Citizendium Blog

Here’s something I cut from an essay I’m working on — but it stands on its own as a mini-essay.

The world is amazed by what global, self-selecting groups can do collaboratively — so much so that “You” are Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year.”  But few have considered, or anyway taken seriously, the ideas of requiring the use of real names, absolutely insisting on professional standards of behavior, and giving collaborative projects some gentle expert oversight.  To suggest that it is feasible to add these innovations — quite radical innovations, really, by Web 2.0 standards — is tantamount to suggesting that we can secure the stunning productivity of Web 2.0 without suffering the common ills of irresponsibility, obnoxious behavior, and mediocrity.  That is precisely the proposition on which the new Citizendium effort rests.  We are Web 2.0 with real names, fairly enforced rules, and a role for experts.

For many, the triumph of Web 2.0 does not lie mainly in productivity and innovation, but in empowering everybody, and more particularly, in removing the power to declare what is known, or worth spending our time on, from the hands of a so-called elite.  No longer are the arbiters of opinion and taste the big newspapers, magazines, television, and Hollywood.  Instead, the ordinary person is given a say, through Wikipedia, YouTube, Slashdot, and Digg, and countless other websites.  Those who celebrate Web 2.0 for being a democratizing force, in this way, are naturally opposed to the suggestion that Web 2.0 might be improved by adding expert involvement.  They are also generally opposed to making Web 2.0 projects any less anonymous, because information about who people really are suggests differences in credibility.  (This, by the way, is why so many Wikipedians are widely rejecting Jimmy Wales’ suggestion that persons who cite their credentials be made to prove their claims.)  Amateurism and anonymity are, thus, absolute prerequisites to the democratization that some people desire.

Democratization, empowering the individual, and reducing the authority of the elites all sound like good things, and they are part and parcel of Web 2.0.  So why is it that so many of us have such a love-hate relationship with Web 2.0?  Why do so many of us basically feel left out, and even marginalized, by communities allegedly devoted to self-empowerment?  If these are projects of The People, then why are so many of us people disappointed with the mediocre quality and irresponsibility of the results?  Why do we feel so alienated by hostile and immature communities that more often resemble The Lord of the Flies than a civil society?  Is this what empowerment is supposed to feel like?

I do love the fact that Web 2.0 projects empower individuals.  I mean that quite sincerely.  I hold no brief for the Establishment.  I merely think that individuals are empowered better by a variation on the usual Web 2.0 system — a variation that is just as collaborative and nearly as open, but with real names, civil behavior, and gentle expert oversight.  This, again, is what we are trying out with the Citizendium (and with respectable success so far, too).  We can expect better behavior from others if they are not hiding behind a pseudonym.  Civility empowers everyone.  Moreover, by being identified as the real-world individuals we are, we form real-world relationships.  Such relationships empower everyone in many ways.  If we have clear and sensible rules that are enforced consistently and fairly, everyone is empowered: we can go about our business without fear of ill treatment.  That makes everyone bolder in all the right ways.

And by making room for real-world experts, we provide a fair and more reliable means of making decisions in case of conflict over content.  This is ultimately far more empowering than leaving decisions up to a mob.  It is one thing to be free to make a contribution, express an opinion, and get a hearing; that is always empowering.  But it is quite another thing to be a participant in a system that makes decisions by aggregating a million amateur opinions; there is no particular reason to regard that as a way to empower the individual.  As Jaron Lanier pointed out, this empowers mobs, not individuals.  Perhaps it empowers the people who are most expert at gaming a mob system, but that is not an empowerment worth caring about, and it certainly does not empower the rank-and-file that is not interested in gaming the system but only wants to produce something of high quality.  It is more empowering to the average individual to work within a system in which accepted knowledge, as determined by communities of experts, is regarded as a fallible benchmark, an imperfect starting-point.  The current state of such expert, but imperfect knowledge is predictable, researchable, and augmentable — unlike the ever-shifting, arbitrary, game-able aggregation of the opinions of the local amateurs.  If I am myself an amateur on some subject I enjoy — astronomy, cartography, and caving, for instance, interests of mine that go back to my childhood — I am far more interested and indeed empowered by having my crude opinions being ultimately reviewable by genuine experts, as opposed to other dilettantes like myself.

I’d be curious to learn how the mavens of Web 2.0 respond to this.  If you love Web 2.0 because it empowers individuals, and if it is more empowering of individuals to employ real names, civil behavior, and gentle expert oversight, then why aren’t you in favor of these things?