2023/06/03 by Jisung Yoon, Yoon, Jisung, Christopher P. Kempes +8
Computer Science · Social Sciences · #Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation #FOS: Physical sciences #Open Source Software Innovations #Physics and Society (physics.soc-ph) #Wikis in Education and Collaboration
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2306.02113
openalex publication_date 2023/06/03 · openalex created_date 2023/06/07 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The collective effort exceeds the sum of its parts when individuals coordinate and regulate their activities and behaviors. This holds true even in self-organizing systems with open, voluntary participation where coordination occurs implicitly. Here, we analyze the non-functional actions of contributors, administrators, and bots on Wikipedia, categorizing them by their asymmetric authority: one-way oversight and two-way. This categorization helps us reveal comparable patterns. First, we find remarkably consistent scaling factors for each category relative to system size. Two-way coordination scales superlinearly (with an exponent of 1.3), while oversight coordination grows sublinearly (with an exponent of 0.9), suggesting an underlying mechanism for coordination across communities. Second, we identify the hierarchical modular structure of interactions as a key factor for the economy of scale in coordination, and we propose a mathematical model to explain these results. Finally, our temporal analysis shows a shift from two-way interactions to one-way oversight as system size increases. This suggests the emergence of a nascent hierarchical structure even in self-organizing systems, echoing Weber's theory of organizational evolution.