Wikipedia and Termite Hills

Written on March 17, by Erik Van den broecke

One of the most remarkable insights that came to me during last months, links Wikipedia with termite hills. Of course, Wikipedia has an article on termite hills. One can read that these hills can become real cathedrals, up to 10 meters high in Australia. But here I want to focus on the fact that the high tech Wikipedia community uses the same mechanisms to build its word-cathedrals, than the ancient termites.

A termite hill grows because termites are attracted by “work in progress”. A first termite drops a bit of mud in a random place, and this entices other termites to drop their bits in the same place. The higher the mud pile, the stronger the termites are attracted. And so cathedrals develop.

Similarly members of the Wikipedia community are attracted by articles within their domain of interest. If shortcomings or errors are noticed, they tend to fix these by making an own contribution. As is the case for termites, there is no direct communication between Wikipedia contributors. The higher the quality of the resulting article, the more people are attracted, and the higher the chances that further enhancements are made. This positive feedback mechanism explains the enormous and fast growth of Wikipedia.

A second method used as well by insects as by Wikipedia, can be found in ant colonies. During work – looking for and transporting food to the nest, the ant creates a trail of pheromones. Since ants are attracted by pheromones, they can easily find the paths to food sources. Trails towards rich sources are amplified by the ant traffic. Trails to poor sources are not amplified and disappear.

Wikipedia contributors use hyperlinks to explain terms in their contribution. If however the term does not yet have a page in Wikipedia, an empty page is created. Consequently Wikipedia publishes a list of “most wanted articles”, in which the empty pages that are referenced most, are listed at the highest places. This Wikipedia “most wanted” index corresponds to the strongness of the pheromones trail in the ant colonies. Both lead to the place where the biggest added value can be realized.

The two above mechanisms show that insight in biology can lead to better understanding of the principles and opportunities of open source communities. So “back to nature” stays a good mantra, even for those that prefer the comfortable chair in front of their laptop!

For more information see: Why is open access development so successful?, F. Heylighen, 2007