"Power Law Distribution"

The “power law distribution” or “long tail” phenomenon, as seen in behavior online on the Wikipedia, suggests that the concept of an average user of wikipedia is meaningless. Support your answer: how do you think a local, “JMU only” version of the Wikipedia would compare to the worldwide version? Would it be very similar? Higher quality? Less quality? Why?

I think a JMU only version of the Wikipedia would probably overall have the same result as the worldwide version. Although there are less people using the wiki, I think the same conclusion could be drawn. When the first user, lets say the creator of the wiki, prefers "x site" under the "JMU only" wikipedia, it is more likely that the next user will prefer "x site". This pattern will keep on as more and more users catch onto the "JMU only" wikipedia. As more students prefer "x site", less students are searching for "y site". This idea of "preference premium" builds up no matter how large or small the audience is.

Although having a "JMU only" wikipedia does make the audience smaller and more intimate, it still would have a similiar distribution. The quality may be higher, because the community is smaller, I think people that are using the wiki would be more careful what they write. I do think that if we had a "JMU only" wiki the effect would be the same (just on a smaller scale) as the worldwide wikipedia.