Title: Contribution, Social networking, and the Request for Adminship process in Wikipedia

Authors: Romain Picot-Clémente, Cécile Bothorel (UMR CNRS 6285 Lab-STICC),
Nicolas Jullien (ICI-M@rsouin)

Abstract: Epistemic communities are said to be project-oriented communities of experts, evaluated on their contribution in terms of knowledge, where the main criterion for promotion is knowledge production. However, for Wikipedia, for open source, have argued that taking responsibility is an additional step from being a regular contributor, and social interactions with peers may be an additional requirement for being promoted. This work addresses this discussion by looking at the electing process of the administrators (admin) in the English Wikipedia, where exists a quite competitive process of election for the managing position called “administrator”, where social connections and knowledge production skills seem to matter. From 2006-01-01 to 2007-10-01, which is our period of study, there were 1,617 RfA, with a 49.2% rate of success).

This contribution to OpenSym 2015 will be made available as part of the OpenSym 2015 proceedings (or companion) on or after August 19, 2015.