Tim Lee has a post on Freedom to Tinker that may be of special interest to economists. He suggests that Wikipedia may be a public good subject to a free-riding benefit rather than cost. That is with standard public goods, we think of free-riders as people who good institutions would make into contributors. Tim suggests that for certain kinds of projects increasing the number of free-riders (the audience size) is good, because it also increases the number of contributors. Wikipedia for all its faults is interesting, because unlike say the free-software movement, it is driven entirely by volunteers. Maybe someone who knows more about Wikipedia than me can answer the question of whether these volunteers are anonymous, or whether the are working in hopes of recognition.

David:

My contributions have been anonymous (except to the administrators of Wikipedia), and I have not looked for attribution.

Wikipedia is an interesting project, because participants are encouraged to get benefit, but they are also encouraged to improve the knowledge of Wikipedia. The benefit to participating is that the participation indirectly encourages others to participate, increasing utility for all. I think endeavors like this reach a sort of critical mass, or never do. Wikipedia is popular because it is generally self-correcting (with a few significant exceptions that needed intervention by Wikipedia), and largely correct. More participation is always welcomed, though improved standards have increased the requirements for contribution.

I would define it semi-anonimity: even if most edits are signed, it is very difficult to get recognition, partly because you need a couple of clicks to find what changes you actually made, partly because articles change all the time, and after a few edits it is very difficult to measure what an editor's contribution was. There is no way you can put a contribution to wikipedia on your cv...

That does not mean there are no incentives to contribute; it is my understanding that the non-occasional contributors (a very small number in my opinion, but I never had the time to actually check the data) are a tight group with an internal incentive system. Frequent contributors move higher up in wikipedia's administration hierarchy. You know, the thrill of blocking someone's account....

RePEc would be in the same league: the more people are using it, the more publishers and authors want to be on it. But I would have called that network economies.

"RePEc"???

repec