The Six Main Roles of Wikipedia Contributors

Dr. Sudha Ram of University of Arizona’s Eller College of Management and graduate student Jun Liu have an interesting publication centered on the dynamics that make Wikipedia work (and not work).  The research showed that the quality of articles hinged on participation of six primary types of contributors as well as ‘Casual Contributors’.

Dr. Sudha Ram

The roles are:

1. Starters -  Focused on sentence creations and seldom engaging in other actions. Performing actions less frequently
2. Cleaners – Focuses on removing sentences, references and links
3. Copy Editors – Focuses on sentence modifications
4. Content Justifiers – Focuses on three types of actions: sentence creations, link creations and reference creations. Performing actions less frequently
5. Watchdogs – Focuses on reverts. Performing actions more frequently than an average contributor
6. All-round Editors – Engaging in many types of actions including sentence creations, modifications, and deletions and link and reference creations, modifications and deletions. Performing actions more frequently than an average contributor

Obviously almost nobody is limited to just one role and I find myself jumping back and forth between Watchdog and Content Justifier quite often.

In the published report (PDF) (starts on page 175), there is a lot more to read.

Read the press summary at Who Does What On Wikipedia? on Red