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Rationality and Society
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Reputation and Reliability in Collective Goods

The Case of the Online Encyclopedia Wikipedia

Denise Anthony

Department of Sociology, HB6104, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755, danthony{at}dartmouth.edu

Sean W. Smith

Department of Computer Science, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755

Timothy Williamson

Ning, Inc., Palo Alto CA

An important organizational innovation enabled by the revolution in information technologies is `open source' production which converts private commodities into essentially public goods. Similar to other public goods, incentives for reputation and group identity appear to motivate contributions to open source projects, overcoming the social dilemma inherent in producing such goods. In this paper we examine how contributor motivations affect the type of contributions made to the open source online encyclopedia Wikipedia. As expected, we find that registered participants, motivated by reputation and commitment to the Wikipedia community, make many contributions with high reliability. Surprisingly, however, we find the highest reliability from the vast numbers of anonymous `Good Samaritans' who contribute only once. Our findings of high reliability in the contributions of both Good Samaritans and committed `zealots' suggest that open source production succeeds by altering the scope of production such that a critical mass of contributors can participate.

Key Words: collective action • collective goods • group identity • open source production • public goods • reputation • technology

Rationality and Society, Vol. 21, No. 3, 283-306 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/1043463109336804
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