Shirky: A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy

tyranny of the majority

Highlighted by april_

Good morning, everybody. I want to talk this morning about social software ...there's a surprise. I want to talk about a pattern I've seen over and over again in social software that supports large and long-lived groups. And that pattern is the pattern described in the title of this talk: "A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy."

Highlighted by leadingzero

I've just caught up with a great article written by social software specialist Clay Shirky on how and why groups behave the way they do online, drawing a bit on face-to-face (well, psychologist W. R. Brion studying neurotics). You'll have to read the article to find just why groups are their own worst enemy, and stay to the end to find Clay's three things to accept in developing or using social software (lists, forums etc) : 1 You cannot separate social and technical discussion 2 Group members are different from users, and you need a core group 3 The core group has rights that trump individual rights in some circumstances - you need governance. There are also four things to design for in large groups: 'handles' people can invest in (sort of identity); recognition for members of good standing; barriers to participation; and a way to spare the group from scale (too big). Clay says he writes about “Systems where vested interests lose out to innovation” ... or maybe “Systems where having good participants produces better results than having good planners.”

Highlighted by dandiig

I've just caught up with a great article written by social software specialist Clay Shirky on how and why groups behave the way they do online, drawing a bit on face-to-face (well, psychologist W. R. Brion studying neurotics). You'll have to read the article to find just why groups are their own worst enemy, and stay to the end to find Clay's three things to accept in developing or using social software (lists, forums etc) : 1 You cannot separate social and technical discussion 2 Group members are different from users, and you need a core group 3 The core group has rights that trump individual rights in some circumstances - you need governance. There are also four things to design for in large groups: 'handles' people can invest in (sort of identity); recognition for members of good standing; barriers to participation; and a way to spare the group from scale (too big). Clay says he writes about “Systems where vested interests lose out to innovation” ... or maybe “Systems where having good participants produces better results than having good planners.”

Highlighted by dandiig

I've just caught up with a great article written by social software specialist Clay Shirky on how and why groups behave the way they do online, drawing a bit on face-to-face (well, psychologist W. R. Brion studying neurotics). You'll have to read the article to find just why groups are their own worst enemy, and stay to the end to find Clay's three things to accept in developing or using social software (lists, forums etc) : 1 You cannot separate social and technical discussion 2 Group members are different from users, and you need a core group 3 The core group has rights that trump individual rights in some circumstances - you need governance. There are also four things to design for in large groups: 'handles' people can invest in (sort of identity); recognition for members of good standing; barriers to participation; and a way to spare the group from scale (too big). Clay says he writes about “Systems where vested interests lose out to innovation” ... or maybe “Systems where having good participants produces better results than having good planners.”

Highlighted by dandiig

This talk is in three parts. The best explanation I have found for the kinds of things that happen when groups of humans interact is psychological research that predates the Internet, so the first part is going to be about W.R. Bion's research, which I will talk about in a moment, research that I believe explains how and why a group is its own worst enemy. The second part is: Why now? What's going on now that makes this worth thinking about? I think we're seeing a revolution in social software in the current environment that's really interesting. And third, I want to identify some things, about half a dozen things, in fact, that I think are core to any software that supports larger, long-lived groups.

Highlighted by grlloyd

By Clay Shirky, Networks, Economics and Culture mailing list, June 30, 2003

Highlighted by shanta

Good morning, everybody. I want to talk this morning about social software ...there's a surprise. I want to talk about a pattern I've seen over and over again in social software that supports large and long-lived groups. And that pattern is the pattern described in the title of this talk: "A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy."

Highlighted by leadingzero

3.) Three, you need barriers to participation. This is one of the things that killed Usenet. You have to have some cost to either join or participate, if not at the lowest level, then at higher levels. There needs to be some kind of segmentation of capabilities.

Highlighted by dcorking

A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy A speech at ETech, April, 2003 Published July 1, 2003 on the "Networks, Economics, and Culture" mailing list. Subscribe to the mailing list. This is a lightly edited version of the keynote I gave on Social Software at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology conference in Santa Clara on April 24, 2003 Good morning, everybody. I want to talk this morning about social software ...there's a surprise. I want to talk about a pattern I've seen over and over again in social software that supports large and long-lived groups. And that pattern is the pattern described in the title of this talk: "A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy." In particular, I want to talk about what I now think is one of the core challenges for designing large-scale social software. Let me offer a definition of social software, because it's a term that's still fairly amorphous. My definition is fairly simple: It's software that supports group interaction. I also want to emphasize, although that's a fairly simple definition, how radical that pattern is. The Internet supports lots of communications patterns, principally point-to-point and two-way, one-to-many outbound, and many-to-many two-way. Prior to the Internet, we had lots of patterns that supported point-to-point two-way. We had telephones, we had the telegraph. We were familiar with technological mediation of those kinds of conversations. Prior to the Internet, we had lots of patterns that supported one-way outbound. I could put something on television or the radio, I could publish a newspaper. We had the printing press. So although the Internet does good things for those patterns, they're patterns we knew from before. Prior to the Internet, the last technology that had any real effect on the way people sat down and talked together was the table. There was no technological mediation for group conversations. The closest we got was the conference call, which never really worked right -- "Hello? Do I push this butt

Highlighted by emdiesus

A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy A speech at ETech, April, 2003 Published July 1, 2003 on the "Networks, Economics, and Culture" mailing list. Subscribe to the mailing list. This is a lightly edited version of the keynote I gave on Social Software at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology conference in Santa Clara on April 24, 2003 Good morning, everybody. I want to talk this morning about social software ...there's a surprise. I want to talk about a pattern I've seen over and over again in social software that supports large and long-lived groups. And that pattern is the pattern described in the title of this talk: "A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy." In particular, I want to talk about what I now think is one of the core challenges for designing large-scale social software. Let me offer a definition of social software, because it's a term that's still fairly amorphous. My definition is fairly simple: It's software that supports group interaction. I also want to emphasize, although that's a fairly simple definition, how radical that pattern is. The Internet supports lots of communications patterns, principally point-to-point and two-way, one-to-many outbound, and many-to-many two-way. Prior to the Internet, we had lots of patterns that supported point-to-point two-way. We had telephones, we had the telegraph. We were familiar with technological mediation of those kinds of conversations. Prior to the Internet, we had lots of patterns that supported one-way outbound. I could put something on television or the radio, I could publish a newspaper. We had the printing press. So although the Internet does good things for those patterns, they're patterns we knew from before. Prior to the Internet, the last technology that had any real effect on the way people sat down and talked together was the table. There was no technological mediation for group conversations. The closest we got was the conference call, which never really worked right -- "Hello? Do I push this butt

Highlighted by emdiesus

Prior to the Internet, we had lots of patterns that supported point-to-point two-way. We had telephones, we had the telegraph. We were familiar with technological mediation of those kinds of conversations. Prior to the Internet, we had lots of patterns that supported one-way outbound. I could put something on television or the radio, I could publish a newspaper. We had the printing press. So although the Internet does good things for those patterns, they're patterns we knew from before.

Prior to the Internet, the last technology that had any real effect on the way people sat down and talked together was the table.

Highlighted by maximizen

software that supports group interaction

Highlighted by urlwolf

Prior to the Internet, we had lots of patterns that supported point-to-point two-way. We had telephones, we had the telegraph. We were familiar with technological mediation of those kinds of conversations. Prior to the Internet, we had lots of patterns that supported one-way outbound. I could put something on television or the radio, I could publish a newspaper. We had the printing press. So although the Internet does good things for those patterns, they're patterns we knew from before.

Prior to the Internet, the last technology that had any real effect on the way people sat down and talked together was the table. There was no technological mediation for group conversations. The closest we got was the conference call, which never really worked right

Highlighted by doug_lss

Prior to the Internet, the last technology that had any real effect on the way people sat down and talked together was the table.

Highlighted by mgabriela

The closest we got was the conference call, which never really worked right -- "Hello? Do I push this button now? Oh, shoot, I just hung up." It's not easy to set up a conference call, but it's very easy to email five of your friends and say "Hey, where are we going for pizza?" So ridiculously easy group forming is really news.

Highlighted by maximizen

Groups are a run-time effect. You cannot specify in advance what the group will do

Highlighted by maximizen

We built this software, a group came and used it, and they began to exhibit behaviors that surprised us enormously, so we've gone and documented these behaviors

Highlighted by maximizen

So email doesn't necessarily support social patterns, group patterns, although it can. Ditto a weblog.

Highlighted by urlwolf

He said that humans are fundamentally individual, and also fundamentally social.

Highlighted by traveller2008

Now, it's pretty easy to see how groups of people who have formal memberships, groups that have been labeled and named like "I am a member of such-and-such a guild in a massively multi-player online role-playing game," it's easy to see how you would have some kind of group cohesion there. But Bion's thesis is that this effect is much, much deeper, and kicks in much, much sooner than many of us expect. So I want to illustrate this with a story, and to illustrate the illustration, I'll use a story from your life. Because even if I don't know you, I know what I'm about to describe has happened to you.

You are at a party, and you get bored. You say "This isn't doing it for me anymore. I'd rather be someplace else. I'd rather be home asleep. The people I wanted to talk to aren't here." Whatever. The party fails to meet some threshold of interest. And then a really remarkable thing happens: You don't leave. You make a decision "I don't like this." If you were in a bookstore and you said "I'm done," you'd walk out. If you were in a coffee shop and said "This is boring," you'd walk out.

You're sitting at a party, you decide "I don't like this; I don't want to be here." And then you don't leave. That kind of social stickiness is what Bion is talking about.

And then, another really remarkable thing happens. Twenty minutes later, one person stands up and gets their coat, and what happens? Suddenly everyone is getting their coats on, all at the same time. Which means that everyone had decided that the party was not for them, and no one had done anything about it, until finally this triggering event let the air out of the group, and everyone kind of felt okay about leaving.

This effect is so steady it's sometimes called the paradox of groups. It's obvious that there are no groups without members. But what's less obvious is that there are no members without a group. Because what would you be a member of?

So there's this very complicated moment of a group coming together, where enough individuals, for whatever reason, sort of agree that something worthwhile is happening, and the decision they make at that moment is: This is good and must be protected. And at that moment, even if it's subconscious, you start getting group effects. And the effects that we've seen come up over and over and over again in online communities.

Highlighted by april_

You are at a party, and you get bored. You say "This isn't doing it for me anymore. I'd rather be someplace else. I'd rather be home asleep. The people I wanted to talk to aren't here." Whatever. The party fails to meet some threshold of interest. And then a really remarkable thing happens: You don't leave. You make a decision "I don't like this." If you were in a bookstore and you said "I'm done," you'd walk out. If you were in a coffee shop and said "This is boring," you'd walk out.

You're sitting at a party, you decide "I don't like this; I don't want to be here." And then you don't leave.

Highlighted by mezzotoscano

You're sitting at a party, you decide "I don't like this; I don't want to be here." And then you don't leave. That kind of social stickiness is what Bion is talking about.

Highlighted by traveller2008

And then, another really remarkable thing happens. Twenty minutes later, one person stands up and gets their coat, and what happens? Suddenly everyone is getting their coats on, all at the same time. Which means that everyone had decided that the party was not for them, and no one had done anything about it, until finally this triggering event let the air out of the group, and everyone kind of felt okay about leaving.

Highlighted by traveller2008

the paradox of groups

Highlighted by traveller2008

The second basic pattern that Bion detailed: The identification and vilification of external enemies.

Highlighted by traveller2008

So these are human patterns that have shown up on the Internet, not because of the software, but because it's being used by humans. Bion has identified this possibility of groups sandbagging their sophisticated goals with these basic urges. And what he finally came to, in analyzing this tension, is that group structure is necessary. Robert's Rules of Order are necessary. Constitutions are necessary. Norms, rituals, laws, the whole list of ways that we say, out of the universe of possible behaviors, we're going to draw a relatively small circle around the acceptable ones.

He said the group structure is necessary to defend the group from itself. Group structure exists to keep a group on target, on track, on message, on charter, whatever. To keep a group focused on its own sophisticated goals and to keep a group from sliding into these basic patterns. Group structure defends the group from the action of its own members.

Highlighted by april_

sex talk

Highlighted by urlwolf

vilification of external enemies

Highlighted by urlwolf

This pattern has happened over and over and over again. Someone built the system, they assumed certain user behaviors. The users came on and exhibited different behaviors. And the people running the system discovered to their horror that the technological and social issues could not in fact be decoupled.

Highlighted by harshbarger

Religious veneration

Highlighted by urlwolf

Go onto a Tolkein newsgroup or discussion forum, and try saying "You know, The Two Towers is a little dull. I mean loooong. We didn't need that much description about the forest, because it's pretty much the same forest all the way."

Try having that discussion. On the door of the group it will say: "This is for discussing the works of Tolkein." Go in and try and have that discussion.

Highlighted by doug_lss

And the worst crisis is the first crisis, because it's not just "We need to have some rules." It's also "We need to have some rules for making some rules." And this is what we see over and over again in large and long-lived social software systems. Constitutions are a necessary component of large, long-lived, heterogenous groups.

Geoff Cohen has a great observation about this. He said "The likelihood that any unmoderated group will eventually get into a flame-war about whether or not to have a moderator approaches one as time increases." As a group commits to its existence as a group, and begins to think that the group is good or important, the chance that they will begin to call for additional structure, in order to defend themselves from themselves, gets very, very high.

Highlighted by april_

I can't tell you precisely why, but observationally there is a revolution in social software going on. The number of people writing tools to support or enhance group collaboration or communication is astonishing.

Highlighted by traveller2008

The downside of going for size and scale above all else is that the dense, interconnected pattern that drives group conversation and collaboration isn't supportable at any large scale. Less is different -- small groups of people can engage in kinds of interaction that large groups can't. And so we blew past that interesting scale of small groups. Larger than a dozen, smaller than a few hundred, where people can actually have these conversational forms that can't be supported when you're talking about tens of thousands or millions of users, at least in a single group.

Highlighted by traveller2008

As a group commits to its existence as a group, and begins to think that the group is good or important, the chance that they will begin to call for additional structure, in order to defend themselves from themselves, gets very, very high.

Highlighted by mgabriela

The downside of going for size and scale above all else is that the dense, interconnected pattern that drives group conversation and collaboration isn't supportable at any large scale.

Highlighted by mgabriela

The most charitable description of this repeated pattern is "learning from experience." But learning from experience is the worst possible way to learn something. Learning from experience is one up from remembering. That's not great. The best way to learn something is when someone else figures it out and tells you: "Don't go in that swamp. There are alligators in there."

Highlighted by doug_lss

the things that people are now building are web-native

Highlighted by mgabriela

There's a great document called "LambdaMOO Takes a New Direction," which is about the wizards of LambdaMOO, Pavel Curtis's Xerox PARC experiment in building a MUD world. And one day the wizards of LambdaMOO announced "We've gotten this system up and running, and all these interesting social effects are happening. Henceforth we wizards will only be involved in technological issues. We're not going to get involved in any of that social stuff."

And then, I think about 18 months later -- I don't remember the exact gap of time -- they come back. The wizards come back, extremely cranky. And they say: "What we have learned from you whining users is that we can't do what we said we would do. We cannot separate the technological aspects from the social aspects of running a virtual world.

"So we're back, and we're taking wizardly fiat back, and we're going to do things to run the system. We are effectively setting ourselves up as a government, because this place needs a government, because without us, the place was falling apart."

Highlighted by doug_lss

The likelihood that any unmoderated group will eventually get into a flame-war about whether or not to have a moderator approaches one as time increases."

Highlighted by urlwolf

ubiquity

Highlighted by mgabriela

In many situations, all people have access to the network. And "all" is a different kind of amount than "most." "All" lets you start taking things for granted.

Highlighted by mgabriela

We're starting to see software that simply assumes that all offline groups will have an online component, no matter what.

Highlighted by mgabriela

1.) Of the things you have to accept, the first is that you cannot completely separate technical and social issues.

Highlighted by traveller2008

And that's a different kind of thing than the old pattern of "online community."

Highlighted by mgabriela

they can be both face to face and online at the same time, you can start to do different kinds of things.

Highlighted by mgabriela

2.) The second thing you have to accept: Members are different than users.

Highlighted by traveller2008

A pattern will arise in which there is some group of users that cares more than average about the integrity and success of the group as a whole.

Highlighted by traveller2008

the wiki went from novel to normal in a couple of days.

Highlighted by mgabriela

And that becomes your core group, Art Kleiner's phrase for "the group within the group that matters most."

Highlighted by traveller2008

It becomes a sort of shared repository for group memory

Highlighted by mgabriela

3.) The third thing you need to accept: The core group has rights that trump individual rights in some situations.

Highlighted by traveller2008

The normal experience of social software is failure

Highlighted by mgabriela

no one could fork the conversation between social and technical issues, because the conversation can't be forked.

Highlighted by mgabriela

Four Things to Design For

Highlighted by traveller2008

Members are different than users.

Highlighted by mgabriela

2.) Second, you have to design a way for there to be members in good standing. Have to design some way in which good works get recognized. The minimal way is, posts appear with identity. You can do more sophisticated things like having formal karma or "member since."

Highlighted by traveller2008

the core group needs ways to defend itself

Highlighted by mgabriela

4.) And, finally, you have to find a way to spare the group from scale.

Highlighted by traveller2008