These same patterns have been noted for decades in studies of volunteerism,
charitable giving, community association, face-to-face support groups, and
voluntary religious organizations. They are a consequences of the interaction
of human interests/motivations and competition for limited attention/effort
playing out at a population level.
Is there really any reason to expect that they wouldn't still work that way?
(or actually be made worse -- because online environments make the costs of
exploration lower, switching from one activity/group to another lower, and the
number of alternatives higher).
Brian Butler
UMD, iSchool
On Jan 6, 2015, at 4:20 PM, Jonathan Morgan wrote:
This from Ars[1]. Sound familiar?
* The top 10 percent of contributors end up supplying an average of about
80 percent of the total effort put into these projects.
* Most people who show up to check out a project never return. The most
compelling projects still saw 60 percent of their users stop by for a single
visit and never come back; the worst case was an 83-percent rate.
* The topic of the project also seemed to have some effect [on
participation rates]. The biggest project... lets users sift through Kepler
telescope data to search for exoplanets; that attracted almost 30,000 users in
its first 180 days. The smallest, Galaxy Zoo Supernova (which is no longer
active) only drew a bit over 3,000.
Original manuscript [2] (paywalled). Anyone have subscription access?
1.
http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/01/most-participants-in-citizen-science-projects-give-up-almost-immediately/
2. http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/01/02/1408907112
--
Jonathan T. Morgan
Community Research Lead
Wikimedia Foundation
User:Jmorgan (WMF)https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Jmorgan_(WMF)
jmor...@wikimedia.orgmailto:jmor...@wikimedia.org
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