What Makes A Wikipedian, and Why?

by Jarrett Martineau | January 24, 2008 at 02:59 pm

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Collaborative 'knowledge-building' websites, like Wikipedia, rely on users' participation, along with some semblance of community, in order to function effectively. But who contributes to Wikipedia and why?

The Wikimedia foundation intends to find out.

In the next several months Wikipedians, or the authors of the content found on Wikipedia will be the subject of a worldwide survey to find out about people's posting habits on the immensely popular online encyclopedia.

The Wikimedia foundation, which operates Wikipedia is employing Netherlands-based UNU-MERIT to conduct the research that aims to figure out not only who Wikipedians are, but how much they're contributing to the site. The survey is also designed to find out why people are coming to Wikipedia, and the identify the types of users who go from casual browsers to site contributors.