Recently, Clay Shirky wrote an essay on how to create and maintain
long-lived groups among people who communicate with each other
electronically. Interestingly, although Shirky does not say so
specifically, his main focus parallels that of David Brin, who wrote
an essay on disputation arenas.
Shirky focuses on groups: how to enhance their success and longevity.
Brin focuses on civilization: how to gain from the Internet a benefit
as great as those we have harvested from "four marvels of our age --
science, democracy, the justice system, and fair markets."
For both, a key underlying theme is that members of a group must be
accountable.
Shirky's essay is called, "A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy"
http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html
and Brin's essay is called "Disputation Arenas: Harnessing Conflict
and Competition for Society's Benefit"
http://www.davidbrin.com/disputationarticle1.html
First, I will try to summarize Shirky's thesis, then Brin's.
By `groups', Shirky means many-to-many two-way conversations, not the
one-to-many action of broadcasters or the one-person-to-one-person
two-way action of a telephone conversation. (He says that telephone
`conference calls' do not work well. This is my experience, too.)
Shirky's thesis is that people in groups must develop reputations, be
rewarded for doing well, be freed from exploitation, and be given
enough time to converse.
Shirky points out that with computers, we enjoy a new technology:
Prior to the Internet, the last technology that had any real
effect on the way people sat down and talked together was the
table.
Shirky goes on to say,
... if you are going to create a piece of social software designed
to support large groups, you have to accept three things, and
design for four things.
The three items you need to accept are a part of the universe, like
gravity. You cannot avoid them. You can start out be ignoring them
or by pretending they are not issues, but they will catch up with you,
just as gravity does.
The three characteristics of long-lived group interaction are:
* First, you cannot completely separate technical and social issues.
As Winston Churchill once said of the Houses of Parliament, `we
shape our buildings and our buildings shape us.' People choose
which tools to provide and use; and in turn those tools enable or
prevent the system from working well; and lead the members of a
group to want to defend or gain more use of the tools, or not.
Shirky gives as an example, a bulletin board system called
Communitree that was started in the 1970s. It was founded "... on
the principles of open access and free dialogue." At first it
worked fine. But then some boys started causing trouble and the
people who had set up Communitree could not "... defend themselves
against their own users."
As Shirky says,
... you could ask whether or not the founders' inability to
defend themselves ... was a technical or a social problem.
Did the software not allow the problem to be solved? Or was
it the social configuration of the group that founded it ...?
... in a way, it doesn't matter ....
* Second, some members of a group will emerge who care more about
the group more than the average member.
If the tools are available, these members will take care of the
group and ensure its continuation. If the tools are not
available, those whose actions destroy the group will succeed.
Shirky points out that the core group in Communitree, the bulletin
board founded in the 1970s,
... was undifferentiated from the group of random users that
came in. They were separate in their own minds, because they
knew what they wanted to do, but they couldn't defend
themselves against the other users.
Shirky then goes on to say,
But in all successful online communities that I've looked at,
a core group arises that cares about and gardens effectively.
* Third, the core group has rights that trump individual rights in
some situations.
This goes against the libertarian view that is quite common and
against the principle that one person should have one vote, with
no entrance requirements. But if you do not prevent some people
from destroying a group, they will destroy it.
For example, Shirky talks about a proposal in the early 1990s to
create a Usenet news group for discussing Tibetan culture. The
proposal was voted down. In large part, this was because many in
or from mainland China did not consider Tibet a country, but
simply another region of China. So, since Tibet was not a
country, it did not need a news group for discussing its culture.
As Shirky says,
... because the one person/one vote model on Usenet said
"Anyone who's on Usenet gets to vote on any group,"
sufficiently contentious groups could simply be voted away.
In order to create a successful electronic, many-to-many two-way
conversation you need to design four features:
* First, a process to enable reputation management. This means
providing for a consistent identity over time.
As Shirky says, the "world's best reputation management system" is
in one's head. "If you want a good reputation system, just let me
remember who you are."
This means that the people who use a system must be able to
identify themselves. Moreover, the group has to penalize a person
for changing identities, perhaps by losing some of his or her
reputation.
* Second, a process to provide benefits for the virtuous.
Otherwise, they will have no reason to stay around and endure the
waste imposed on them by the bad.
Essentially, there has to be some way to distinguish between those
who are more involved in the conversation and those are less
involved.
One way is to insist that new members be promoted by an existing
member. A second is to require that people establish an account.
These two examples are barriers to entry, the presumption being
that once in, the rewards are enough.
A third method is to reward those who have been around for a
while, perhaps by letting them express judgements over others by
scoring the others' works.
* Third, a process to prevent the group and its leading members from
getting swamped. This means barriers to entry.
The barriers are the same as before, but instead of looking at
them as ways to provide benefits to virture, the goal is to find
ways to save the good from being exploited.
For example, everyone may read a posting on Slashdot, and everyone
may post as an `anonymous coward'. There are no barriers at this
level.
However, postings are rated. By default, `anonymous cowards' come
in at zero, and people who have logged on come in at one. A
moderator looks at your post and adds or takes away points. To
become a moderator, you need to have been a member for a while;
you then may be chosen at random out of the eligible pool, given a
small number of points, and only a few days to act.
The current Slashdot system is fairly sophisticated and works
well. It is described in:
http://slashdot.org/faq/com-mod.shtml
* A process to enable the group to stay small. Otherwise, too many
people get involved and the members of the group become
overwhelmed. Shirky suggests that as groups grow, they should
fork in some way. I am not clear on how this should be done.
Regardless, it is a issue.
In essence, Shirky provides tools for civil society.
David Brin, on the other hand, provides a tool for governance.
Brin says that
In the long run, the Internet will serve us best if it enhances
two seemingly contradictory traits -- individualism and
accountability.
The issue is how to combine these two traits in a group.
The key is to make use of "society's true immune system against error
-- fierce and reciprocal criticism."
As Brin says of the individualists who speak:
Any of you reading this can envision friends who exhibit certain
traits:
* strongly held opinions
* claiming to see patterns that others cannot
* distrust of some (or all) authority
* profound faith in their unique individuality
* utter dependence on freedom of speech.
He goes on to say,
Consider four marvels of our age -- science, democracy, the
justice system, and fair markets. In each case the participants
(scientists, politicians, litigants, and capitalists) are driven
by selfish goals. .... By harnessing human competitiveness,
instead of suppressing it, these "accountability arenas" nourished
much of our unprecedented wealth and freedom.
We are reminded that
The four arenas aren't always fair or efficient! A good theory,
law or commercial product may flounder, or else face many trials
before prevailing. But remember that organic systems needn't be
efficient, only robust.
Brin points out that the governance process has phases. First, a
phase that the Net duplicates well:
... structures [to] help participants go off on their own, to
organize and prepare in safety.
Second, a phase the Internet lacks, a
... counterbalancing inward pull. Something that acts to draw
foes together for fair confrontation, after making their
preparations in safe seclusion.
For the latter, Brin suggests a kind of tournament or debate, a "new
accountability arena", that would lead to better understanding.
The goal is to provide a way to handle
... debates and decide between disparate strategic plans, by
comparing them systematically and openly.
To achieve this, he specifies several rules, three of which are that
* An impartial Jury will decide procedural issues and adjudicate a
myriad squabbles that inevitably rise when groups have long hated
and demonized each other.
* Ad hominem remarks must be penalized swiftly to keep things at
least somewhat civil.
* Distinct from the jury will be a panel of Eminent Observers (or
inquisitors) noted for a pitbull tenacity at asking piercing
questions.
Moreover, at the beginning,
... no attention is paid to actual merits of either side's case!
Instead, a month or more is spent discussing the logic and
consistency of each manifesto, by picking apart each advocate's
position into ever-smaller pieces, producing a string (or several
strings) of logical and falsifiable statements. Each will be
given its own discussion thread, so that no step of logic escapes
scrutiny.
Moreover,
After both manifestos are declared logically usable, a distinct
period -- say a month -- will be given to each side so they may
paraphrase the other side's position.
This step aims to ensure that each party has actually read and
understood where the other one stands, so they aren't simply
shouting past each other at chimeric caricatures. ....
Then the debate begins.
Attack and defense can be based on logic, evidence or
morality. ....
This stage continues until we reduce the battle to a limited
number of Core Conflicts over Substance. These would then be the
focus of further intense scrutiny and research.
As a practical matter, I think that many people would be intensely
interested in a tournament of this sort. Unfortunately, the audience
would likely be more alert than advertisers prefer, so only a minority
of companies would be interested in sponsoring such an event.
Moreover, sponsors might fear that they themselves would become a
disputant!
That fear is like the current competence question in US politics. The
Bush administration has opened itself up to the question of whether it
was competent either at handling possible weapons of mass destruction
in Iraq, or alternatively, at handling lies about them. The
Democratic opposition have not jumped at this issue, most likely
because they themselves fear their own incompetence.
Still, I think that some would like to sponsor Brin-type tournaments.
The cost for one tournament is probably about half a human life time,
spread over two or three dozen people for a year or so.
Some tournaments would not need sponsors -- participants would give
their time to it.
Because it is so easy to edit drafts and accept questions, computers
with good software are the tool. Because it enables asynchronous
discussion, the Internet is the place. A Web site will do.
Of course, enough people may prefer the immediacy of a broadcast court
room or Watergate-style hearing. So television could be another
medium; or both media could be combined.
In short, Shirky talks primarily about how to encourage and sustain
conversations within a group. Brin, on the other hand, talks about
how to create a fifth arena for dispute resolution, in addition to
science, democracy, the justice system, and fair markets.
--
Robert J. Chassell Rattlesnake Enterprises
http://www.rattlesnake.com GnuPG Key ID: 004B4AC8
http://www.teak.cc [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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