Social Software

[trochee]

Reading Perlmonks today, I found an interesting recent post on "Why does Perlmonks work?".

A Group is its Own Worst Enemy, to which this post refers, is an interesting discussion of what criteria make social software ("groupware") work.

Among other items, he identifies three key "group" behaviors that he alleges tend to scuttle group alignment with what might actually be their original goals (he admits he cribbed this from a psychologist):

• "Sex talk"
• "The identification and vilification of common enemies"
• "Religious veneration"

He suggests that for groups to stay on track, they need structure, but he explores what kinds of structure might be useful. There is an edificational example of "Communitree" which perhaps bears lessons for the Independent Media Centers:

Communitree was founded on the principles of open access and free dialogue. ... the notion was, effectively, throw off structure and new and beautiful patterns will arise.

And, indeed, as anyone who has put discussion software into groups that were previously disconnected has seen, that does happen. ...
And then, as time sets in, difficulties emerge. In this case, one of the difficulties was occasioned by the fact that one of the institutions that got hold of some modems was a high school. And who, in 1978, was hanging out in the room with the computer and the modems in it, but the boys of that high school. ... They were interested in fart jokes. They were interested in salacious talk. They were interested in running amok and posting four-letter words and nyah-nyah-nyah, all over the bulletin board.

And the adults who had set up Communitree were horrified, and overrun by these students. The place that was founded on open access had too much open access, too much openness. They couldn't defend themselves against their own users. The place that was founded on free speech had too much freedom. They had no way of saying "No, that's not the kind of free speech we meant."

But that was a requirement. In order to defend themselves against being overrun, that was something that they needed to have that they didn't have, and as a result, they simply shut the site down. Now you could ask whether or not the founders' inability to defend themselves from this onslaught, from being overrun, was a technical or a social problem.

LiveJournal is mentioned, albeit briefly, as are several other "new" media. I am not quite sure what to make of this article; on the one hand it has some useful insights into groups, but on the other hand it has a somewhat cynical and snarky attitude towards idealism. But then, this is New Media Criticism...