Collaborative Production Structure of Knowledge Sharing Behavior in Internet Communities

Abstract

Peer production has received considerable attention because it is a new mode of providing information. Online encyclopedias are one typical application of peer production. They allow anyone to freely create and share knowledge. Large numbers of volunteers participate and form various relationships in the process of creating and sharing knowledge. A heterogeneous network model is presented to analyze the collaborative relationship of sharing behavior, and a new network measurement is presented to investigate the network structure by mapping it into a quantum system. The results of the present work show that volunteers in online communities are heterogeneous and that the collective states induced by these collaborative production network structures are different at different times. Some collective states are ordered states while others are softly chaotic. Analysis of these collective states may provide completely different insight from the individual dynamic state of contributors in a network.