Peer production: conditions for success (according to Yochai Benkler)
Here’s a good summary by Tom Abate:
“Benkler lays out three characteristics of successul group efforts:
“They (tasks)
1) must be modular. That is, they must be divisible into components, or modules, each of which can be produced independently of the production of the others. This enables production to be incremental and asynchronous, pooling the efforts of different people, with different capabilities, who are available at different times.�
2.) “For a peer production process to pool successfully a relatively large number of contributors, the modules should be predominately fine–grained, or small size. This allows the project to capture contributions from large numbers of contributors whose motivation levels will not sustain anything more than small efforts toward the project ….â€?
3.) “… a successful peer production enterprise must have low–cost integration, which includes both quality control over the modules and a mechanism for integrating the contributions into the finished product,â€? while defending “itself against incompetent or malicious contributors.â€?
