Measuring author contributions to the Wikipedia

Abstract

We consider the problem of measuring user contributions to versioned, collaborative bodies of information, such as wikis. Measuring the contributions of individual authors can be used to divide revenue, to recognize merit, to award status promotions, and to choose the order of authors when citing the content. In the context of the Wikipedia, previous works on author contribution estimation have focused on two criteria: the total text created, and the total number of edits performed. We show that neither of these criteria work well: both techniques are vulnerable to manipulation, and the total-text criterion fails to reward people who polish or re-arrange the content.