A Group is its own worst enemy

Interesting, blaze, since your argument against Shirky's credibility falls under the wikipedian pedantry of Academic Standards Disease. You seem to be criticizing the wiki standard of cite-lite where Shirky is concerned, yet praising it when it applies to the popular "brain culture" that wiki upholds.

Personally, I agree with you regarding Shirky. He takes a philosophical approach to a sociological problem, and conflates group psychosis with social dynamics. Shirky's issues mirror the problem with wiki in general: a lack of systematic context, in which there is no "professional" standard by which to judge and nourish new ideas - except the current and popular point of view.

Roberta's observations,

"Group think seems compulsory for those who rise towards the top or think they have. Conformity seems to be rewarded. Enemies are created and required for cohesion. Attacking the outsider is common for the ambitious. People don't need to know what the outsider did - gossip is rife and its spreaders unthinking,"

are right on. But these are human group interdynamics that have been happening since before homo sapiens emerged from the Darwinian welter. Why are people surprised to see it happening online or in Second Life? It's not "psychosis" - as Shirky seems to claim. It's normative behavior. If something different is desired, a different environment and set of rules will have to be created.

Seth, I'm trying to get a handle on what disagreements you have with Shirky, exactly. I know you've tried to explain it and I know I can be dense sometimes, but isn't the article in the original post pretty concise in a narrow context? While I think he has it nailed on many aspects of virtual sociology, maybe there are things he says somewhere else that you're taking exception to and applying to this article just because it's Shirky?

I cited Shirky's article for a couple of reasons. One, he makes very good points about the role of inner core groups in online communities. As I said to someone else, virtually every human community has these -- online or off. It's not magical, it's not conspirational, it's normal behavior. The FIC doesn't hold regular meetings and decide where their next million $Lindens will come from (that I know of anyway). Their singular characteristic is, as Shirky notes, that they care more about the world than the average user. They've taken ownership and, frankly, if nobody takes ownership SL is going to turn into another Sociolotron or, worse, just die altogether.

Two, free speech can have too much freedom. I don't understand how this suggestion could be outdated. It strikes me as very true, and indeed extremely pertinent to the current state of SL. There are consequences for both too much freedom AND too much control, and LL admits they don't have the ultimate answer. As does Shirky. I was hoping we could get some discussion going about the appropriate level of freedom that SL needs -- not complete, but not too constrained either. Where is that balancing point?

His other points - the rights of the inner core trumping the rights of individuals; the separation of technical and social issues and even the failure of reputation systems such as SL's are all ancilliary. Good discussion stuff, but not key to the heart of how Shirky's article applies to Second Life.

So I'll ask again -- where do you diverge from his ideas, why, and even if you don't agree with him where do you stand on the balance of freedom and rules? I understand your objections based solely on academic method, but I don't know that academic standards need to prevent us from addressing his questions as they apply to SL, do they?