MIT's Technology Review has a short article on Larry Sanger's involvement with the Wikipedia. Of course the article doesn't say much at all, but the concluding line I find really interesting: ?What you have to have faith in is human beings being able to work together."
I wonder about collaborative projects that don't have codified rules for how the project functions and I also wonder about projects that don't have a core membership who has a history or a connection outside of the project itself. Give the size and scope of the Wikipedia, it appears that without some kind of structure through which the process of adding and editing entries is processed, fracturing behavior is going to emerge.
Given that Sanger himself moved away from the project because of tension between participants, one can only imagine how many other people have been driven away who found the process frustrating or uncoordinated.
Returning to Sanger's quote at the end of the article, I have to say I'm suspect. While I see within it a kernel of anarchic sensibilities (here, the idea that cooperative behavior is possible), it seems that over and over again, the reliance on this sentiment, as opposed to having a commonality, based on a history of experience of the people who are participating in the project is essential.
Clearly, the codification of norms in a project can directly address this kind of situation. However, getting to the point where a group can actually put together a set regulations guiding how the group functions is typically another stumbling point. Here, the competing ideas of what directs the project, what its ends are, are difficult places for a group which doesn't have commonality outside of the project. As much as this process is essential, it stands to be just as fracturing if the group doesn't have history or commonality outside the project to fall back on. Arguably, one of the necessary conditions for a group to be able to go through such a process of codification of norms is having trust in one another, something that is rarely built in the process of making bylaws.
To argue that groups need conditions that build mutual trust among one another before norms can be codified appears on its face to be an extrapolation of the argument that Sanger posits- faith that people can work together. However, shared history and goals which unify a project among membership is different than faith that the project will work itself out. Here, the reliance is not on the hope that people will act well to one another, but rather that given a situation that builds bonds between people there is a greater chance that a conscious desire to both maintain the goals of the group and the group itself will persist amidst competing interest.
Ultimately, how groups move forward through internal competing interests is a huge question. Obviously there has been a huge amount written on this subject, from Tocqueville to the less famous Tyranny of Structurelessness, yet what is surprising is how often this subject continues to raise its head. There is no shortage of irony that a project like the Wikipedia which seeks to be one of the largest collections of information on the net faces it as well.
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