RUNNING HEAD: Diffusion of WorkFinder in Wikipedia The Diffusion of a Task Recommendation System to Facilitate Contributions to an Online Community

This paper studies the diffusion of WorkFinder, an intelligent task recommendation system, in Wikipedia. We investigate both factors that predict who adopts WorkFinder and its impact on adopters’ future contributions to this online community. Analyzing logged data about participants’ activities in Wikipedia, we found that both individual characteristics and social ties influence adoption. Specially, we found that highly involved contributors were more likely to adopt WorkFinder; and interpersonal exposure to innovation, cohesion, and tie homophily all substantially increased the likelihood of adoption. However, connections to admin contributors, i.e. those more prominent contributors in Wikipedia community, did not influence adoption. Finally, although the WorkFinder innovation saw limited distribution, adopters made significantly more contributions to Wikipedia after adoption than their non-adopter counterparts in the comparison group. (124 words).