IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2017 - 53

relies on bots that pre-screen edits in an effort to
detect vandalism. In some instances, the bot reverts
changes, and sends short message to the editor. This
automation promotes existing social order and hierarchies but may discourage new editors from remaining with the community (impersonal messages from
the bot do not help to correct mistakes that were
made in good faith [13]). For any community, therefore, it is important to strike a balance between the
values of social order, tradition, codification of norms,
and those of benevolence, strengthening interpersonal relations, and flexibility (exploration of new ways
of proceeding).
Of crucial importance to the social processes taking place on the platform is the fact that automation
has also been introduced for the governance of the
community. For example, there are bots that clean up
old voting or deliberation pages, which raises concerns
about the accountability of administrators and other
public functions. This automation then (called "algorithmic governance" [16]) should be handled even more
carefully than the algorithms used for editing, as it
might lead to the community becoming impervious to
change with respect to governance. Well managed
change and evolution, advocated for elsewhere in this
issue [17], can help maturing communities remain flexible and adaptive.
Last but not least, what distinguishes Wikipedia
and similar projects from standard, hierarchical organizations is the specific understanding and meaning
given to self-direction. In standard organizations,
even if self-direction is promoted, it usually means
giving contributors only relative freedom in the choice
of the tasks they will be completing. Wikipedia promotes this particular value not only through the division of tasks into small modules and self-selection of
contributors to specific tasks [5]. Rather, registered
users of Wikipedia have control over the direction of
the development of the whole community. This is
achieved both through the ongoing creation and modification of the community's policies and its entire
governance system as well as through requesting certain features to be implemented or modified in the
code of Media Wiki.

Risks and Limitations
Peer collaboration might seem like a revolutionary
mode of production that will change the way institutions and businesses operate. Not all projects resemble
Wikipedia though. The architecture of some platforms
may impose unnecessary limitations on the collective
processes within them. Some others, even if they deliver
quality products at low cost, present certain, inherent
risks due to the inequalities built in. What do the
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communities lose when the code limits certain values
from appearing? Will the free labor of socially motivated individuals lead to a new economy or will it be
exploited to increase inequalities?

Will the free labor of socially
motivated individuals lead to a new
economy, or will it be exploited to
increase inequalities?
Such risks and limitations are especially visible in
those peer production regimes where participants do
not contribute to a commons but rather collaborate on
a proprietary platform and work towards the gain (often
commercial) of a well-defined entity. However, even
then a variety of values can be realized. This is the
case, for example, in crowd funding schemes, which
work towards financial gains of distinct organizations or
individuals. The subject of the project can refer to any
value from the purely hedonistic to that of security or to
preserving the welfare of nature and supporting such
projects might realize those particular values for contributors. Moreover, the pure act of financing can be
motivated by addition values such as social power and
achievement: peers might participate in financing to
preserve their public image of an influential and
wealthy person. The increasing volume of contributions
in crowd funding platforms suggests that the values
they promote are vital and widely shared. On the other
hand, contributors are given no control over how their
contributions are spent and have only limited communication options available, which might inhibit the
emergence of a collective awareness of the process
they are participating in.
In contrast, in case of such endeavors as crowd
labor or crowd sourcing, a limited set of values can
be realized. (In crowd labor participants receive monetary gains. With crowd sourcing, very often they do
not receive any reimbursement for their efforts.)
Crowd labor is attractive for employers because it
offers cost optimization - employers gain access
to a global, on-demand workforce within a very short
time frame and at a very low cost. Employees, on the
other hand, obtain the possibility of choosing the
tasks they want to perform and choosing the timing of work that is convenient for them. This might
be construed as realizing certain values from the
individualistic domain: self- direction, freedom,

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