Pareto Principle and citizen participation in the editing of Wikipedia articles about Colombian government entities

Abstract

Contributions to the exercise of democracy are attributed to social media, such as facilitating the expression of concerns and defense of social interests, and access to information of public interest. Based on the editing activity of users, this paper presents a descriptive analysis of open data on the levels of citizen participation in the construction of Wikipedia articles on Colombian State entities, and a comparison with the distribution proposed by the Pareto principle. The results indicate that there is limited participation by citizens, with a large concentration of authorship in the hands of very few editors. The implications on the use of collective intelligence for the collaborative construction of this type of public information, as a way to understand the structures that govern us and the services to which one is entitled, are addressed.