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

[Jon Awbrey]

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JA = Jon Awbrey
MB = Michel Bauwens

Michel,

Continuing at the point marked thus ">>>--->>>"

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.

JA: 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.

JA: 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.

JA: 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.

JA: 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.

JA: 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."

>>>--->>>

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
    exemplifying 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.

Michel,

I am aged enough to remember the beginnings of the open source, free software,
shareware movements.  I can recall attending my first seminars on the hot new
paradigms of "groupware" and "collaborative software" in the mid 1980's and I
worked on several wiki development projects -- if only as a content filler or
a "playtester" -- before I ever heard of Wikipedia.  So I always view each of
these projects that we have been talking about as yet another experiment in a
very wide field of possible experiments.  The critical thing is to learn what
can be learned from each experiment before moving on to the next, and to stop
the experiments that go bad before they do too much harm to their subjects or
to the public at large.

I do not view Wikipedia and Citizendium on the analogy of naturally evolving
political systems like those that you mention -- no doubt politics is always
a bit "violent" in the sense of Aristotle, but I think there is a difference
between a nudge and a putsch.

I think that Wikipedia and Citizendium are more accurately viewed on the model
of "theme parks", like Disneyland(TM).  Yes, Wikipedia is like Fantasyland(TM),
complete with Gnomes and Trolls, and Citizendium is more like Frontierland(TM),
where gun-totin' Constables are deputized to keep the peace.  Theme parks like
these are the enterprises of entrepreneurs.  They are "para-sties", derivative
of legendary realms that once or never existed, in days of yore and yesteryear,
if ever.  To speak of them as "degenerating" into this or that other condition
is simply to put the cart before the horse.  There were ever thus, it was only
the willing suspension of disbelief that we maintained in their interiors that
illusioned us willing ticket-holders to view them as anything but wholly-owned
capital enterprises.

Jon Awbrey

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