2025:Program/A Model of Peer-Produced Knowledge Commons Lifecycles and Governance
Session title: A Model of Peer-Produced Knowledge Commons Lifecycles and Governance
- Session type: Lecture
- Track: Research
- Language: en
đ„ Session recording: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A_model_of_peer-produced_knowledge_commons_lifecycles_and_governance.webm đ„
Despite varying in many respects, most large Wikimedia projects' editor bases have followed similar patterns of growth, maturity, and decline. I will present a body of evidence that these patterns are a more general feature of âpeer productionââthe model of collaborative production that has produced millions of wikis, free/open source software projects, websites like OpenStreetMap, and more. I will argue that this growth, maturity, and decline pattern is not caused by newcomers who have stopped showing up but rather by communities that have become less open to the newcomers who do arrive. I will present a theoretical mathematical model and a range of empirical evidence that suggests why this surprising dynamic may be a rational approach to the shifting governance challenges faced by digital knowledge commons.
Description
After increasing rapidly over seven years, the number of active contributors to English Wikipedia peaked in 2007 and has been stable or in decline since. Although the specific details are different, the same basic dynamic of rapid growth that transitions rapidly into slow decline also appears to be true of most larger Wikimedia projects. I will present a body of evidence drawn from a range of datasets of other communities that suggests that Wikimedia projects's pattern of growth and decline appears to be a general feature of âpeer productionââthe model of collaborative production that has produced millions of wikis, free/open source software projects, websites like OpenStreetMap, and more.
I will argue that this growth, maturity, and decline pattern is not caused by newcomers who have stopped showing up but rather by communities that have become less open to the newcomers who do arrive. I will present a theoretical mathematical model and a range of empirical evidence that suggests why this surprising dynamic may be a rational approach to the shifting governance challenges faced by digital knowledge commons. I will end by exploring this model's implications for community governance.
This work will present research from research funded by a National Science Foundation CAREER award that I have been working on for several years.
- How does your session relate to the event theme, Wikimania@20 â Inclusivity. Impact. Sustainability?
This is a research talk but it is focused deeply on questiosn of sustainability of our projects and has implications for both our projects' ability to include people and to achieve impact.
- What is the experience level needed for the audience for your session?
Everyone can participate in this session
Resources
Speakers
- Benjamin Mako Hill
- In my day job, I teach and do research at the University of Washington. I am also an active editor on several wikis and work with the Wikimedia community and the Wikimedia Foundation community to support academic research related to wikis and Wikimedia in a number of ways. Please see my user page on meta for more information.