Without the `spillover effects? of open content production, the growth in Wikipedia editing activity between 2002 and 2010 would have been halved. That is the central finding of research by Aleksi Aaltonen and Stephan Seiler, which analyses editing data by Wikipedia users to show how content creation by individuals encourages others to contribute to the collective process of knowledge production. Many organisations are developing open source platforms to create, store and share knowledge. This study shows how a larger mass of potential contributors to an online platform will generate bigger spillovers. Providing incentives for early users to contribute content will trigger further contributions.

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3 October 2014     Paper Number CEPCP428

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This CentrePiece article is published under the centre's Growth programme.