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

Romain Picot-Clémente (1, 2) , Cécile Bothorel (1, 2) , Nicolas Jullien (2, 3, 4)

1 Lab-STICC_TB_CID_DECIDE
2 LUSSI - Département Logique des Usages, Sciences sociales et Sciences de l'Information
3 MARSOUIN - Môle Armoricain de Recherche sur la SOciété de l'information et des usages d'INternet
4 ICI - Laboratoire Information, Coordination, Incitations

In epistemic communities, people are said to be selected on their contribution in knowledge to the project (articles, codes, etc.). However, the socialization process is an important factor for inclusion, sustainability as a contributor, and promotion. Finally, what matters for being promoted? Being a good contributor? Being a good animator? Knowing the boss? We explore this question by looking at the election process for administrators in the English Wikipedia. We used the candidates' revisions and/or social attributes to construct a predictive model of promotion success, based on the candidates' past behavior and a random forest algorithm. Our model explains 78% of the results, which is better than the former models. It also helps to refine the explanation of the election process.

Mots clés: Epistemic Community; Random forest; Wikipedia; Request for adminship; Promotion

Domaines: Algorithme et structure de données [cs.DS]; Apprentissage [cs.LG]; Economies et finances

Romain Picot-Clémente, Cécile Bothorel, Nicolas Jullien. Contribution, Social networking, and the Request for Adminship process in Wikipedia. OpenSym 2015 : 11th International Symposium on Open Collaboration, Aug 2015, San Francisco, United States. ⟨hal-01192597⟩