Translated a great article about communities from Linux.com. Meet

Five principles of successful mass collaboration, part 1

Original article www.linux.com/feature/130023
By Charles Leadbeater www.wethinkthebook.net/home.aspx

(Comments of the translator, written as an explanation of the author's text are in brackets)
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Linux OS has succeeded as a product only because the community that supports it has organized itself systematically to create, share, test, reject and develop (community input) ideas on a way of thinking that despises conventional ideas and stereotypes.
The successful We-Think project (We-Think) is based on five key principles that are all present in the Linux project. Here are the first two.
This article is an extract from the recently published book We We Think: The Power of Mass Creativity. Www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/asin/1861978928/vasoft-20

The foundation

Everything has to start sometime. Someone must be willing to work harder and harder than everyone else, otherwise nothing will be done. Innovative communities invariably begin with the gift of some knowledge perfect by someone, just like Linux began with the kernel that Linus Torvalds created and posted on the Internet.

A good foundation (core of the community) attracts, creates around itself a community of capable helpers, i.e. people willing to make their contribution and participate in the development of ideas (product). The core of the community should be strong, but unfinished, open to improvement; for if the core would always be complete, there would be no way to improve it. Jain McGonigal said that the basis (core) of a successful game, such as I Love Bees en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Love_Bees title = "I Love Bees"> www.computerra.ru/features/334540 title = "I Love Bees" > depends on the starting point, which is ambiguous and open to <different> interpretations. The birth of the worm project www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=385416 title = "worm project"> for decoding the <C. elegan> nematodes and the game "I Love Bees" - it all started with a puzzle that can be solved only through the interaction of the efforts of people with different skills. Stephen Weber, a political analyst at the University of Berkeley (California), found that any successful free software project was inclined to be multidimensional and complex, thereby facilitating the involvement of people with different skills in the project.
Thomas Kahn summarizes the ambiguous (ambiguous) character of the basis of a new intellectual community in his history of scientific revolutions. Kan argues that the possibility of a new scientific paradigm appears precisely when a small group of pioneers make an unprecedented breakthrough that attracts a permanent group of supporters against a competing form of scientific activity.
(Pirates of Silicon Valley against IBM and “big machines”, Unix developers against IBM and white-collar workers, members of the Free Software movement against the proprietary software development model, etc.)
At the same time (or “besides”) the above-mentioned process was not completed (perhaps the process of turning a breakthrough idea into a final product is meant), and all possible problems were to be solved by a new, revised (newly defined) group of practitioners.
However, the foundation will develop only if its creators donate material on which others can work, which they will add and which they will improve. Successful innovations come in the form of creative conversation (discussion, discussion) between people who combine their various skills, talents, intuition and knowledge to explore a problem. The We-Think project is the creation of a new path in these discussions for the emergence of a "new product". A good foundation begins with a creative conversation and inviting people to make a contribution, <to take part in a common cause>.

Cooperation

A successful creative community should attract the right set of people, those who have different ideas and attitudes and access to those tools that involve them in the interaction <and provide an opportunity to contribute to the solution of a common task>.
The project We-Think will only work if you get the right answers to the following questions:
Who is the depositor? What do they contribute? Why do they do it? And how will they do it?

The creative community has a social structure. The main (most difficult) part of the work is most often performed by a relatively small, enthusiastic core group: discussion moderators slashdot.org Slashdot, native residents ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Life Second Life.
This is the aristocracy of Web 2.0. - Most often listen to those who participated in the project longer and who performed more work.
This is not unusual. Most innovative projects, except those that are carried out within companies, theater groups or laboratories, begin with an intense interaction within a small group, which is divided into features of addictions (hobbies) or wishes addressed to the main problem; such as the worm project, which was developed around Sydney Brenner in Cambridge.
Often, however, some communities may begin to close and become closed. To be dynamic, they must open up to the world (a wider circle of users), where there are many different contributors (employees) and those who add their knowledge and challenge conventional stereotypes.

The project We-Think develops when they attract a large crowd of those who are less intensively busy (working) in the project. Their small contribution can be converted to outstanding if the core (of the community) completes this work. For example, in the Linux kernel project, which in addition to the existing 400 key programmers at the base (the community core), has another 150,000 registered users who can only send a program error report. However, such a report can provide a starting point for many important attempts at creating innovation. The idea that the crowd is as important and necessary as mental ability is the highest ideological foundation. Crowds make sense only when their members have determination, a certain world view and sufficient autonomy and independence to express their opinions. Scott Page, a professor of complex systems at the University of Michigan, used sophisticated computer models in his research.
He found that groups with different skills (talents) and attitudes (outlook) come to sensible decisions more often than other groups of very smart people, but with the same attitudes and skills. Groups consisting of people who think in different directions (in different ways) have an advantage over groups of people who are very bright (in their talents) but homogeneous in their views. Paige argues that the last longer than anyone else is looking for the right way <to solve the problem>

Paige’s explanation provides more key points that make it possible to comprehensively address the problem and make it easier to solve. An entire group of experts who think in one direction probably will not succeed better in finding a solution than at the same time each of them individually. That is, if you add more people who think the same way, it is unlikely that this will improve the ability of the group to come to an unusual (better) decision. Groups consisting of people who think the same way <when ​​solving a problem> can often close at one point, such as the top of a foothill in a mountain range where it is impossible to climb to the top that lies out of sight. A group in which people think differently, on the contrary, is more likely to solve a problem, less likely to fall into a dead end and more likely that such a group will find a way out even if it falls into a dead end. Different perspectives will probably generate more possible solutions and evaluate them in a wider range of ways. The right direction will help a difficult problem to make (see) simple. Innovation often involves
many key points until one of them helps to find a simple solution to the problem. As Thomas Edison said: "We have come up with 1000 ways not to reinvent the light bulb."

Errors in the program often become apparent only when the program is tested in various ways with different settings. Better than 1000 people will carry out various tests, than one person will carry out 1000 tests one after another. This explains why open source programs are often more robust than proprietary programs: free programs have already been tested before by many groups of users. Bart Noutbum, a professor at Rotterdam University, argues that distributed testing is a vital need for innovation.
He explored the development of Danish sailing ships of the 17th century and found that their design changed when the sailors' community tried and adapted them to different conditions: first canals, then lakes, large inland waterways, sailing in the open sea, North Sea, Atlantic, and so on. The “We-Think” project provides an opportunity to test ideas (innovations) with the help of numerous and diverse points of view, and this happens faster, with a continuous exchange of ideas between their associated foundation (community), those who develop them and the crowd that tests their.
Testing becomes possible only when people can make a contribution, so that they feel happy; a contribution that requires the existence of tools that allow them to participate in the project.
Mass computer games are thriving because there are easy-to-use tools for game developers that allow you to create a variety of content (content) for these games. Keeping online blogs (blogs) directly depends on easy-to-use web applications for writing text and publishing it online. A video / camera mobile phones have become the ubiquitous tool of citizen journalism.
Such tools bring to the mass level the ethics of self-help of the first computer hackers. The first versions of the Unix operating system on which Linux is based were created by some programmers who could not provide technical support to their users. Therefore, when programmers sent their programs to users (usually representing a bunch of floppy disks), they included tools that allowed users to solve their problems on their own.
When people received ownership of tools that allowed them to provide service, they began to become players, participants and developers: newspaper readers become authors, editors and distributors; listeners become participants and critics.

Perhaps the most perplexing question is not how people contribute, but why they do it, especially when they are not paid and the results of their work are available to everyone. Of the participants in Open Source projects, only a few are inspired by the hatred of proprietary software suppliers, especially Microsoft. A minority of them are driven by altruistic motivation. Many are involved in such projects in search of better job: by demonstrating their skills in the open source community, they can increase their chances of being hired for a prestigious job. For most of the participants, the main motivation of their activities is recognition: they want to be recognized for their merits in their useful activities, it gives them a sense of achievement in the process of solving a problem for which other people are still looking for a solution. Many of the most amazing success stories of Web 2.0 began when users created tools to solve their problems — for example, tracking all the blogs they created, sharing videos and photos online — that were quickly adopted by those who faced the same problems.
The principle of Open Source (open source software) is that the author of the program gives intellectual property, so that other people can use this software freely.
The We-Think project calls for more: it is also an invitation to participate and collaborate in the creation of something. Responsibility of the open source community for the project arises when it provides innovative approaches through mass collaboration. For this to be possible, many ideas must be united; savers must meet and connect with each other.

Next is the chapter Connection. To be continued…