Wiki as a Commons

-Cheap, accessible conflict resolution: rollbacks.

-Managed by locals: wiki users.

Wikis are open-ended. Anyone can create a page for any purpose. Yet all page names belong to one global namespace. This creates a scarcity—who will define the meaning of each name? The result is a generative tussle that forces the emergence of negotiation, communal norms, communal goals, communal meanings.

Today’s internet is an Internet of Beefs. Flat, global networks like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are overrun by memetic epidemics — harassment mobs, disinformation, conspiracy theories, alternative facts, troll farms, state actors, ransomware, extremists. How is it that Wikipedia, with its cooperative ownership, has not been overrun by these sam... See more

-Self-determination of the community: it’s a volunteer project.

-Clear boundaries: the wiki domain, and those who can edit it.

-In large commons, multiple levels of management: on Wikipedia, administrators.

-Community can monitor behavior: edit history.

-Community makes its own rules: wikis have no formal rules beyond actions the community carries out.