Comments on: Lorenz, Gini, and Pareto

By: Steffen

Steffen — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 06:54:11 +0000

What kinda information do you need? Wikipedia pretty much explains every technical detail about the Lorenz curve, don’t you think? And our own interpretation in terms of wiki usage in organizations is straight foward, too. But maybe I can be of more assistance …

By: Human Resource Consulting

Human Resource Consulting — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 17:56:45 +0000

Thanks for that graph. Do you have any more info about the Lorenz curve? The wiki link really isn’t giving me enough info.

By: Steffen

Steffen — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 13:26:46 +0000

Motivating users is certainly among the most important things an organization (i.e., who ever is responsible or, better, feels responsible) can do to get its wiki going. Then again, there is only so much an organization can do. What we frequently observe in corporate wikis is that there is some inaugural period (a jump start, if you will) where only few people contribute to the wiki. We call these people the midwives as the bring the wiki into life. If an organizations fails to jump start the wiki (e.g., create curiosity and above all necessity), there is little left to do.

The wiki itself does not need to be the mother of all organizational information and communication, although in cases of smaller organizations that’s desirable. The magic word here is structural equivalence. That is to say, the purpose of the wiki has to fit a niche, there can be no competing and thus structural equivalent system. If this niche is to maintain information and communication, fine. We’ve seen cases where wikis serve a single purpose (e.g., software documentation) and integrate well with other information and communication systems (e.g., ticketing or project management systems). Wikis work flawlessly as long as they’re one of a kind. If a wiki is more or less a ‘nice-to-have’ kind of system, it’s almost bound to fail.

By: klml

klml — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 14:50:30 +0000

“So I think its feasible to compare the curves above the way we did.”
OK now I understand, You are right.

“And also in organizations we have users who registered (as they are forced to) but do not participate/refuse to use the wiki.”

Probably its the most important task to motivate Users, getting at least a wiki which is the ‘mother’ of all organizational information and communication.

By: Klaus

Klaus — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 08:34:36 +0000

To make that clear: the number of 137238 users is not the number of users who registered but the number of users with at least one edit. And also in organizations we have users who registered (as they are forced to) but do not participate/refuse to use the wiki. So I think its feasible to compare the curves above the way we did.

By: Steffen

Steffen — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 04:26:27 +0000

Yes, you’re right, 137.238 users are in the database, which obviously contains a lot of dead bodies. However, increasing the minimum number of edits to at least 20 still returns 27.485 users. Thus, the Gini coefficient is well above .9. I’ll see for some of your other suggestions later on. Thanks for your suggestion, I appreciate it.

By: klml

klml — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 23:22:13 +0000

sorry but i dont agree with the ‘137238′ users. These are afaik dead database-bodies of speedregistering.

If you want to compare ‘real’ wikipedians with enlisted, wage-getting, 9-5 engaged employees, you should decrease to the a number of editors withat least 20 edits or editors with ‘Stimmberechtigung’ ( http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Stimmberechtigung )

Wikpedia says “Mehr als 7.000 Autoren arbeiten regelmäßig an der deutschsprachigen Ausgabe mit.” ( http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia )