with hetero- tion.” They tried to use the concept to understand group- geneous interests and resources, and not purely by accumu- level behaviors. When does a collection of individuals be- lating content. come a group and start acting like a group, with group goals? To explain this, they use a metaphor of critical mass, and de- Introduction veloped a theory of how critical mass forms in social groups. This Critical Mass Theory identifies a production function Online communities often struggle to get off the ground and for each group, which is the relationship between individual grow large enough to sustain activity and achieve their goals. use and the group-level goals. Production functions are char- This problem is frequently characterized as a problem of acterized by their shape. Critical mass theory describes three critical mass something : the community needs sufficient to primary shapes: accelerating, linear, and decelerating pro- be successful. What exactly is critical mass in terms of an duction functions (Oliver, Marwell, and Teixeira 1985). In online community? Or, put another way, an online commu- an accelerating function, each subsequent contribution to the what nity needs a critical mass of ? group has a greater value or greater return; for decelerating This is a difficult question to answer because online com- functions the opposite is true. It is not clear what production munities have a number of different components. Online functions look like for social media systems; do early con- communities have people, they have content, they have ac- tributors have to do the hard work of setting social norms, tivity, and they have participation. For an online commu- and later contributors have it easy (decelerating production nity to achieve a critical mass, does it need to have grown function), or do early contributors see few benefits because to a certain number of distinct members? Or does it need a there is no one to read their contributions, and later contrib- certain number of posts, comments, pictures, or other con- utors have the most impact because of their broad readership tent regardless of how and from whom they got there? Fur- (accelerating production function)? thermore, how does an online community know when it has The production function determines the relationship be- achieved a critical mass? tween individual behavior and group outcomes. For online Copyright c 2014, Association for the Advancement of Artificial communities, it is certainly not clear if there is a group- Intelligence (www.aaai.org). All rights reserved. level outcome. A ”community” — a coherent feeling of 476 belonging to the group — isn’t always one of the desired communities because of policy changes to the site, personal outcomes. Many people contribute to Wikipedia or Face- life changes alter priorities, or because they can no longer book without feeling the need or desire to become part of the fulfill their perceived role in the community. Socialization ”Wikipedia community.” And on Facebook, there isn’t nec- of new members into a community can also affect whether essarily a common group output that everyone is working to- people remain in a community after an initial trial. Burke, wards. As a result, it is not clear if the critical mass theory of Marlow and Rento (2009) found that when newcomers to a Oliver and Marwell applies to these situations, even though social media site receive a response from the community to many researchers studying social media have invoked the their initial post, they are more likely to remain on the site concept. and make future contributions. Markus (1987) points out that critical mass theory is se- It is clear that online communities experience significant quential. It assumes that each person is influenced by the turnover in their membership. Some experiments (Farzan et people who came before them. However, in reality influence al. 2011; Dabbish et al. 2012) have shown that people are runs both directions. Individuals can also be influenced by more likely to join and participate in a community where the people who will come after them through the setting of there is high turnover. This suggests that a community that expectations. She suggests that people are frequently aware not only accumulates a lot of new members, but also has of production functions and that knowledge can be used to members leaving as well, may actually be more sustainable make participation decisions. in the long run than communities whose members never Critical mass theory proposes that one factor influencing leave once they have joined. This counterintuitive finding the shape of a production function for a group is the hetero- is attributed to enhanced social presence on sites with high geneity of that group in terms of access to resources or in- turnover. High turnover on a site offers the impression that formation. It argues that groups with heterogeneous access those who are on a site are active and engaging, which in- to resources or information are more likely to have acceler- creases the perception of the site as a social entity. ating production functions. For example, a group in which one person has sandwiches, another has salad, another has a Distribution of Participation. Other research has taken frisbee, and someone else has drinks is more likely to pro- different perspectives on critical mass. Peddibhotla and Sub- duce a picnic than a group where four people have frisbees. rahami (2007) argue that the majority of contributions are Diversity allows for contributions to complement each other made by a minority of individuals, and that it is this small and increase the value of the collective good, as opposed minority of contributors who constitute a community’s ”crit- to contributions replacing each other and generating no new ical mass”. From this perspective, the amount of contribu- value for the group as a whole. tions made in total to the community is what is important, We believe that a community’s production function can be and not necessarily who makes them or the number of dif- estimated by examining growth over time because of its se- ferent people making them. Raban and Rabin (2009) show quential nature. By exploring the growth patterns of a large that most internet data, particularly from online communi- number of online communities, we hope to gain insight into ties, are power-law distributed in that a large majority of the nature of the production functions for online communi- content or contributions are made by a small minority of ties and inform communities regarding how to develop crit- users. In fact, they show that without performing statisti- ical mass. cal transformations of data from Usenet communities, there may not be a meaningful relationship on average between Critical Mass in Online Communities the number of people participating and the total amount of participation. Community Growth and Turnover. Much existing re- The nature of this distribution has an important conse- search on online communities has looked at how people quence for understanding critical mass. Do new members of join and leave communities and their motivations for doing a community really influence the productivity of that com- so. Nov (2007) has identified several motivations offered by munity? If new members do not show up, will existing Wikipedians for their participation, such as expressing val- ”power users” make up the slack and make the necessary ues, having fun, and socializing. Large communities may contributions to keep the community active and maintain its be attractive to potential new contributors because there is value? If not, it suggests that critical mass is not really about more assurance that there will be people with whom to com- growing in terms of overall community membership, but in municate or who will find value in one’s contributions.