[p2p-research] disagreement by deletion/addition

[Michel Bauwens]

Very good question Paul.

My first reply is that the way you pose the question. Of course there is no
'always', but a constant tension between both. The evidence would be the
thousands of open wiki's around.

While it is true that Wikipedia is reverting to a scarcity-based paradigm in
its deletionist degeneration, I still think that the whole dynamic is one of
self-organization, not of traditional hierarchical allocation or
bureaucracy. In other words, it is a shadow of peer governance itself, not a
traditional problem of bureaucracy.

Through the creation of an artificial scarcity, the deletionists created a
power base for themselves, but the process is quite different from a
hierarchical bureaucracy in the traditional sense.

There are two issues: 1) addressng the degeneration to pluralist design; 2)
finding support amongst Wikipedia users to do so ... Regarding to question
two: do we have any record about how the Wikipedia 'decided' to go to that
disastrous road?

1) the scarcity processes could be avoided through design, see the concept
of Knowing Networks, http://p2pfoundation.net/Knowing_Networks, by Stephen
Dowes, about how to design for autonomy and diversity and go against the
Power Law, http://p2pfoundation.net/Power_Law

It is part of a broader movement to use Value Conscious Design,
http://p2pfoundation.net/Value_Sensitive_Design, against the new
protocollary power that is typical of distributed networks,
http://p2pfoundation.net/Protocollary_Power

You'd have to go in the links to follow my argument in more detail, but as
I'm on the road, I have to be short,

Michel

On Dec 7, 2007 12:31 AM, Paul B. Hartzog <paulbhartzog at gmail.com> wrote:

> conversation starter:
>
> Deletionism, or Disagreement by Deletion
>
> long time ago in my naive days
> Sunir Shah and I got talking about what was good about wikis.
>
> one of the key things was:
> 1) disagreement by deletion
> vs.
> 2) disagreement by addition
>
> DbD was the old-school political philosophy of exclusive practice,
> i.e. deciding who is "in" and who is "out"
>
> DbA was the new-school of pluralization, pluralism, and conversation,
> i.e. including perspectival acknowledgement as part of the process
>
> I actually used to lecture that this was a KEY reason why wikis are
> politically revolutionary, which is that by using DbA they
> 1) mesh with a multivocal world
> 2) function on inclusion instead of fragmentation (echo chamber)
>
> Now we see the "new" spaces, turning into "old" spaces
> by adopting the same rules as the old.
>
> Question:
> Is this a historical inevitability.  Will new open spaces that emerge,
> ALWAYS become co-opted by the old rules systems?  Will they
> ALWAYS be forced (as they scale?) to adopt the old rules?
>
> thoughts?
>
> -p
>
> --------------------------------------------------------
> http://www.PaulBHartzog.org
> http://www.panarchy.com
> PaulBHartzog at PaulBHartzog.org
> PaulBHartzog at panarchy.com
> PHartzog at umich.edu
> --------------------------------------------------------
> The Universe is made up of stories, not atoms.
>                 --Muriel Rukeyser
>
> See differently, then you will act differently.
>                 --Paul B. Hartzog
> --------------------------------------------------------
>
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