Graz University of Technology, 8010, Graz, Austria.
EPFL, 1015, Lausanne, Switzerland.
Sci Rep. 2021 Nov 2;11(1):21505. doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-00789-3.
Wikipedia, the largest encyclopedia ever created, is a global initiative driven by volunteer contributions. When the COVID-19 pandemic broke out and mobility restrictions ensued across the globe, it was unclear whether contributions to Wikipedia would decrease in the face of the pandemic, or whether volunteers would withstand the added stress and increase their contributions to accommodate the growing readership uncovered in recent studies. We analyze [Formula: see text] million edits contributed from 2018 to 2020 across twelve Wikipedia language editions and find that Wikipedia's global volunteer community responded resiliently to the pandemic, substantially increasing both productivity and the number of newcomers who joined the community. For example, contributions to the English Wikipedia increased by over [Formula: see text] compared to the expectation derived from pre-pandemic data. Our work sheds light on the response of a global volunteer population to the COVID-19 crisis, providing valuable insights into the behavior of critical online communities under stress.
维基百科是有史以来最大的百科全书，它是一个由志愿者贡献推动的全球性计划。当 COVID-19 大流行爆发并在全球范围内实施出行限制时，尚不清楚面对疫情，维基百科的贡献是否会减少，或者志愿者是否能够承受额外的压力并增加他们的贡献以适应最近研究中发现的不断增长的读者群。我们分析了来自十二个维基百科语言版本的 2018 年至 2020 年间贡献的[Formula: see text]百万次编辑，发现维基百科的全球志愿者社区对疫情做出了弹性响应，大幅提高了生产力和新加入社区的人数。例如，与大流行前数据得出的预期相比，英文维基百科的贡献增加了超过[Formula: see text]。我们的工作揭示了全球志愿者群体对 COVID-19 危机的反应，为了解关键在线社区在压力下的行为提供了有价值的见解。
