Internal Bonding, External Bridging and Functional Diversity: Impact of Social Capital on the Quality of Wikipedia Articles

Outlet Title

21st Workshop on Information Technologies & Systems Meetings (WITS)

Document Type

Conference Proceeding

Publication Date

2011

Abstract

This research focuses on the question of why Wikipedia articles are different in quality. Since Wikipedia articles are developed in an open and social environment, our work investigates if social capital of Wikipedia contributors plays a role in determining the quality of Wikipedia articles. In this study, we focus on three major factors of social capital with respect to teams of contributors working on different Wikipedia articles: internal bonding, external bridging and functional diversity. An empirical analysis of Wikipedia articles using quantitative techniques suggests that all these three major factors have a significant impact on the quality of Wikipedia articles. These results have implications for developing automated techniques for quality assessment of Wikipedia and also provide insights into improving quality of these articles.

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