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reddragdivaThe problem with Internet-based projects is that they form groups of humans, and a group is its own worst enemy. That's a marvellous essay by Clay Shirky, who's on the Wikimedia advisory board for good reason. When I read it I was just nodding my head and going "yep" over and over. A community (Internet or not) has a life cycle. It starts, it's good for a while, it chokes itself or falls away. I've seen this time and time again.
On Wikipedia, the community is not an end in itself but has grown around a purpose. The English Wikipedia's interesting community problems are an emergent phenomenon, not Wikipedia or Jimmy Wales doing something wrong.
(Not to mention the flood of people for whom this is their first online community, who haven't experienced the cycle even once. We have enough trouble enculturating Usenet refugees and their robust interaction style.)
Larry Sanger is trying to work around this on Citizendium, as advised by Shirky's main source, Wilfred Bion's Experiences In Groups: group structure is necessary. Robert's Rules of Order, parliamentary procedure and so forth. The obvious risk is killing the best in favour of steadiness.
Shirky notes: "Constitutions are a necessary component of large, long-lived, heterogenous groups." I've long spoken of Wikipedia's fundamental policies — neutrality, verifiability, no original research; assume good faith, no personal attacks, don't bite the newbies — as a constitution, and said that any process that violates them must be thrown out. The catch being there's not yet a way to enforce that.
One thing Shirky strongly points out: "The third thing you need to accept: The core group has rights that trump individual rights in some situations. This pulls against the libertarian view that's quite common on the network, and it absolutely pulls against the one person/one vote notion. But you can see examples of how bad an idea voting is when citizenship is the same as ability to log in." You would probably believe the outrage when I applied the phrase "one moron one vote" to Requests for Adminship, the prime example on English Wikipedia at present of a group that's being its own worst enemy. Worse than Articles for Deletion. (The reason people form into insular groups that defend one moron one vote is that the groups then attain local "core" status and feel they can get some work done. This is why new committees keep popping up.) The trouble is then squaring this with not being exclusionary toward the newbies.
(And you'll see Shirky's 2003 essay speaking of Wikipedia as a project that's dodged that one. Whoops.)
The Tyranny Of Structurelessness by Jo Freeman is one of my favourite essays on emergent hierarchies: if you pretend there's no hierarchy, one will emerge out of your sight and bite you in the backside. (I'm unconvinced its solutions, particularly electing everyone, are directly applicable here — just about every process on English Wikipedia even resembling a vote rapidly turns into an insular committee or a lynch mob.)
Some consider cabalism on English Wikipedia the source of all problems. Unfortunately, with 4330 frequent editors and 43,000 occasional editors each month, no-one is going to know everyone. So people will cluster with those they do know just to get anything done.
The people who do work on a project will usually ignore idiocy until it gets in their face. In the Linux world, the kernel.org lists resolutely ignore the baying fanboy cat piss men, and Linus Torvalds remains project leader by acclaim. The LambdaMOO solution in Shirky's paper may be the best option: the wizards return and lay the smackdown. Let's start with shooting all rules that violate the above six constitutional basics. So who are the wizards?
How to keep the community focused on the point of the exercise? What level of control does one apply to keep the project on track without killing off the liveliness? How would you apply Shirky's findings?
Is there a sociologist in the house?
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(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-02 07:40 pm (UTC)You've got a *hell* of a lot going on right now, but we should *so* just sit down and talk about this over pints for a few hours, I'd really be interested in your perspective on these problems.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-02 07:45 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-02 07:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-02 08:01 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-02 08:04 pm (UTC)Ironically, given that a number of other people who might assume that I don't know who they are on the list are mistaken.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-02 07:43 pm (UTC)Oh, that's a lovely way to pronounce "cranky jerk"...
And I think I'll be looking at this as fairly timely for our little example of cabalism after the workday's done...
(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-02 07:46 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-02 07:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-02 08:33 pm (UTC)People ought (IMO) in general to be more bulletproof than they are. Possibly not to the standard of battle-hardened Usenet veterans, but more bullet proof than: 'Palpably untrue thing, host of opinions' 'rebutted with logic + proof as to why said thing is untrue ' 'waaah *cries* 'I want my Mummy'.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-02 08:46 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-02 11:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-02 11:28 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-03 05:21 am (UTC)Could _this_ be the reason why some whiney bitches get so rabid when I argue?
(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-03 07:14 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2007-05-03 12:53 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2007-05-02 08:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-02 08:44 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-03 05:09 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-03 05:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-02 09:08 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-02 09:19 pm (UTC)Yep, seen this cycle over and again. And in the communities that do make it to long term functionality, the people upset that the rules that give the group enough ongoing structure to continue etc are getting in the way of their individual cliques efforts to do things their way. Be interested to hear what answers you come up with.
Yes, there is a sociologist in the house
Date: 2007-05-02 11:11 pm (UTC).... Weber is the key the answer here (specifically, Theory of Social and Economic Organization and to follow up, Merton's Reader in Bureaucracy.
Groups initially form with the introduction of new ideas and new values; that is via charismatic leadership. However, in order for the ideas and values to survive the principles need to be established into bureaucratic structure. That is, a transition from the ecentric and revolutionary to the conservative and stable, with the adoption of formal and consistent rules based on the charismatic principles.
This of course stays in place until the the rules and norms fail to deliver and a new revolution led by a new charismatic power comes along...
I can go on further on the specific requirements of a stable bureaucracy according to Weber if you like...
Re: Yes, there is a sociologist in the house
Date: 2007-05-02 11:14 pm (UTC)Re: Yes, there is a sociologist in the house
Date: 2007-05-03 01:11 am (UTC)OK, time to power up the scanner... I'll be back in a while...
From Weber
Date: 2007-05-03 01:58 am (UTC)2. "[Within bureaucracy] administration of law is held to consist in the application of . . . rules to particular cases; the administrative process is the rational pursuit of the interests which are specified in the order governing the corporate group within the limits laid down by legal precepts. . ."
3. "[Within the bureaucracy] the typical person in authority occupies an 'office.' In the action associated with his status, including the commands he issues to others, he is subject to an impersonal order to which his actions are oriented."
4. "[T]he person who obeys authority does so, . . . only in his capacity as a 'member' of the corporate group and what he obeys is only 'the law.'"
5. "[M]embers of the corporate group, insofar as they obey a person in authority, do not owe this obedience to him as an individual but to the impersonal social order."
6. "[Within a bureaucracy] the organization of offices follows the principle of hierarchy; that is, each lower office is under the control and supervision of a higher one."
7. "[O]nly a person who has demonstrated an adequate technical training is qualified to be a member of the administrative staff of [a bureaucratically] organized group, and hence only such persons are eligible for appointment to official positions."
8. "In the rational type [of bureaucracy] it is a matter of principle that the members of the administrative staff should be completely separated from ownership of the means of production or administration. . . . There exists, furthermore, in principle complete separation of the property belonging to the organization, which is controlled within the sphere of office, and the personal property of the individual, which is available for his own private uses. There is a corresponding separation of the place in which official functions are carried out, the 'office' in the sense of premises, from living quarters."
9. "Administrative acts, decisions, and rilles are formulated and recorded in writing, even in cases where oral discussion is the rule or is even mandatory. This applies at least to preliminary discussions and proposals, to final decisions, and to all sorts of orders and rules. The combination of written documents and a continuous organization of official functions constitutes the 'office,' which is the central focus of all types of modern corporate action."
Re: Yes, there is a sociologist in the house
Date: 2007-05-02 11:18 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-03 12:22 am (UTC)That'll be the best euphemism I've read all day.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-03 04:59 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-03 05:39 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-03 05:41 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-03 05:38 am (UTC)Just a 3rd year psychological anthropology student here. I used that Bion article in my ethnography of a self-help chatroom last year. It was quite helpful, esp since my anth department is so bloody Marxist and concrete-leaning that they distrust anything with "psyche" attached to it.
Groups still do confound, fascinate and frighten me. I tend to understand the individual's experience of the group better so I then work outwards from that.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-03 07:16 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-03 12:49 pm (UTC)Constitutions are a necessary component of large, long-lived, heterogenous groups.
is certainly true, but you need to know what the purpose of the group is. When you had 10 members, you could talk about everything to do with $X and welcome anyone interested in $X. With 1000, that won't work - you either focus on aspects of $X or exclude those who aren't die-hard $X practicitioners, if the conversation is to avoid becoming one-off broadcasts.
"...the worst crisis is the first crisis, because it's not just "We need to have some rules." It's also "We need to have some rules for making some rules." And this is what we see over and over again in large and long-lived social systems. Constitutions are a necessary component of large, long-lived, heterogenous groups.
Cohen's Law: "The likelihood that any unmoderated group will eventually get into a flame-war about whether or not to have a moderator approaches one as time increases." As a group commits to its existence as a group, and begins to think that the group is good or important, the chance that they will begin to call for additional structure, in order to defend themselves from themselves, gets very, very high.'
Which is linked to:
"the dense, interconnected pattern that drives group conversation and collaboration isn't supportable at any large scale. ...the density of conversation falls off very fast as the system scales even a little bit....The value is inverse to the size of the group. And you have to find some way to protect the group within the context of those effects. "
Great stuff in there. He's right about any group having a formal and informal constitution, and I think the informal constitution only becomes apparent when you reach your first size-related crisis (see above).
If your Old Hats then prove to be working 50:50 to different informal constitutions, then you have a downstream problem that Shirky didn't get round to addressing in that essay, which is a shame as if he had I'd be posting his advice on a mailing list of our acquaintance.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-03 09:47 pm (UTC)