Written by: James Burke
31 January 2008

In his article titled Participation Inequality: Encouraging More Users to Contribute, Jakob Nielsen explores a phenomenon which affects most online, multi-user communities that rely on users to contribute. Participation Inequality is the tendency for most users to participate very little (if at all) and a few members of the community to account for a disproportionately large amount of the content and activity.

When studied, it was found that user participation generally follows a 90-9-1 Rule:

• 90% of users are "lurkers" (i.e. they read or browse but don't contribute)
• 9% of users contribute from time to time, but other priorities dominate their time
• 1% of users participate very often and account for most of the contributions

Usage

This concept is very applicable to a wiki environment because contribution is fundamental to a wiki's success. While it is impossible to overcome this type of human behaviour, it is possible to change the participation distribution (i.e 80-16-4 where 80% are lurkers, 16% contribute a little and 4% contribute the most). Some ways to equalize participation in a wiki include:

• Making it easier to contribute. Offering a wiki help centre, tutorial information and resources for users can help familiarize users with the environment and allow them to feel more comfortable contributing
• Encouraging editing over creating. For most new users, the thought of a blank white page is frightening. Instead, offer templates and examples which users can reformat to fit their content without having to come up with everything themselves.
• Reward participants. Identify your contributors and reward them using small incentives (i.e. gold stars on personal spaces, or Duke Stars