This site examines DavisWiki. DavisWiki is an on-line community that is a curious cross between a conventional encyclopedia, USENET, and a fantasy role-playing game.We are interested in them because they have a massive, unearned influence on what passes for reliable information in Davis, Californa. Who are these mysterious people who have taken it on themselves to prove mediocre information on anything and everything Davis? Investigating who is writing DavisWiki, you can get seriously worried. A study by Israeli psychology researchers found "the prosocial behaviour apparent in Wikipedia is primarily connected to egocentric motives ... which are not associated with high levels of agreeableness".

The study, published in the journal CyberPsychology and Behaviour, gave personality tests to 69 active members of the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit and 70 non-Wikipedians, finding the former "feel more comfortable expressing themselves on the net than they do offline". The researchers' findings that Wikipedians were egocentric, introverted, disagreeable and closed to new ideas is at odds with the notion that Wikipedia was built around community and knowledge sharing. Amichai-Hamburger speculates that rather than contributing altruistically, Wiki people take part because they struggle to express themselves in real-world social situations. "They are compensating," he suggests. "It is their way to have a voice in this world."This is consistent with previous research on online communication, says Scott Caplan of the University of Delaware in Newark, who suspects that heavy users of sites such as Digg and Twitter may have similar characteristics.

DavisWiki editor at 'work'.

The site is certainly not objective and nobody who really participates has claimed that it is. —NickSchmalenberger

I agree... it would be horrible if we were objective here on the wiki. It would certainly make it less useful and interesting. —Evan 'JabberWokky' Edwards