Human communities have self-organizing properties that give rise to very specific natural grouping patterns, reflected in the Dunbar Number and its layered structure (a Dunbar Graph). Since work-groups are necessarily also social groups, we might expect the same principles to apply here as well. One factor likely to be important in limiting the size of groups is that conflicts typically escalate with the number of people involved. Here we analyse Wikipedia editing histories across a wide range of topics to show that there is an emergent coherence in the size of groups formed transiently to edit the content of subject texts, with two peaks averaging at around $N=8$ for the size corresponding to maximal contention, and at around $N=4$ as a regular team. These values are consistent with the observed sizes of conversational groups, as well as the hierarchical structuring of Dunbar graphs. We use the Promise Theory of trust to suggest a scaling law that may apply to all group distributions based on seeded attraction. In addition to providing further evidence that even natural communities of strangers are self-organising, the results have important implications for the governance of the Wikipedia commons and for the security of all online social platforms and associations.

翻译：人类社群具有自组织特性，这会产生非常特定的自然群体模式，体现在邓巴数及其分层结构（邓巴图）中。由于工作群体必然也是社会群体，我们可预期相同原理同样适用。限制群体规模的重要因素之一是冲突通常随参与人数增加而升级。本文通过分析维基百科跨广泛主题的编辑历史，发现为编辑主题文本而临时形成的群体规模存在涌现的连贯性，其峰值分别对应约$N=8$的最大争议规模与约$N=4$的常规团队规模。这些数值与对话群体观察到的规模及邓巴图的分层结构一致。我们运用信任承诺理论提出基于种子吸引的标度律，该定律可能适用于所有群体分布。该研究不仅为陌生人自然社群亦具有自组织性提供了新证据，其结论对维基百科公地治理及所有在线社交平台与协会的安全性具有重要启示。