Title:	WEB COMMUNITY CONTRIBUTORS’ MOTIVATION: JAPANESE WIKIPEDIA CASE STUDY
Author(s):	Maiko Kamata, Daishi Kato, Kazuo Kunieda, Keiji Yamada
ISBN:	978-972-8939-21-2
Editors:	Nik Bessis, Piet Kommers and Pedro Isaías
Year:	2010
Edition:	Single
Keywords:	Motivation, Wikipedia, Japanese, Web survey.
Type:	Short Paper
First Page:	35
Last Page:	33
Language:	English
Cover:
Full Contents:	click to dowload
Paper Abstract:	Motivating participants is one of the vital issues for voluntary web communities. Although quite a few studies have portrayed the online encyclopedia Wikipedia as a successful example, many of them were focused only on Western language versions such as English. We carried out a survey on Japanese Wikipedia participants and examined their characteristics from a comparative point of view. As a result, we found that the desires to fix errors and fill gaps were the most powerful motivators. In addition, contrary to our initial expectations, many of the participants confessed that they did not feel pleasure from the editing activities. From this, we realized that they are motivated merely by the impulse to remove the incorrect information, and consequently they are ready to leave the community at any point. Moreover, while the wish to share knowledge was the most popular motivation in global studies previously done, few of our participants noted this as their drive. We conclude that familiarization of the community’s basic position in society is the essential condition to motivate people continually.
	Go Back