I used to work for a software company that created online software that loan officers used to pull a mortgage applicant's credit. For those of you who may not know, when applying for a mortgage, your credit history and score are MAJOR factors. One no-no that brings down your fica credit score is if your credit is pulled too many times. It was not uncommon for loan officers to claim that they had only pulled someone's credit once. I'm not quite sure they knew that code doesn't lie and the logs could should exactly how many time they had pulled credit, which bureaus, what time, etc - EVERYTHING.
Larry Lessig's Code is Law reveals that code is god - it decides how things work, who can join, who can't, who has access to everything and who has access to just some things - EVERYTHING. And since code is created by people, if you were the creator of a website (as all the APOC students eventually will be), what kind of god/ruler would you be? Two types that came up in the Social Dynamics class were democratic leaders and benevolent dictators. Originally I voted for democracy. Heck yah I wanted people to have a voice and be able to vote! It's working in the U.S. right now, it sure as well can online! However, I have since changed my vote. In keeping with my natural proclivity for compromise (for profit + non-profit = social entrepreneurship), I now want some type of hybrid.
When creating an online community, it might be best to be a benevolent dictator (having this as your backstage behavior), coupled with a appearance of democracy in the frontstage, and occasionally, when necessary, yielding to democracy (but very very rarely) Yes, that sounds deceptive, but if you take a look at most (ok, that's a big claim) sucessful online communities, they either follow that model, or they are ruled by pure dictatorship.
Let's take a look at Facebook, one of the major social networking sites. You can upload pictures and share them – that's great! You can upload videos, create insightful notes, and even create your very own applications – that's way great! But have you read Facebook's Terms? I hadn't (until now) and didn't previously feel the need to. I felt that since there were so many people on Facebook, Facebook wouldn't try and screw anyone over or do something totally uncool... or would they?
“When you post User Content to the Site, you authorize and direct us to make such copies thereof as we deem necessary in order to facilitate the posting and storage of the User Content on the Site. By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose, commercial, advertising, or otherwise, on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing.”
Hmmmm. I don't know about... you'd really have to trust Facebook to post proprietary content which you want to commercialize.
We could also always look at the Digg.com hexadecimal posting example. Digg, facing the possibility of legal prosecution, took down user content, locked out accounts – basically exercised they godlike power. Until that is, they faced the wrath of their community which was so substantial that they finally gave in and accommodated their user's will.
What I've observed is that high entrance and exit costs along with allowing user's to have a voice, defines a strong community. Entities like facebook, digg, aol, apple, etc. have all thrived by being the “dictators”. So therefore, I think some hybrid of the two should be just as succssful.
1 comment:
You've touched on a really difficult issue, and one that's likely to remain unresolved for a very long time. On the face of it, I agree: you need to start with some kind of bottom line 'structure' to make a site meaningful. Even Wikipedia - a very democratic site - is really a benevolent dictatorship or perhaps 'not' a pure democracy and more of a managed or representative democracy in the form of editors who check postings and filter wrong or irrelevant information. This type of democracy is in fact what we have in the US - a representative democracy, and not a direct democracy.
The idea: it is of practical importance to have people act as a buffer or representatives of large groups of people. Why is this practical? Because people tend to splinter to the point of ridiculous when it comes to a practical outcome.
So ... yes, I agree with you. But with some reticence. Maybe a new model will emerge that allows people to synthesize enough to where, practically speaking, there are reasonable and timely outcomes. We'll see ...
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