LimitsOfDemocracyOnline

Here here.

It’s only democratic as long as you have where to go. You can argue that it’s easy to create a new “place” online to go to, but that’s not true for everyone. Thus, you have the people with power – those who know how to setup a web server, install forum, blog or wiki software, advertise them properly and, the hardest part, build community in that new space – and the peons who maybe might create a blog in a blog farm, provided the owners don’t mind. Oh, and of course a person who is banned on most forums because of being obnoxious has probably little chances of building a community – although the experience of trying may be enlightening.

This seems like self-fulfilling prophecy. Is that the purpose of it? Does this person want to kill off the network, or are they just embittered by past experience?

Is this a fair abstract summary?

1. When I see X, I know what’s gonna happen …
2. X doesn’t work, what works is Y
3. There’s only one way to save us – Y
4. Nobody will do Y.
5. Remember that doing Y is expensive and unrewarding for the people involved.
6. I’m not doing Y. I won’t do anything either way.
7. When we do X, nothing gets done.
8. I’ve been around for decades! (implication: sit around listening to me, and giving me attention, even though I won’t do anything)
9. We’re doomed!
10. People never learn except the hard way.
11. Online, X and Y are different than in MeatSpace.
12. Wealth is power.
13. People are stingy.

I don’t think there’s any way to defeat this, except perhaps to ignore it. Try ConsensusDecisionMaking instead – can it work online?

Well, I read it as “in my 20 years of experience people have tried X, people have never learnt X, people are X, and the only thing that works is X” – I think that’s a valid observation to make. Otherwise we would never learn from experience.

In fact, there’s also a valid line of thought in that democracy is complicated but necessary if you cannot walk away from it. But if you can, why bother? There’s only so much process overhead you can take because it’s so easy to switch.

I claim the question of perfection in self-government is a strawman.

I don’t understand why it should be necessary to “defeat” the observation. Proving that it cannot be generalized by doing it differently, or by providing examples where it worked, and analyzing why it worked – those seem to be valuable approaches to the statements offered.

I don’t understand how the topic of the community – blogs about people playing roleplaying games – has anything to do with the question of limits of democracy. Unless you want to claim that this community are biased in particular ways, in which case it’d be interesting to understand in which ways they differ from other communities, online or offline.

I don’t understand. I'm trying to have a conversation, here. I feel like you’re saying the above is X and therefore we should ignore it. I certainly didn’t quote it all because I felt it was to be ignored. How about adressing why the above is X and saying what you object to? I feel irritated because I feel that what is being said is ignored.

You plant insulting rhetorical questions into your answers which irritate me me even further. You didn’t mean to be rude, but you imply that people sharing the opinion presented above are old, bitter and resigned to inequity. I feel treated rudely.

You say: This observation is defeatism. How so? It is only defeatist if you assume that a democratic form of self-government is the goal, therefore speaking up against it is defeatist. That seems to precludes all conversation of the limits of democracy. End of story?

You ask: Is there something we learn? Of course – if you’re in a situation where an online community lacks self-government and you’re trying to set something up, the observation suggests that maybe you should just go out there and do it because a democratic form of government will get you nowhere. Concrete steps are actually formulated: Limit yourself to a small group of people, be repared to spend an unrewarded and considerable amount time and effort, and often money, do not expect it will always work.

If you’re planning on continuing to ignore the above, you’re of course feel free to do so. But please don't insult me by taking the time to tell me that it should be ignored without also taking the time to write a decent rebuttal.

You don’t defeat observations, you make more observations proving different points. Then you make arguments and formulate a hypothesis that is judged on elegance, falsifiability, power of prediction, and so on.

Marcus,

• You have conceded the emperical observations;
• You have proposed no counter-arguments;
• You have merely clung to “I believe in Democracy.”
  • Effectively, “Don’t you believe in Democracy?”
  • And Alex has already said, “In many situations, yes, but not this one, for reason of RightToLeave.” (Did you read it?)

These are fair moves, but they do not convince.

As for “I won’t entertain him any more” – I take this for putting hands over the ears, and saying “I’m not listening,” when the voice of experience is speaking.

Contrast Radomir, who has argued, and argued well. (It reminds me of my argument regarding WikiCanonicalization?, which itself was part of the initial split between CommunityWiki and MeatballWiki.)

Marcus, I appeal to you:

• Do keep your eye on the prize. Not your particular ideas right now, but what lives behind them.
• Recognize that will and courage are not enough. Technique must match reality, and there must also be listening.
• Keep notes. Literally, I mean: Keep a notebook.
  • And make your theories and justifications visible in your notes. Explore them, poke them, prod them.

And for heaven’s sake, don’t piss off AlexSchroeder!

Democracy, albeit expensive, gives to people who are not necessarily active, technically skilled, entrepreneurial, etc., but who are still a large part of the community involved an opportunity to speak. By taking the risk of having never-ending discussions, people with politic agendas, manipulators, trolls, etc. you get the chance to actually listen to the “peons”. They may, for example, tell you that a TechnologySolution that you are planning is not going to work for them, that dropping support for a certain (possibly broken) software will cut them off, or simply provide an insight that would be ignored by the more technical types. Sure, they can leave, but if that repeats everywhere they go to (and it may, as democracy is expensive to maintain), they will be eventually excluded from all communities that are based on that “democratic framework” known as Internet.

Now, there is also another question: why should all the members of the community be forced to pay the price of sustaining democracy, just for the sake of the least active ones. I can only say that the “masters” (skilled, technically-minded, entrepreneurial) have the ability to leave at any time and start anew.

I’m not exactly “putting my hands over my ears”, and saying “I’m not listening,” because Mr Lizard isn’t even here! Is he?

Btw - Alex, I really try to avoid rhetorical questions. Those were all genuine questions!

For all intents and purposes, I share Mr Lizards’s line of thought. It’s as if I had written it. I quoted it because I felt it was well said.

I think Radomir’s argument is well made. And I think I can find negative examples in people I met online. They did not fit into the communities I participated in, and I can’t imagine other, positive communities where they’d fit in.

In effect, they are like the loosers of a capitalist society, unable to work at our pace, unable to talk our language, the dregs of society. And the rest of society has excuses, of course. Squandered their money, dropped out of school, substance abuse, etc. But some would see those excuses as phenomena created by a society that can no longer accomodate all of its members. We just decide to pay tax to employ people to prevent the worst (social welfare and the like).

Online, such people will in fact end up “excluded from all communities”. And we haven’t built a framework where some people get paid to prevent the worst. In this, we see the most negative effects of freedom: The freedom to loose, to fail, the freedom of other people to not care.

It’s an interesting tension that I haven’t thought of, so thanks, Radomir.

People in our societies who rise to the top of authority must often seek power over others, status, and attention for themselves, and be prepared to exploit others, sometimes even through deceit. So when you mention the “dregs of society” who ‘dropped out’ I think that’s one-sided and it could be used as rhetoric for disregarding equal rights for some people.

People you call losers probably need to be involved somehow differently in our society. If we exclude people in meatspace it brutalises us, so the solution must be to direct their energy, perhaps by offering status, rewards and special luxury for people who can only be motivated that way, at the expense of everybody else. We’d still have to do extra work for them, as we do today, but at least none of them will be in positions of power.

The chore I see with RadicalInclusiveness is that it encourages the core contributors to stay online all the time. I think it might work well if we had a thriving wiki-net, where people actively revert vandalism on each other’s wikis. Is this happening already?