A recent survey of contributors to Wikipedia found that less than 15% of contributors are women. This gender contribution gap has received significant attention from both researchers and the media. A panel of researchers and practitioners has offered several insights and opinions as to why a gender gap exists in contributions despite gender anonymity online. The gender research literature suggests that the difference in contribution rates could be due to three factors: (1) the high levels of conflict in discussions, (2) dislike of critical environments, and (3) lack of confidence in editing other contributors' work. This paper examines these hypotheses regarding the existence of the gender gap in contribution by using data from an international survey of 176,192 readers, contributors, and former contributors to Wikipedia, including measures of demographics, education, motivation, and participation. Implications for improving the design and culture of online communities to be more gender inclusive are discussed.

Online peer-to-peer (P2P) lending organizations enable an individual to obtain an unsecured loan from a collection of individuals without the participation of a bank. Previous research has addressed the use of reputation systems to reduce information asymmetry based on individual history within online markets. Within the last few years one of the market leaders in P2P lending, Prosper.com, has sought to replace the information vetting and monitoring typically done by the bank with a community of users free to select its community members based on any criteria it chooses. By embedding individual reputations within a community reputation, incentives become aligned for peers to select highly qualified borrowers and produce more costly information signals to reduce the adverse selection and moral hazard risk typical of any principle-agent relationship. This study draws on theory from the Principle-Agent perspective to empirically examine the signals that enhance community reputation.