[p2p-research] [P2P Foundation] From Citizendium To Eduzendium

[Jon Awbrey]

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Henrik Ingo wrote:
> 
> Hi Jon, welcome to the list and for taking this discussion here too:

Thanks, Henrik, it looks like it may be a while
before I can catch up with the first day's mail!

> On Feb 4, 2008 7:40 AM, Jon Awbrey <jawbrey at att.net> wrote:
> >
> > 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.
> 
> ...
> 
> > C. What does it say about the level of voluntary contribution
> >    when there is a very high level of involuntary exclusion?
> 
> Just as a side comment to the above:  When talking about
> peer production in general, one should not be too keen on
> seeing any equality or egalitarianism in its processes.  In fact,
> the principle of "benevolent dictator" and meritocracy explicitly
> state that some leaders of the project will use their own power
> above other, and those leaders are often not elected to their
> positions in any democratic way (and this works very well in
> Free Software).  Exclusion again is a very important ingredient
> to almost any successful Free Software project, its users would
> expect everything but the most high quality contributions to be
> excluded, again nothing wrong there.

Yes, I think we clarified the sense of the "peer = equal" equation
a bit in discussions that followed the initial exchanges.  Based on
my experience, however, "benevolent dictators" have a notorious habit
of mutating very quickly into the usual sorts of Benitos, and this is
almost certain to happen in a regime of anonymous authority.  Moreover,
when we speak of "meritocracy" we must be careful to ask "merit at what?".
In Wikipedia, for example, wikiplebes earn their merit badges by exhibiting
their expertise at playing a very peculiar sort of game.  Does that sort of
"merit" have merit for the external society?  Will they one day insist that
it does?  What then?

> The problem with Wikipedia simply seems to be that a growing number of
> people are disagreeing with the actions of its "leadership", that there
> is exclusionism where there shouldn't be, etc.  In fact, Wikipedia would
> probably gain from a more explicit, yet still undemocratic leadership.
> Now it seems that the more stubborn one always wins, this is a terrible
> state of affairs.  If a "dictatorship" powers where clearly given to
> a small set of leaders, who wouldn't be acting behind pseudonyms,
> it would be better than the current situation.

Yes, these are of course issues for any society, or theory of society,
that must try to work out the optimal relationship between "democracy",
the dialogue among people, and "inquiry" (research and reality testing),
the dialogue that we have with Nature, who can be a very harsh dictator
whenever we fail to understand the dictation.

These questions were part of my research programme for many years before
I ever fell down the Wikipedia rabid hole -- for the sake of applications
to the wiki medium I started collecting a few notes and references on the
following threads at The Wikipedia Review:

Meta-Thread on Inquiry
http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=15478

Meta-Thread on Fascism
http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=15510

> Even so, the Citizendium model with more rigid and democratic-like
> governing processes is probably a very healthy step at this point,
> and it may well be that for an encyclopedia project it is the right
> thing to do. (Debian is an example from the Free Software world,
> where a democratic governance model clearly is the best fit.)

Sadly, I think that the Citizendium model, despite 1 or 2 bug fixes,
remains undermined by Sanger's insistence on trying the fundaments of
the Wikipedia model all over again, namely, the peculiar mutations of
the norms of scholarship that we find in his ideas about NPOV, NOR, VER,
IAR, and so on down the (party) line.

Jon Awbrey

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