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Part 2 of 2 - What should an effective produsage community look like?

Hey everyone! Welcome to part two of this mini post series. I'll probably be talking more about modalities to develop produsage communities in posts in the coming weeks - it's really a huge topic to go into. I'll  be delving into the notion of communities of practice as well so stay tuned to that. 

In this post however, I would like to look at one specific aspect of produsage communities - facilitating discussion and the exchange of ideas. Now noting that produsage communities necessarily require some form of communicative collaboration - users produce materials for desirable usage by other users - an avenue for discussion and learning would constitute one of the pillars of a functioning community. 

How this discussion takes place is a function of the method of its facilitation. I discuss two such models. Firstly, there is a laissez faire model, akin to the old internet messaging forums like iirc. Characteristics of this model include little to no moderation of comments and discussion, with no overarching theme/ shared enterprise beyond basic guidelines for behavior. Benefits of this model include a sort of freedom of communication with each individual being able to completely pursue their interests. Technically, there would be no censorship meaning each individual can pursue all perspectives of an issue.

The problem with this model is that the shared practices, patterns of behavior and eventual culture of the group is completely organic and up to the users themselves. Consequently, it might not be possible to engineer/ steer the community towards traits that are conducive to an effective produsage community as mentioned in part 1 of this series.

Conversely, there is also a moderation model where there is a caste of moderating users that help curate content based on community guidelines and goals that the community itself agrees with. This model can be found on platforms like Reddit where each subreddit possesses its own moderators selected from the user base and work with the technical administrators of the site (admins) to ensure a specific culture of discussion is adhered to. My personal preference is this model because the laissez faire model being anarchic in nature constitutes a gamble on the probability that the desired community traits would be organically accrued. Moderators can be selected from the user pool that either exemplify the desired community traits or are trained to align with them.

However, assuming an active control over culture can be risky and ensuring consistency in the application of rules and behavior is fundamental to the continued adherence of and belief in the desired culture. I leave you with an example of what happens when users detect inconsistency in the application of these traits/ rules. The world politics subbreddit has descended into chaos because users have felt a blatant unequal application of moderating rules in the forum towards different political positions. As a result, many users have advocated for anarchy - if the moderators were not enforcing the rules equally then they were either not enforcing them at all or perhaps, the rules were not worth adhering to. These users then uploaded hundreds of pornographic material that has made the subreddit designated as an adult forum on the platform. It is a really interesting phenomenon. Have a look at it! (Not the subreddit, an article talking about it). Article by distractify on World Politics Subreddit Drama


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