Volunteers in Wikipedia: Why the community matters

Abstract

Wikipedia is a reliable encyclopedia with over seven million articles in several languages all contributed and maintained by volunteers. To learn more about what drives people to devote their time and expertise to building and maintaining this remarkable resource, surveys with Likert-scaled items measuring different types of motivations were completed by 115 Wikipedia administrators. The survey also included comments and openended questions that were used to check the validity of the Likert-scaled items and allow participants to express their reasons for being a Wikipedian. The Likert-scaled items showed that Wikipedia administrators are largely driven by motivations to learn and create. The comments and open-ended questions indicated that altruism — the desire to create a public repository for all knowledge — is one of the most important factors.