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_ Meta Discussion _ Unintended Consequences Of The Community Metaphor
Posted by: Jonny Cache
This was the title of a discussion point that I tried to raise with Larry Sanger and the Citizendians back in the days when their neverending Constitutional Convention was just a toddler in short pants.
But the issue is a perennial one in this Brave Nøøb World of the Wikisphere, and it has flared up once again with the advent of a number of new-fanged lawgifts that those geeks in the Woolen Hearse known as Wikipedia have come abearing.
So I think the time has come to air a mix of old and new tunes on this old song and dance routine.
Jonny 
Posted by: Jonny Cache
There are times when it's tough to keep up with the rush of ongoing developments, revolting or otherwise, and I'm already way beehind the buzziness of WP:BEES and WR:BEES both.
Plus, the birds in the yard are bitchin at me to clean out and restock their feeders, and this time o'year the birds have priority over the bees.
So before I buzz off — a con∑mation devoutly 2b wished by ∑ of you, I'm sure — just let me jot down a couple of notes to myself as memos for the evening's diversion or the morrow's reflection.
- Wikipedia's New Hanging Tree For The ∑mary Lynching Of Alleged Sockpuppets.
- Wikipedia Review's Latest Relapse To The Ills That Wikipediot Φlesh Is Heir To.
Posted by: Jonny Cache
I'm going to extract a few posts from the tarpit that strike me as illustrating the theme of this thread and try to arrange them in a more coherent fashion for the sake of a more focused discussion than I'm guessing they will ever get there, with everyone choking on all those feathers flying about.
Jonny
Art Of The Dithyramb
QUOTE(Moulton @ Thu 1st November 2007, 7:56am) 
Speaking of http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/skepticism/ and http://www.chrisxperience.com/2007/10/wikipedia-review-rx-healthy-dose-of.html, (not to be confused with http://www.google.com/search?q=Narcissistic+Wounding and http://www.google.com/search?q=Inverse+Narcissism), methinks it's time to craft an essay on Post-Dramatic Stress Disorder (PDSD).
Of all the stressful dramas one can be pitched into, it occurs to me that the Middle School staple of ridicule and narcissistic wounding associated with being the star of a classic Hero-Goat Drama is hard to beat. This is especially so if one lacks the musical talent to compose and perform a sufficiently cathartic post-apocalyptic dithyramb.
Perhaps we should hold therapeutic workshops in the http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Moulton&oldid=165096240#Inherit_the_Windmills.
QUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Thu 1st November 2007, 9:04am)
Mr. Dythers, he rambled and rambled and rambled on
Dagwood? He kept luckin on ways to keep on truckin
Bumblin instead of routing every bee-hive and bush
Till one fine day the burning bush dropped the Bimb
QUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Mon 5th November 2007, 12:36am)
After 3 or 4 readings I'm still not exactly sure what Moulton is saying about the Bumps And Bruises Of Self-Esteem (BABOSE), but what it brings to mind in a free associative sort of way is a theme that links up, curiously enough, with the dynamics of fascism. I suppose I'm thinking of the wounds to class or collective pride that issue in many of history's most devasting wars. That element of wounded pride is no doubt a human universal, but I think I detect a specific isotope of this element that is tantamount to the "tribal face" or maybe the "tribal in yer face" of the Wikipediot character.
Eppur Si Muove : Neutralism, Objectivism, Pluralism
QUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Sun 4th November 2007, 2:20am)
Each of us knows what person¹ and person² and person³ and so on thinks about this, that, and the other think, at least if it's on a subject that we care enough to read the comments on. There is no We The People in this Forum to say what They think about this, that, and the other think. So you have to rest content with saying what You think about each think that comes along.
Tragedy Of The Tarpit (TOTT)
QUOTE(Moulton @ Sun 4th November 2007, 5:51am)
Harrumph! Uffda! Zounds!
I woke up at 5AM this morning, only to discover it was actually 4AM, and so I had an extra hour to kill, listening to my least favorite overnight music genre on WBUR, and thinking about an essay I was planning to write, once my morning cuppa cawfee kicked in.
The essay idea was sparked by the confluence of three or four instances of a generic recurring problem, of which this thread reveals an unexpected additional instance.
There is a phenomenon known as http://www.google.com/search?q=Tragedy+Commons+Garrett+Hardin that arises now and then in an inadequately regulated system.
In the Tragedy of the Commons, there appears some kind of unsustainable practice which, if perpetuated and increased in frequency of occurrence, threatens to corrode, deplete, usurp, corrupt, and consume the system or its core resources.
The other instances of this phenomenon that I had on my mind as I arose in the predawn darkness this morning were carbon emissions from increased burning of fossil fuels, naked short-selling in the securities markets, and excessive politicking among Wikipedians.
In the latter case, and now here on Wikipedia Review, the insidious practice of narcissistic wounding has emerged as possibly the most ominous generative factor in the dynamic that Garret Hardin characterized in The Tragedy of the Commons. It's a corrosive cancer on most human systems, which tend to be susceptible to a spiral descent into the recursion of reciprocal narcissistic wounding.
I would prefer to see a throttling back of the practice of narcissistic wounding throughout our culture, as I consider it an irresponsible practice that is likely to subject almost any human system to becoming ensnared in the Tragedy of the Unmanaged Commons.
Echoes Of Narcissism (EON)
QUOTE(Moulton @ Sun 4th November 2007, 8:58am)
Like-minded souls have wanted narcissistic wounding to abate since the dawn of civilization.
Perhaps the oldest and most insidious example of narcissistic wounding is the practice of scapegoating (shaming and blaming) which the Sumerians and Babylonians introduced into the culture some 4000 years ago. Moses and Aaron sought to supplant that corrosive practice when they devised the http://moultonlava.blogspot.com/2005/10/some-thoughts-on-yom-kippur.html. The Passion Story of the New Testament was the second major historical attempt at resolving this persistent and unbecoming practice of demonizing, stigmatizing, and scapegoating the most convenient blameworthy character at unwashed hand.
These are modern times, and those biblical-era solutions have largely fallen by the wayside.
Today, we are obliged to adopt more creative ways to http://underground.musenet.org:8080/utnebury/phreak.html the http://moultonlava.blogspot.com/2007/10/alexithymia-and-acedia.html of dissing and pissing.
Me, I'm partial to recovering from rejection with http://underground.musenet.org:8080/utnebury/numa.numa.html or http://ultra.musenet.org:8020/media/slouching.html.
Scape-Bees
QUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Sun 4th November 2007, 3:24pm)
The bee-knighted idea that a hive can resolve a dispute by e-lecting a bee to e-ject from the hive is why we are here.
It's a bee-brained idea.
QUOTE(Moulton @ Sun 4th November 2007, 3:30pm)
Wikipedia gets away with ejecting outliers on both ends of the normal distribution because on the one side, no one loves a crackpot, and on the other side, no one loves an iconoclast.
Which, I suppose, is why Wikipedia shoots itself in the foot when it comes to contemplating potentially beneficial innovations.
Wikipedia tends to regress to the mediocre.
QUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Sun 4th November 2007, 7:54pm)
A serious investigation of this question — if there is such a thing as a serious thread in the TP&FB — would have to branch out as follows:
- Do all of the subspaces of interest to us support unimodal population densities? To put it picaresquely — Who would these fardels bear, http://www.camelphotos.com/camel_breeds.html, and do you really think there is nothing but Dromedaries in all this wondrous wide world of ours?
- Not bluddy likely, but some humps are clearly a One not a Many. How goes it with those?
- Does every rider of the 1-humped camel chop off its head and its tail over time, leading to a narrow-minded mediocracy?
- Or do some riders burn their camels in the middle, turning both ends against the middle until nothing but a polarized caravan remains?
Posted by: Yehudi
Excuse my ignorance, but if they're in the tarpit aren't they supposed to stay there?
Posted by: Moulton
QUOTE(Yehudi @ Mon 5th November 2007, 4:46am)
Excuse my ignorance, but if they're in the tarpit aren't they supposed to stay there?
Sometimes a compassionate soul tosses a lifeline into the tarpit.
Usually the tarpit sucks in the compassionate soul, lifeline and all.
Posted by: Jonny Cache
QUOTE(Yehudi @ Mon 5th November 2007, 5:46am)
Excuse my ignorance, but if they're in the tarpit aren't they supposed to stay there?
No, you're confusing that with Las Vegas.
Jonny
Posted by: Poetlister
QUOTE(Yehudi @ Mon 5th November 2007, 9:46am)
Excuse my ignorance, but if they're in the tarpit aren't they supposed to stay there?
They are indeed, Jonny. I may have to tarpit threads where this sort of thing is done - sorry, I don't like being brutal or anything.
Posted by: Jonny Cache
QUOTE(Poetlister @ Mon 5th November 2007, 10:42am)
QUOTE(Yehudi @ Mon 5th November 2007, 9:46am)
Excuse my ignorance, but if they're in the tarpit aren't they supposed to stay there?
They are indeed, Jonny. I may have to tarpit threads where this sort of thing is done — sorry, I don't like being brutal or anything.
That's redickulous.
I can certainly copy my own stuff out of the tarpit if I wish.
If Moulton Rouge objects to my elevating his very elevated remarks out of La Brea, then he can do that, and I will delete them ¼with.
Jonny
Posted by: Poetlister
QUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Mon 5th November 2007, 2:56pm)
¼with.
For the benefit of English speakers, that's pronounced fourth-with, not quarter-with.
Posted by: Jonny Cache
For those who are keeping score:
- On Topic — 3
- Off Topic — 6
Taking A Little DejaVooey Brake …
Jonny
Posted by: Moulton
Cream rises to the top and sludge sinks to the bottom.
Jonny has pretty good instincts about what is meaningful, even when it's abstract and metaphorical.
Our challenge is finding a way to reduce those memes to a common denominator that emerges from the tar pit like a lotus blossom in the swamp.
If we do this right, we end up with some scrumptious jujubes.
Posted by: Castle Rock
QUOTE(Moulton @ Mon 5th November 2007, 5:46pm)
Cream rises to the top and sludge sinks to the bottom.
No, the opposite is usually true both in the real world and especially Wikipedia. Just like a toilet, the turds float to the top.
Posted by: Piperdown
QUOTE(Castle Rock @ Tue 6th November 2007, 1:51am)
QUOTE(Moulton @ Mon 5th November 2007, 5:46pm)
Cream rises to the top and sludge sinks to the bottom.
No, the opposite is usually true both in the real world and especially Wikipedia. Just like a toilet, the turds float to the top.
Castle Rock? As in movie productions?
As far as Wikipedia Promotion and Advancement goes, it's been tried and true that it's the band of ruthless thugs and smart sociopaths that rises to the top during chaos in national order.
WP is in its 1926-1945 era. Is this the Bier Hall Putz phase? There are lot of putzes at WP jumping up on tables and declaring heil to the unquestionable leader.
Fascism is so cute when it's young!
P.S. I fear I'm morphing into Jonny Cacheism. Jonny, help me man, I'm devolving! I'll just blame it, like a fratboy sneaking a Sunday morning heifer out the back door, on the wine later.
Posted by: Nathan
That's probably where he got it from, but Castle Rock is MichaelLinnear, aka ED troll but surprisingly non-trollish WR'er.
(He should take that as a compliment from me, that's as good of a compliment as he's going to get)
Posted by: Moulton
Not to spoil the frivolities here, but I have another variation on a dull theme for Jonny to fold into the sludge fudge batter bowl...
http://underground.musenet.org:8080/orenda/AAAI-2002.html
Here's a quote...
It has been our experience that communities are successful when they are founded on a mutually understood and agreed upon Social Contract. Note that it is not possible to have an imposed Social Contract; a Social Contract can only exist if all participants voluntarily agree to it. For this reason Social Contract communities tend to small private communities. Large public communities are not amenable to the Social Contract model. Large public communities with an open-door policy tend to run toward ill-mannered political factionalism. These communities do not support horizontal dialogue; they tend to be dominated by a small number of outspoken partisans who collectively construct, what we charitably refer to as a 'lunatic drama' characterized by mutual disrespect. Such communities can be long lasting and even entertaining but they rarely foster insight, problem solving or personal growth. By contrast the small Social Contract communities can carry their participants along collaborative and profound transformational journeys.
Posted by: Jonny Cache
QUOTE(Moulton @ Mon 5th November 2007, 10:21pm)
Not to spoil the frivolities here, but I have another variation on a dull theme for Jonny to fold into the sludge fudge batter bowl …
http://underground.musenet.org:8080/orenda/AAAI-2002.html
Here's a quote …
QUOTE
It has been our experience that communities are successful when they are founded on a mutually understood and agreed upon Social Contract. Note that it is not possible to have an imposed Social Contract; a Social Contract can only exist if all participants voluntarily agree to it. For this reason Social Contract communities tend to small private communities. Large public communities are not amenable to the Social Contract model. Large public communities with an open-door policy tend to run toward ill-mannered political factionalism. These communities do not support horizontal dialogue; they tend to be dominated by a small number of outspoken partisans who collectively construct, what we charitably refer to as a 'lunatic drama' characterized by mutual disrespect. Such communities can be long lasting and even entertaining but they rarely foster insight, problem solving or personal growth. By contrast the small Social Contract communities can carry their participants along collaborative and profound transformational journeys.
I get it that some people are out there on the Internet looking for a long lost sense of community, or trying to get laid in some other way, but most folks I know have all they can do keeping up with the demands of the communities that they already have. What these latter sorts of folk were once naive enough to believe is that yet another medium of communication would help them out with the slate of community duties that they already had.
But no-o-o-o-oh, there is abroad in the Web this rampant Lawgivers Disease that has given us nothing but one damn Banhammurabi after another …
Jon Awbrey
Posted by: Moulton
It will be interesting and/or tragic to see if WR falls prey to the lividity of the Lawgivers Disease, or if it ascends to a more enlightened and evolved model of self-regulation.
Posted by: Jonny Cache
QUOTE(Moulton @ Sun 25th November 2007, 4:36pm)
It will be interesting and/or tragic to see if WR falls prey to the lividity of the Lawgivers Disease, or if it ascends to a more enlightened and evolved model of self-regulation.
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
Posted by: Moulton
Not everything is a system, either.
But there is something satisfying about systems which feature a worthwhile emergent property that appears as a result of an otherwise haphazard collection of elements operating together as a functioning system.
Posted by: Jonny Cache
QUOTE(Moulton @ Sun 25th November 2007, 4:59pm)
Not everything is a system, either.
But there is something satisfying about systems which feature a worthwhile emergent property that appears as a result of an otherwise haphazard collection of elements operating together as a functioning system.
Put down the Bauder —
Step away from the ArbCom —
Jonny
Posted by: GlassBeadGame
QUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Sun 25th November 2007, 3:50pm)
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.
Posted by: Jonny Cache
QUOTE(GlassBeadGame @ Sun 25th November 2007, 9:53pm)
QUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Sun 25th November 2007, 3:50pm)
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
Posted by: Moulton
I thought Fred Bauder was an ex-lawyer, not a systems thinker.
Posted by: 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 
Posted by: Jon Awbrey
QUOTE
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.
http://forum.citizendium.org/index.php/topic,14.0.html
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
Posted by: Somey
QUOTE(Jon Awbrey @ Tue 6th July 2010, 11:48am)
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.
Posted by: Jon Awbrey
QUOTE(Somey @ Tue 6th July 2010, 1:04pm)
QUOTE(Jon Awbrey @ Tue 6th July 2010, 11:48am)
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
Posted by: Somey
QUOTE(Jon Awbrey @ Tue 6th July 2010, 12:18pm)
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.
Posted by: 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
Posted by: Moulton
QUOTE(Jon Awbrey @ Tue 6th July 2010, 2:30pm)
I think this overwhelming desire to hide or lose oneself in make-believe calls for further explanation.
Um, because the real world sucks?
Posted by: CharlotteWebb
QUOTE(Jon Awbrey @ Tue 6th July 2010, 4:48pm)
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.
Posted by: 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:“Editorsâ€, 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
Posted by: Jon Awbrey
Let me just add Sue Gardner's http://suegardner.org/2010/08/02/how-to-help-wikipedia-and-how-to-hurt-it/ to the long list of loony tunes that arise from confusing a publishing enterprise with a social movement.
Jon