Jess Hemerly, who is has been studying MusicBrainz as part of a class at UC Berkeley, has devised a survey for MusicBrainz users to get a better understanding of who contributes to MusicBrainz and why. She says:
I’m a researcher at UC Berkeley’s School of Information and a MusicBrainz editor (agreatnotion). I’m interested in how and why people contribute to MusicBrainz and how it can be better. Your participation will help us learn more about you, our community, and how to sustain a successful peer-produced database. The survey takes about 15 minutes, and all personal information—like username and email—will remain confidential. My advisor and I will review and analyze the results and hope to share our analysis with the academic and open source communities. The results will also be made available to the MusicBrainz community.
Take the survey here. The survey will be open for two weeks, until July 23, 2010.
Thank you for participating!
MetaBrainz Blog 
One slightly odd question in there… do I think yes votes are rewards for getting things right. Now I’m stuck halfway between “Achievements for editing!” and shouting “Not everything needs achievements!” at myself.
+1 chiark. Level up!
The Next step in research will likely be:
Does the MusicBrainz community differ significantly from other Open Source communities?
In other words: does music make a different type of freaks? 🙂