Self-organizing principles

[Bas Reus]

P2P friends, here a topic on self-organizing. Currently I am trying to define this theme by making a list of themes that overlap self-organizing somewhere, and help to define the theme seen from an online collaborative point of view.

Self-organizing to me can be a system that is highly adaptive, flexible and 'bottom-up'. When seen from an online collaborative point of view I tend to think of empowerment and rules of engagement.

Of course Wikipedia can be seen as a self-organizing system where online collaboration is taking place. This is a great example that we all know. But what can be learnt from that? How did it become what it is today? Is it because of self-organizing, or where there some rules agreed upon that made it happen?

I'd like to be inspired by your thougths on this subject. Thanks, Bas.

[Michel Bauwens]

Hi Bas,

one of the things you may check out is Studies in Emergent Order, initiated by Gus DiZerega (I'm probably misspelling), whose email I have. You may also want to ask the same question to our very active p2presearch list.

Ryan's project of 'core p2p collaboration principles' could also be related. Other names I'm thinking of are Mark Elliot's work on stygmery, sam rose, paul hartzog's panarchy.

Michel

[Bas Reus]

Thanks Michel. I will look into the suggested topics.

I think Mark's, Sam's and Paul's work on these topics can give me more insights and directions. I will update on any progress when possible, in the meantime I hope to be even more inspired from various people in all the P2P groups.

Bas

[Cies Breijs]

hi all.

i just want to join in saying that i looked at this from a very practical angle. what tools, ways, methods, techinques or patterns are used out there on the internet by existing websites to accomplish self organization (yeah, bottom up, obviously). i do this for my truetopiaproject.org... excerpt from the website:

* Projects are loosely modeled after Free/ Open-Source Software projects. They share the principle of 'open innovation', therefor work openly and transparent.
* The steps, their main questions and the checklists are based on the Productive Thinking Model. But the number of steps was brought down to 3 (basically joined steps together), as too many steps only obfuscate the system, yet too little would not allow enough collaboration (see the our wiki page on this topic).
* Documents are full-blown Wiki pages, the same publishing principle used for Wikipedia. Wiki pages (where each page has public view-edit-discussion-history functionality) have proven to be a successful way to collaborate on a texts.
* The Agenda (a Latin word meaning 'things to be done') is commonly used to drive meetings, political parties and parliamentary work-flow.
* The step voting algorithm, is based on the alogithm discussed in the party program of Activ Demokracy. Learn about our take on the algorithm in the wiki page on the 'platform' concept.
* The agenda voting algorithm, is simply a list in which the agenda point are ordered by their 'saldo of up and down votes'.
* Modding is a form of user moderation, a system used by many online comments/discussion forums. It allows everyone to value each others expressions through so called 'mods'.
* Additionally you find many of the features found in social software in Truetopia, seen in features like 'event subscription' (watching), tagging and messaging.

these are some 'patterns' i found that currently empower online self-organization.
hope it adds to this discussion.

_cies.