Volunteered geographic information production as a spatial process

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae, and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand, or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material. Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia that anyone can edit and a popular example of user– generated content that includes volunteered geographic information (VGI). In this article, we present three main contributions: (1) a spatial data model and collection methods to study VGI in systems that may not explicitly support geographic data; (2) quantitative methods for measuring distance between online authors and articles; and (3) empirically calibrated results from a gravity model of the role of distance in VGI production. To model spatial processes of VGI contributors, we use an invariant exponential gravity model based on article and author proximity. We define a proximity metric called a 'signature distance' as a weighted average distance between an article and each of its authors, and we estimate the location of 2.8 million anonymous authors through IP geolocation. Our study collects empirical data directly from 21 language-specific Wikipedia databases, spanning 7 years of contributions (2001–2008) to nearly 1 million geotagged articles. We find empirical evidence that the spatial processes of anonymous contributors fit an exponential distance decay model. Our results are consistent with the prior results on information diffusion as a spatial process, but run counter to theories that a globalized Internet neutralizes distance as a determinant of social behaviors. 1. Introduction Volunteered geographic information (VGI) is 'a special case of the more general Web phenomenon of user-generated content' (Goodchild 2007, p. 212). Today, users can share and pool geographic information via the Internet at lower costs, in effect creating a global digital commons of geographic knowledge that is released from traditional mechanisms of production and distribution. Geobrowsers, in particular, use visualization and Internet technologies to share place-based information (Scharl and Tochtermann 2007). The popularity of Google Earth highlights how the geobrowser …