Background. A wide circle of multidisciplinary researchers share interest in motivation factors of Wikipedians, i.e. virtual volunteers, members of the online world’s largest online encyclopedia «Wikipedia», who consolidate personal resources to manage comprehensive aggregation of free knowledge. Nevertheless, the question of the driving forces of this prosocial behaviour is still open.

Objective. It is assumed that for a full understanding of the determined online activities of Wikipedians we need to analyze the value orientations to which they give personal preference. In accordance with this, the following goal was set: to identify the shared values of the experienced transnational core of Wikipedia authors.

Design. Based on the semantic units derived from previous cycles of disparate academic studies of Wikipedia’s practical development, we conducted a content analysis of a transnational survey. The recipients were 65 authors of multilingual Wikipedia segments (83% males and 17% females) with average experience of 9.9 years compilation of encyclopedic articles.

Results. The constitutive system of invariant internal and external value orientations characteristic of Wikipedians is disclosed. It is found that in the most cases Wikipedians find a number of personal significant reasons for participating in the Wikipedia, the reasons resonating with their inner essence.

Conclusion. The internal value orientations of Wikipedians include: self-development (self-improvement, self-assertion, self-realization); reciprocal (mutual) altruism; a tendency to high quality and systematization of knowledge; a pleasure of creation; autonomy; recreation (hobby, entertainment); meaningfulness; preservation of personal heritage. The external value orientations include: preservation and development of the cultural heritage / language segment; promotion and popularization of Wikipedia (its ideology and principles); low transaction costs and convenience (attractiveness) of the system; affiliation; social identity; improvement peace («Weltverbesserungs Antrieb»); building bridges between cultures and languages. It is summarized that a detailed study of the identified value orientations and also other psychological characteristics of Wikipedia volunteers can significantly expand theoretical concepts of functioning and the applied value for the organization of volunteer practices to disseminate knowledge as the highest value of humanity.

Moral choice in adolescents is determined by the interaction of cognitive, emotional and personal factors that prescribe the orientation on the justice principle, or the principle of care, exercised in certain social psychological and situational conditions. Some features of the of moral dilemmas solution in L. Kohlberg’s concept of moral development and N. Eisenberg’s theory of prosocial behaviour are considered. The following types of moral choice dilemmas are identified: personal choice and decision-making within uncertain moral norms as a behaviour regulating tool; moral choice within competitive moral norms; the dilemma ofalter altruism.

Conditions and factors of solving moral dilemmas in adolescents are identified and described: the social psychological conditions (culture, socioeconomic status, family, school); individual features (moral values, moral feelings and emotions, e.g. guilt, sympathy, empathy and distress, presence of socio-cognitive conflicts in past experiences, the proximity to the victim and identifying oneself as a victim, age, sex); level of cognitive development and attribute processes (regarding prosocial behaviour of other people as «good» and identifying oneself as «good»; being aware of altruistic motives of one’s behaviour and the nature of one’s behaviour as showing care for welfare of others; adequately assessing the needs of another person for further assistance and identifying its objective necessity); situational factors and structural and content limitations of the moral dilemmas (according to the degree of involvement, either personal or social, according to the extent of meeting social expectations, i.e. antisocial, prosocial dilemmas and social pressures).