[okfn-discuss] Tragedy of the Lurkers

Tue Oct 3 15:47:47 UTC 2006

Brilliant Julian, absolutely brilliant -- an analysis of the lurker's 
tragedy from the perspective of traditional literary theory is not one 
that would have come readily to my mind. If this is what we are missing 
out on when you lurk it is a tragedy indeed ...

~rufus

Julian Priest wrote:
> Hi Peter,
> 
> Thanks for your post and Rufus: for your great summary of different
> resource using scenarios in commons.
> 
> I think that's the best invitiation to de-lurk I've seen yet on a list
> yet!  - so not wishing to exploit under-provision and free-ride but
> hopefully to contribute something to the common resource pool..
> 
> Rufus's comment about whether the tragedy of the lurker is a true
> tragedy made me think a bit again about the *tragedy* in the tragedy
> of the commons again.
> 
> In Aristotelian poetics a classical tragedy centres around the actions
> of a protagonist who is often referred to as the tragic hero. As the
> drama develops a sequence of events builds up which crystalise in the
> cathartic moment where the tragedy is revealed, and the protagonist is
> undone and meets his nemesis.
> 
> The tragedgy is tied up with the concept of hamartia which is the
> cause of the protagonist's fall. Hamartia is a mistake or perhaps flaw
> of character that is of the protagonists doing, but is unknown by the
> protagonist. The cathartic moment in the tragedy occurs when this is
> revealed to both the protagonist and the audience.
> 
> Garret Hardin (author of the 1968 Science article that popularised the
> Tragedy of the commons) said he meant tragedy in the systemic sense of
> Whiteheads 'The remorseless working of things'. Self interest of
> private property owners using the commons drives them to greater and
> greater resource useage until the ultimate destruction of the resource
> commons with a remorseless mechanistic certainty the seeds of which
> lie in the structure of the commons system itself.
> 
> This sense of tragedy seems different from the Aristotelian version of
> tragedy but perhaps can be resolved by using the anthropomorphic trick
> pulled in company law.
> 
> If 'the commons' is framed as a protagonist in the way that a company
> frames a group of social and ecomonic relations as a legal individual,
> then we have an actor who can be the tragic hero.
> 
> In this sense Hardin's protagonist 'the commons' unknowingly contains
> within its system the flaw that leads to its nemesis.
> 
> I'm not sure however whether lurking does constitue a sysetemic flaw
> that leads to the unknowing or remorseless downfall of information
> commons like open knowledge or free software.
> 
> It's true that many projects do founder for lack of funds, lack of
> support or lack of participation, but as Rufus points out the commons
> of open knowledge is built and only exists by virtue of its useage or
> currency.
> 
> To me the more appropriate candidate for tragic hero in the tragedy of
> the lurker are lurkers themseleves. In greek literature the hamartia -
> or flaw is often that of the hubris of the protagonist -
> 
> "doing or saying things that cause shame to the victim, not in
> order that anything may happen to you, nor because anything has
> happened to you, but merely for your own gratification." 
> 
> In greek times shame was characterised by unwanted public attention on
> for instance weakness - the victim of hubris defeated in combat in
> public is not physically wounded but publicly shamed. The shamer is
> guilty of hubris.
> 
> In fickle network attention economies perhaps this is reversed with
> any attention, however seemingly bad being positive and flow
> capturing. Non-participation or lurking could thus be seen as a kind
> of contemporary version of hubris - witholding attention to cause
> shame.
> 
> As in every tragedy the cathartic moment must now be revealed but what
> will befall our tragic biotech corporate FLOSS project lurkers and what
> wil be their nemesis?
> 
> Perhaps the collapse of a mission critical open source server software
> project, will lead to a promethean eternity of proprietary over
> generously version numbered upgrade cycles, with attendant long term
> disasterous effects for TCO, the bottom line and ultimatley the
> protagonists promotion prospects within the horizontal performance
> related benefits structure of bioinformatica.com.
> 
> cheers
> 
> /julian
> 
> --references
> 
> [0] IIRC disclaimer
> [1] half remembered critique of aristotelian poetics
> [2] wikiepdia for everything else
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Mon, Oct 02, 2006 at 10:22:09AM +0100, Rufus Pollock wrote:
> 
>>peter murray-rust wrote:
>>
>>>Rufus et al.
>>>
>>>In my latest post http://wwmm.ch.cam.ac.uk/blogs/murrayrust/?p=78 I have 
>>>argued that lurking in an Open Source project constitutes a tragedy. I 
>>>have no idea whether this is widely recognised or whether an economic 
>>>theory has been developed about it - if not does it makes sense?
>>
>>The issue of 'lurkers' that you discuss falls firmly into category 
>>(iii). 'Lurkers' after all are those who use the knowledge you've 
>>created without contributing back. Whether this constitutes a tragedy is 
>>difficult to say. Of course it would be better if more of these people 
>>contributed to the projects they used -- and the lack of contribution 
>>may well be resulting in 'under-production'. However in trying to do 
>>anything about this one is caught in the classic dilemma: in trying to 
>>exclude people (or force them to contribute more) one will reduce usage 
>>and perhaps prevent the full reuse of one's work (and you'll almost 
>>certainly reduce the contributions of those who currently *aren't* lurking).