Disgruntled Wikipedians

Nick Carr parses a study comparing Wikipedians an non-Wikipedians. The results weren't very flattering:

Scott Caplan, a communications professor at the University of Delaware, tells New Scientist that studies of social networks generally indicate that "people who prefer online social behaviour tend to have higher levels of social anxiety and lower social skills." None of this is particularly surprising. But the findings do lend a darker tint to the rose-colored rhetoric that surrounds online communities. A wag might suggest that "social production" would be more accurately termed "antisocial production.

--PA