Subject: MediaMOO forum on democracy

From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 4 Feb 1993 10:19:08 -0800

Carl asked me to post here a summary of the MediaMOO forum on democracy.

I guess I would call it more of a brainstorming session than an orderly
discussion.  Synchronous online conversations seem to often form multiple
threads.  When you have a dozen people talking, think of it as the scrap bin
in a tailor shop... lots of very short threads of many colors!

For me personally, the most interesting idea was to compare the governance of
virtual communities to a condominium board or school board.  People
participate in their free time because they care about the community.  They
get no remuneration, but influence and power in exchange for their trouble.
People often use those committees as a place to work out anxieties which are
really coming from another part of their life.  (They hate their job and are
having troubles with their spouse, and then initiate an argument at the coop
board meeting out of proportion with the gravity of the issues being
discussed.)  There aren't enough checks and balances built into the
system, so for example coop or condo boards are often accused of
racial prejudice.

Another intersting analogy is a zoning commission.  In theory, we'd like to
say that if you "own" the land, you can put what you want there.  But in
practice, community controls in the form of zoning are necessary to keep up
the over all quality, for everyone's benefit.  If you're not careful, you end
up with a "tragedy of the commons."

To return to the analogy of a coop or condo board, in many cases, there is no
such board.  People who rent apartments can move somewhere else if they don't
like what the landlord is doing.  Most commercial network services are more
like rental apartments than condos.

We talked about many things; these are just the analogies that interested 
me.  If you'd like to continue this conversation, please come by
MediaMOO!

Try:
telnet purple-crayon.media.mit.edu 8888
connect guest
help create

-- Amy