To investigate how participants in peer production systems allocate their time, we examine editing activity on Wikipedia, the well-known online encyclopedia. To analyze the huge edit histories of the site’s administrators we introduce a visualization technique, the chromogram, that can display very long textual sequences through a simple color coding scheme. Using chromograms we describe a set of characteristic editing patterns. In addition to confirming known patterns, such reacting to vandalism events, we identify a distinct class of organized systematic activities. We discuss how both reactive and systematic strategies shed light on self-allocation of effort in Wikipedia, and how they may pertain to other peer-production systems.

Despite the simplicity of the coding scheme, the chromogram technique turned out to be effective in distinguishing between various patterns of activity, and helpful in viewing small- and large-scale structures. Because of its simplicity and generality, the technique may be useful in contexts aside from Wikipedia.