Permaculture Information Web

[Richard Morris <webmaster AT pfaf.org>]

An interesting article at
        
http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/free_issues/issue_02/fud_based_encyclopedia/

with a response to an article by ex Encyclopedia Britanica editor on the 
wikipedia project.

There lots of good stuff, of particular relavance to us is the
Authority Model. Basically who controls whats in the pages.

Quite what we want as an authority model for our project needs to be 
worked out.


> Commons-Based Peer Production refers to any coordinated, (chiefly) 
internet-based effort whereby volunteers contribute project components, 
and there exists some process to combine them to produce a unified 
intellectual work. CBPP covers many different types of intellectual 
output, from software to libraries of quantitative data to 
human-readable documents (manuals, books, encyclopedias, reviews, blogs, 
periodicals, and more).

SNIP

> In previous work [Krowne, 2004], I identified one of the key
attributes of CBPP as the authority model. The authority model of a CBPP
system governs who has permissions to access and modify which artifacts,
when, and in what workflow sequence.
> In that study, I outlined two authority models, the free-form model,
and the owner-centric model. The free-form model, which Wikipedia
employs, allows anyone to edit any entry at any time. Changes can of
course be rolled-back, but they can also be re-applied. The ultimate
guard against malicious behaviour is therefore the administrators of the
site. However, ne'er-do-wells typically lose interest long before it is
necessary to resort to administrative powers.
> PlanetMath is an example of a CBPP project, which is organized in a
way that addresses concerns about integrating expertise.
> My own project, PlanetMath, employs the owner-centric model by
default. In this model, there is an owner of each entry - initially the
entry's creator. Other users may suggest changes to each entry, but only
the owner can apply these changes. If the owner comes to trust
individual users enough, he or she can grant these specific users "edit"
access to the entry.
> These two models have different assumptions and effects. The
> free-form
model connotes more of a sense that all users are on the "same level,"
and that expertise will be universally recognized and deferred to. As a
result, the creator of an entry is spared the trouble of reviewing every
change before it is integrated, as well as the need to perform the
integration. By contrast, the owner-centric authority model assumes the
owner is the de facto expert in the topic at hand, above all others, and
all others must defer to them. Because of this arrangement, the owner
must review all modification proposals, and take the time to integrate
the good ones. However, no non-expert will ever be allowed to "damage"
an entry, and therefore resorting to administrative powers is
vanishingly rare.
> It is likely that these models have secondary consequences. A natural
result of the free-form model may be that entries lack some cohesion,
and perhaps may even be of lower overall quality, despite having high
coverage. On the flip side of the coin, the owner-centric model can be
expected to foster a high level of cohesion quality, but may actually
lag in coverage due to higher barriers to individual contribution.