Herding the cats: the influence of groups in coordinating peer production
Proceedings of the 5th International Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration
The singularity is not near: slowing growth of Wikipedia
Proceedings of the 5th International Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration
"Welcome!": social and psychological predictors of volunteer socializers in online communities
Proceedings of the 2013 conference on Computer supported cooperative work
Tea and sympathy: crafting positive new user experiences on wikipedia
Proceedings of the 2013 conference on Computer supported cooperative work
Emotions and dialogue in a peer-production community: the case of Wikipedia
Proceedings of the Eighth Annual International Symposium on Wikis and 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 continuous success of Wikipedia depends upon its capability to recruit and engage new editors, especially those with new knowledge and perspectives. Yet Wikipedia over the years has become a complicated bureaucracy that may be difficult for newcomers to navigate. Mentoring is a practice that has been widely used in offline organizations to help new members adjust to their roles. In this paper, we draw insights from the offline mentoring literature to analyze mentoring practices in Wikipedia and how they influence editor behaviors. Our quantitative analysis of the Adopt-a-user program shows mixed success of the program. Communication between adopters and adoptees is correlated with the amount of article editing done by adoptees shortly after adoption. Our qualitative analysis of the communication between adopters and adoptees suggests that several key functions of mentoring are missing or not fulfilled consistently. Most adopters focus on establishing their legitimacy rather than acting proactively to guide, protect, and support the long-term growth of adoptees. We conclude with recommendations of how Wikipedia mentoring programs can evolve to take advantage of offline best practices.