With the proliferation of community web spaces such as wikis, blogs, forums, and commenting systems comes worries of vandalism. A recent article by Dan Gillmor, Remembering the People Who Give Back to the Net, and All of Us, discusses the vandlism of his WordPirates site. The vandals showed Dan the "downside of the Net" while the mass of people who helped restore the site to its intended state showed Dan the "profound upside".
One of the most interesting things about open sites is that they are forced to become what the net wants them to be. Who's good and who's bad (vandals vs maintainers) is really a popularity contest. Wikipedia persists because there are a lot of people who like to work and build Wikipedia. The BitTorrentFAQ wiki node often appears vandalized because there isn't a strong community behind the wiki (and possibly because people don't know how to easily fix it). Friendster thrives with fakesters because there is a strong community of fakesters (even a manifesto) and people who want to connect to fakesters.
The net builds what it wants. If there is a stronger force that doesn't want a site the way it is and the force works to take the site down, it will go down. Is this wrong? I don't think so. I think anyone should be able to have an open site but they will have to build community if they want it to be successful and protected. Foreign policy sans WOMD?
Posted by brainsik at 02.10.03 05:17I agreed with the author up until this point:
"The net builds what it wants. If there is a stronger force that doesn't want a site the way it is and the force works to take the site down, it will go down. Is this wrong? I don't think so."
The creation and destruction cycle which you allude to only works well where ther is certain amount of 'protectionism' underlying the community. Should I partake in 'open' forums - yet have a dissenting opinion, isn't not thatould my voice will be drowned out, but it will be lost, erased, written over. You don't have to listen to me and think 'Wow, that girl's nuts!', because somebody came along afterwards and wiped my comments from the history books.
If I find myself completely dismissed by this hypothetical community, I could always head out into the woods and create my own. However, communities are also at their most fragile stages (and most vunerable) when they are small or developing.
Being silenced by a populist opinion, isn't really the ideals of most healthy physical communities, so why should you justify it on the net?
As for WOMD, I think your notion of community is a little bit insulated compared to ethnic groups of the mid. east. After all, you believe in popular opinion. History is riddled with examples where that has gone astray...
Posted by: the Angry Bear at 08.10.03 22:30I agre with this Angry Bear's point about minority opions. I was trubbled by the same thing she is but could not express why. I think thoe your point dose have marett when put in the right context. When you consider a community resorce as a hole I think that if the community is disinstread then it is ok if it dies. I have been making this clame about community wireless networks for a wile, if people are unwilling to put the effort in to mantaining them then it is right that thay die. There can be not community network with out a community. This applys to what you sead but still Angrey Bear's point should still be considered; what if a minority community is being opressed. We don't put up with that in meet space.
Posted by: Jonathan at 10.10.03 10:27