Without comparing with other creative activities, we have no indication of whether this result is connected to online production, social production, or to some other characteristic of the Wikipedia community (which might be specific to Wikipedia, or to the kind of cataloging work that goes on there).

There is a further question about the distinction made between members and non-Members. Aaron Swartz’s informal examination of Wikipedia edits found that most substantive contributions were by occasional or one-time contributors, while the core community focused on editorial tasks. (Has there been any formal follow-up to this?) It does not seem unlikely that these groups would exhibit different characteristics.

Michel,

What you include below doesn’t surprise me at all; in fact, I’ve experienced it first hand several times. By the way, I think it is equally true of open source ventures where I have noted an extreme capacity for organizations to harbor the socially mal-adept, cynical, crypto-elitist and otherwise self-serving ego-driven types as an overwhelming majority. As we both have some first hand experience and since it is a obvious target, it is easy to visualize a personality profile of, say, Richard Stallman. One finds numerous deontologists, etc. in these domains and if these folks entered paradise they’d complain about the rules. In short, judgmental people are drawn to organized commons. They are contentious, combative, highly self-certain and almost always judgmental.

It doesn’t take a PhD in psychology to realize that many of these people are expressing power and control in areas where they can do so because they are maladjusted to conventional social frameworks. But it does open the question as to why altruism and selflessness do often occur–and when and where.

While I have no data to match this Israeli study, my own experience is that those most committed to public good simply act on it and don’t spend so much time debating their role, how others should act, or what the governance model is. They aren’t flamboyant about their service. They simply just do it. They are pragmatists. These are likened to “the spiritual” in faith-based terms. And then there is what I can only identify in my own views as the religious. They are all about the structure, their position, the judgment, what is a crisis and what is the solution…and not so much about the actual doing of something.

Ryan Lanham