Sunday, April 19, 2009

Session 7 Management and conflict

Internet and related communications technologies support an emerging environment : “social software.” As M. Madison point out: "social software” specifically to describe a class of computer programs, environments, tools, and protocols that are designed to enhance individual productivity or sociability in group settings on the Internet or other computer networks. computing is about people, not merely about information. Computing builds connections, networks, and pathways for information and activity, channels that constrain the individual and that enable the group. It concerned freedom and sovereignty, and specifically how to conceptualize the relationship of the individual not to the individual machine. We face new challenges in appreciating the relationship between the law and groups.

One site I choose for my final project is Wikipedia. It is a sort of online encyclopedia that consists of content contributed to and edited by the user population itself. The quality of Wikipedia content appears to vary, depending on the depth and level of engagement of the relevant user population. As it is a well developed website, it has fully developed policy and guidelines as shown in screen shot one. We can category them into five main parts:
  1. Behavioral: standards for behavior on Wikipedia to make it a pleasant experience for everyone.
  2. Content and style: define which topics are welcome on Wikipedia, and provide quality and naming standards.
  3. Deletion: the body of policies dealing with page deletion.
  4. Enforcement: what actions editors can take to enforce other policies.
  5. Legal and copyright: law-based rules about what material may be used here, and remedies for misuse.

Also the following links provides some useful information on its copyright policy, its administration and contributions.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:About#Trademarks_and_copyrights

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:FAQ/Administration


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:FAQ/Contributing




Three examples to break the rules:

Example 1: An open proxy

A proxy server that is accessible by any Internet user. It allows users within a network group to store and forward Internet services to reduce and control the bandwidth used by the group. With an open proxy, any user on the Internet is able to use this forwarding service. Open proxies may be blocked from editing for any period at any time to deal with editing abuse.

This is the problem of free-rider as explained in Peter Kollock and Marc Smith’s paper. A public good is a resource from which all may benefit, regardless of whether they have helped create the good. The temptation is to enjoy a public good without contributing to its production, but if all reach this decision, the good is never created and all suffer. Like in this open proxy example, the bandwidth used by the group is the public resource. If everyone try to use it without control. Then everyone is suffered. There is often a tension between individual and collective rationality. To avoid this situation, some rules have been proposed:

  • Group boundaries are clearly defined.
  • Rules governing the use of collective goods are well matched to local needs and conditions.
  • Most individuals affected by these rules can participate in modifying the rules.
  • The rights of community members to devise their own rules is respected by external authorities
  • A system for monitoring member's behavior exists; this monitoring is undertaken by the community members themselves
  • A graduated system of sanctions is used
  • Community members have access to low-cost conflict resolution mechanisms
Here we can set a maximum limit for internet user to forbid the user to over use it and blocked for the user for any period at any time to deal with this abuse.

Example 2: Disruptive editors

They can be blocked from editing for short or long amounts of time. Extremely disruptive editors may be banned from Wikipedia. If you do not respect these bans, bait banned users, and help them out, you may be banned. Bans can be appealed to Jimbo Wales or the Arbitration Committee, depending on the nature of the ban.

When content restrictions were removed from a question answering community and social technologies were introduced, participants begin to focus less on topical content and more on one another. This increased site participation, social support and open normative debates, but it also increased conflict, rogue behaviors and factionalism. Sometimes the user may not respect the bans and help the banned user out. Severely punishing such a person might alienate him or her from the community, causing greater problems. Here we can use a graduated system of sanctions. The initial sanction for breaking a rule is very low, such as giving them a warning, blocking them for a short period, While sanctions could be as severe as banishment from the group.

Example 3: Uploading non-free images

avoid uploading non-free images; fully describe images' sources and copyright details on their description pages, and try to make images as useful and reusable as possible. They can be blocked from uploading images for short or long amounts of time.
“Social software” supports the creation and persistence of informal, dynamic groups of people, and it makes those groups visible and salient to a larger degree than they have been before. That salience should prompt law and policy to rethink historic skepticism of informal collectives, particularly in light of suggestions that the loose constraints that define informal groups may enable them to do a lot of good.

4 comments:

  1. I tried to look for users who have broken some of Wikipedia’s rules. The easiest one to find is the “Disruptive Editor.” For instance an editor had replaced the entire the JavaScript entry with a disruptive statement. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:JavaScript&oldid=90920305
    However it is unclear as to what happened to the user’s account. It looks like Wikipedia references that account with an IP address. The user’s talk page was deleted by an administrator, but the IP address was not banned.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:204.129.154.50&action=edit&redlink=1
    http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=block&user=&page=User%3A204.129.154.50&year=&month=-1

    Probably the more difficult rule breaker to ban is the one that uses open proxies. As you mentioned in your post, other editors who depend on these open proxies (i.e. citizens in China) to access Wikipedia suffer the consequences because Wikipedia is forced to block an IP “to deal with editing abuse.” Also the offender may use other open proxies to access Wikipedia, making it difficult to determine who they are.

    A very interesting post, and it brings up a lot of questions on how communities could better deal with abuse given the techniques that the abusers use.

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  3. I echo tomjenni that your post has brought up a number of good insights into how online communities (continue to) evolve as they face abusers. I know close to nothing about software development, but I am curious how you would assess in your case study the effectiveness and technical limitations of automated software features in policing abusers. My questions maybe completely off topic, but how would you overall assess Wikipedia’s monitoring mechanism, perhaps in comparison to other sites you are familiar with? Do you see any areas of technical improvement to be made?

    Thanks for bringing the Arbitration Committee to my attention (one of the sites I am using in my final project is Wikipedia).

    On that note, @ tomjenni: I will check out Disruptive Editors. Thanks for the link.

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  4. I'm a frequent user of Wikipedia. I can see how a disruptive editor can be a problem. I'm wondering how an editor is blocked? It seems that you just click on the edit button to edit the page. A determined editor could use a different computer with a new IP to continue to edit, like at the public library. I've never actually done the edit, just goofed around with the options.

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