1. Peer production: Wikipedia case Mayo Fuster Morell, PhD European University Institute http://www.onlinecreation.info ARA Talk Series Politecnic University of Valencia, 21 March 2010

2. Main methodological features 1) Large N statistical web analysis of 50 cases 2) Four case studies comparison (interviews, content analysis, virtual ethnography and participant observation)

3. Presentation parts 1) The evolution over time of peer production 2) Logic of participation in peer production 3) Infrastructure provision peer production

4. 1 st Part: The evolution over time of peer production

5. "Wikipedia is a child of the crisis" Jimmy Wales – Wikipedia co-founder

6. Crisis as starting point Change of model linked to the dot.com crisis: Nupedia (expert base) >>> Wikipedia (community base - The encyclopaedia that anyone can edit) Dot.com crisis technological industry 2001: Low venture capital & more unemployment

7. 2001 – 2003: Slow growth i) Slowly the community started to growth ii) Bomis (Wales Company) provided the requiered infrastructure (servers, URL, etc.) iii) Wales contacted Stallman and get in contact with free software communities iv) Other linguistic versions emerged (Catalan Wikipedia second to appear) iv) 3 years (2003) until Wikipedia started to become popular (though Google searchs) Be patient

8. Curve of growth of activity

9. Wikipedia 2011 Total: 42,9 unique visitors, 1 of the 10 th most visited website (Source: alexa.com), 279 linguistic versions & other sister projects and around 500.000 active Wikipedians Trends Wikipedian (Source: Wikimedia Foundation): 1) Wikipedia communities are aging: Percentage of editors with less than one year of experience has fallen quickly since 2006. 2) The retention rate of long-time editors (more than 3 year active) is about 75–80%. 3) The retention of New Wikipedians dropped dramatically from mid 2005 to early 2007, and has since remained low. But editor retention has not worsened over the past three years. Stabilization period: Easy to retain old wikipedians, but decrease in growth of newbies

10. 2 nd Part; Logic of participation in peer production

11. Logic of participation in Wikipedia 1) Openness to participation 2) Strong uniqual distribution of the participation on content creation 3) Descentralization: Growth by fragmentation into subgroups (Mean 3 editors/article) 4) Hybridism: Means adapted to each particular goals 5) Public participation: Transparent organisational process and resulting outcome collectively owned and accessible as a public good 6) Autonomous participation: Participants assume the costs. Reproduction of resource distributions in society (i.e. 12% women)

12. Power law: 90/9/1 1% Strong participation - Role: Content creation 9 % Weak participation – Role: Informational networking 90 % Non-participation - Role: Audience & improve the site Ecosystemic participation

13. Logic of participation in Wikipedia 1) Openness to participation 2) Strong uniqual distribution of the participation on content creation 3) Descentralization: Growth by fragmentation into subgroups (Mean 3 editors/article) 4) Hybridism: Means adapted to each particular goals 5) Public participation: Transparent organisational process and resulting outcome collectively owned and accessible as a public good 6) Autonomous participation: Participants assume the costs. Reproduction of resource distributions in society (i.e. 12% women)

14. 3 rd part: Infrastructure provision peer production

15. Peer production components. Infrastructure provider Community of participants at the online platform

16. Evolution infrastructure provision of Wikipedia 2001: Bomis Company infrastructure provider and major dependency founder >>>>> High costs & Spanish fork 2003: Creation of a Wikimedia Foundation based on voluntarism (like the Wikipedia Community) >>>>>> Managerial crisis & Increase of participation = costs 2007: Foundation take a professionalism turn and moved to San Francisco Bay Area (near Silicon Valley) 2009: Towards a global participatory Foundation: * Participative strategic planning * World wise network of chapters * Offices in USA, India and Brazil

17. Not focus only on platform design!!!! The capacity of Wikipedia to evolve over time in terms of infrastructure provision is one of the reasons which explain its success

18. Infrastructure provision model shape the communities generated Participation size at the community Infrastructure governance Complexity collaboration at the community

19. Axes of order of model of infrastructure provision 1) Level of community involvement in the infrastructure provision decision-making and provision transparency 2) Level of freedom and autonomy of the participants in regard to the infrastructure Black-box versus netenabler conditions

20. Axes and models infrastructure governance Autonomy Netenabler Self-provision Assembly Mission Enterprises Representative Foundations (Wikipedia) Close Open Corporate services Blackbox Dependency

21. Infrastructure governance: Conflictual logics Autonomy Netenabler Commons logic Close Open Corporate logic Blackbox Dependency

22. Conflict between commons versus corporate: Free Culture Movement and digital rights movements

23. Autonomy Collaborative Common logic Close Open Corporate logic Largest communities Dependency..............

24. Concluding remarks ● Crisis can be a good context to innovate in collective action online ● Be patient: Online communities require time to start and have a curve of growth. Adapt to the several stages of evolution. ● Design the community from a ecosystem participation perspective that integrates diverse forms and degress of participation. Enjoy hybridism. ● Design a gender policy & other policies to integrate low resources profiles ● Infrastructure provision models matter and shape the community. To increase collaboration and for achive complex goals, communities requiere empowering conditions (control over the infrastructure and free licenses and software) ● Wikipedia is part of a free culture movement. In the comming years, there is going to be an increase of mobilization on infrastructure provision related questions.

25. Thank you! More @ www.onlinecreation.info