Does Reputation Matter for Open Content Systems?

Traditionally, organizational knowledge bases are created in a highly centralized manner to ensure quality. In Open Content Systems (OCS), on the other hand, content is generated in a distributed and decentralized manner. OCS represents a new paradigm for content management, and is founded on the philosophy of the open-source movement. OCS emerged on the internet, with the most noticeable example being the online encyclopedia Wikipedia. The advantage of OCS is the speed in which content is accumulated, while the risk of open content systems is the lack of traditional quality control mechanisms. OCS replace traditional controls with decentralized mechanisms, e.g. reputation, in order to support cooperative behavior and encourage quality content contributions, and these controls are the key to OCS success in open settings. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of OCS controls on content quality, and to assess the differences in expected impacts between open and corporate settings. We adopt a modeling research methodology, to find that due to differences in users' characteristics, the type of OCS controls that are required for corporate settings differ from those suitable for open settings, and thus some control mechanisms, such as reputation, which proved vital in open setting, might not have similar impact in corporate settings.