The Wisdom of Crowds
Becoming Wikipedian: transformation of participation in a collaborative online encyclopedia
GROUP '05 Proceedings of the 2005 international ACM SIGGROUP conference on Supporting group work
He says, she says: conflict and coordination in Wikipedia
Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Community, consensus, coercion, control: cs*w or how policy mediates mass participation
Proceedings of the 2007 international ACM conference on Supporting group work
Creating, destroying, and restoring value in wikipedia
Proceedings of the 2007 international ACM conference on Supporting group work
Crafting the initial user experience to achieve community goals
Proceedings of the 2008 ACM conference on Recommender systems
Harnessing the wisdom of crowds in wikipedia: quality through coordination
Proceedings of the 2008 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work
What's in Wikipedia?: mapping topics and conflict using socially annotated category structure
Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Wikipedians are born, not made: a study of power editors on Wikipedia
Proceedings of the ACM 2009 international conference on Supporting group work
The effects of group composition on decision quality in a social production community
Proceedings of the 16th ACM international conference on Supporting group work
WP:clubhouse?: an exploration of Wikipedia's gender imbalance
Proceedings of the 7th International Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration
NICE: social translucence through UI intervention
Proceedings of the 7th International Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration
Proceedings of the ACM 2012 conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work
Searching for the goldilocks zone: trade-offs in managing online volunteer groups
Proceedings of the ACM 2012 conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work
Consequences of content diversity for online public spaces for local communities
Proceedings of the 2013 conference on Computer supported cooperative work
CommunityCompare: visually comparing communities for online community leaders in the enterprise
Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Project talk: coordination work and group membership in WikiProjects
Proceedings of the 9th International Symposium on Open Collaboration
Editing beyond articles: diversity & dynamics of teamwork in open collaborations
Proceedings of the 17th ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work & social computing
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The "wisdom of crowds" argument emphasizes the importance of diversity in online collaborations, such as open source projects and Wikipedia. However, decades of research on diversity in offline work groups have painted an inconclusive picture. On the one hand, the broader range of insights from a diverse group can lead to improved outcomes. On the other hand, individual differences can lead to conflict and diminished performance. In this paper, we examine the effects of group diversity on the amount of work accomplished and on member withdrawal behaviors in the context of WikiProjects. We find that increased diversity in experience with Wikipedia increases group productivity and decreases member withdrawal -- up to a point. Beyond that point, group productivity remains high, but members are more likely to withdraw. Strikingly, no such diminishing returns were observed for differences in member interest, which increases productivity and decreases member withdrawal in a linear fashion. Our results suggest that the low visibility of individual differences in online groups may allow them to harvest more of the benefits of diversity while bearing less of the cost. We discuss how our findings can inform further research of online collaboration.