Paper: Kollock, The Economies of Online Cooperation: Gifts and Public Goods in Cyberspace
Discussion leader: Anamary Leal
Summary
This paper discusses features about online internet communities that support cooperation and gift giving (of sometimes very expensive things like hundred-dollar consultations). The authors compare gift and commodity economies; Getting a commodity does not obligate you to get another. Getting a gift means you get the feeling to reciprocate. Gifts at “the thing that so-n-so gave me”, and commodities are “a” thing. In the internet, If you give the gift of free advice, there is no feeling of reciprocation. The gift is given to some huge group. But, there may be a sense of reciprocity within the group.
Online goods are a public good that is indivisible (online person viewing an answer does not hinder another), non-excludable (can’t exclude others from the good), and can be duplicated. Everyone benefits, but it doesn’t mean that it will happen. And, the temptation for online users to not contribute much and still get a ton of benefits, known as free-ride, arises. Only one person needs to pay the cost by contributing (known as the privileged group) to get the most benefit. How do you motivate people to produce the good and to coordinate with others?
One reason is anticipated reciprocity, which is reciprocity from the group itself for help in the future. A good contributor to a forum may feel entitled to receive help from the forum in the future. One study found that they indeed get help more quickly than others. Another is maintaining a reputation online (which also implies that there is an fixed identify set to a contribution to keep track of their contributions.) Self-efficacy is also a well-studied motivator, and the logic is that one will help the group to help make their own impact seem wider.
The paper discusses two case studies in online cooperation. The first is making Linux, and while it had many markings to fail, it succeeded due to one person doing a large amount of the work up front to get it usable, and making it compelling to contributors. Programmers contributed drivers to get Linux to work on their devices.
The second is connecting elementary schools to internet access by organizing an online rally to organize, coordinate volunteers, and accomplish the task in one day. Additionally, a committee also did much of the work in having face-to-face meetings with school officials and such. The online system allowed for people to sign up based on schools’ needs.
The authors caution that while online communities can rally together to do great things, that interest, not necessarily importance, help rally people. A massive plumbing repair job instead of wiring to the internet may be less successful of a job than the massive wiring internet job. Additionally, many digital goods are produced and managed by a small group or even one person, even if initially.
Reflection:
The paper has a few hints of its age, such as stressing the benefits of instantly communicating online compared to doing a mail, TV or newspaper campaign. But, this paper remains to be compelling to start outlining the features of how these communities interact (ongoing interaction, identity persistence, and knowledge of prior interactions.)
In discussing motivation, it was an interesting choice to first discuss motivation without altruism or group attachment to the equation, assuming that everyone is in it for themselves, and then ease into more altruistic motivations like group needs. To keep the discussion focused, it was a good idea. But, while the paper mentioned that it was rare, I wonder how much altruism, group need, or attachment impact how much they contribute.
The authors stress that many of these efforts are started with a small group or one person. In the Linux example, Linus put a an enormous amount of work to get Linux to a usable state, and then released it for programmers contributed and checked themselves on the contributions. There was no SVN, GIT or code control system back then to help support this (or at least, from what I checked.) I can only imagine how hard it was to keep and manage the code repository back then.
Additionally, how big was the size of the core committee that managed the NetDay? It moved 20,000 volunteers, but how many people did the online site, held the face-to-face meetings? I wouldn’t be surprised if it was one or a handful of people who met regularly and coordinated. I also surmise that this project took a large chunk of their time, compared to the regular volunteer who spent a day wiring.
Fast-forward until now, we now have systems to facilitate such endeavors much easier. Yet, I do not see multiple reasonable OS’s or multiple reasonable alternatives to common software. Most commonly used software, used by the majority that I have seen (not just technologists) is a result of a company of either made by Apple, Microsoft or Google. I wonder how much could quality still remain to be a factor. One would think that the more early crowdsourcing efforts would have the most maturity and be the most successful now, instead of potentially less interesting efforts like ones on Amazon Turk.
Discussion:
- The discussion of reciprocity is set in terms of accountability and credit, in 1999. What kinds of mechanisms that you have seen online have tried to design to keep track of a user’s contributions to a community? How well do they work or not work?
- One would assume that the earliest crowdsourcing efforts would have the most time to mature, and be the most successful (public events to benefit others, and making software). But Turk, with it’s boring tasks, is the most successful, and may not be widely motivating nor interesting. Why are not these online communities the most successful? Are there still challenges unsolved?
- What’s the relationship between efforts doing by one individual or a group, compared to the efforts of the crowd? Torvald built an OS, and surely some core set of people met and worked on NetDay for countless hours. In my experience, the most successful massive efforts are led by a core dedicated group meeting live. In other words, how much effort does an individual or group need to put to get these online communities to successfully do these projects?
- Could these individuals, in the present time, be able to delegate out some of the core tasks(develop an OS, organize a NetDay od 20,000 volunteers) to others? If so, how so, and which parts could be crodsourced? Are there any technologies or techniques that come to mind? If not, why not?
