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Voices from the WELL:
The Logic of the Virtual Commons
Marc A. Smith
Department of Sociology
U.C.L.A.
Submitted in partial fulfillment of the Master's Requirements
Committee:
Professor Peter Kollock
Professor John Heritage
Correspondence regarding this essay may be sent to Marc Smith, Department
of Sociology, U.C.L.A., Los Angeles, CA 90024. Email may be sent to
SMITHM@NICCO.SSCNET.UCLA.EDU.
Its hard enough to love someone
when they're right close at home
don't you think I know its hard honey
squeezing sugar from the phone
- Bonnie Raitt
The Road's My Middle Name,
from Nick of Time, Capitol Records
ABSTRACT: The recent development of virtual communities, sites of social
interaction predominantly mediated by computers and telecommunications
networks, provides a unique opportunity to study the mechanisms by which
collectivities generate and maintain the commitment of their participants
in a new social terrain. Using the analytical framework developed in
studies of intentional communities and collective action dilemmas, this
paper examines the unique obstacles to collective action and the commitment
mechanisms used to overcome them in a particular virtual community, the
WELL. Drawing upon ethnographic and interview data, this community is
evaluated in terms of the community's capacity, or lack thereof, to
overcome obstacles to organization and elicit appropriate participation in
the production of desired collective goods.
Table of Contents:
Introduction: Social Dilemmas in Virtual Spaces 4
Cyberspace and Virtual Worlds 5
Method 9
The Structure of the WELL 11
The Character of Virtual Space 14
Theory 18
Theories of Communities and Collective Action 18
Towards a definition of community 20
The Elements of Successful Community 21
The Construction of Commitment 22
Economies of Commitment 24
The Character of Collective Goods 24
Accounting Systems and Misunderstandings 25
Data 28
Collective Goods in a Virtual Space 28
Social Capital 28
Knowledge Capital 30
Communion 34
Obstacles to the provision of collective goods 35
Population Pressures 36
Participation 37
Transgressions and Sanctions 37
Stolen Files and Justice
Decorum 44
The Weird Raid on Misc
Discussion 48
Suggestions for Future Research 49
Conclusion 49
Introduction: Social Dilemmas in Virtual Spaces
A virtual community is a set of on-going many-sided interactions that
occur predominantly in and through computers linked via
telecommunications networks. They are a fairly recent phenomena and
one that is rapidly developing as more people come to have access to
computers and data networks. The virtual spaces constructed by these
technologies are not only new, they have some fundamental differences
from more familiar terrain of interaction. Virtual spaces change the
kinds of communication that can be exchanged between individuals and
alter the economies of communication and organization. As a result
many familiar and common social process must be adapted to the virtual
environment and some do not transfer well at all. One aspect of
interaction remains constant however; virtual communities, like all
groups to some extent, must face the social dilemma that individually
rational behavior can often lead to collectively irrational outcomes.
The purpose of this paper is to begin to examine how community and
cooperation emerges and is maintained in groups that interact
predominantly within virtual spaces.
As yet, virtual communities are somewhat esoteric and have attracted
only limited attention from the social science community. Many
questions about virtual communities remain unanswered, and many more
unasked. No detailed work has yet addressed the questions, for
example, of how virtual communities form and mature, how relations
within these communities differ from relations in "real-space", or how
the dynamics of group organization and operation in virtual
communities differs from and is similar to communities based upon
physical copresence. But like their real-space counterparts, virtual
communities face the challenge of maintaining their member's
commitment, monitoring and sanctioning their behavior, ensuring the
continued production of essential resources and organizing their
distribution. The dynamic and evolving character of these groups
provides a unique opportunity to study the emergence of endogenous
order in a group. Simultaneously, the novel aspects of interaction in
virtual spaces offers an illuminating contrast to interactions that
occur through other media, including face-to-face interaction.
Many communities have the potential to organize their members so as to
produce a collective good, something that no individual member of the
community could provide for themselves if they had acted alone. Some
goods are tangible, like common pastures or irrigation systems, others
are intangible goods like goodwill, trust, and identity. However,
this potential is not always realized. As Mancur Olson noted, "if the
members of some group have a common interest or objective, and if they
would all be better off if that objective were achieved, it [does not
necessarily follow] that the individuals in that group ... act to
achieve that objective." (p. 1, 1965) There are many obstacles that
stand in the way of the production of collective goods and even
success can be fragile, especially when it is possible to draw from a
good without contributing to its production. Nonetheless, despite
arguments to the contrary (Hardin, 1968), many groups do succeed in
producing goods in common. And, as Elinor Ostrom's work illustrates,
some communities have succeeded in doing so for centuries (1991). The
question this raises is: what contributes to the successful provision
of collective goods? How is cooperation achieved and maintained in
the face of a temptation to defect?
Virtual communities produce a variety of collective goods. They allow
people of like interests to come together with little cost, help them
exchange ideas and coordinate their activities, and provide the kind
of identification and feeling of membership found in face-to-face
interaction. In the process they face familiar problems of defection,
free-riding and other forms of disruptive behavior although in new and
sometimes very unexpected ways. The novelty of the medium means that
the rules and practices that lead to a successful virtual community
are not yet well known or set fast in a codified formal system.
Cyberspace and Virtual Worlds
Virtual interaction is often said to occur in a unique kind of space,
a cyberspace, constructed in and through computers and networks. This
term was coined by William Gibson in his visionary novel Neuromancer.
Gibson described a new technologically constructed social space in
which much of the commerce, communication and interaction among human
beings and their constructed agents would take place. In the novel
Gibson gives his own description of cyberspace,
"Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions
of legitimate operators, in every nation... a graphic representation
of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human
system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the
nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city
lights, receding" Gibson's cyberspace remains in part in the realm of
science fiction. But much of what he described has already taken on
very real form. The global interconnection of computers via phone and
data networks has created the foundation for a seamless system of
communication between machines designed specifically for the storage
and manipulation of signs. Cyberspace, then, can be understood as a
vast territory , a space of representations. While human beings have
inhabited representational spaces for a very long time, we have never
been able to create representations with the ease and flexibility
possible in cyberspace. This is important because with each new
development in the technologies of representation, from the printing
press to satellite communication, there has been a reworking of the
kinds of representations and social relationships that are possible to
maintain.
Gibson envisioned cyberspace as two related technologies, the first
provided the individual connecting to cyberspace with a complete
sensorium, enclosing the user in a totally computer generated reality.
Connected directly to a computer, wires connected directly to the
nervous system, an artificial set of sense data would be constructed
and delivered to a credulous mind. The fact that no such technology
yet exists does not invalidate Gibson's vision, mistaking far less
sophisticated representations for reality is already common and does
not require such complex technology. Nonetheless, research and
development of this kind of technology is advancing rapidly,
compelling visual cyberspaces (often termed "photo realistic") are
available now and will become widespread after the further refinement
and decline in the cost of processing power. Direct contact between a
machine and a human mind may be a bit further off, but is a subject of
research that has promising and disturbing implications. In contrast,
the second element of Gibson's cyberspace is very much a reality.
This is the matrix, the densely intertwined networks of networks,
lines of communication linking millions of computers around the world.
While sensual cyberspaces may have profound effects on our perception
and understanding of reality, even when limited to the comparatively
pedestrian medium of text, the matrix is already having visible
effects.
Computer networking was pioneered by the United State's Defense
Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) which funded the
development of the first wide area network (WAN), the ARPANET, in
1969. The ARPANET has since grown exponentially and inspired many
additional networks. It has since been integrated into the INTERNET
(1983), a globe spanning "network of networks" supporting over fifteen
million users. The ArpaNet/INTERNET was joined by the USENET (1979),
the BITNET (1981) and the FIDONET (1983). These large scale networks
are supplemented by the proliferation of independent Bulletin Board
Systems (BBSs) run from individual microcomputers and medium to
large-scale information services like Compuserve, GEnie, and the WELL.
While not all of these networks are unified or managed by a single
regulating body, many are interconnected: users on one network can
often utilize many of the resources available on the others through
gateways. This list does not exhaust the number of networks in
existence, John Quarterman's 1990 book on the subject, The Matrix,
lists over 900 networks. That number may already be surpassed.
Within these vast networks interconnections of another kind have
formed: social networks of people who have come together virtually,
that is via computers and networks, to interact with others for a
myriad number of purposes. A number of methods exist to facilitate
communication between individuals and groups via these networks. The
simplest is electronic mail (email). Email allows for one-to-one or
one-to-many communication between any individuals who have a valid
email address on the same network or on a network that can be
gatewayed to. Effectively, this means that some 15 million people are
accessible to one another instantaneously and without regard for
distance. Using tools to enhance email, some groups have created
"lists" than ease the process of collecting email addresses.
Some lists provide a single address for mail that is to be forwarded
to every member of the list. The largest of these lists have as many
as 15,000 subscribers located all around the planet. At last check,
there were more than 2,400 lists carried on the INTERNET alone on
subjects ranging from dentistry to religion to quantum physics. New
lists are created on a daily basis while some old lists fall inactive.
Conferencing systems, information services and BBSs fill out the range
of virtual communications. These systems share a great deal in
common, differing mostly in terms of size, commercial status, and
focus. These systems tend to be centralized, that is supported by
computers at a single location although accessed by computers all over
the world. Conferencing systems focus on providing the tools for the
facilitation of discussions. BBSs and information services do this as
well, but additional emphasis may be placed on services like software
libraries, weather and stock reports, and airline reservations. Often
information services are operated on a for-profit basis.
Whichever system people use, they frequently develop relations with
other users that have some stability and longevity. This should not
be surprising considering the ease with which network systems allow
individuals to find others with like interests. Networks are in many
ways dynamic electronic "Schelling" points (Schelling, 1960). In The
Strategy of Conflict, Schelling developed the idea of natural and
constructed points that focus interactions, places that facilitate
connections with people interested in a participating in a common line
of action. The clock at Grand Central Station is an example, as are
singles bars and market places. Each is a space designated as a point
of congregation for people of like interests. Networks enhance the
flexibility of Schelling points by radically altering the economies of
their production and use. Members of these virtual social networks
frequently identify their groups (and groups of groups) as "virtual
communities". The use of the term "virtual" may be confusing for
those who do not know its use within the computer literate community
where "virtual" is used to mean "in effect", a surrogate. For
example, virtual memory is not memory in the conventional sense, it is
not composed of memory chips, but is instead the use of a hard drive
to simulate chip-based memory. In the context of community, then, the
term is used to emphasize not the ersatz nature of the community but
rather that a seemingly non-existent medium is used to facilitate and
maintain one. Virtual communities are communities "in effect". The
use of the term "community" to describe these social formations may be
contested, but it is the argument of this paper that virtual
communities are indeed communities.
Virtual communities developed soon after the first computer networks
were created in the late 1960s. But it was not until the wide
proliferation of microcomputers in the late 1970s that there were
enough computer owners to create collective organizations outside of
the defense and military establishment. Often fairly small, many
groups used Bulletin Board Systems run as non-profit collective goods
to facilitate their interactions and exchanges. In addition to local
non commercial or semi-commercial BBSs, large systems, used by tens of
thousands of individuals, most notably Compuserve, GEnie, Prodigy,
America On-line, and the WELL have been created and run for profit.
Despite the fact that both kinds of systems provide mostly the
exchange of unadorned text, users of these systems have come to feel
that they participate in a community that fulfills many of the roles
more commonly found in traditional face-to-face communities.
Interaction in virtual spaces share many of the characteristics of
"real" interaction, people discuss, argue, fight, reconcile, amuse,
and offend just as much and perhaps more in a virtual community. But
virtual communities are also starkly different. In a virtual
interaction nothing but words are normally exchanged. Interaction
involves the creation of personality, nuance, identity and "self" with
only the tools of texts . But the differences may not be as sharp as
they first seem, as Erving Goffman showed, real life too is an act of
authorship, of constant image management and careful presentation.
Face-to-face interaction is a rich canvass with which to paint, but it
is one loaded with the indelible "stigma" of social identities. In a
virtual world participants are washed clean of the stigmata of their
real "selves" and are free to invent new ones to their tastes. Escape
is not total, however, participants are revealed in virtual
communities, they "give off" as well as give signals as happens in
face-to-face interaction, but with a far more reliable mask. This is
just one way in which virtual interaction and virtual communities
differ from "real" ones.
These differences do not necessarily exclude virtual communities from
the category of legitimate communities. While interaction with a
virtual community is peculiar in many ways, this does not mean that
very familiar kinds of social interaction do not take place within
them. Rather, it is the ways that common and familiar forms of
interaction are transplanted into and transformed by virtual spaces
that is of particular interest.
Method
This paper offers a structured ethnographic account of the production
of collective goods in a virtual community, of the processes that
maintain those goods and the processes that block or disrupt such
production. It is structured broadly by the theories of collective
action dilemmas and seeks to address some general theoretical claims
made by that school of theory. I have let these theories direct my
ethnographic data collection and will use them to frame and analyze
that data.
Ethnographic data was drawn from a single virtual community, the Whole
Earth 'Lectronic Link (WELL). The WELL is a relatively old virtual
community, established in 1986 by the Point Foundation. The WELL is a
for-profit organization, access is billed at two dollars per hour. It
is physically located in Sausalito, California and is composed of four
Sequent computers, an array of disk drives providing four gigabytes of
storage, and multiple telephone and Internet connections. It is
currently used by over 6600 people located all over the world although
a large majority of the users live in the San Francisco Bay area .
The WELL is not the only virtual community, nor is it necessarily the
model for all the others that exist. As a result the generalizability
of conclusions drawn from the WELL is not certain and comparative
analysis is certainly called for. However, this is beyond the scope
of this paper. Nonetheless, the WELL has pioneered and developed the
concepts and practices of community in a virtual space, making it a
useful starting point for an analysis of this phenomena.
I collected data by logging into the WELL from my personal computer,
using the UCLA connection to the Internet to connect me with the WELL.
Unlike face-to-face interaction, interaction through the WELL produces
a fairly durable artifact, indeed it could be argued that interaction
takes place through the construction of artifacts that are then made
publicly visible. This allowed me to collect faithful records of
interactions among a wide variety of groups and over a large period of
time. The artifactual remains of interaction in the WELL go beyond
audio and video recordings of interactions in that no aspect of the
interaction is missed. However, the subjective meanings that were
constructed in these interactions must reconstructed just like audio
and video records.
The WELL is structured by software called Picospan which organizes
interaction into a series of conferences which may have any number of
subordinate topics. There are currently 223 public conferences open
to any user of the WELL, each of which may have anywhere from 1 to 500
or more sub-topics. Data was collected by copying contributions to
public conferences to files that were then transferred back to my
personal computer for examination and analysis. The WELL also offers
a variety of back-channels of communication. Users may email one
another or open private conferences that are accessible only to those
who are invited by their owner. The contents of email and private
conferences were not available to me.
To illustrate certain significant processes, I will present segments
of interactions that took place in the WELL. I will set off materials
drawn from the WELL in the following manner:
Topic 1050: Experts On The WELL
# 57: Banter with a strange device (jrc) Thu, Sep 17, '92 (15:38) 5
lines
the key between "f" and "h" on my old keyboard broke, so I can't move
to any conferences. My new keyboard doesn't wanna work. I may commit
indecencies, but I'll have to do them ri'ht here.
I will always present the entire posting and have not edited any of
the contents. However, posts are single turns in a much larger and
longer series of exchanges. Due to the length of most topics, it is
necessary to lift particular posts out of their series and highlight
them. In so doing I will attempt to summarize the context of the
posting as faithfully as possible.
In addition to reading and selecting posts from WELL conferences, I
engaged in a series of interviews with participants of various
interactions of particular interest. Interviews were carried out
"on-line", that is through email or in a public conference. Some
additional information was gathered through telephone conversations
with members of the WELL community. In addition, I attended the
WELL's Summer Picnic, held in San Francisco on July 19, 1992, one of
the occasional face-to-face meetings organized by members of the WELL.
This meeting allowed me to gather information about the social status
of WELL members that could not easily be derived from contact via the
WELL itself.
Data was collected and examined in terms of its relevance to the
central theoretical assumptions and conclusions of collective action
theory. In particular, I looked for examples of individuals being
encouraged to participate, the returns on participation, and the kinds
of disruptions that raise the question of monitoring and sanctioning
systems. These aspects address the construction of commitment in the
virtual community and mechanisms that are enacted to maintain and
defend it against the endemic temptations that threaten to dissolve
the systems that maintain the collective goods produced in the WELL.
At each point, the unique character of virtual interaction will be
highlighted to illustrate the special challenges and opportunities of
this terrain.
This paper will proceed in three stages. First, because many people
have as yet never experienced virtual spaces, I will provide a
description of the development of networks and systems like the WELL.
This description will be further elaborated in the following sections.
Next, I turn to the theories of community and collective action.
Finally, I will examine specific data drawn from the WELL in terms of
the theoretical framework developed in the preceding section.
The Structure of the WELL
The WELL is in many ways a single program called Picospan. Written by
Marcus Watts in 1984 and since refined and embellished by many others,
Picospan constructs and maintains a hierarchy that sorts and
identifies messages created by its users (see appendix A for a
schematic diagram of the WELL). As a result of its segmented
architecture, Picospan allows thousands of individual discussions to
progress simultaneously without loss of coherency or much limitation
on the activities of individual participants. At the top most level
of the Picospan hierarchy are conferences, broad subject categories of
interest. Conferences include subjects such as current events,
telecommunications, agriculture, erotica, philosophy, and over
two-hundred others at the time of this writing (see appendix B for a
list of all current conferences). Picospan is noted for its
flexibility and openness to individual control. While conferences can
be created only with special permission, any user, from the oldest
hand to the newest user, can create a new topic with the use of a
single, simple command. This power allows interaction in the WELL to
share the phenomena in conversation whereby the topic shifts from
subject to subject. The difference in Picospan is that more than one
subject may be maintained at one time: as new topics are spawned, new
"threads" are added to the conference while old conferences are
sometimes deleted or removed to an archive after a long period of
inactivity. Within each conference there many be anywhere from one to
many hundred topics (see appendix C for a list of topics in the
"Virtual Communities" conference). A topic is often more specific
than a conference. All contributions to a conference are placed in
one topic or another at the discretion of the individual contributor.
A posting is an individual's contribution to a topic. A posting can
be anywhere from zero to many hundreds of lines of text, although the
average posting is approximately eight-lines in length. Individuals
post their contributions serially, following all other contributions
that have already been made to a topic.
A posting is always accompanied by a header generated by Picospan. In
this sample posting:
Topic 1050: Experts On The WELL
# 3: Stephen David Fishman (sfish) Tue, Sep 15, '92 (12:26) 2 lines
I have a Mac LC with a Seiko color monitor. All of a sudden the picture has
started shaking. What could be causing this? (It's very annoying.)
the top line identifies the number of the topic within its conference
. This posting was drawn from the News conference, one of the oldest
and most heavily used conferences in the WELL. Following the topic
number is the topic title. Topics are given titles by their creators.
Any WELL user may create a new topic at any time in any public
conference using a single command. The second line of the topic
header identifies the number of the posting in the topic. Each
posting is added to the topic and numbered serially in chronological
order. Following the posting number is the pseudonym, this is a line
of text that the poster may change to anything they want. Often, as
in this case, the "pseud" is the full name of the poster, however this
is not always the case. Many members change their pseudonym to
contain a nickname or some meta-commentary on their posts or the posts
of others. For example,
Topic 1050: Experts On The WELL
# 4: Will Work for Pay (chuck3) Tue, Sep 15, '92 (13:19) 1 line
The blow dryer. (Or any squirrel-cage motor like that.)
Topic 1050: Experts On The WELL
# 7: Cosmic litterbox (darlis) Tue, Sep 15, '92 (14:48) 2 lines
And -- this is silly, I know, but -- have you checked to be sure that all
the connectors are plugged in nice and tight?
The word in parentheses is the "userid", a unique identifier that is
stamped on every contribution the member makes in the WELL. While the
pseudonym is modifiable by the member, the userid is not. There have
been some cases in which member's changed their userid with the
cooperation of WELL management or by opening a new account, userids
remain a fairly stable marking. Finally, the posting is time and date
stamped and the length of the posting noted. The length is important
as a signal to the reader about how much of their attention this
posting will take. Since there is virtually no limit on the length of
a posting, some members contribute hundreds of lines (either of their
own words or transcriptions from other sources). WELL etiquette calls
for very long posts to be "hidden" although this does not happen as
often as some members claim it should. Hidden posts display only the
header when read normally. Members must explicitly request the
contents of a hidden post, allowing them to skip over long
contributions.
Each conference is managed by a conference host, an individual or
small group that attends to the technical and social management of the
conference's contents. Hosts encourage participation, guide the
discussions, and are sometimes deferred to in conflicts. Hosts do
wield significant powers not available to non-host participants.
Hosts may exclude a member from access to their conference, may
"freeze" a topic (making additional contribution impossible), and
generally hold some moral authority as a result. The WELL's guidebook
for hosts defines the powers of a host as:
The host of a conference has the right and power to censor responses,
freeze topics, retire topics and kill (delete) topics where he/she
sees fit. The host of a conference also has the right to ban users
whom the host judges to be nuisances within his or her conference from
further participation in that conference. This is a serious move and
should be discussed in the Backstage conference before being
undertaken. For lack of other technical means, "banning" can be
enforced by censoring postings of the banned user.
However, the use of these powers by hosts is subject to extensive
informal social controls and are, as a result, rarely used without
careful consideration. The issue of the powers weilded by hosts will
be addressed below. Any member of the WELL may enter any public
conference and post a contribution to any topic. In addition any user
may create new topics. New topics are frequently generated but not
all attract attention.
Each member of the WELL has certain rights, some that are a product of
the architecture of the Picospan program and some that have been
developed and refined through many years of discussion and conflict.
Most central is the member's right to control the use of their
contributions. The principle is identified by a phrase often used in
the WELL and posted at its main "entrance": "You Own Your Own Words"
(YOYOW) (Figure1.).
Type your userid or newuser to register
login: msmith
Password:
Last login: Mon Jun 1 11:57:26 from julia.math.ucla.
DYNIX(R)
Copyright 1984 Sequent Computer Systems, Inc.
You own your own words. This means that you are responsible for the
words that you post on the WELL and that reproduction of those words
without your permission in any medium outside of the WELL's conferencing
system may be challenged by you, the author.
==========================================================================
For a recorded message with WELL System Status information call:
1-800-326-8354 from within the 48 contiguous United States.
==========================================================================
** The WELL will be off-line for BACKUPS, Wednesday, June 3
** from 4:30am PDT until approximately 09:00am PDT
This is a schedule change from the previously announced
downtime we had planned from 4 till 9 am Tuesday.
=========================================================================
PicoSpan T3.3; designed by Marcus Watts
copyright 1984 NETI; licensed by Unicon Inc.
Figure 1. A sample WELL login screen.
This means that no other user, including hosts and staff, may alter
the words a member enters into the WELL. Users may not edit their
words once posted, although they may delete them entirely through a
command known as "scribble". These norms and restrictions are
intended to rule out revisionism, abuses of power and censorship.
The Character of Virtual Space
A virtual space has some generic qualities that distinguish it from
the space of face-to-face interactions. In many ways virtual
communities are modern incarnations of the committees of
correspondence of the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Like those
groups formed around the political and scientific interests of the
day, virtual communities are composed of groups brought together by a
common interest and separated by potentially great distance. However,
unlike the committees, virtual communities are not limited by the
speed of man on horseback or even the steam engine, but are granted
near instantaneous communication by the speed of computers and data
networks. The increased speed and the unique qualities and powers of
computer network based communication makes the dynamics of virtual
communities distinct from committees of correspondence. The
differences in the medium of communication have effects on the kinds
of interactions that can take place and how the interactions that do
occur can progress and unfold. For example, slow media that introduce
long delays into turn-taking reduces the interactively of an social
exchange and can lead to more cautious (and thus, perhaps, more
detailed and exact) messages. Media can vary in terms of the
ambiguity they introduce to the messages passed through them. Some
media provide a certain audience, that is the target of a message can
be selected without fear of additional surveillance. If you do not
know who might be in the room it makes sense to watch what you say.
Further, some media prevent the identity of message creators to be
known with certainty if at all. With so much variation in different
kinds of media it is not hard to imagine that their character alters
the kinds of messages that are sent through it, and, by extension, the
kinds of social action and interaction that will develop around it.
This is not technological determinism, but rather a solid materialism:
technologies change the fabric of the material world which in turn
changes the social world. The terrain of interaction in virtual
communities is different in some powerful and subtle ways, some forms
of interaction translate well into a virtual space, others do not. In
all cases, people are actively drawing upon their understanding of
interaction and improvising in the gaps, some of which are cavernous.
There are six aspects of virtual interaction that have a significant
impact on the kinds of interaction that can take place within them.
First, virtual interaction is aspatial, increasing distance does not
effect the kind of interactions possible. As a result the economies
of copresence are superseded and assembly becomes possible for groups
spread widely across the planet. This may have profound implications
on the organization of space; just as the telegraph enabled the
construction of the modern multi-national corporation by solving the
problem of control from a distance, virtual spaces may undermine the
economies that lead to the development of cities. Indeed, there is a
growing movement for the relocation of many business activities to
rural areas. This is made possible by the ease and economy of
electronic communication that makes any space as good as any other.
As a result criteria other than proximity can determine the selection
of sites for various activities. Second, virtual interaction via
systems like the WELL is asynchronous. While not all virtual
interaction is this way (notable exceptions include the IRC system and
the growing proliferation of MUDs ), conferencing systems and email do
allow interaction partners to participate in a staggered fashion. One
person leaves a message and at some other time another reads and
responds to it. This has a major impact on the coordination necessary
for the assembly of a group. Face-to-face interaction requires a high
level of coordination since all participants must be copresent in both
time and space. Conferencing systems, by contrast, allow people
separated by time zones, work schedules, and other activities to
interact with minimal coordination. Despite the lack of immediate
interaction, the interactions created in many conferencing systems do
exhibit a high level of responsiveness and dynamism usually associated
with real-time interaction.
The current text-only nature of most virtual interaction leads to
another unique aspect: without copresence, participants are acorporal
to one another. This may have profound implications since many of the
process of group formation and control involve either the application
or potential for application of force to the body. In a virtual
space, there are no bodies. As noted before, while the communications
"bandwidth" of most communities is quite rich and capable of nuance
and fine texture through the use of communications devices like voice,
gesture, posture, dress, and a host of other symbol equipment, most
virtual communities allow their participants to signal each other only
through the use of text.
The absence of the body in virtual interactions might lead some to
dismiss the possibility of virtual community. Indeed, interaction in
a virtual space has been described as "having your everything
amputated" Rather than preclude the formation of community, however,
the effective absence of the body in virtual interaction
simultaneously highlights the role of the body in real-space while
liberating the individual from many of the restrictions inherent in
bodies. And while telephone conversations are also acorporal, virtual
communities also have the capacity to facilitate the interaction of
large groups of people, far beyond telephone conferencing could
reasonably support. Further, as noted above, because participants are
not limited to real-time interaction, the task of coordinating
interaction participants is greatly eased. In addition, the qualities
of being aspatial and potentially asynchronous expands the pool of
potential participants of virtual communities beyond that of most
space-bound ones. It is not uncommon to settle into a long and
satisfying discussion with someone who lives on a different continent
while in a virtual community. But without the power of presence to
enforce sanctions and evoke communion, written and virtual communities
face unique challenges, a point I will take up again in this paper.
Closely related to the acorporeality of virtual interaction is its
limited "bandwidth" . Most users of the WELL and other virtual
communities use computers equipped with telephone-line interfaces
(modems) that allow for the exchange of information at speeds of 2400
baud (bits-per-second) to 14,400 baud. These speeds effectively limit
the quantity of data that can effectively be transmitted. As a result
interaction in virtual communities remains firmly entrenched in a
text-only environment. This has some interesting effects. The first
is that virtual interaction is relatively astigmatic. As Goffman used
the term, stigma are markings or behaviors that locate an individual
in a particular social status. While many stigma can have negative
connotations, stigma also mark positively valued social status.
Without the ability to present ones self to others in virtual
interaction, many of the stigma associated with people are filtered
out. Race, gender, age, body shape, and appearance, the most common
information we "give-off" to others in interaction, are absent in a
virtual space. The result can be both positive and negative: the
information we give-off helps to coordinate social interaction,
identifies likely interaction partners, and may serve to minimize
conflict by identifying likely antagonisms. Without such signals
additional work must be done to enable interaction and to signal
status and location to other potential interactants. At the same
time, this limitation makes discrimination more difficult. The result
may be that participants judge each other more on the "content of
their character" than any other status marking.
Finally, the preceding five characteristics combine to make virtual
interaction fairly anonymous. This leads directly to issues of
identity in a virtual space. In many virtual spaces anonymity is
complete. Participants may change their names at will and no record
is kept connecting names with real-world identities. Such anonymity
has been sought out by some participants in virtual interactions
because of its potential to liberate one from existing or enforced
identities. However, many systems, including the WELL, have found
that complete anonymity leads to a lack of accountability. As a
result, while all members of the WELL may alter a pseudonym that
accompanies each contribution the make, their userid remains constant
and a unambiguous link to their identity. However, even this fairly
rigorous identification system has limitations. There is no guarantee
that a person acting under a particular userid is in fact that person
or is the kind of person they present themselves as. The ambiguity of
identity has led some people to gender-switching, or to giving vent to
aspects of their personality they would otherwise keep under wraps.
Virtual sociopathy seems to strike a small but stable percentage of
participants in virtual interaction. Nonetheless, identity does
remain in a virtual space. Since the userid remains a constant in all
interactions, people often come to invest certain expectations and
evaluations in the user of that id. It is possible to develop status
in a virtual community that works to prevent the participant from
acting in disruptive ways lest their status be revoked.
Figure2. Summary of defining characteristics of Virtual Communities.
The arrow denotes a derivative effect.
Theory
In this section I will examine some work that bears closely on the
development and dynamics of the WELL. A significant body of theory
has developed to address the question of collective action and the
provision of collective goods but first I should note that there has
been some useful and high quality research on the role of electronic
communication in groups. The effects of email on organizations has
been discussed by Zuboff (1988), Kerr and Hiltz (1982), and Chesebro
and Bonsall (1989). Generally, their studies have been limited to an
examination of email and their findings to the fact that electronic
communication alters the hierarchy of communication within
organizations, often resulting in shifts of power. These works offer
some insight into virtual communities but suffer from one
short-coming: all concern themselves with organizations in which order
has been imposed by an external force. Most of the email systems
studied have been inserted into existing institutional structures and
thus offer little insight into the emergence of new collectivities or
their maintenance through the use of electronic communication. The
virtual community studied in this paper does not have an over-arching
institutional structure to explain why its members are present or to
offer an external source of power for imposing order on the
interactions found within themselves.
As a result, the central questions asked by theories of collective
action are underscored: how is order achieved and maintained in the
absence of external authority? The common appeal to external
authority simply begs the question of order for two reasons. First,
there is the empirical evidence of groups endogenously creating the
order they need to produce and consume the goods they need and want.
Second, appeals to external authority ignore the second order
cooperation necessary for the existence of the external authority.
Endogenous order is logically prior to exogenous order.
Theories of Communities and Collective Action
The term community is ambiguous. It is used to describe groups that
range from neighbors to nations and levels of solidarity from the
personal to the professional. Generically, a community can be
understood as a set of on-going social relations bound together by a
common interest or shared circumstance. As a result, communities may
be intentional or unintentional, a community's participants may
purposely join together or be thrust into membership by circumstance.
Intentional communities are of particular interest because they raise
more questions about the reasons and causes for their emergence than
do unintentional ones. Where unintentional communities are amenable
to structural explanations, economic, social, and political forces are
often directly evident, explaining intentional communities requires an
inquiry into the motives of its participants.
Despite the ease with which the term is used, there is no single
characteristic that easily defines what a community is or identifies a
particular social formation as a community without ambiguity. The
level of solidarity evident in a community, for example, can vary
greatly and communities can often be competitive rather than
cooperative. While the term community is often associated with the
notion of cooperation and collective contribution to a common good,
exclusive focus on this aspect of community obscures the fact that
communities, even those clearly engaged in the construction of
collective goods, are frequently marked by conflict and divisiveness.
Nonetheless, the presence of cooperative action is indeed a
distinguishing mark of communities; a community can be said to have
failed when it is no longer able to foster any cooperation among its
members.
Network theory, by providing useful tools for the illustration of the
structure of communities, may be able to provide more exact
definitions of community in the form of particular geometries of
social networks. Communities might be definable as a set of
overlapping networks of communication that remain stable for some
duration and, in their intentional form, are capable of acting
collectively towards a particular end. Strong communities might be
marked by high levels of interconnectivity and frequent interaction
along those network connections. By contrast, networks that are
arranged in severely hierarchical forms along the lines of a formal
organization do not fulfill one of the commonly held conditions of
community: while communities may certainly have governing bodies and
be stratified, they are not normally rigidly or formally structured.
The dynamism of a set of social interactions and the autonomy of their
participants may help distinguish a community from other otherwise
similar social groups. Most importantly, a network model may be able
to empirically illustrate what may be the single defining
characteristic of a community: boundaries. The kind of boundary that
defines a community is a major determinant of the kind of community,
intentional or not, that it contains. An unintentional community can
be defined as one that has externally enforced boundaries. The
process of membership in a community, therefore, may be an active or
passive one.
Often, definitions of community include the existence of commonly held
ideas, perceptions, and understandings. For Michael Taylor (1987),
for example, "... community... mean[s] a group of people (i) who have
beliefs and values in common, (ii) whose relations are direct and
many-sided and (iii) who practice generalized as well as balanced
reciprocity." (p. 23) This definition has many strengths. It opens
up the question of the relationship between intersubjectivity and
community, makes explicit the range and richness of interactions with
a community, and suggests a potentially powerful criteria of
evaluation. The first element is not as simple as it may seem. While
in many communities members do indeed share common cognitive
processes, ideological homogeneity is not a necessary condition of
community. It may be entirely absent in unintentional communities and
only minimal in intentional ones. Nonetheless, many communities are
marked by their commonly held and constructed ideologies and it can be
argued that widely held and accepted ideas that explain, justify and
compel continued individual contribution to a collective's projects
often pay a critical and decisive role in community formation and
survival. Ideas matter and their role should not be dismissed or
ignored. Nonetheless, capturing their effect with precision has been
a notoriously difficult task, it is easy to get lost down the long and
rocky road of cultural studies and ideological critique. The process
whereby an individual comes to perceive and embrace an idea, and in so
doing accept or reject a line of action, touches upon the central
questions of consciousness.
Taylor's last point is of special importance. The presence of
generalized as well as balanced reciprocity is further illustration of
the diversity of community relations, but I assume that Taylor places
special value on the presence of generalized reciprocity. Since one
of the defining characteristics of community is its comparatively long
duration, and given the advantages of credit systems, communities are
often able to support systems of generalized reciprocity.
Essentially, communities may provide resources for the redress of
infractions and forfeitures of debts that might not otherwise be
redeemable. Social pressure, from insult to incarceration, to make
good on all debts helps communities maintain the essential collective
good of trust. The benefit of maintaining a generalized accounting
system (one that allows for credit and does not demand intensive
monitoring) is supported by experimental research (Kollock, 1992) in
which it was found that generalized accounting systems yield much
greater mutual benefit than tight systems that demanded in-kind
exchanges at all turns.
Towards a definition of community
Cooperation, communication, duration, stability, interconnectivity,
structure, boundaries, intersubjectivity, and generalized accounting
systems, however inexact, are all certainly characteristics of
community and at worst are useful guides to their identification and
evaluation. Nonetheless, even the unanimous presence of each of these
characteristics does not ensure the success of a community. I noted
earlier that a community could be considered a failure when it is
incapable of fostering any level of cooperation among its members.
Such a community is perhaps one in name only. A successful community,
by contrast, is capable of directing individual action towards the
construction and maintenance of goods that could not be created by
individuals acting in isolation. There are many familiar collective
goods; common pastures, air and watersheds, and fishing groups are
common examples. But, despite the existence of many notable
exceptions, collective goods are difficult to maintain and are often
short lived. The continued production and availability of any
collective good depends upon the existence of a sufficient level of
commitment of the community's members and the application of
appropriate systems of monitoring and sanctioning. But every
collective good is plagued by some form of a collective action
dilemma, a situation in which actions that are rational for individual
members of the collective are irrational, that is either less
beneficial or even tragic, when repeated across a collectivity. At
each moment of their participation in the production of a collective
good individuals face the, sometimes latent, choice to commit to some
aspect of collective action or to defect from participating. This
choice is framed by the fact that the reward for defection is often
greater than that for cooperation. The result is a pervasive
temptation to escape the demands of collectives while remaining within
them in order to reap their rewards. As a result, communities can be
fragile things. Collectives must exercise two forms of power to
maintain their common goods, first, they must restrain and punish
individual actions that exploit or undermine collective goods through
monitoring and sanctioning, and second, maintain the commitment of
members to continued participation and contribution through rituals
and other practices that increase the individual's identification with
the group and acceptance of its demands. Since neither form of power
is easily achieved or maintained a number of theories have developed
to identify and explain the reasons some communities are successful
and others fail.
The Elements of Successful Community
While there is fairly wide-spread agreement that these two forms of
power are the definitive elements of successful communities, there is
far less agreement as to how to create and most effectively wield
these forms of power. Mancur Olson, for example, stresses the
importance of group size on its likelihood of success. He argues that
size is inversely related to success, as a group grows the costs of
communication and coordination rise threatening the existence of the
collective. This is an idea that has attracted a great deal of
criticism. Michael Taylor (1987) argues that "Olson's first claim in
support of the "size" effect... is not necessarily true. It holds
only where costs unavoidably increases with size or where there is
imperfect jointness or rivalness or both. Most goods, however,
exhibit some divisibility, and most public goods interactions exhibit
some rivalness." (p. 11) As a result, Taylor believes that "The size
effect that I think should be taken most seriously is the increased
difficulty of conditional cooperation in larger groups." (p.13) Small
groups do possess a special quality that enables them to maintain
themselves with greater ease than larger groups. In particular, small
groups are usually able to provide high levels of communication
between each member of the group while maintaining high levels of
surveillance of each members activities, especially his or her
contributions and withdrawals to and from the group's resources. This
"small group effect" is a powerful one, but it does not exclude or
even explain the possibility of successful large groups. One
significant aspect of virtual communication may be the way in which it
alters the economies of communication and coordination, thus making it
possible for larger groups to "succeed" with less effort and
difficulty.
If size is not a necessary determinant of success, what is? Rosabeth
Moss Kanter, Michael Taylor, Michael Hechter, and Peter Kollock have
various answers. Each focuses on a somewhat different aspect of the
organization and practices a group employs to explain the group's
likely success or failure. Briefly, Kanter focuses on the
construction of commitment, identifying three broad methods for its
construction. Hechter provides a schematic of the steps necessary for
a good to be effectively produced. Taylor looks at the kinds of goods
to be produced, revealing that the character of a good in many ways
controls the ease with which it and those who produce and consume it
may be controlled. Kollock, in contrast, looks at the systems of
monitoring employed by members of a collective and the effect of
distortion on communication between members to identify methods which
reliably yield more productive arrangements.
The Construction of Commitment
The availability of communication is not alone sufficient for
successful organization. Those paths of communication must be used to
engender commitment and to enforce compliance. Kanter (1972) examines
intentional communities to identify the mechanisms by which they
maintained sufficient levels of commitment in each of their members.
She recognizes that particular material practices have
phenomenological impact. Some, in particular circumstances, can have
the effect of generating in their subjects self-restraint and willing
contribution to the production of collective goods. The general
presence of such inclinations is often referred to as solidarity. But
Kanter does not suggest that communities survive by goodwill alone.
She notes that the presence of practices that enable surveillance and
effective control over pay-offs, both sanctions and rewards, are the
real foundation of successful communities and provides a short catalog
of commitment mechanisms that were present in the successful examples
of the intentional communities she surveys, where success is equated
with the longevity of the collective. Success in her study is defined
as the survival of a group longer than one 25 year generation. She
examines data on 30 examples of historical intentional "utopian"
communities that flourished in the United States from 1780 to 1860,
seeking in each indicators of the presence of particular strategies in
each category of commitment maintenance. Successful communities
fostered attachment, dependence, and obedience through the reduction
of individual difference, the provision of a common risk and share of
collective goods, and the maintenance of distinct boundaries with
everything not in-group.
Kanter identifies three elements of the process of producing
individual commitment to a community, the cognitive, cathectic and
evaluative. Cognitive processes involve the evaluation of potential
profits and costs of participation in a collective labor, cathectic
process entail the emotional and affective bonds created between
coparticipants in a collective labor, and evaluative process entail
the use and acceptance of the collective's standards of behavior. A
collective's success, according to Kanter, is directly related to its
capacity to foster and maintain all three forms of connection between
the individual and the collectivity.
Kanter further divides cognitive mechanisms into sacrifices and
investments. The former increases the "costs" of membership, while
the latter increases the benefits of continued membership. All
collectives make use of strategies to manage these forms of
contribution. But commitment mechanisms need not necessarily involve
the evaluations of cost and benefit implied in these above categories.
Cathectic commitment involves emotional attachments to relations
within the collective and are thus not directly dependent on the
continued return on the investment of participation. Emotional
involvement in a collective takes two forms: renunciation and
communion. The former highlights the abandonment or diminishment of
relations outside the collective, the latter highlights the process of
incorporating group identification into individual identity.
Communion involves the positive construction of affective solidarity.
Ritual practices, sometimes woven into productive practices, restate
and reassert the ideological principles that justify membership and
commitment. Evaluative commitment involves the use and acceptance of
the collective's schema of interpretation of their behavior and the
behavior of others. This inevitably involves moral judgments of
proper conduct and contribution. To the extent that a collective is
able to capture central elements of identity within group practices of
validated meanings, the individual is bound more closely and tightly
to the group.
Each of these processes takes place within the WELL, albeit with
modification. The communities in Kanter's study are all face-to-face
communities of people who have an economic dependence upon one
another. This condition does not hold in the WELL where its members
come together to satisfy needs and wants beyond their immediate
material survival. Nonetheless, interactions within the WELL do
exhibit these processes and are perhaps more important there since no
physical coercion is possible. The costs of membership in the WELL
are primarily money and time, the payoff useful knowledge and
membership in a collectivity. Attachment is generated quite strongly
at times, creating a condition known as "Well Addiction" in which
members find themselves participating in the WELL to the exclusion of
other activities. The generation of communion effects will be taken
up again below.
Economies of Commitment
Hechter (1988) develops this theme further. He notes that monitoring
and sanctioning systems have their own economies and their relative
costs determine whether groups can bring them into use and to what
effect. Furthermore, there are a number of steps that must be taken
before these mechanisms can be put into use. First, there is the
entrepreneurial task of organizational design, or production rules,
the costs of which can be prohibitive. Second, collective acceptance
of a particular production scheme must be achieved. It is here that
conflicting interests and preferences complicate the process of
collective organization. Third, the production rules must be
maintained. Individual commitment must be maintained and defectors
identified and punishment applied. This involves the problem of
assurance, the conviction that committed contribution to the
collective good will be reciprocated by all interaction partners.
Hechter argues for the necessity of formal rules and controls:
"Whatever its specific causes, sub-optimal production of the joint
good leads the group to unravel. In order to attain optimal
production, formal controls that assure high levels of compliance with
production (and distribution) rules by monitoring and sanctioning
group members must be adopted." (p. 18) The dilemma facing groups is
that such systems of organization are themselves collective goods
which must be produced and maintained: "Yet since these controls are
themselves a collective-good, their establishment has been difficult
to explain from choice-theoretic premises." (p. 18)
The construction of formal systems of regulation has been repeatedly
avoided by the members of the WELL, a point that offers some evidence
critical of Hechter's argument. Members of the WELL have diverse
backgrounds but seem to share an unwillingness to construct
regulations and formal sanctioning systems for their interactions.
Nonetheless, a number of collective goods continue to be produced as
will be noted below.
The Character of Collective Goods Michael Taylor's work (1987) expands
on Hechter's system by describing the kinds of collective
organizations that are possible and their relations to the goods they
seek to control. He examines the type of goods groups can produce,
categorizing them on the basis of the type of boundaries that can be
placed around them and the manner in which they are produced and
consumed. For example goods can be excludable or not. An excludable
good offers the collective the power of denying access to anyone who
does not contribute to its production. Goods can be rival or not:
some goods are diminished by their consumption: two people can not eat
the same bite of food. Further, some forms of consumption reduce the
value of the remaining resource (for example adding pollution to a
stream.) But not all goods are rival and some are even strongly
anti-rival: information can in some cases be like this. [Ex: the more
widely accurate knowledge of AIDS is distributed the more developed
the common good. Further, a newspaper, once read, is not necessarily
diminished in value.] Similarly, some goods are divisible: it is
possible to quantize the good, electrical power is an example, while
others are not, public safety while expressible in terms of a crime
rate is not easily decomposed into units of safety. Some goods are
exhaustible and others renewable. Fossil fuels are a primary example
of the former. But many goods have rates of sustainable use,
fisheries, pasture land, and pools of credit can regenerate
themselves. Nonetheless, even a renewable resource can be exhausted
by overuse. Some goods require active production while others require
regulated access. Resources are not only collectively drawn from but
also collectively contributed to. A common pool resource can be more
than physical resources like fish or pasture-land. CPRs can also be
social organizations themselves. Markets, judicial systems, and
communities are all common resources. These kinds of resources have
the added element that they must be actively reconstructed, where fish
will remain in the sea whether they are fished or not, a judicial
system will not persist without the continued contribution of all of
its participants. Further, institutions are just one form of a social
common pool resources. The far less formal settings that enable
particular kinds of interaction are also common goods.
The goods produced and maintained in the WELL are primarily the
product of on-going discussions and the relationships that they enable
and embody. In Taylor's schema, the WELL's goods are not very
excludable, the contents of public conferences are open to all
members. However, the existence of backchannels of communication,
such as email, and private conferences, allow for some goods to be
excluded. Indeed, private conferences, as a result of their enhanced
capacity to exclude access to some other group of members, are able to
produces certain goods that could not otherwise be generated. For
example, private conferences often contain discussions of sensitive or
personal issues that rely upon a high level of trust between
co-participants. But, whether public or private, the goods in the
WELL are not rival, increased use of the information generated by the
WELL, as is the case with many forms of information, does not diminish
its value. Furthermore, the goods derived from the WELL are not very
quantizable, although access to the WELL is. These qualities mean
that the WELL is faced with a difficult task as a result of the
qualities of the goods it produces. Without control over the
boundaries surrounding goods, Taylor suggests, the likelihood of
continued successful production is diminished. An illustration of this
is offered below.
Accounting Systems and Misunderstandings
Kollock (1992) extends Taylor's examination of the nature of the
collective goods a group seeks to produce by including the
communications environment. Some environments allow for easy
communication between members of a collective or partners in a trade.
In such cases individuals are able to express and display their
intentions, either to cooperate or defect, and thus may be able to
create a situation of assurance. Once assured of cooperation, members
may themselves be more inclined to cooperate. However, many
environments make such communication and display difficult or
ambiguous. In cases where communication can not be relied upon
coordination and thus cooperation becomes more difficult. This is
especially true when the criteria of sanctioning is rigid and
retaliatory. In cases when a defection is met quickly with a
counter-defection, cooperation quickly dissolves. However, when
defection is met with a more relaxed accounting system, cooperation is
more likely to be maintained. This is especially true when
communication, and thus certainty that a partner did in fact defect,
is ambiguous and capable of generating "false positives".
Moving from a restricted to a general accounting system is by no means
an easy task. At the very least it is necessary that someone take on
the entrepreneurial task of creating a more relaxed system and drawing
a significant number of members into acceptance of these rules.
Members often have strong grounds for refusing to cooperate,
especially if they do not believe that others will abide by the rules
or if there are outstanding "debts" they would be required to abandon.
Creating a sense of assurance, then, requires a great deal of work and
public demonstrations of acceptance. The frequent disputes that
emerge in the WELL have led some people to believe that a more relaxed
accounting system is necessary and they have started topics to garner
public acceptance of the system:
Topic 104: THE SLACK COMPACT: A General Custom to Replace Rules
# 1: My other account is on the Internet (boswell) Wed, May 20, '92
(11:04) 32 lines
TTHE SLACK COMPACT:
In the name of Gopod, Amen. We, whose names are underwritten, the Loyal
Users of the WELL, by the Grace of Gopod, of Internet, of PCConnect, of CPN
and PacBell e&.
Having undertaken for the Glory of Gopod, and Advancement of the Universal
Connectivity, and the Honour of our System and Virtual Community, to create
the finest telecommunications colony in Cyberspace; do by these presents,
solemnly and mutually in the Presence of Gopod and one of another, covenant
and combine ourselves together into a civil Body swearing to cut each other
slack at all times, IN ALL CONFERENCES SAVE ONE, and in all manner possible
for our better Ordering and the Preservation of Online Peace of Mind, and
Furtherance of the Ends aforesaid; And by Virtue hereof to enact,
constitute, and frame, this solumn compact of the STATE OF SLACK, that it
shall enable us to respond in a forthright manner or to create topics as we
so choose and yet recall that the GIVING OF SLACK shall be held to be the
state as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the General good of
the WELL and all other systems that we shall inhabit; unto which we promise
all due submission and obedience.
In Witness whereof we have hereunto subscribed our names at well.sf.ca.us
the Month of May, in the Reign of our Sovereign Sysop, fig of Mill
Valley,Sausalito, and California Anno Domini, 1992.
While some members embraced this effort,
Topic 104: THE SLACK COMPACT: A General Custom to Replace Rules
# 13: Andrew L. Alden (alden) Wed, May 20, '92 (14:22) 5 lines
As the descendant of a signer of the Mayflower Compact, I am honored to
affix my name and userid herebelow to the document hereinabove and for now
and hereafter.
Andrew L. Alden alden
Topic 104: THE SLACK COMPACT: A General Custom to Replace Rules
# 14: Frank Miles (fhm) Wed, May 20, '92 (14:25) 1 line
Slack, yes, by all means.
others reacted with a significant amount of resistance:
Topic 104: THE SLACK COMPACT: A General Custom to Replace Rules
# 6: set phasers on scribble (axon) Wed, May 20, '92 (13:00) 11
lines
very amusing, gerard. you want to rip off my words and ship them to
the worldnet, you want to drag a cadre of filthy camp-followers
through my parlor, you want to build your online reputation on the
creativity and effort of brighter lights than yourself, and then you
want me to give you *slack*?
i've got your slack right here, pal. go fuck yourself, wheelock. and
the horse you rode in on.
The move to institute this compact, like many other calls for the
reform of behavior on the WELL, yielded no formal rules or clearly
developed set of new normative standards. But by bringing the issue
into public discussion, it may have served to highlight the problem in
the minds of the members and provide some standard by which
evaluations of behavior will be made in the future.
Data:
Collective Goods in a Virtual Space Despite the lack of physical
contact and the minimal exchange of material goods between members of
virtual communities, a number of goods are produced and consumed.
Topic 29: What does the Well *do* for users?
# 1: another user (gail) Sun, Nov 17, '91 (14:59) 25 lines
When I started, I wanted information.
Then I wanted to play and frolic... using my theater background.
Then I wanted to be sincere and contradictory and fully human.
Then I wanted interaction, brilliant intellectual syntheses and paradoxes
and great collaborative problem solving.
Then I wanted community.
Then I wanted inspired group improvisation with emotion, spirit and
analytical thought all permitted and appreciated.
Then I wanted not to get in anybody's way.
Then I wanted to be able to sit at an ascii conf. table or firecircle or
whatever and chime in whether I was agreeing or questioning, and to be
confident that if it wasn't important, my remarks would be properly ignored.
The best to me is personal epiphanies and clarifications of different world
views, and perhaps best when actually serendipitous... but this is a matter
of taste and trust, I've just grown up with disdain for the synthetic, and
had to learn to question as well as honor that disdain.
I'm still here out of a mixture of gratitude and a kind of rash bravado taht
if there's no reason for this, I'll be able to tell, and I'll stop posting.
My doubts have to do with my lack of specific useful knowlege.
What keeps us here?
These goods can be categorized as various forms of capital. Members
of the WELL produce two forms of capital in abundance, although not
every member of the community is able to make equal use of these
resources. The first form of capital is social network capital, the
WELL expands the number of social relations available to an
individual. This is also understood to be the primary mission of the
management and staff of the WELL:
Matisse Enzer - Tue 14 Apr 1992 in Topic 46:
WELL Customer Support Policy
The main thing that The WELL provides is a computer conferencing
environment. This is a place for people to meet each other and
exchange ideas and thoughts in a conversational fashion. After
access, our next priority is the maintainance of the conferencing
environment and helping people to use the basic features of that
environment: Reading conferences, Posting in conferences and Finding
material you are interested in.The main thing that The WELL provides
is a computer conferencing environment.
Other organizations do this as well: churches, clubs, and associations
provide individuals with new contacts and expand their potential and
realized networks, but the WELL and other virtual communities provides
instant access to ongoing relationships with an even larger and more
diverse group of people than most face-to-face organizations provide.
Further, because virtual communities can rely on the structure of
computer software, individuals can quickly seek out and join groups
interested in exactly the same interests they hold. While it is
impossible to pick up the phone and ask to be connected with a group
of people interested in Jazz or comic books, or raising a child with
disabilities, that is exactly what virtual communities provide. In
effect the segmented architecture of virtual communities can be
imagined as a vast convention with groups congregating around signs
that advertise their intended topic of discussion. The result is a
kind of electronically maintained set of Schelling points, social
magnets for particular interests. This is reflected in the statements
of members of the WELL who frequently cite access to other people as
one of the main purposes for their community:
Topic 28: WELL's Mission Statement -- What Would it Be if it Existed?
# 1: Sharon Fisher (slf) Mon, May 4, '92 (09:18) 2 lines
Bringing people in touch with each other, who might not otherwise meet, to
discuss all types of issues.
Topic 28: WELL's Mission Statement -- What Would it Be if it Existed?
# 2: demontiki (jdevoto) Mon, May 4, '92 (09:53) 3 lines
Providing ways to communicate.
Building communities.
Tying people into the world net.
Topic 28: WELL's Mission Statement -- What Would it Be if it Existed?
# 6: Matisse Enzer (matisse) Tue, May 5, '92 (19:26) 10 lines
Here's a "statement of core values" the staff came up with last July -
we felt that this was a good PRELUDE to a mission statement, but is
not a mission statement itself:
The WELL's core values are building and maintaining
RELIABLE, EXPANDING, COLLABORATIVE telecomputing systems
that support and environment of stimulating conversation
and ENCOURAGE CREATIVITY, DIVERSITY and TOLERANCE
Topic 28: WELL's Mission Statement -- What Would it Be if it Existed?
# 42: Matisse Enzer (matisse) Sat, May 16, '92 (15:51) 5 lines
The new version of the WELL brochure will say:
ACCESS TO PEOPLE AND IDEAS
Topic 28: WELL's Mission Statement -- What Would it Be if it Existed?
# 52: Larry Moss (lsm) Wed, May 20, '92 (13:25) 12 lines
Ok, here's a sketch for a small piece of a statement:
Bringing people together means more than just having them occupy the same
space at the same time. In electronic communication, we find aspects of