ConFigures

Community and Ownership issues for Knowledge Gardening

What happens when an organization tries to foster a community, but there’s disagreement between them (and/or within the community) over priorities, principles, and procedures of knowledge management?

Not that most of them are quick to identify them as knowledge management issues, but many of the recent organization-community conflicts I’m aware of have a lot to do with knowledge management, as affected by ownership.

• EVE online (game): How is sensitive information secured/accessed? How is information about controversies managed? Who has the ultimate say on what topics are allowed on the community boards?
• Wikipedia: What information is appropriate for Wikipedia? Is it a good venue for knowledge development (semantics: is organizing references knowledge development, or only when new analyses are allowed is that knowledge work (as opposed to information management))? What happens when the neutrality of editors/judges is called into question? Are links to sites critical of Wikipedia going to be allowed?
• LibraryThing: What information should be on a work page or an author page? What if there’s disagreement about the legitimacy/accuracy of including/excluding certain types of information (see previous LibraryThing entry)? Does “Common Knowledge” imply truth, or truthiness? Which should it imply? What if one workflow is better for adding books from the user point of view, but another is better at generating accurate book data?
• One Laptop Per Child: Is “go explore” a reasonable response to a new Give One Get One XO laptop owner’s question about the laptop? What if the US user base gets way ahead of OLPC in generating information about it, but, impatient with the official wiki, puts most of that information over on discussion forums on OLPC News (not associated with OLPC; in fact, sometimes highly critical, though often enthusiastic about the technology and mission) instead?
• For any of these, who owns the information users contribute, and how portable is it?

An obvious answer from the organization’s point of view is “we sponsor the site/project; someone has to decide, and we’re the ones who’ll make the final decision.” A vulnerability of this approach is when they depend on a large user community for contributions for their reason for being (Wikipedia) or for profit (LibraryThing). If their community grows disenchanted, they’re in trouble (especially if/when the Next Big Thing comes along). If the organization depends more directly on ads for survival (e.g., LiveJournal) than its users, it’s not such an immediate issue.

I think most flourishing communities have growing pains from time to time. Some resolve the conflict and move on, some paper it over and move on, and some splinter or go out with a whimper. I’m not sure what the sociology is of which direction a community is likely to go depending on whether it’s a mission-oriented community (e.g., an open source project) or a community of proximity (geographic, or common interests without a strong mission, e.g., people who like to chat about movies). I’d be interested in any studies about how the financial angle (e.g., non- versus for-profits) plays in, too.