EPTJalla Jalla
TL.net (in my eyes) has a large focus on a bunch of numbers, e.g. how many forum posts you have, how long you've been here and so on and so forth. I recently had my six year anniversary as registered user (on this account), crossed the 600 post mark and added my 300th article to LP I. There have been rumors that legendary blahz0r, Liquidpedia's staff bot (yes, he's not human 10011101 @ you blahz0r), has about 18,5k edits - and now I have 10% of his edit count. This demands some sort of ... huge blog. I guess. Or not, I don't care, whatever.
Traditionally, I'd write something „fun“ like Liquileaks or (with the help of tremendous NinaZerg) Giggly Girl eSports. But I don't feel like it at all. This is probably going to be the first post I'll do that only features content which is remotely related to the games featured on TL.net. No idea if it is interesting, people usually are not that interested in these topics in real life (other than in university), but who knows, zatic showed that there is some sort of demand for short things. I can't keep it short, I won't even try. You've been warned.
Introduction - Sociology
There's a question I learned to hate really, really much. Coming from relatives, friends and ordinary strangers I meet and get into a conversation with. The ordinary opening always has something like „what do you do“, which I answer with „I'm studying social sciences/sociology“. Bam. „And what do you do with it?“. Some also think it would be social as in „helping people“, or - even worse - that this subject/science has something to do with animals. What.
I actually met people who really knew what sociology is about, but these came from either the Eastern European countries or grew up in the former DDR (east Germany before the 1990es, Iron Curtain and all). It's funny, because once I explain it people just give me an odd look and change the subject, as if I told them I sold crystal meth or something. (yeah science, yeah Mr. White!)
So, the TL;DR verison of sociology is a lot like the TL;DR of many social sciences. We do not do research on single individuals, we look at larger groups. We need at least two persons that interact in some way. It doesn't matter if they actually do money based trades, or if they only talk to each other, avoid each other or pass each other. We like to seek for patterns of every day life, why people get jobs, how they get jobs, how they learn, how educational systems work, why and how cooperation between groups, individual or even nations emerge. We like to do cross-national comparisons of different social systems (educational, social and cultural systems). Some focus on gender research, some focus on health expectancies others purely on how an ordinary life of the ordinary person in a community looks like. Based on observations we try to extract common patterns and have a look if they change over time, in different cultures and so on and so forth. This sounds dry, but can be more than exciting.
Now, why would that be interesting? Isn't most of that obvious? It depends, some topics I had to learn were really obvious (and boring), others changed my view on society bit by bit and are fairly interesting. Right now, my focus is on educational research and labour markets. But that's not all I learned or all I'm interested in. That's the advantage of social sciences - the wide spectrum of things you can do research about.
I could write a ton about why the German educational system is so different from the rest, why we, the South Germans, are so elitist assholes about it, how the Scandinavian countries are so different from the South European ones, how the politicians are idiots when they try to manipulate OECD studies - but well. Nah.
I tried to give a hint that this blog indeed will feature something that is loosely conntected to TL.net. It's about Wikipedia, the first topic we discussed in one of my courses I personally found to be not only interesting, but relevant to my everyday. Have you ever really thought about how a Wiki could work? I mean why would anyone write a good article? Who are these people and what motivates them?
Common Goods in a nutshell
Most papers on these issues start with a formal introduction explaining what Wikipedia (or Wikis) are. I guess I can leave that out. Oh, btw, this blog basically sums up the papers of Christian Stegbauer et al. - if you have access to them, go and read, it's good stuff.
The important thing to see is that Wikis are so much different from anything else, especially Wikipedia. It's definitely a useful source of wisdom, although it is kinda flawed here and there. Usually, if you wrote a giant lexicon or article or produced any kind of good you'd try to get money for it. You invested a lot of time, so consequently there should be any profit as outcome. Profit doesn't mean money, it could be gratitude for example. Anything positive.
Now, there are several problems. Economists will know. First: organizational problems. The more people work on the same subject/project, the less effort will be put into it. This can be abstracted, just to give you a better contrast:
There have been several cases of persons being in great danger: There was an issue in the early 70es (iirc) where a boy in Munich was about to drown and a lot of bystanders watched. Nobody helped, because everyone thought someone would take the initative. This boy could have been definitely saved, but he died.
The problem with ordinary projects is not that people are bystanders, because they usually get paid for their job. They know what to do, when to do it and how to do it. The point here would be that people exert the minimum amount of effort to get the job done. Then again, most companies introduced different systems to motivate their employees, but a list of these options/systems would be a bit too much for this blog.
So, back to the point: Wikipedia is a common good. This means a lot of people benefit from the encyclopedia and only do little or nothing to help creating it. In real life there a different „common goods“.
Taxes are a prominent example. You pay comparatively little money (again, this depends in the international context and is probably limited to first world countries) and get a lot in return. The collected money is spent on welfare programs, social insurances, better infrastructure and other kind of services.
If an actor (actor means any individual that can do any kind of interaction) is rational he'd try to minimize the amount of money/work he spends on such a common good while trying to maximize his personal output. Consequently the option to just not pay taxes while getting everything either way is quite lucrative. And that's the main problem with common goods. In Germany the fines/punishments handed out to those who dodge taxes are very high and you can even go to jail for this. That's because the system is so complex, easy to abuse and would fail if the amount of dodging people is too high.
Another example of more or less the same problem seen from a different angle is the prisoner's dilemma. Google it, I'll save the space and your eyes this time. The key to this is that there are multiple persons that try to maximize their profit - so far nothing new. However, these two (or more) actors do not, or rather can not share information. They know about the outcome of their choices (either cooperate or not cooperate), know the best solution would be to cooperate, but can't foresee the other persons option. So - how do you get people to not only cooperate, when you can't read their minds and how do you avoid people abusing a common good?
The solution can not be „to punish“ people for „only reading“ Wikipedia, because a) treading is the point of a Wiki and b) the common good Wikipedia doesn't automatically fail if there are more lurkers than editors. If people stop paying taxes there is less money and everyone loses (except for the abusers), but if people only read, there won't be less articles. But why is there no stop in Wikipedias expansions? How come that there are new articles?
Theories
Back to motivation. Motivation in the context of this article means that a rational actor would expect some sort of gain for the energy he spent on doing something.
Intrinsic Motivation
Sociology focuses on more than one actor, hence an intrinsic motivation will not be the explaining factor for me. It should still be mentioned, because it is probably why a lot of users contribute to Liquidpedia.
The intrinsic motivation is more of a psychological thing, rather than something you'd read about in sociological papers. Any individual would do something just to please his very own needs. There are types of persons that like to work, because it has a higher meaning for their life. Or there are people that would write articles about a special subject - let's assume something IT related - just to exercise what they learned. Some want to show off. Others are afraid of punishments, getting bad looks from their superior or something like that. In case of Wikipedia they'd like to get feedback or want to increase their knowledge about a topic.
Persons that just want to boost their ego will have a hard time to get the gains from writing an article. Almost nobody looks up at their alias in the author/history tab and even if they do, they wouldn't know how to contact this person to thank him or could put a face to his nick. So, this can't be really an explanation if this editor is not completely delusional. I just assume that the majority of Wiki-contributors are not mentally unstable.
Intrinsic motivation can explain why people start to edit, create content or fix mistakes. It is most likely the starting point of a sociological explanation, but it won't be enough. Maybe psychologists won't agree, maybe they will. A few personality types would actually edit a lot in their spare time, just to please their inner demon so to speak. But it's probably not enough to explain a large quantity of editors from numerous countries, having different cultural and educational background. It's not enough to assume one or more homogeneous group(s) of people that magically make such a complex project possible.
Rational Choice
Rational Choice theories (RC) are quite prominent within social sciences. They state that single actors maximize their profit, always do the smart thing and are basically all-knowing. This view on humans is a bit flawed but works well in different scenarios. The so-called homo economicus can explain a lot in these micro theories.
To give you an example of how the homo economicus works: Imagine some sort of society that has some sort of currency. Now, if there is one person that wants product X, he will go around and search for people that offer X. He will judge everyone's product and seek for the X that is best for him, both quality and prize wise. The people that sell or offer X will also compare their own product to the other offered X-es in the society. Sooner or later buyers and sellers will automatically sell/buy their product to a prize that is fair/just for everyone. It is as if some „invisible hand“ controls the entire market of this society. Again, this is just a very plain explanation, probably a little flawed and a lot of people have already heard of it. It's really a basic thing in social science. If you never heard of it, this is Adam Smith. In very easy though.
Now, let's transfer that theory on Wikipedia. We assume that people try to maximize their profit, which would either mean read-only, or if they contribute, some sort of gain. But there's is no monetary gain. There is only exchange between editors, but no exchange between consumers and authors.
Wikipedia had (and still has iirc) policies that forbid personal marketing. If a company/person/whatever adds itself just to sell their image, they'll get deleted or edited a way they might not like it at all. This „harsh“ policy has changed a bit over time, but still exists insome form. (Liquileaks note: discussions about that matter even happened among LP editors not so long ago!)
The flexible model can explain why there is still a continous stream of editors, at least it can do it a bit better than the intrinsical motivation theories, because it simply includes these. Roughly speaking. (uh, oh, I smell „you are wrong posts“)
It explains that there might be a non-monetary gain, as the editors might be happy about correcting mistakes for example. But it is pretty much against the idea of a homo economicus, because he would actually abuse the system by lurking.
Durkheim, Toennis, Macro
Another approach to explaining cooperation comes from ... a bit outdated theories, mainly from the French Durkheim. It basically says that individuals don't have a mind of their own (again very roughly speaking), but some sort of fixed choices. Society dictates laws, conventions and so on. These have to be followed. If any individual breaks these he will receive a punishment, if he follows them strictly he will receive some sort of positive feedback.
The idea how such a fixed system starts is a bit more complicated. Durkheim argues (iirc) a bit like the homo economicus, that any society will differentiate itself sooner or later, people will take the jobs they are best at. To keep it short: Once this is done, the system doesn't change, because individual actors re-produce the system through trades; changes can only come from the system itself, mostly because new problems need a solution, which can only be offered by the swarm-like society. Again, please note that I use high contrasts and that there is way more to the theories, than what I just wrote. My explanations are flawed, but hopefully easier to understand than the original papers from a hundred years ago.
These theories and thoughts work well for some problems, but are basically meaningless for Wikipedia. Wikipedia is by definition international and the contributors are not strongly connected to one another. The macro theories need strong ties, they can explain why family structures work, why small villages have a different social network than cities (this one is more Toennis) - so they definitely make sense, just not here. I only added them to contrast micro theories (individuals create patterns through accumulated exchange over time) and macro theories (individuals are directed by society as a whole).
Gift exchange
This one, I really don't know. It's not really a sociological thing, it's more of a longshot in my eyes. There are customs here in my area that are just silly. Whenever a 14 year old boy or girl gets officially part of the church there is celebration all over the place. Social convention dictates that you give them presents (money, rare coins, cakes, sweets, whatever), but they also have to give presents back (cards, sweets, cake) to those who gave them presents in the first place. It just makes no sense, but everyone does it - here, Durkheim, see - nobody knows why, but they do. If you break it you get the evil looks and/or people start to ignore you. Nobody even likes it.
So, someone whom I can't remember, suggested that a similar tradition could be the case for Wikipedia. A cultural thing. You see someone worked, which is a gift, so you work too, to give the present back. It's not directed, because you... losely place a gift here and there, but the original author doesn't receive the gift from the person that had the biggest gain.
It well, it makes sense somehow if you think about it. But Wikipedia is a bit more directed and definitely somewhat organized. If this system would be explaining all the facts, Wikipedia would be a chaos.
Networking - A Solution
If you are into social sciences you must have ran at least once into the guy or the girl who wants to be a teacher for pre-school or something. I hate them, because their solution to all problem is „it's a bit of all“ or „I have no idea but I talk“ or „let's talk about it“. This is bullshit. But here they'd be right for once. It indeed is a bit of everything.
When you have a closer look at bigger and smaller articles and do statistics on them, you'll see a few odd things. The majority of editors are first-time contributors. They add some stuff here and there, but nothing that would take more than a few hours at most. And then disappear.
There is also a larger community (but in relative numbers quite small) that do a lot of work on very different subjects and articles. They exchange a lot via talk pages. Cluster analysis and other methods show that particularly well. I don't have them at hand, sadly, nor would I be allowed to share them I guess - German IP laws are a bitch.
Stegbauer's explanations start with the intrinsic motivation: People start to edit because they are interested or want to do something, maybe as some sort of nerd hobby, maybe because it's their real life hobby, maybe they exercise - it doesn't matter, only the fact that they start is important.
Now, nobody is tied to the system yet. The statistics they had in their book show that if an exchange starts, people get sucked into the system. They start to talk, have discussions and edit their initial edits once again if they get feedback. Over and over. The more experienced authors communicate with rookies, the more first time editors get tied into a network of authors. If they receive harsh criticism they leave. This makes perfect sense.
This is very micro-orientated and goes well with the Rational Choice model, except for the gain part. They get no visible gains. This is where the system is similar to Durkheim/Toennies, because the network works very tightly.
Sooner or later the new authors get embed into a hierarchy of authors; they will learn that the more experienced contributors have a reputation that is worth a lot within their network. The more you contribute, the more you accept the policies everyone agreed upon, the more respect you get in return. The stat analyses showed, that these „respected“ authors sit in a web like a spider - they have a lot people asking them, they review a lot, they are known and famous. It also shows that positive feedback increases the respect level. That's the gain that is not visible to the ordinary lurker.
That's a whole new level in between macro and micro theories. Usually, you'd argue that
a) individuals interact, and all their actions, trades and whatnot will change the society (macro level) completely
or
b) there is a shift that affects everyone (technological, cultural, political changes for a group of people) that will in consequently increase/decrease the choices that actors have
This theory of networking is constantly changing. Both optioni a) and option b) will be dynamic, too, but there's no level in between individual actors and society. There's a group that makes conventions, saves their work, rules on how outsiders are to be assimilated and create gains on their own, before making changes global; some of these groups act a bit like terrorist cells and the reaction of each cell is equally important. But each cell can at any time influence the individual actor, without changing the entire „society“ of authors first.
And now for another interesting part: if lurkers abuse, it usually is bad for a common good. If they abuse Wikipedia, they can only add to the fame of an author. An article that gets „abuse-lurked“ by ordinary users will only add more to the amount of respect of its authors. Because that's just another way to see which article has a higher quality.
Consequences - Why do research on THAT?
Wow, that was boring. I guess. To me this was interesting, because it has more to it. It can basically extrapolated and used if you want to create an equal common good. Note that it won't entirely be as relevant for projects like Liquidpedia, because a lot of contributers can get personal gain here (e-Fame for your online alter ego, advertisment, organizational platform). Also, the coin system that shows which author did a lot of work adds respect, but isn't „that“ needed.
Let's see what it could be used for in the real world.
Social Systems
In Germany we have a problem with demography: we have too many old people on too little new borns. Our fertility rate isn't exactly a disaster yet, but it already starts to hurt. The social systems will eventually face huge problems sooner or later when it comes to retirement fonds or social care for the elderly. Furthermore, people retire in an age at which they could theoretically still work, but the system supports their earlier exit through various exit-systems. There are projects to attract these people, because it's not they hate to work, but they just don't want to work full time anymore. The idea is to create some sort of system where these elderly do work for free in social organizations a few hours a week. If you could connect those people, you'd save a lot of time and create something quite good for society as a whole. They could work in retirement homes, kindergartens and whatnot. Opinion polls show that they'd do it. So let's do it? Well German politicians suck mostly and try to solve it differently. It's not that this would solve everything, but it could make a few things here a bit easier.
The System Closes
And here's a new thing. People hate BW elitists. TL.net staff people are sell outs. Assholes who abandoned the page. That's what you can read every now and then. People critize the new organizers for being incompetent. Why is this?
Well these people founded the page, that's about it, here's your explanation. Veterans are veterans, because they are strongly tied to a scene you don't recognize as scene, because you're a newcomer. When people meet and create conventions and you break them, just by being new in the worst case scenario (not saying that's the case for TL, but I know pages where this is normal), you'll get jalla jalla in return. If you start to exchange and do trades with them, you get sucked in.
Systems are not fixed, but they tend to be locked for outsiders. Insiders want to save what they built. This is a huge problem for Wikis, as there are cases when new and correct changes get rejected. One of my teachers did an edit to a page that was about his work (and the page was plainly wrong) and this edit got rejected, because the reviewer thought my prof was an impostor of some sorts.
So, here's the lesson we could learn:
If you want to change a system, be polite, get to know the rules, join the system and change it from within.
If you're old, always realize that things change, need to be changed and give the new ones a chance.
There will be always people that leave the system or change „the cell“ in which they're active (BW -> SC2 / DotA in this case). This doesn't mean they leave, because the old cell was bad. This just happens. People change their minds sometimes. It is also no sign to stop your work, quite the contrary, go on and continue what they left you to do. Don't hate the player. Not even the game.
Anyhow, I hope it wasn't that boring, I hope it showed what research in sociology looks like (even though this is a very small part of it) and that it was „worth“ the number article. If it was interesting, I'd maybe do something more structured, thought through on a different subject, maybe even something about educational systems in Germany. No idea. You guys are strange in what you think is worth reading and what isn't.
Here's to a thousand more articles in liquipedia.
Thanks to Ahelvin to point out a few mistakes and confusing parts. I hope I could fix them all.
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