[p2p-research] Wikipedia, Citizendium, Eduzendium, ...

[Jon Awbrey]

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JA = Jon Awbrey
MB = Michel Bauwens

Michel,

I will make some attempt to work through your initial comments
before moving on to the newer responses.  Old stuff is tagged
and indented, my current comments are unindented.

JA: It may take me several passes to work through your text below.

JA: Let me begin with your definition of peer production,
    even though I remain a little troubled by a nagging
    sense that some essential element of equality is
    missing from the mix.

MB: | Peer production has three aspects:
    | 1) voluntary contributions;
    | 2) participatory processes;
    | 3) commons oriented output.

JA: You have stated your opinion that Wikipedia exemplifies
    or exhibits the characters of 1 and 3, lacking only 2.

JA: There are several questions that I would have to ask at the outset:

JA: A. Is peer production like "fire production", where missing any side
       of the "fire triangle" -- fuel, heat, oxygen -- breaks the chain
       of necessary causes?  Or does one get partial credit for 2/3?

JA: B. What is the output?  What is the product of ultimate interest?
       Is it the content of documents and files, the content of minds,
       or is it the conditional general resolution of people to act in
       certain ways, in short, beliefs?  [beliefs or habits (Peirce)].

JA: C. What does it say about the level of voluntary contribution
       when there is a very high level of involuntary exclusion?

Re: http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/from-citizendium-to-eduzendium/2008/01/29#comment-182719

MB: Very clear reply ... though I'm still unsatisfied, and the reason
    is of course, that, despite the failing of enacting values in the
    participatory process, it still has 2 of the 3 functions of peer
    production,

MB: let's say that for me peer production is an objective mode
    that potentially expresses an 'espoused ideal', and to
    different degrees, it will have discrepancies with
    how these ideals are espoused.

Just to be clear, we know the espoused ideals by their "espousals",
that is, from their announcement in the advertisements, prospecti,
and other public representations collectively known as "PR".  But
whether there is any objective mode of production that actualizes
these espousals within a given project or range of activities, ay,
there's the rubber that seeks to gain traction on the road of good
intentions.

Though advertisements may turn our attention to a particular area
of activity in the world, we must gather our impressions about the
objective mode of it through actual experience interacting with it.

Discrepancies between preaching and practice can be symptoms of many
different states of affairs, anything from a moment's inattention to
chronic incapacities to reprobate mendacity on the part of preachers.

When we speak of "governance" in the system-theoretic sense of "regulation",
then we become very interested in the "differential dynamics" engendered by
these differences.  Indeed, you can usually tell a person who wants to fix
the problem and who knows at least how to begin fixing the problem from
a person who wants nothing more than to deny the problem and hide the
very existence of the problem from others by that person's attitude
toward these discrepancies.

But I already know the tribal attitude of Wikipediots toward solving any problem.
It is summarized in the Chapter & Verse of WP:BEANS, which amounts to the advice:
"Ignore it and maybe it will go away."

Have to break here ... will continue from this point next time ...

Jon Awbrey

MB: The other thing though, is how to establish a kind of cutting off point,
    when it really becomes something else.

MB: Take Russia, at what point did it become something altogether different
    than the originally espoused ideals of socialism?  How real where the
    original soviets? how significant was it that competing interpretations
    where suppressed from the very start; and what did it really become when
    stalinism was fully consolidated as a new system: was it state socialism,
    state capitalism ?? extremely difficult questions

MB: and here we are at the very beginning of peer production,
    witnessing a degradation ... at what point does it really
    turn into something altogether different??

MB: So my question to you is:

MB: what then, has it become?

MB: If not peer production and governance, you would then have
    to explain to me how to 'explain away the input and output
    feature, as being also part of another system? and then
    explain that other system, which in my eyes, is not
    a market, nor a command and control system ...

MB: So my problem is:

MB: 1) to see it as a degeneration of peer production and governance, but
    still exemplying this new mode of production;  and we can then discuss
    the various degrees of degeneration and perhaps indicate cut-off points
    (by analogy, when did the perhaps original council system become a top down
    but different system, only retaining public property, but embedding it in a
    new extremely totalitarian and unequal hierarchy system);

MB: 2) to see it as something different than peer production, yet another mode?

MB: Please explain how you see this.

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