decentralized governance: programming and wikis.
The class will be using Scratch, a programming tool that is being released just to this class. The program is still in development (@ MIT), and will not be released until February. As the username and password were about to be told to the class, it was pointed out that the class was being filmed for broadcast on the internet – did we want to turn off the camera?
Thus followed a long discussion on whether using software that is not yet public was in the spirit of openness that the class was centered around. If you ask me, we were overthinking it. This was not some great ethical dilemma – there is utility to keeping a program secret until the bugs are worked out, this was not our program to open up, and there are some utilities to allowing some programs to be proprietary, even (although not at issue in this case) indefinitely.
However, the exercise did, as Prof. Nesson pointed out, demonstrate that the class is capable of self-governance. It also showed some of the flaws of decentralized self-governance, such as several people speaking on points that were not really at issue. For example, it took a few rounds before people pointed out that there was already strong consensus as to whether it would be proper to just disclose the password (as opposed to not using the program as a symbolic gesture).
This plays back to the idea of Wiki, where administrators (volunteers) emerge to give some guidance, but cannot enforce hard and fast rules. However, they do make strides toward achieving those things regular posters have reached consensus on. The process to reach that consensus is doubtlessly more tortured and prolonged than a simple administrative, unilateral decision made within a typical framework. There are pros and cons of each, notably those things in which decisions are needed immediately or one person needs to possess a level of expertise to decide, versus those general knowledge based decisions without immediacy which are probably more likely to arrive at the ‘right’ result due to its deliberation.
September 19th, 2006 at 7:19 pm
[...] So, for example, you are not to make an entry about your mom. She may be grand, it may be 100% true, but it doesn’t pass the notability test. It is worth noting that even this is not a rule of Wikipedia in the true sense. Jimbo Wales, founder of Wikipedia, (and fellow at the Berkman Center, which is behind the course itself) has given his official imprimatur to the notion that there are no rules etched in stone. Nonetheless, as discussed previously, there are some policies and guidelines that have gained such universal acceptance on WP that they are, for the most part, followed. [...]
September 28th, 2006 at 11:02 am
[...] The class will be using Scratch, a programming tool that is being released just to this class. The program is still in development (@ MIT), and will not be released until February. (more on that) [...]