Content is king, leadership lags: Effects of prior experience on newcomer retention and productivity in online production groups

Raghav Pavan Karumur, Bowen Yu, Haiyi Zhu, Joseph A. Konstan

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

5 Scopus citations

Abstract

Organizers of online groups often struggle to recruit members who can most effectively carry out the group's activities and remain part of the group over time. In a study of a sample of 30,000 new editors belonging to 1,054 English WikiProjects, we empirically examine the effects of generalized prior work-productivity experience (measured by overall prior article edits), prior leadership experience (measured by overall prior project edits), and localized prior work-productivity experience (measured by pre-joining article edits on a project) on early retention and productivity. We find that (1)generalized prior work-productivity experience is positively associated with retention, but negatively associated with productivity (2) prior leadership experience is negatively associated with both retention and productivity, and (3) localized prior workproductivity experience is positively associated with both retention and productivity within that focal project. We then discuss implications to inform the designs of early interventions aimed at group success.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationCHI 2018 - Extended Abstracts of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Subtitle of host publicationEngage with CHI
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
ISBN (Electronic)9781450356206, 9781450356213
DOIs
StatePublished - Apr 20 2018
Event2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2018 - Montreal, Canada
Duration: Apr 21 2018Apr 26 2018

Publication series

NameConference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings
Volume2018-April

Other

Other2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2018
Country/TerritoryCanada
CityMontreal
Period4/21/184/26/18

Keywords

  • Learning transfer
  • Newcomers
  • Online communities
  • Online groups
  • Peer production
  • Prior experience
  • Productivity
  • Resocialization
  • Retention
  • Subgroups
  • WikiProjects
  • Wikipedia
  • Withdrawal

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