The “power law distribution” or “long tail” phenomenon, as seen in behavior online on the Wikipedia, suggests that the concept of an average user of wikipedia is meaningless. Support your answer: how do you think a local, “JMU only” version of the Wikipedia would compare to the worldwide version? Would it be very similar? Higher quality? Less quality? Why?
Chapter five of Shirky's book describes Wikipedia in detail: how it started and why it works. In this description he discusses the graph comparing users to their contribution to Wikipedia. This graph is not a bell curve, but a "power of law distribution". Since a few select users contribute an overwhelming amount of the information while the vast majority of users only post occasionally, the graph has a steep (nearly vertical) slope starting off and then flattens out. Because of this distribution, the "average" user has no meaning.
If JMU created their own version of Wikipedia, I think it would also follow the "power law distribution" because there would be those individuals (possibly professors or very passionate students) who get really into contributing information/contribute most of it and those that only post one or two articles to meet a class requirement, because they are inspired by something they learn, or they wish to correct a typo. After it caught on, I think it would be about the same quality as the worldwide version. The same motives people have for contributing to the worldwide version are most likely present in JMU's student body and faculty: "a chance to exercise some unused mental capacities...vanity...and the desire to do a good thing" (p. 132-133). Shirky states that it becomes significantly harder to harm a wiki if even a few people care about it. The motives create interest and care which combats vandalism and unequal representation of an interest group. I also think that it would naturally be smaller than the worldwide version because fewer people are able to contribute to it.
Excellent, supported reasoning.
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