Unintended Consequences Of The Community Metaphor, Internet Websites Are Not Sovereign Nations — Duh !!! Options

[GlassBeadGame]

It's really quite simple.

Not everything is a business, but some people think everything should be run like a business.

Not everything is a community, but some people think that every population is a community.

Not everything is a family, but some people think that every organization is like their family.

Businesses, communities, and families are all capable of much good in their proper places, but each of these organizational concepts can make for an absolutely disastrous model when they are forced on organizations whose objectives they do not fit.

Jon Awbrey

Good sense.

[Jonny Cache]

It's really quite simple.

Not everything is a business, but some people think everything should be run like a business.

Not everything is a community, but some people think that every population is a community.

Not everything is a family, but some people think that every organization is like their family.

Businesses, communities, and families are all capable of much good in their proper places, but each of these organizational concepts can make for an absolutely disastrous model when they are forced on organizations whose objectives they do not fit.

Jon Awbrey

Good sense.

Sorry, I must be sleeping …

Jonny

This post has been edited by Jonny Cache: Mon 26th November 2007, 1:55am

[Moulton]

I thought Fred Bauder was an ex-lawyer, not a systems thinker.

[Jon Awbrey]

There was a point to this thread, but it looks like I didn't have moderator super-powers back in the day when it eventually went off course, so maybe I'll try to sift the theme from the vagarations over the next week or so.

Jon

[Jon Awbrey]

The Name of the Pose … The Name of the Posse

Having rode a good ways down the road of good intentions that led to many bad and ugly things at Wikipedia, I will persist, for a while longer, in suggesting that we engage in a serious and duly reflective critical examination of the community metaphor that lurks behind the presumably innocent use of the word "constable", or any other word of a similar order, for the role in question.

Jon Awbrey, 26 Sep 2006

I was trying to make the point that the use of a word like “constable” to describe a a website moderator was not a harmless metaphor, but invokes the role-playing fantasy of a delusively metaphorical pseudo-community.

I don't think I realized at the time that the use of words like “administrator” and “editor” for website button-pushers is every bit as harmful in its ability to disconnect the role-players in question from real-world solid ground.

Jon Awbrey

[Somey]

I don't think I realized at the time that the use of words like “administrator” and “editor” for website button-pushers is every bit as harmful in its ability to disconnect the role-players in question from real-world solid ground.

I've always felt that way too, actually.

For a while it really did seem like a harmless set of analogy-designations, but clearly as time goes on, people start identifying more and more with the real-world roles those words represent, to the detriment of pretty much everybody else.

A better system would be one that recognizes the realities of the WP game/world (gameworld?) and simply assigned "level" numbers to each set of rights and privileges. (New user would be level 1, steward would be level 12... sort of like Scientology, actually.) Some of this could be automated - i.e., the first few levels would be based entirely on time-in-game, number of edits, etc., but then the auto-promotion would end at some point and further increase in level would require increasing amounts of human intervention - not unlike the current system, really, just more clearly based on what actually goes on.

Personally, I object to the term "editor" more than the term "administrator." In the real world, both occupations should require training, expertise, and (hopefully) experience, but in actual real-world practice only an "editor" can be assumed to actually have those things if he or she is any good at it. WP'ers calling themselves "editors" essentially usurps and cheapens the term, and negatively affects those who can call themselves that legitimately.

[Jon Awbrey]

I don't think I realized at the time that the use of words like “administrator” and “editor” for website button-pushers is every bit as harmful in its ability to disconnect the role-players in question from real-world solid ground.

I've always felt that way too, actually.

For a while it really did seem like a harmless set of analogy-designations, but clearly as time goes on, people start identifying more and more with the real-world roles those words represent, to the detriment of pretty much everybody else.

A better system would be one that recognizes the realities of the WP game/world (gameworld?) and simply assigned "level" numbers to each set of rights and privileges. (New user would be level 1, steward would be level 12 … sort of like Scientology, actually.) Some of this could be automated — i.e., the first few levels would be based entirely on time-in-game, number of edits, etc., but then the auto-promotion would end at some point and further increase in level would require increasing amounts of human intervention — not unlike the current system, really, just more clearly based on what actually goes on.

Personally, I object to the term "editor" more than the term "administrator." In the real world, both occupations should require training, expertise, and (hopefully) experience, but in actual real-world practice only an "editor" can be assumed to actually have those things if he or she is any good at it. WP'ers calling themselves "editors" essentially usurps and cheapens the term, and negatively affects those who can call themselves that legitimately.

I've always relied a lot on analogies and metaphors in my own thinking, I've taken formal courses and done research under AI-CogSci headings, even tried programming a few simple analogy-formers way back when, and I know that simulation games can be worthwhile in many fields — so I guess I've been a bit slow to figure out where the cloven-hoofed fly in the ointment is hiding its ugly head.

Maybe it's time for another close and searching look.

Jon Awbrey

[Somey]

I've always relied a lot on analogies and metaphors in my own thinking, I've taken formal courses and done research under AI-CogSci headings, even tried programming a few simple analogy-formers way back when, and I know that simulation games can be worthwhile in many fields — so I guess I've been a bit slow to figure out where the cloven-hoofed fly in the ointment is hiding its ugly head.

I suppose the most obvious aspect of this is simply that word-designations appeal to the self-glorification impulse more than an impersonal numeric designation, even if the effect on others is the same. IOW, if you've just signed up and you're the sort who's intimidated by self-appointed authority figures anyway, you're probably going to be just as intimidated by a "Level 7" as you would be by a "Checkuser," maybe even more so - but if you're the Checkuser, you'd rather have that word associated with your role than merely "Level 7." (I realize that these designations are functional and based on specifc rights assignments which aren't necessarily hierarchical; I'm just making an abstract point here.)

This goes all the way back to early "consumer" role-playing games, like the original Dungeons and Dragons, in which characters would get both level-numbers and (arguably) analogous word-designations as they gained "experience points" (i.e., kills and "treasure") and moved up the ladder. Presumably the creators of D&D looked at their thesaurus, found multiple synonyms for the words "wizard," "warrior," and "cleric," and arbitrarily ranked each synonym in terms of how experienced (or "powerful") a person would have to be to attain that designation. Thus they created a whole generation of geeky teenagers who gradually became convinced that a "sorcerer" is more powerful than a "magician," or that a "myrmidon" must work hard to someday become a "berserker," and so on. It's a bit of a stretch, but this may have led to a tendency to rank real-world occupational designations in general, in ways that aren't particularly logical or socially beneficial.

Regardless, in nearly all such RPG schemes the designations are made for the benefit of the designee, not others who have to deal with the designee in some way. It's a feature of RPG's that's designed to keep players in the game, essentially by helping them stroke their own egos.

[Jon Awbrey]

Those are good observations, but I don't expect mainscream Wikipediots will ever own up to the make-believe character of the game they're playing. Pretending that a pretend-encyclopedia is a real encyclopedia involves pretending that pretend-editors are real editors — so I don't see an end to their pretends on that score — but what compels them to pretend that a pretend-community is a real community, since a non-trivial notion of genuine community is not implied by the nature of a publishing enterprise?

And remember that I raised these issues at the upstarting of Citizendium, where I once had hopes of a project informed by the lessons of Wikipedia's mistakes, and where there was supposed to be a practice of relating internal properties and imputations to external qualities and reputations. But even there the compulsion to specious role-playing was just too great.

I think this overwhelming desire to hide or lose oneself in make-believe calls for further explanation.

Jon Awbrey

[Moulton]

I think this overwhelming desire to hide or lose oneself in make-believe calls for further explanation.

Um, because the real world sucks?

[CharlotteWebb]

I was trying to make the point that the use of a word like “constable” to describe a a website moderator was not a harmless metaphor, but invokes the role-playing fantasy of a delusively metaphorical pseudo-community.

Okay. Suppose you choose happier, more positive terms to describe these individuals. Would they not develop a negative connotation among participants, given enough time and emphasis? Do the words redefine the people or do the people redefine the words? It may work both ways.

As the gap widens between the way things are and the way they should be, one must decide which path the vocabulary should follow, whether to recite the same idealistic double-speak, hoping the inner hypocrisy will somehow reform itself and come to resemble the intended spec... or to raise awareness using revised and descriptive language, demanding rebellion against a failing system.

I figure the latter strategy is generally more effective.

[Jon Awbrey]

The first hints of a theory of analogy are already present in the Organon of Aristotle, where analogies are based on properties that analogical subjects hold in common, the more shared properties the better the analogy.

I know people who are qualified to call themselves administrators and editors in the real world, some of them are even friends of mine — WP:“Administrators” and WP:“Editors”, on the whole, have so few properties in common with their real world namesakes as to make the comparison utterly ridiculous.

Everyone knows this —

So why do some people insist on repeating the joke with their best attempt at a straight face?

Jon Awbrey

[Jon Awbrey]

Let me just add Sue Gardner's latest absurdities to the long list of loony tunes that arise from confusing a publishing enterprise with a social movement.

Jon