Australian Wikipedians have hit out at a report which found they were egocentric, disagreeable, socially awkward and closed to new ideas.

The public perception of Wikipedia editors and moderators is that they are an altruistic group of bright sparks who volunteer their time to expand the world's knowledge, but a study by Israeli psychology researchers found "the prosocial behaviour apparent in Wikipedia is primarily connected to egocentric motives ... which are not associated with high levels of agreeableness".

The study, published in the journal CyberPsychology and Behaviour, gave personality tests to 69 active members of the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit and 70 non-Wikipedians, finding the former "feel more comfortable expressing themselves on the net than they do offline".

The researchers' findings that Wikipedians were introverted, disagreeable and closed to new ideas is at odds with the notion that Wikipedia was built around community and knowledge sharing.

This was partly confirmed by Australian Wikipedia admin Andrew, who doesn't want his surname published but goes by the online handle Orderinchaos. He said many discussions between moderators about the site's policies resulted in "intractably opposed contributors, many with vested interests, slugging it out to the death".

He also said the site had "a slightly pro-academic bias" and "any serious proposals for change usually get defeated by the community, which is now realistically too big to speak with a united voice on almost any subject".

But Daniel Bryant, one of the most senior Wikipedia administrators in Australia, noted the study only surveyed Israeli users and said the Australian Wikipedia community had a different culture from other national groups.

"I may be biased in this assessment, but I'd go as far as to say that we are likely in the top echelon of countries for Wikipedians who have what could be described as a `normal' social standing and a `normal' real life," he said.

"I don't think [the study] accurately reflects Australian Wikipedians nearly as well as it does the Wikipedia community's general population."

Andrew agreed with this assessment, saying "Australian Wikipedia is one of the oases of relative calm on Wikipedia generally". He noted that only one disputed Australian article ever made it to Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee.

Lead researcher Yair Amichai-Hamburger, of the Sammy Ofer School of Communication, told New Scientist that Wikipedia users were "compensating" and contributing to the site was "their way to have a voice in this world".

Similarly, last year, Hewlett-Packard researchers analysed the habits of 580,000 YouTube contributors and found that people who regularly uploaded material were attention seekers with egocentric motives.

But Bryant said: "Established Australian Wikipedians are some of the most well-connected in real life, both as members of the education and information revolution, and also socially."