Repository archived, instead see https://github.com/jsekamane/wiki-cv
Articles on Wikipedia are written and continuously maintained by vast crowds of dedicated authors. Authors whose primary motivation appear to be altruistic, even cathartic. Whilst the platform meticulously tracks every edit (full transparency), the contribution of each individual author is often lost in the sheer volume of information (information overload). Any mechanism enhancing recognition of the individual author's contributions may inadvertently also be encouraging behaviour that debases quality*. I.e. opportunistic authors will try and 'game the system'. It is therefore not enough to simply assume that any contribution made, will always be valuable to the encyclopaedia. The semi-official recognition employed by the community is Barnstars. Although it has many strengths, its only valid as internal recognition and rewarded non-systematically and subjectively. Various other mechanisms and tools have been developed. However few seem to solve the problem of information overload or counter the strategic behaviour of opportunistic authors. They may still give guidance, ex. WikiTrust computes text survival as measurement of contributions, rather than the simple text amount or edit count that are easily distorted. Another difference is that this paper will focus on articles that fulfil the Good Article or Featured Article criteria. These go through a process of creation, nomination and independent review, before given the actual label. This process is similar to those found in academia or written examinations. The findings here -- in a setting with near infinite amount of data on the actual dynamic process -- might generalise and be of benefit in other areas.
The first endeavour is understanding how the Wikipedia community currently self-regulates, and if this can be utilised when attempting to accredit authors for their contributions.
*) And behaviour that contradicts the fundamental principles. The purpose of Wikipedia is curating collective knowledge, and using it in the pursuit of 'personal branding' or self-promotion is strongly discouraged and frowned upon in the community.
Keywords: academic credentials, recommendation, accreditation, reputation, gamification, mechanism design, behavioural economics, dishonesty.
This is intended to be a Supplementary Paper at the Department of Economics at the University of Copenhagen in 2014.