Computer-Mediated Communication Collective Action and Collaborative Editing Systems

First Annual CMC Tournament 9/20/2018 Computer-Mediated Communication — Cheshire & Fiore

Computer-Mediated Communication — Cheshire & Fiore Types of dilemmas   Coop Defect 3,3 (R) 0,5 (S) 5,0 (T) 1,1 (P) Different games make different use of the payouts T>R>P>S Prisoner's Dilemma T>R>S>P Chicken T>P>R>S Deadlock R>T>P>S Stag Hunt Standard PD game T>R>P>S 9/20/2018 Computer-Mediated Communication — Cheshire & Fiore

The Evolution of Cooperation Axelrod’s famous tournament allowed individuals to submit any strategy. All strategies played each other in the tournament. The winner was one of the shortest submissions, about 4 lines of code. 9/20/2018 Computer-Mediated Communication — Cheshire & Fiore

The Simple Effectiveness of the Tit-for-Tat Strategy Tit-for-Tat: begin with ‘cooperate’ and then do whatever the opponent did on the last turn. 9/20/2018 Computer-Mediated Communication — Cheshire & Fiore

Lessons from Tit-for-Tat Be nice It starts by cooperating. All top-scoring strategies do this. Be forgiving It quickly and happily returns to cooperation without holding a grudge. Be able to retaliate It never allows defection to go unpunished. Be clear It is predictable and easy to understand. It pays to be predictable in non-zero sum games. 9/20/2018 Computer-Mediated Communication — Cheshire & Fiore

Is Tit-for-Tat Always the Answer? 2-person repeated PD N-person PD Public Good 9/20/2018 Computer-Mediated Communication — Cheshire & Fiore

Where does this apply in our world? Wherever we find mixed-motive situations and collective action… Standards Wars Online Tagging Systems (folksonomies), Collaborative Editing Systems Del.ic.ious 9/20/2018 Computer-Mediated Communication — Cheshire & Fiore

Public goods on the Internet Smaller groups tend to have a better chance of producing a public good (Olson 1965) Why? More benefits for each person Larger impact of any single contribution Generally, lower costs of organization 9/20/2018 Computer-Mediated Communication — Cheshire & Fiore

But what about reaaaally big groups? Analyzing and Visualizing the Semantic Coverage of Wikipedia and Its Authors (Holloway, Bozicevic and Borner 2005) http://arxiv.org/abs/cs/0512085 9/20/2018 Computer-Mediated Communication — Cheshire & Fiore