RE: The Steemit Tragedy of The Commons
Elinor Ostrom won the nobel prize for her work on 'common goods' and how they can be set up to benefit all (or conversely how people can create a 'tragedy of the commons' that you indicate above). Perhaps it's worth the Steemit community reflecting on the principles she identified (and won the nobel prize for) and see how strong we feel these elements are represented in Steemit currently, to help prevent our own tragedy of the commons.
There are 8 principles which groups adhere to when the whole process 'works'
- Strong group identity and understanding of purpose
- Fair distribution of costs and benefits
- Fair and inclusive decision making
- Monitoring agreed upon behaviours
- Graduated sanctions for misbehaviours
- Fast and fair conflict resolution
- Authority to self govern
- Appropriate relations to other groups
As you point out, there seem to be gaps between how the Steemit community currently works and how it needs to work in the future to navigate into a successful common goods platform - which essentially what Steemit needs to become.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elinor_Ostrom
thanks for the article @anyx
I'm a fan of Ostrom, but I'm not sure how well her principles will work on the blockchain. It's really hard to build a longlasting and strong community when people can't see themselves face to face. Most users stay more or less anonymous. When people are anonymous, it's probably better to rely more on economic incentives than Ostrom's principles.
Perhaps using Ostrom's principles to inform economic incentives might help? You also made me think of Ernst Fehr work on 'Altruistic punishment' - where they tested economic principles to govern selfish behaviour - but using altruistic principles.
Hey bud. While they may or may not translate directly, it is valuable to give them the once over to see what might be able to fit. There isn't a foolproof blueprint for what is being done here and there needs to be give and take and adjustment.
We can see that economic incentives are not working as well as we would hope and I'm desperate to see Steemit succeed, so don't leave any rocks left unturned while looking for helpful solutions.
Another point came to my mind... Effective way of handling the tragedy of the commons with Ostrom's principles needs to have quite stable community. That is not the case with Steem. New users are coming in and some old users are leaving, so the community is under constant change. In a case like this, it's really hard to enforce the culture that is needed to counter the problems from tragedy of the commons.
this is the most interesting comment that I see so far.
here have true ideas to create a policy governing communities