Wikipedia:Psychology

A study seemed to indicate that the majority of Wikipedians, through their participation, are compensating for 'something' (the study showed negative behavior, compensation was suggested as the explanation).

THESIS: Regardless of any flaws in the study, the psychology and motivations of Wikipedians should be considered rather than assumed.

Assumption: study only showed negative behavior and presumed unspecified compensation as explanation.
Jobs: Most Wikipedians may contribute in their pre-established fields or in deep hobbies with nothing to prove aside from what comes necessary from the anonymity of the internet.
Howard Hughes: better to compensate through a contribution than through taking.

Important questions include:

How do people read into conversations they literally read?
How do people respond to conflict?

Motivations

Possible positive motivations include:

Anal retentiveness
Sociality
Joy in knowledge
Fun – enjoying the activity^[1]
Ideology – expressing support for what is perceived to be the underlying ideology of the activity (e.g. the belief that knowledge should be free)^[1]
Values – expressing values to do with altruism and helping others^[1]

Possible negative motivations include:

Competitiveness

Positive or negative:

To gain recognition within the community^[2]
Addictiveness

Rewards

Wikipedia appears to offer no award aside from:

Joy in collaboration
Satisfaction in completion of activities or correction of errors
Occasional thanks from other contributors

Inhibitors

Inhibitors to contributions include:

Complexity/difficulty
Fighting
Bias and discrimination

In stone

How does it affect editors that all interactions are permanently recorded?

Sources

^ ^a ^b ^c Nov, Oded (2007). "What Motivates Wikipedians?". Communications of the ACM. 50 (11): 60–64. doi:10.1145/1297797.1297798.
^ Forte, Amy; Bruckman, Andrea (2005). "Why Do People Write for Wikipedia? Incentives to Contribute to Open-Content Publishing". SIGGROUP 2005 Workshop: Sustaining Community: 6–9. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.120.7906.

External links

Robertson, Niel (March 3, 2010). "Wikipedia’s Decline and the 7 Types of Human Motivation", Enterprise Irregulars.
(February 19, 2011). "Nine Reasons Women Don’t Edit Wikipedia (in their own words)", Sue Gardner's Blog. Cites: Cohen, Noam (January 30, 2011). "Define Gender Gap? Look Up Wikipedia’s Contributor List", NYTimes.com.

[Nov-1] Nov, Oded (2007). "What Motivates Wikipedians?". Communications of the ACM. 50 (11): 60–64. doi:10.1145/1297797.1297798.

[Forte_and_Bruckman-2] Forte, Amy; Bruckman, Andrea (2005). "Why Do People Write for Wikipedia? Incentives to Contribute to Open-Content Publishing". SIGGROUP 2005 Workshop: Sustaining Community: 6–9. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.120.7906.

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