Diverse teams tend to do good work in wikipedia (but jacks of all trades don't)

Abstract

We define network-based indicators of diversity for Wikipedia teams and users. A team of Wikipedia contributors is diverse to the extent that its members edit different articles. An individual contributor is a 'jack of all trades' to the extent that she edits articles that are rarely co-edited by the same other users. For both indicators of team and individual diversity we propose a model-based normalization in which we compare observed values to expected values in a random graph model that preserves expected degrees of users and articles. Using data on all articles in the English-language edition of Wikipedia, we show that diverse teams tend to write high-quality articles, but articles writ..