Do editors or articles drive collaboration?: Multilevel statistical network analysis of Wikipedia coauthorship

Prior scholarship on Wikipedia’s collaboration processes has examined the properties of either editors or articles, but not the interactions between both. We analyze the coauthorship network of Wikipedia articles about breaking news demanding intense coordination and compare the properties of these articles and the editors who contribute to them to articles about contemporary and historical events. Using p*/ERGM methods to test a multi-level, multi-theoretical model, we identify how editors ’ attributes and editing patterns interact with articles ’ attributes and authorship history. Editors ’ attributes like prior experience have a stronger influence on collaboration patterns, but article attributes also play significant roles. Finally, we discuss the implications our findings and methods have for understanding the socio-material duality of collective intelligence systems beyond Wikipedia. Author Keywords Wikipedia; collaboration; network analysis; coauthorship