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4 Social Norms and Rules in Peer Production

      Christian Pentzold

1 Introduction

      The regulation of peer production projects is usually achieved by the users themselves. Ideally, this self‐organization and self‐management depend on shared social norms and rules. Some of these institutional arrangements characterize the larger population of peer production projects, whilst others are the attribute of particular projects. The chapter provides an overview and comparison of peer production’s institutions, traces their origins, and describes their implications for cooperation and governance.

      Peer production is often advertised as a truly alternative form of providing information goods and services, one that is less constraining than hierarchical firms or contractual markets. Hence, voluntary participation and freely available outcomes are taken to epitomize a novel form of libertarian cooperation unfettered by rules and restrictions. This kind of ideal setting of “organizing without organizations,” as Clay Shirky (2008) described it, should be characterized by egalitarianism, communal evaluation, and flat, fluid, or even absent hierarchies so as to maximize individual freedom and autonomy (Bruns, 2008; Stevenson, this volume). Peer production does, therefore, not only rest on the freedom of membership and commons goods but is believed to also be freedom‐producing (Tkacz, 2015; see also Borschke, this volume; Dulong de Rosnay, this volume). It thus produces free information and services, but also ought to enhance the practice and experience of generosity, altruism, and comradery (Benkler & Nissenbaum, this volume; Firer‐Blaess & Fuchs, 2014).

      Ideas of independence, voluntarism, and equality, deliberation and self‐amending procedures are deeply ingrained in the rhetoric and culture of peer production (Fish et al., 2011; Jemielniak, 2016; see also Bauwens & Kostakis, this volume; Dafermos, this volume). When considering the actual interactions in projects, these claims seem vastly exaggerated: Free and open source software initiatives like Debian have, for instance, devised extensive ranks and procedural schemes to steer contributors. In Wikipedia, editors complain about cliques and the power plays of an oligarchy of users and they struggle with bureaucracy and formalized rules.

Addressing this discrepancy, it would be too easy to just dismiss the discourse around the virtues of peer production as an ill‐founded pipedream that never was in touch with its reality. Instead of decrying the apparent gap between the rationale of peer production as an alternative mode of cooperation and its imperfect practical accomplishment, it is more productive to study the processes through which organizational forms and institutions come into being. That way, the consolidation of norms, codes of conduct, and contributor positions does not arise as an inadvertent setback but can be approached as an inevitable and even requisite development. On these terms, Kreiss, Finn, and Turner (2011) refer to Max Weber’s classical sociological thought in order to dismiss the idea that peer production must stand against bureaucracy. Indeed, bureaucracy can protect against arbitrary rule. Loose hierarchies or the absence of rules are, therefore, not per se more egalitarian or democratic because “regulations hold the whims of individual members in check,” Kreiss et al. (2011, p. 251) argue. The authority of rules and formalized workflows do not automatically preclude peer production or stifle creativity but are necessary to make it happen. Anarchy has, it seems, never been an option, even though the ordering of peer production projects must not necessarily take the shape of a formalized bureaucracy (O’Neil, 2014). In fact, a key characteristic of peer production institutions is that they are openly debated by participants on mailing lists in Debian or on wiki pages as in Wikipedia.

      Institutions enable the conversion of the freedom gained from a number of legal and managerial restrictions into a freedom achieved for productive participation (Berlin, 1969). This chapter charts and discusses rules and norms as potentially conducive “forms of closure” (Tkacz, 2016, p. 33) in peer production. This sounds oxymoronic, yet it points to a fundamental friction between, on the one hand, the ambition to open forms of cooperation that are less restricted by property rights or hierarchical structures and, on the other, the need to establish rules that close activities set to violate this openness.

      The overview offered in this chapter starts from the idea that voluntary, commons‐based cooperation needs some kind of ordering and that institutions can help to organize the freedom of action found within peer production. Following the social constructivism of Berger and Luckmann (1966), the chapter assumes that institutionalization happens whenever people interact in a more habitual manner. Institutions such as norms and rules thus hint at the typification, habitualization, and ordering of social action. De‐institutionalization, in turn, occurs through the transition of rules or norms into new contexts or when their original setting changes. Regulations can also be altered by strategic efforts. Furthermore, institutions might be transformed due to conflicting rulings or dissenting normative expectations (Oliver, 1992; Zucker, 1977). For instance, in her study of the Debian community of programmers, Coleman (2013) finds what she calls moments of “punctuated crisis” (p. 124). There, the conflicting modes of governance of democratic majoritarian rule, a guildlike meritocracy, and an ad hoc process of rough consensus clash and prompt negotiations and new rulings.

      The chapter is organized along a set of questions. The second part asks why peer production needs any sort of rules and norms. Based on this discussion of institutional conditions, the third part will map what sorts of rules and norms prevail in peer production. It delineates the three institutional levels of policies, guidelines, and basic normative understandings that are geared towards the products and the processes of peer production. Next, the fourth part examines how rules and norms come into existence and are made to function. Finally, the chapter reflects to what end peer production’s institutions congeal into governance regimes, bureaucracy, and hierarchies.

      The chapter mostly refers to Wikipedia and free and open source software projects such as Linux and Debian (see also Couture, this volume; Haider & Sundin, this volume). These paragons showcase the power and potential of peer production. They are taken as reference cases since these mature initiatives provide rich information about the long‐term processes of building and transforming institutions for voluntary and free cooperation.

2 Why Rules and Norms? Institutional Conditions for Peer Production

      Rules and social norms play an important part in organizing peer production. Given the anonymity, ease of entry, and limited social cues which characterize peer projects, this can be a challenging mission (Resnick & Kraut, 2011). In that respect, institutions can be seen as an answer to the question of “how to steer the integration of dispersed knowledge resources and how to coordinate such activities to the purpose of creating common value” (Aaltonen & Lanzara, 2015, p. 1650). They provide for the collective capability of participants separated in space and time to bundle together the piecemeal contributions and direct them towards the joint production of a valuable outcome. In order to continuously create and ensure collective agency, rules and social norms can rarely be one‐time solutions. They have to be adapted to the dynamics of a particular project, for instance, in terms of new user cohorts, content growth, or a changing technological and legal environment.

Scott (2001) defines institutions as “multifaceted, durable, social structures, made up of symbolic elements, social activities, and material resources” (p. 49). Institutions are created because of “the development, recognition, and naming of a recurrent problem to which no existing institution provides a satisfactory repertoire of responses” (Scott, 2001, p. 96). In peer production institutions take the shape of formal regulations, informal social norms, as well as shared actions and evaluations. Furthermore, institutions are encoded requirements and courses of activity embedded