Does the “decay rate” at community sites like Epinions.com spell eventual doom for Wikipedia? Technology and Marketing Law blogger Eric Goldman thinks so, and, not to put any more pressure on him, is working on an academic paper to show why.
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The site’s decay rate—the rate at which community members become less devoted to a site over time—is just one part of Goldman’s larger argument. At his blog he pulls up some data regarding Epinions, which relies on paid community member reviews.
The crux of the argument seems to be that if users who actually are paid for and get credit their work lose interest over time, what hope does Wikipedia have when relying on anonymous and free content labor?
It will be interesting to see Goldman’s conclusion once he’s finished his study. He readily acknowledges in his blog post that Wikipedia is a different animal from Epinions and thus might be subject to different laws of community nature. A foil for the comparison could lie in the book Predictably Irrational, a great outline of which you can read at
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Do Online Communities Have a Decay Rate?
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