Good Faith Collaboration

GOOD FAITH COLLABORATION The Culture of Wikipedia Joseph Michael Reagle Jr. | foreword by Lawrence Lessig 01000010000001101001011011100010000001110111011010000110100101100011 01101000011101010110110101100001011011100010000001100010011001010110 00110110100001100001011100100110010100100000011010010110111000100000 01101011011011100110111101110111011011000110010101100100011001110110 01100011001000010000001101001011011100010000001110111011010000110100 0010000001101000011101010110110101100001011011100010000001100010011 00000011100110110100001100001011100100110010100100000011010010110111 00010000001101011011011100110111101110111011011000110010101100100011 1001001101100011001000010000001101001011011100010000001110111011010 00011001010010000001101000011101010110110101100001011011100010000001 1100100100000011100110110100001100001011100100110010100100000011010 00011011000010000001101011011011100110111101110111011011000110010101 1011110111001001101100011001000010000001101001011011100010000001110 1101101100011001010010000001101000011101010110110101100001011011100 1011000111100100100000011100110110100001100001011100100110010100100 00101101100011011000010000001101011011011100110111101110111011011000 01110111011011110111001001101100011001000010000001101001011011100010 1100110011101101100011001010010000001101000011101010110110101100001 01100101011011000111100100100000011100110110100001100001011100100110 00000110000101101100011011000010000001101011011011100110111101110111 0010000001110111011011110111001001101100011001000010000001101001011 01001011011100110011101101100011001010010000001101000011101010110110 00110010101100101011011000111100100100000011100110110100001100001011 00110001000000110000101101100011011000010000001101011011011100110111 00011000010010000001110111011011110111001001101100011001000010000001 1001101101001011011100110011101101100011001010010000001101000011101 0011100100110010101100101011011000111100100100000011100110110100001 0111101100110001000000110000101101100011011000010000001101011011011 0100100000011000010010000001110111011011110111001001101100011001000 01000000111001101101001011011100110011101101100011001010010000001101 00001100110011100100110010101100101011011000111100100100000011100110 01000000110111101100110001000000110000101101100011011000010000001101 1100110010100100000011000010010000001110111011011110111001001101100 Good Faith Collaboration History and Foundations of Information Science Edited by Michael Buckland and Jonathan Furner Human Information Retrieval by Julian Warner Good Faith Collaboration: The Culture of Wikipedia by Joseph Michael Reagle Jr. Good Faith Collaboration: The Culture of Wikipedia Joseph Michael Reagle Jr. Foreword by Lawrence Lessig The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England © 2010 Joseph Michael Reagle Jr. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. For information about special quantity discounts, please email special_sales@mit- press.mit.edu This book was set in Stone Sans and Stone Serif by the MIT Press. Printed and bound in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Reagle, Joseph Michael. Good faith collaboration : the culture of Wikipedia / Joseph Michael Reagle Jr. ; foreword by Lawrence Lessig. p. cm. — (History and foundations of information science) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-262-01447-2 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Wikipedia. 2. Electronic encyclopedias—Case studies. 3. Wikis (Computer science)—Case studies. 4. Communication in learning and scholarship—Technological innovations—Case studies. 5. Authorship—Collaboration—Case studies. 6. Online social networks—Case studies. I. Title. AE100.R43 2010 030—dc22 2009052779 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 To my family, a barnstar. Contents Foreword by Lawrence Lessig ix Preface xiii 1 Nazis and Norms 1 2 The Pursuit of the Universal Encyclopedia 17 3 Good Faith Collaboration 45 4 The Puzzle of Openness 73 5 The Challenges of Consensus 97 6 The Benevolent Dictator 117 7 Encyclopedic Anxiety 137 8 Conclusion: “A Globe in Accord” 169 Notes 175 Bibliographic Note 175 Contents Foreword by Lawrence Lessig ix Preface xiii 1 Nazis and Norms 1 2 The Pursuit of the Universal Encyclopedia 17 3 Good Faith Collaboration 45 4 The Puzzle of Openness 73 5 The Challenges of Consensus 97 6 The Benevolent Dictator 117 7 Encyclopedic Anxiety 137 8 Conclusion: “A Globe in Accord” 169 Notes 175 Index 235 Foreword There is value in studying anything that was once thought impossible but then proves possible. There is significant value in studying it well. A decade ago, no one—including its founder, Jimmy Wales—would have imagined “Wikipedia” possible. Today it is one of the very top Web sites on the Inter- net. And not just the Internet: Wikipedia has come to define the very best in an ethic of a different kind of economy or community: at its core, it is a “collaborative community” that freely and voluntarily gives to the world a constant invitation to understand and correct. More than any democracy, it empowers broadly. More than any entity anywhere, it elicits the very best of an amateur ethic—people working hard for the love of the work, and not for the money. Most of the world has known of Wikipedia for no more than a few years. Even the “digerati” have not paid much attention to the project for more than seven years. Like the most important innovations throughout human history, this one too stole upon us when most of us were looking elsewhere. And now, none of us understands anything new without first pinging Wiki- pedia’s brain to see its cut on whatever piques our curiosity. Scholars will spend a generation understanding its birth and growth. There have already been important books understanding open source production specifically (Steven Weber, The Success of Open Source [Harvard 2004]), and the culture of commons-based production (Yochai Benkler, The Wealth of Networks [Yale 2007]). But Joseph Reagle’s contribution here is something new and important. Reagle came to this subject as a native. He was a computer scientist at MIT. He helped me work through early thoughts about what he called “social protocols”—an explicit mixing of computer science ideals with insight about social organization and norms. When he decided to return to x Foreword graduate school to get his PhD, I was skeptical that such enormous talent should be lost to the stacks for so many years. This book proves me wrong. Reagle comes to this ethnographical project understanding more about the technology and its history than the people he intended to study. But that knowledge doesn’t get in the way. He has opened himself to a community that is similar to some he has worked within—the World Wide Web Consortium, most prominently—but impor- tantly distinct. And as his book convincingly demonstrates, it is a community with a family resemblance to lots in our world, but unlike almost anything else. Wikipedia is a community, but one formed through a practice, or a doing—collaboration. That collaboration happens within a culture, or a set of norms, guided by principles that the community accepts and fights about, and through that struggle defines. The collaboration produces a social good that an enormous number of people from around the world rely upon. The project is a generation away from its objective of “a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge.” But it is the first time in ten generations that this aspiration of the Enlightenment seems even possible to anyone but the likes of Jefferson. We need many academic disciplines—economics, political science, history, even law—to help us understand this phenomenon. But the first rich understanding must come from ethnographies. Only a deep reading of the culture of this community—for it is a community rich with a distinctive culture—can begin to make the important lessons of Wikipedia accessible. No utopia is to be found in these pages. Wikipedia is not written by angels; nor does its founder pretend to perfection. What is most striking throughout this lucid and informed account is the human-ness of every- thing inside. Wales, the founder, self-consciously practicing the humility every great leader teaches. A community, struggling to get it right, some devoting thousands of hours to making knowledge free. There are relatively few organizations that inspire respect, flaws notwith- standing. Very few retain that respect after serious scrutiny. These pages introduce one such institution. No one doubts it produces an encyclopedia that has errors. But it is hard to imagine a more significant and sustained community, manned by volunteers, from teenagers to retirees, working to produce understanding. Foreword xi Every serious soul must try to understand this impossibility. For there is little doubt that its lessons have much to teach far beyond the millions of entries on Wikipedia pages. Nor that an important first step in that understanding is found in these pages. Lawrence Lessig Professor of Law, Harvard Law School Director, Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics Preface When I returned to graduate school I faced the task of choosing a research topic. I left my position at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) with an interest in new Web applications, particularly blogs, and an appreciation for collaboration. Since I had been

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