Just How Important was that Bill Gates Guy, Anyway?
Following up on Anthony DiPierro’s comments on my previous post, I realized that our disagreement in whether or not criticisms of crowdsourcing could be considered criticisms of open source was based on a definition. Given my own statements equating Wikipedia with open source, it seems we have a difference in distinguishing the definition of these diverse projects (Wow, that was extremely alliterative, though unintentionally so). I tend to lump them together, following Benkler’s definition of commons-based peer production, and therefore tend to believe that attributes of these varied production methods are more commonly shared. I think that anyone can quite readily criticize der Wiki (or open source) with educated and accurate points. I think the appeal of the sucker map and also the attempts at various people to throw Wiki on something and therefore expect it to blossom into a top-ten website illustrates just that point. But I also think most project originators on SourceForge have a sucker map in mind when they get started, and suffer similar results.
The real disagreement in these differing definitions comes to how individuals assume some kind of helm role, and whether or not self-selection proves to be an effective and valuable process. I’m of the opinion that all those fellows who think they can replicate Wikipedia need to reevaluate the project’s success. I think that Wikipedia emerged as a result of certain socio-cultural conditions (Literacy, familiarity with computers and the Internet, familiarity with the encyclopedic style of knowledge presentation) coupled with ease-of-access made possible by MediaWiki. Jimbo and Larry Sanger, following this argument, were just lucky. I think we try a little too hard to make rock stars out of everyone (I’d offer Richard Stallman as an example, who was by all accounts a coding whiz, but is a miserable epistemologist, despite his bombast and energy) when oftentimes the reason why a project, a company or a state succeeds are the result of external factors which made a particular product or ideology well-suited for success. The current efforts of Berners-Lee at trying to will the Semantic Web into existence is another example that comes to mind. It’s not determinist to acknowledge that many things emerge into existence, and are not created by strong-willed individuals, and woe to the individual who doesn’t realize when they’re dealing with the former and not the latter. I like to think of it as Gettysburg Syndrome, wherein Lee thought he could defeat the Union center through sheer force of will, rather than acknowledging that the time and place of the battle was against him.
But we all need to be careful not to turn this into a false binary. Sometimes a great leader does push a project into existence and sometimes a project is simply the expression of a particular zeitgeist, wherein the individuals are little more than determinist placeholders. The real question comes when we speak of specific projects and when we try to figure out which way particular mediums of production tend to lean.
I know you asked for my thoughts on the matter, but I’m not sure what to say, really. I probably agree with about 50% of what you wrote, although I’m confused about a good portion of it.
However, this discussion has caused me to reread The Cathedral and the Bazaar, and I found a section in it which summarizes exactly what I was trying to say in my original article (which was much more thought out than these blog comments have been):
“Insight comes from individuals. The most their surrounding social machinery can ever hope to do is to be responsive to breakthrough insights—to nourish and reward and rigorously test them instead of squashing them.
Some will characterize this as a romantic view, a reversion to outmoded lone-inventor stereotypes. Not so; I am not asserting that groups are incapable of developing breakthrough insights once they have been hatched; indeed, we learn from the peer-review process that such development groups are essential to producing a high-quality result. Rather I am pointing out that every such group development starts from—is necessarily sparked by—one good idea in one person’s head. Cathedrals and bazaars and other social structures can catch that lightning and refine it, but they cannot make it on demand.”
Wales and Sanger were lucky, but I don’t think they were *just* lucky. Wales correctly identified those “socio-cultural conditions” which made Wikipedia so popular. Of the infinite possibilities for what projects Bomis should work on, he chose to work on a free encyclopedia. He read the market need perfectly, though his timing was a bit off. That’s what Wales is good at, and I think he did it again with Wikia Search, though 1) his timing was perhaps off once again, and 2) he didn’t pull together the right team to implement the product. As for Sanger, the historical record is a bit murky on this, but it is my understanding that he was the main driving force behind the policies formed during the early stages of Wikipedia. While I believe that some of those policies have proven to be mistaken, I think the majority of the mistakes made “by Wikipedia” were made after Sanger had been laid off. In fact, one of the worst mistakes made “by Wikipedia” (in this case by Wales) was the implementation of the arbitration committee, which was largely formed precisely *because* Sanger wasn’t there to make those types of decisions. Wales put far too much power into the hands of a group, and the result was a mess which in my opinion destroyed Wikipedia.