Talk:Social loafing

Relevance to Psychology Wiki
This article is very relevant to our project of Wiki editing. Social Loafing happens a lot on Wikipedia, as people dont think that their contributions matter as much when so many other people are contributing. Of course, us younger Wiki's have the opposite problem of not enough contributors.

I think they key to optimising our group work will be to grow the number of contributors, relative to the size of the wiki such that we have above the critical number of contributors to keep a Wiki alive (so people don't get editing fatigue) but preferably not too high so that there is not too much social loafing. People need to feel that their contributions matter.

A good way to reward people for contributions is to hand out 'medals' or smiley faces for a job well done. These don't have monetary value, but are a purely social-psychological reward. When you feel your work is worthwhile and appreciated, your productivity will increase. See User:Bri_bri for an example of a 'medal' Mostly Zen