Can Produsage Environments Separate Valuable Information from Trash?

Sifting through the various blogs and comments posted throughout our KCB201 online community, it has become evident that while produsage has resulted in numerous benefits for the wider community, the issue of separating valuable information from ‘trash’ is a recurrent issue. As Bruns (2008, 106) states, this concern ‘provides one of the core hurdles to a mainstreaming of produsage processes in partial replacement of traditional production models’.

In my first blog, ‘User-led Organisation’ I endeavoured to explore Shirky’s views on the topic. With regards to online organization, Shirky explained how through the utilization of tagging ‘value is created by grouped classifications over time’ (2008). This idea of communal evaluation has been explored again by Bruns (2008, 101-136) in his article Wikipedia: Representations of Knowledge.

As stated by Bruns (2008, 102), Wikipedia ‘has become… by far the most successful online encyclopaedia both in terms of its user base and the breadth of its coverage.’ For this reason, it is a perfect example of how a compilation of communal knowledge can be made valuable in an open participation context.

One of the main reasons why Wikipedia has become so successful is because of its ‘ability to encapsulate the current state of accepted knowledge itself’ (Bruns, 2008, 103). It is therefore ‘particularly effective in its coverage of current, unfolding events’ (Bruns, 2008, 104).

At the same time, it has also been subject to various criticisms due to ‘perceived inaccuracies and mistakes in its content, especially also in the context of errors deliberately introduced by malicious contributors’ (Bruns, 2008, 124). Despite these criticisms, Wikipedia’s producers have been able to implement effective policies that act as a guide for all users. It has also been debated that even without these policies, Wikipedia is quite self sufficient in filtering its content. As Pink suggests (Bruns, 2008, 129), ‘it turns out that Wikipedia has an innate capacity to heal itself. As a result, woefully outnumbered vandals often give up and leave. What’s more, making changes is so simple that who prevails often comes down to who cares more. And hardcore Wikipedians care. A lot’ (Bruns, 2008, 129).

In conclusion, it is evident that produsage environments can create valuable collections of information. In these environments, value is not created by the individual but rather a collective group of educated minds. While inaccuracies and mistakes may occur, these are swiftly amended as can be seen in the case of Wikipedia. Wikipidia is undoubtedly a very valuable resource and for this reason there is ‘a wider need to educate both active contributors to Wikipedia and more casual users of its content about questions of quality and accuracy in the resource and about the available tools to examine that quality’ (Bruns, 2008, 130).

Till next time,
Annelise

Reference List

Bruns, A. Wikipedia: Representations of Knowledge. In Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond: From Production to Produsage. 101-136. New York: Peter Lang.

Shirky, C. 2008. Ontology Is Overrated: Categories, Links and Tags. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clay_Shirky (accessed 4th April, 2008).