Tuesday, September 9, 2008

September 10th Reaction

For September 10th 2008 the COM430Z class was required to read an article by Peter Kollock and March Smith called "Managing the Virtual Commons: Cooperation and Conflict in Computer Communities".

Kollock and Smith tell us that they apply the logic of social dilemmas to a portion of cyberspace which they call the Usenet which was developed in 1981. Describing the Usenet as a "collection of several thousand discussion groups that is distributed and maintained in a decentralized fashion." Basically a large communication system that is looked over by computers. Starting out in the chapter telling us about Usenet and the major social problems the members take on. Then exploring how the problems might be solved by studying cases of Ostrom (1990) who researched many types of communities to see what contributed to its success and even if be their failure.

Their main focus in the chapter was the free-rider problem and the ability of a group to overcome it. The free-rider problem is basically referring to a situation where some individuals in a population either consume more than their fair share of a common resource, or pay less than their fair share of the cost of a common resource. Or in other words one who benefits from a collective activity without participating in it. Kollock and Smith talk about two opposing arguments the first being that researchers say "coercion by a strong external authority is necessary in order to insure cooperation" and the second "that an external authority may not be necessary and may even make the situation worse."

Cooperation is not always the thing to do and even find. There will always be that one person who does not want to cooperate. In this case, of the free-rider problem, there will always be those people who do not participate at all. I ask myself, why? Honestly I do not know. Maybe it is because they would rather kick back and observe what is going on, keeping their opinion, thoughts and ideas to themselves. Is this such a bad thing though, if we have enough people participation and cooperating, then maybe it is not so bad if some do not. The real problem would be if not enough people are cooperating because then we have nothing and like Kollock and Smith implied, we all suffer. I believe it is natural for most human beings, to take the easy way out, always looking for the fastest easiest ways to do things. Letting others do the work for them thinking that they are sparing themselves but in the end these people and ones whom are free-riding will only hurt themselves.

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