What Might Happen Ina Stone Wiki

One individual's attempt to understand what a WikiStoneSociety might behave like (without forming an opinion on the idea's merits), and thereby identify the limits of his understanding. Questions arising in the narrative are labled {1}, {2} etc. and collected at the end.

The stone wiki is chugging along as normal, when a highly contentious page comes along, OscillatingThirbligsConsideredHarmful.

Let's say that over a few days those interested in oscillating thirbligs polarize into a few parties; party 1 agrees that they are harmful, party A thinks they're great, the blue party thinks that thirbligs are fine in principle, but on no account should be allowed to oscillate, and the warm-to-the-touch party thinks the whole discussion is beneath everyone's collective dignity.

So, the page bounces back and forth, growing a nice bushy thread mess, and maybe metastasizing over a couple of other pages. At which point...

An auction arises {1} to settle which party's view gets to appear under the page name. The implementation creates OscillatingThirbligsConsideredHarmful(moderated), hanging off of which are non-editable pages {2} like OscillatingThirbligsReallyAreHarmful, NonOscillatingThirbligsAreOK, OscillatingThirbligsAreGreat, and ThisWikiHasNoOpinionAboutOscillatingThirbligs. The last one is pretty close to the warm-to-the-touch party's view, but is generated automatically, and means that only the unmoderated OscillatingThirbligsConsideredHarmful will remain after the auction, if that option wins.

Then, interested officers of the wiki {3} get to use their stones to choose between the options available. Suppose that it's NonOscillatingThirbligsAreOK that wins. This is good news for the blue party {4} . So now OscillatingThirbligsConsideredHarmful(moderated) contains the content that was in NonOscillatingThirbligsAreOK, and cannot be edited, for the duration of the auction's term.

Now it all becomes a little unclear. My guess is that: the other option pages become editable, and the various parties continue to thrash it out there. At some point, another auction {5} might arise for the content of OscillatingThirbligsConsideredHarmful(moderated), at which point the process repeats.

Questions

1. Who gets to initiate an auction? Just the officers of the society, or wiki users at large?

If it's to be a real open wiki, following the WikiNature, it seems like officers would have to include all users. There's no point in having a privileged clan running things in such a situation. On a more authoritarian wiki - WhyClublet, say - there might be various levels of Commission to correspond with the preferences of the proprietors. On a completely closed wiki - the old GreenCheese, say - there seems like no need for the system in the first place.

2. How do the immutable pages that are the options for the auction get populated in the first place? Who chooses how many there should be, and what they should be called?

Can't be done effectively without adding some kind of structuring principle to wiki - otherwise the debate will just continue to rage with paraphrased WikiNames. This makes WikiStoneSociety sound very un-wiki-like, though.

3. Who are they, and how did this come to pass?

That's one of those issues one tosses into a WikiStoneCharter. For myself, I like it best when everyone can play. GreenCheese is in the process of opening up like this - though it's likely only approved folk will be able to load up graphics and do a few other things. But as to exactly how - maybe a CopulistSociety ...

4. Are officers meant to be immune to lobbying, incentives and threats from parties within the wiki using population?

Nope. That's one of the problems with any society that isn't completely flat in structure - it's the royal road to corruption.

5. Can an auction for the contents of a moderated page only arise through the expiration of the previous auctions term?

Not certain I understand the question. Stone auctions are cyclic; the end of a term is the start of another term. That's the answer, then.

Questions 1 and, more importantly, 3 seem to be the crux of the biscuit. All the rest of the mechanism could be tacked onto an existing wiki server without necessarily changing the character of the community using it, indeed, they could be largely instituted voluntarily by users without any technological support. Right now on wiki, any page that happens to be moderated is so because someone volunteers to do the work and handles praise or criticism of their moderating actions however they feel is best. In the stone wiki, the only folks with moderating capabilities are the officers of the society. Since non-officers have no stones, they cannot directly affect the outcomes of auctions.

WikiStoneSociety suggests in passing that it is only officers who get to initiate auctions.

Thus it is crucial to know who gets to be an officer, and how.

The suggestion seems to be that officers are appointed, for a term, by the outcome of an auction, with bids from the existing officers. Unless there's some subtlety I've missed (eminently possible), then all authority in the stone wiki, or any other stone society, would seem to derive ultimately from the original officers put in place when the society was set up. Which is very likely to say, the person who sets up the server and their friends. That's pretty much the same sort of thing as the informal oligarchy that all the current non-stone wikis got when they were set up. Except that the stone wiki formalizes such an oligarchy.

This conclusion seems exactly opposed to what the stone society seems to be about. So what am I missing?

Stones can be used democratically, meritocratically, oligarchically, nepotistically, or however else you want to set things up. It's up to you how you do it. -- PeterMerel

So, that makes stones different from money, votes, degree of consanguinity with the king etc. in exactly what respect?

We've covered this in more detail elsewhere, but in a nutshell: Nutshells are good.

Money can't be spent after its been used to make a purchase.

It can be spent by its recipient. Once stones get into an auction, that's it for them until the following term.

Money does sorta-kinda get recycled (unless by "money" you mean "value").

Money sorta-kinda gets recycled by fiat - taxation, interest and so on - but such mechanisms carry a lot of baggage and institutions. Stone recycling is simple and impartial, and requires no concept of debt or interest.

There are various proportional voting systems.

Do you know of one in which the totals for one decision carry through to the next, as they can do in stone auctions?

Are you suggesting that the outcome of a stone auction is some proportional mix of the options?

In some embodiments, yes, that's what's described. You can parameterize stone auctions any way that suits you.

Which seems to swap one mode of arbitrariness with another.

Stones don't dictate a social system. If you'd like to apply it within the status quo, there are ways to do so. Stones are just a novel economic mechanism, applicable for good or ill like any other. It'd take more than the mechanism by itself to form an organization, which is why there's all these issues that get encapsulated as a Charter.

It's really a very simple idea. I haven't had much time to spend on it lately, but do intend to take it further when work commitments permit. I've also been trying to noodle a system to manage private rather than corporate resources, but can't offer anything on that yet. -- Pete

OK, so stones are different from money etc. in these ways, but still may be used democratically etc., so what would be the advantage of introducing stones and their administrative overhead (which is significant, even though the idea it supports is simple) in any situation?

I don't know about any situation. The specific situation I was considering for Stones is corporate resource management. I wanted a market-based system that could replace the feudalism/socialism/nepotism/corpocracy we suffer to exist inside all major human organizations at present. I really respect capitalism, but capitalism as expressed by cash doesn't and can't exist inside large human organizations at present. I mean, can you imagine a free market for middle-management decisions? The inefficiencies and corruptions that follow from this problem exist on all scales of Western civ.

As to Stones administrative overhead, it pales by comparison to most economic mechanisms. Consider the accounting required to work a bank or a stock market, for example. Stones overhead seems not considerably larger than a MutualCreditSystem?, and can be completely and securely automated without much fuss I believe.

If there's nothing fundamentally wrong with the stone wiki scenario above as an interpretation of the idea, then I'm truly at a loss to understand what advantages stone societies would necessarily have. And if they don't necessarily have any advantage, why bother?

Stones were never intended for use with wiki per se. I raised 'em for consideration back in '97, and Ward got interested enough to start a couple of pages. But we never took it further. If Stones are to be used on wiki, some invention remains to be done to cover the problems identified so far. Such invention might not be very difficult to do. But Ron was right back when this was under active consideration - the result would be very different from wiki as it is today.

I don't think you will succeed in resolving the conflict by voting for a "refactoring" as you describe above. Voting is only useful when a large number of almost mutually exclusive players (or at least a dysfunctional collective) have to make a collective decision quickly. You can't vote away ideas, though. People won't stop thinking that OscillatingThirbligsConsideredHarmful, and their opinions will continue to influence their writings. Indeed, I think they will feel hurt that their opinions are suppressed (cf. FairProcess) and consequently conflict will break out (nothing new on this wiki, of course). VotingIsEvil; it is not to be misused nor abused, especially not for ConflictResolution of the type needed here. -- SunirShah

For once, Sunir and I are in complete agreement. Let's not do it too often though - people will talk. --PeterMerel

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