This page is an enumeration of the benefits of Commons-Based Peer Production.
akrowne began a discussion on the efficiency of CBPP. Much of this comes from the fact that CBPP projects are decentralized, and the dynamics of how decentralized projects work.
The fruits of CBPP are generally more accessible than those of other forms of production. This is for several reasons.
First, other forms of production often do not lend themselves well to maximal accessibility. Centralized producers must recoup the costs of production, and often must limit access to their products to paying consumers. CBPP, on the other hand, decentralizes the costs of production, making it quite possible to offer free access to everyone.
Second, in order to be CBPP, participation in the project must be widely accessible. It immediately follows that the product as well must be widely accessible.
While this point is related to accessibility, there is a subtle difference. Due to the elimination of limitations to access and the decentralization of the production process, novel parts of this process become available to consumers and examiners of the project. Thus, not only is the final product widely accessible, but secondary artifacts of the production process become available as well.
For example, CBPP encyclopedia-like projects commonly have version histories of articles available for public consumption. Using these histories, readers can get an idea of how mature the article is, what past mistakes the writers made, who contributed and how much, and how the item might have changed from when last viewed.
Another example, which is common in CBPP publication projects, is the availability of editorial discussions. These discussions give consumers insight into the production process and may also alert them to especially contentious portions of the output. This helps to enforce the notion that knowledge is always provisional, a notion which closed, centralized producers tend to suppress.
CBPP allows the consumer to become a part of the production process, whether they can play a small or a large role in it. This has ramifications for more efficient self-improvement of the consumer: interactive things are generally more engaging, for instance, and perhaps the best way to learn is through teaching.
Also, due to the openness factor discussed above, the whole production process becomes much less "mysterious". The consumer sees that fallible humans like themselves have generated the output, with a little dedication and hard work. This puts consumers on the same "level" as producers (an actuality which as always been the case), which opens the door to future participation, as well as end-user critique of the effort.
In general, the ability to join the productive process, and even the mere presence of an overtly level playing field, teaches the consumer that they can actively shape the world around them and make a difference. Combined with the accessibility of product, CBPP allows for knowledge production and dissemination to become more egalitarian than any system which has come before it.
Because there are many participants, CBPP-based projects are rich environments in which to apply collaborative filtering. This is the use of data collected from many participants in order to derive a particular perspective for a user (or all users, or some subset of users). These perspectives are useful for several purposes: determining quality in a subjective manner; recommending unvisited content; finding related content; and even searching.
Some CBPP projects are little more than collaborative filtering. Some examples are SETI @ Home, Amiwhateverornot.com, or ircquotes.com (the latter two do, however, at least take content contributions from users). Google can even be seen as an example of collaborative filtering, except Google comes to you to get your data contribution, rather than vice versa.
However, it would not be correct or useful to call all CBPP projects solely "collaborative filtering" projects. The hint at why this is so comes from the observation that "collaborative filtering" is something of a misnomer: the actual participants aren't ever directly working together. Thus, CF is only about collaboration in a very watered-down sense. This should not be taken to dimish the importance of collaborative filtering projects or CF components of CBPP projects, but it does show that there is a difference. Filtering is merely one task that CBPP might undertake.
For CBPP naysayers, trustworthiness is often the primary flaw in CBPP-derived content. Ironically, it is CBPP that is best equipped to ensure trustworthiness. One can only trust content by its reputation or by exercising diligence in the determination of its quality, neither of which comes from the production process itself. However, CBPP strongly enhances both.
Through the use of collaborative filtering, we can employ many methods of deriving reputation. For example, a record of an author's quality can be collected collaboratively (e.g., through user ratings). We can then collect this data to derive a measure of that author's reputation. This is generally not possible with other forms of production, as they rarely build in a means of rating content or authors. Instead, the reputation must be derived from the centralized producer itself, which can lead to elitism.
No process, whether CBPP or otherwise, can guarantee quality. By having an open process, CBPP makes the options a consumer has in determining quality much more rich. For example, a CBPP-based process can provide a means of recorded discussion of content. A consumer can peruse this discussion to find issues that other consumers have found with this content. It is in these discussions where misinformation or corrections can often be found. In a closed process, all such problems are swept under the rug, until a new edition is released.
Related to the notions of "efficiency" and "openness" is the fact that work can be shared between interested parties. If some task becomes too big for one person, they can seek help from others. Of course, there is no guarantee that anyone else will be interested in working on the given task; also, even people who might be interested can lack the know-how or other resources to make their involvement profitable. Nevertheless, CBPP makes it possible to share a given workload with anyone who has the interest, time, and skills to work on the task.
In a firm, a surfeit of work could be a call for overtime, or hiring new employees (or consultants), or maybe outsourcing some of the work to another company. So it is not so much that firms can not rebalance their load - but they are constrained to do it within the aegis of the firm itself, whereas CBPP can share with here-to-fore unknown outsiders.
As an example, in the case of free software projects, bug reports are a way for end users to contribute back to the project leaders. This saves money on testing (in the long run, I mean!). Some companies do use bug reporting systems; arguably this is a "CBPP-type" aspect of their production mode.
This is a very early draft, and is currently a brainstorming effort. I have not done a good job of elucidating any of these points. Consider it a beginning, for myself and others to expand upon. I'd like to see some good, solid arguments for each of these points, and the introduction of further benefits. – logan Sun Feb 27 03:50:12 UTC 2005