My adviser Coye Cheshire, and I have just had a paper published in the latest issue of the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. It’s titled The Social Psychological Effects of Feedback on the Production of Internet Information Pools and it’s freely available here.

I’m excited because this is the work that set me down the research path that I’m currently on, and that will lead to my dissertation research (and beyond). It’s based on research I did while I was working on Mycroft, which then became a relatively short-lived startup company called inChorus.

The Economist recently reported the results of Radiohead’s bold experiment in giving their new album away for free on the internet. It turns out 60% of people paid nothing for the album - unsurprising if you believe that a rational, self-interested individual would not pay for something he could get for free (as many economists do, for example). And yet, 40% of people paid something for the album, quite a few of them more than they would have paid if they’d been able to download the album from iTunes or Amazon. Who are these people?

One window into that question might be opened by looking at the pricing data longitudinally. A few weeks after the album was released, I remember reading that the number of free-riders was only about 30%, though I can’t remember the source. But still, it puts the question out there: how did the distribution of prices change over time?

My completely unsupported guess is that the vast majority of the high outliers came right away - motivated fans, ideological supporters of new music models, enemies of the big record companies. Even if we take the narrow view of pure rationalism, we can call these people ‘rational zealots’ - we must factor the belief and promotion of a valuable cause into the price they were willing to pay. I’d also guess that the percentage of non-payers increased dramatically as time went on, and that these days most people download the album for free. Who’s got the data for us to check?! Any way you slice it, this is a cool experiment.

Why do I keep writing about Wikipedia? Mostly it’s because Wikipedia is emblematic of the sorts of online collective action that I study. And I just love that all their dirty laundry is falling out. Actually, I don’t intend that to be mean - more that Wikipedia has, up until now, been driven by a sort of utopian ideal that masks a lot of the turbulence and reality under the surface. And we shouldn’t be surprised - this is what happens when people try to cooperate, online or not. It an everyday part of social systems.

Anyway, The Register is reporting on a new scandal in which - shocklingly - it turns out that Wikipedia is not as open and democratic as everyone thought - or hoped. Turns out a select group of upper-level administrators have been using private mailing lists to coordinate responses (read: attacks) on users they think are trying to undermine their power, among other things. My reaction is similar to when I hear about a White House scandal - it’s good to get a tiny window into the machinations of people in power, but we don’t even know the half of it.

An interesting question is, would Wikipedia be able to survive without the ‘rings of hegemony‘ that have now apparently sprung up? Would the challenges of coordinating the efforts of millions towards a stated goal (uber-open-online encyclopedia) overwhelm any truly democratic, egalitarian (dare I say socialist?) efforts? I have opinions, of course, but if anyone is out there, I’m interested in yours.

I think this recent clash between Wikipedia editors and webcomic creators is just the tip of the iceberg - we’re going to see more frequent and intense clashes in the near future. Read the short article linked above to get the gist, but basically: a few Wikipedia users (one in particular) went around deleting many pages related to webcomics, saying they did not meet Wikipedia’s notability guidelines. The webcomics community is angry, refusing to help with Wikipedia’s fundraising efforts, trying to raise the profile of the issue.

As an observer, I love that this battle is happening. On the one hand we have editors who feel that it’s their duty to police the boundaries of Wikipedia, and delete content they feel does not meet the notability guideline. On the other we have a community of content producers who, irrespective of any other measure of notability or popularity, perceive the intentional deletion of articles about their webcomics as a slight.

And rightly so. It is a slight. Someone with more power than most - in this case the user Dragonfiend - has applied an arbitrary interpretation of the notability guideline. Editors do this all the time, right? Well, it wouldn’t be so problematic in this case except for two factors - and these are two fascinating factors that I think will continue to haunt and define Wikipedia in the years to come.

First, Wikipedia is wrestling with its openness as it grows. It wants to be democratic - indeed it has built its brand upon it. It’s “the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit”. (Actually, right now that slogan strikes me as a little duplicitous. *Almost* anyone can edit, and someone may end up denying your edits in the end.) And yet the challenges of immense popularity have made people like Dragonfiend necessary. As the size of the encyclopedia increases, the problems of order and coordination also increasing. In Wikipedia’s case this seems to have required increased activity by self-appointed editors who wield the power of interpreting Wikipedia’s policies as they see fit. Check out, for example, this recent paper that documents the increasing use of Wikipedia’s Talk pages to handle emerging problems of coordination. The arbitrariness of these interpretations, as well as the mere existence of people who, like judges and editors, can single-handedly influence the system, is clashing with Wikipedia’s democratic, open, community-based ideals.

None of this would be as big a problem as it has been, however, if it weren’t for the second factor I want to mention. This debate is a lens that magnifies the social and cultural position of prestige and authority that Wikipedia has come to occupy among certain stakeholders. The webcomics community, for example, probably wouldn’t be so upset if their articles were not included in the latest edition of Britannica. That encyclopedia just has a different position as a sociocultural icon. Similarly, many (but not all) chemists, philosophers, and literature critics (and the like) might not be as upset if they were left out of Wikipedia (and indeed they are under-represented there), but would be aghast at being left out of Britannica.

To generalize (in a slightly unfair way): In 2007 the web is a platform for community to coalesce around their hobbies and interests, to push across geographic boundaries and form dense networks of content creation and sharing. For these sorts of web-enabled, tech-savvy folks, Wikipedia was supposed to be a safe haven where they could participate and be included on the same footing as everyone else. After all, these were the exact people who embraced the new model that Wikipedia represented when it was just taking off. And now that they’re being pushed to the fringes as Wikipedia is forced (or chooses) to take on the character of a traditional edited publication, they’re pissed. Who can blame them?

Via TechCrunch, I read about a fascinating piece of work by Robert Rohde that seems to suggest that Wikipedia’s astonishing rate of growth over the last few years is slowing down a bit. Check out this page, complete with interesting info. graphics like the one below.

Reading through the comments about this both on the Wikipedia talk pages and WikiEN-l archive is pretty revealing. Many people are extremely passionate about Wikipedia and unwilling to accept the validity of any argument that is seen to besmirch its good name. That leads to a lot of silly counter-arguments based on rhetoric and ideology rather than data.

The interesting thing is that I wouldn’t jump to the conclusion that the slowdown, if it really does exist, is actually a bad thing for Wikipedia. It’s very hard to interpret statistical analyses of logfiles. For instance, Rohde’s analysis seems to show that overall edits are down slightly, and that a higher percentage of edits are reverts of earlier versions. Without knowing something more about the qualitative nature of these edits, it’s hard to assume this is some kind of ‘Mid-Life Crisis’ slowdown as TechCrunch suggests. This could be a sign of maturity - more well-reasoned edits overall, perhaps. Or it could be a sign of change in the nature of contributions (and contributors). Wikipedia may be attracting a large proportion of users who make fewer, more substantive edits rather than many tiny corrections. We just don’t know.

Fantastic food for thought, though.

I recently found this commentary by Jason Calcanis on what he calls ‘Wikipedia’s Technological Obscurification‘. Basically, Jason argues that there are three primary factors that keep many folks from contributing to Wikipedia:

1. The lack of a WYSIWYG editor (what you see is what you get)
2. The user of discussion pages that are hard to understand
3. The use of IRC for many of the meta-discussions about how Wikipedia is run

Jason quite rightly points out that these are not intentional mechanisms for blocking participation, and neither are they necessarily a bad thing. He comes down with the point that these conditions are remnants of old technologies, and that Wikipedia has lacked the resources to move to more modern ones. I don’t buy this last argument, and I want to reframe the question a bit.

First, I think this example shows us that although Wikipedia’s rhetoric has been all about openness, in practice it doesn’t really get there. My adviser Coye Cheshire often points out that even the most open of public goods on the internet end up enacting what he calls ‘rings of hegemony’. In other words, we can think of the openness as starting only once we get to a certain point on the totem pole. Above that, there are still heirarchies of power that grow out of the need to do things like make rules, pay bills, and manage servers. I don’t think this is a knock against Wikipedia at all. It’s just a reality check.

Second, I take a completely different view from Jason about why these technologies persist. A lack of resources may be a part of it, but more important is the fact that Wikipedia is a culture with entrenched practices. Its core contributors apparently ascribe some meaning and value to technologies like Wiki markup and IRC that help them persist even when they become outmoded. This reminds is that many of these open projects are driven by a small group of zealots, even when the number of contributors overall gets very large.

Finally, Coye and I have recently written an article (forthcoming) which makes the point that online public goods system may tend to move from less order to more order over time and as they get larger. We define order as the degree to which the process by which the public good is produced and the product which constitutes it are clearly defined. Certainly wiki markup and IRC present a barrier to entry (which may or may not be intentional), but we can also think of stubbornly adhering to older technologies as one way of imposing order. By doing nothing, they essentially set up a structured process that is controlled by access to certain skills. Another way to impose order, of course, is to create new technologies and hierarchies (which they are also doing).

Think about it this way: why does Congress continue to adhere to a set of highly complex and arcane rules and procedures? Because they’re necessary? Probably not. I’d argue it’s more because the fact that they’re so hard to understand gives a measure of power to more experienced lawmakers, thereby implying an order to the body. Imposing new rules to provide order would work too, but it would not necessarily privilege older lawmakers.