An information commons is like any other commons. Its existence is fragile and its enjoyment is easily wrecked by abuse. However, given the right conditions, many commons in the real world have proved to be extremely robust and beneficial for all users. In an information commons (think Wikipedia), it isn’t much different. If users dump trash into the space, the commons will be made unusable.
While this concept of shared information is new and exciting, its roots lie in an extremely old concept tied to physical communities. In the UK, where I grew up, many towns and villages have a piece of grassland known as the “Common”. Like most people, I didn’t pay much attention to the name, but the Common was a vestige of rights hard won in feudal times, used as common grazing for villager’s livestock. They were usually located just off the center of the village convenient to where the townsfolk lived.
The fact that these commons still provide benefit to their communities today after hundreds of years is testament to the power and principal of commons. Shared rights have been chipped away at, abused and encroached over centuries, but they survive because the will of the users (the local community). This is reflected though local regulation and management, enforced and paid for by local taxes.
The internet is a new space- the dimension is virtual. However, it would seem that all commons operate under similar principals. Wikipedia’s move to provide more formal editorial control provides a central authority that manages the shared resource to maximize the benefit to the whole community of users.
I don’t buy the naysayers who want the Internet to remain like the wild west and who see this change by one of the icons of user-generated content as a threat to their way of life. The boundaries in a virtual world don’t exist so we can perpetually head west if we don’t like the rules. Wikipedia’s move will ensure Wikipedia survives and grows to its full potential, and it’s the right thing. Without quality, Wikipedia can’t survive. Information quality is an integral part of the user-contributed model when its information we need and not entertainment.
Our own business operates on exactly the same principals. Users share information (B2B contact data), and we provide the central authority that verifies the accuracy of the information, making sure it is up-to-date and usable. This maintenance provides a benefit to all users of the shared commons- a database of over 8 million business contacts, all of them guaranteed accurate.
-Gary Halliwell
Chief Executive OfficerNetProspex
Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/netprospex
M: 617 803 2979
318 - 320 Bear Hill Road
Waltham, MA 02451
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