Social Rewarding in Wiki Systems

Online communities have something in common: their§success rise and fall with the participation rate of§active users. This book focuses on social rewarding§mechanisms that generate benefits for users in order§to achieve a higher contribution rate in a wiki§system (e.g., like Wikipedia). In an online§community, social rewarding is in the majority of§cases based on accentuation of the most active§members. As money cannot be used as a motivating§factor others, such as status, power, acceptance, and§glory have to be employed. Different social rewarding§mechanisms are explained which aim to meet these§needs of users. Furthermore, four methods were§implemented within the MediaWiki system, where social§rewarding criteria are satisfied by generating a§ranking of the most active members. These techniques§refer to used references in an article, user votes,§article visits, and user recommendations. In§addition, this book also focuses on the calculation§algorithm the ranking of authors is based on, the§implementation process of the development, and the§use of adequate information visualization techniques§to present results.