Abstract

How does the number of collaborators affect individual productivity? Results of prior research have been conflicting, with some studies reporting an increase in individual productivity as the number of collaborators grows, while other studies showing that the free-rider effect skews the effort invested by individuals, making larger groups less productive. The difference between these schools of thought is substantial: if a super-scaling effect exists, as suggested by former studies, then as groups grow, their productivity will increase even faster than their size, super-linearly improving their efficiency. We address this question by studying two planetary-scale collaborative systems: GitHub and Wikipedia. By analyzing the activity of over 2 million users on these platforms, we discover that the interplay between group size and productivity exhibits complex, previously-unobserved dynamics: the productivity of smaller groups …

Date

November 7, 2019

Authors

Goran Murić, Andres Abeliuk, Kristina Lerman, Emilio Ferrara

Journal

Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction

Volume

3

Issue

CSCW

Pages

1-24

Publisher

ACM