Dec 4, 2003

Thoughts on "A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy"

I was recently re-reading Clay Shirky's A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy, and a couple of things that I'd skimmed over before now had more meaning to me.

In the "Three Things to Accept" section, the first is:
"you cannot completely separate technical and social issues. There are two attractive patterns." So when a technical change it made, it affects the social patterns, and at times the social landscape will induce technical changes. Even a minor addition can have drastic effects.

Another item in that same section, "A pattern will arise in which there is some group of users that cares more than average about the integrity and success of the group as a whole.", which seems obvious, but then goes on to say, "the software does not always allow the core group to express itself, ... if the software doesn't allow the core group to express itself, it will invent new ways of doing so."

It's very risky to introduce a technical change that does not reflect the desires of the community, especially the core group. In some case it happens that an individual developer will have an idea for a feature or change, and introduce it without assessing the community reaction. I'm not entirely against this -- it's an interesting bit of emergent behavior -- but what can be disastrous is if the developer does not respond to feedback from the group regarding the change. Some will be OK with it, some will not care, and some will detest it. And of course, the core group, the ones that really care, will be the most vocal, and, as Shirky makes clear, are the ones whose opinions count.