Pareto Ratio and Inequality Level of Knowledge Sharing in Virtual Knowledge Collaboration: Analysis of Behaviors on Wikipedia

The Pareto principle, also known as the 80-20 rule, states that roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes for many events including natural phenomena. It has been recognized as a golden rule in business with a wide application of such discovery like 20 percent of customers resulting in 80 percent of total sales. On the other hand, the Long Tail theory, pointing out that "the trivial many" produces more value than "the vital few," has gained popularity in recent times with a tremendous reduction of distribution and inventory costs through the development of ICT(Information and Communication Technology). This study started with a view to illuminating how these two primary business paradigms-Pareto principle and Long Tail theory-relates to the success of virtual knowledge collaboration. The importance of virtual knowledge collaboration is soaring in this era of globalization and virtualization transcending geographical and temporal constraints. Many previous studies on knowledge sharing have focused on the factors to affect knowledge sharing, seeking to boost individual knowledge sharing and resolve the social dilemma caused from the fact that rational individuals are likely to rather consume than contribute knowledge. Knowledge collaboration can be defined as the creation of knowledge by not only sharing knowledge, but also by transforming and integrating such knowledge. In this perspective of knowledge collaboration, the relative distribution of knowledge sharing among participants can count as much as the absolute amounts of individual knowledge sharing. In particular, whether the more contribution of the upper 20 percent of participants in knowledge sharing will enhance the efficiency of overall knowledge collaboration is an issue of interest. This study deals with the effect of this sort of knowledge sharing distribution on the efficiency of knowledge collaboration and is extended to reflect the work characteristics. All analyses were conducted based on actual data instead of self-reported questionnaire surveys. More specifically, we analyzed the collaborative behaviors of editors of 2,978 English Wikipedia featured articles, which are the best quality grade of articles in English Wikipedia. We adopted Pareto ratio, the ratio of the number of knowledge contribution of the upper 20 percent of participants to the total number of knowledge contribution made by the total participants of an article group, to examine the effect of Pareto principle. In addition, Gini coefficient, which represents the inequality of income among a group of people, was applied to reveal the effect of inequality of knowledge contribution. Hypotheses were set up based on the assumption that the higher ratio of knowledge contribution by more highly motivated participants will lead to the higher collaboration efficiency, but if the ratio gets too high, the collaboration efficiency will be exacerbated because overall informational diversity is threatened and knowledge contribution of less motivated participants is intimidated. Cox regression models were formulated for each of the focal variables-Pareto ratio and Gini coefficient-with seven control variables such as the number of editors involved in an article, the average time length between successive edits of an article, the number of sections a featured article has, etc. The dependent variable of the Cox models is the time spent from article initiation to promotion to the featured article level, indicating the efficiency of knowledge collaboration. To examine whether the effects of the focal variables vary depending on the characteristics of a group task, we classified 2,978 featured articles into two categories: Academic and Non-academic. Academic articles refer to at least one paper published at an SCI, SSCI, A&HCI, or SCIE journal. We assumed that academic articles are more complex, entail more information processing and problem solving, and thus require more skill variety and expertise. The analysis results indicate the followings; First, Pareto ratio and inequality of knowledge sharing relates in a curvilinear fashion to the collaboration efficiency in an online community, promoting it to an optimal point and undermining it thereafter. Second, the curvilinear effect of Pareto ratio and inequality of knowledge sharing on the collaboration efficiency is more sensitive with a more academic task in an online community.

지식 공유의 파레토 비율 및 불평등 정도와 가상 지식 협업: 위키피디아 행위 데이터 분석

전체 결과의 80%가 전체 원인의 20%에 의해 일어난다는 파레토 법칙(Pareto principle)은 상위 20%의 핵심 고객에 대한 우선적인 마케팅을 비롯하여 기업 경영의 많은 부분에서 적용되어 왔다. 파레토 법칙과는 대조적으로, 80%의 사소한 다수가 20%의 핵심적인 소수보다 우월한 가치를 창출한다는 롱테일 법칙(Long Tail theory)은 ICT(Information and Communication Technology)의 발전과 함께 새로운 경영 패러다임으로 주목 받아오고 있다. 본 연구의 목적은 경영 현장에서 양대 흐름을 형성해온 이러한 법칙들이 변화무쌍한 글로벌 가상화 환경에서 기업의 핵심적인 성공 요인이라고 할 수 있는 가상 지식 협업에는 어떻게 관련되는지를 규명하는 것이다. 이를 위해, 대표적인 가상 지식 협업 커뮤니티인 위키피디아에서 품질 최상위 등급인 피쳐드 아티클(Featured Article) 레벨로 승급된 2,978개의 아티클에 대한 협업 행위를 분석하였다. 즉, 각 아티클 그룹에서 편집 횟수 기준 상위 20%에 속하는 참여자들의 총 편집 횟수가 전체 편집 횟수에서 차지하는 비율인 파레토 비율(Pareto ratio)이 지식 협업 효율성과 어떤 관계를 가지고 있는지를 도출하였다. 그리고, 이러한 연구를 편집 참여를 통한 지식 공유에 대한 전체적인 불평등 정도를 나타내는 지니 계수(Gini coefficient)의 영향 및 그룹의 작업 특성을 반영하도록 확장하였다. 결과적으로, 지식 공유의 파레토 비율과 지니 계수가 증가하면 지식 협업 효율성도 높아지지만, 이러한 변수들이 일정 수준 이상으로 증가하면 오히려 지식 협업 효율성이 낮아지는 역 U자(inverted U-shaped) 관계가 있음을 확인하였다. 그리고, 이러한 관계는 인지적 노력을 상대적으로 더 많이 요구하는 학문적인 특성의 작업에서 더 민감하게 작용하는 것으로 보인다.