Week 13 - Review about The Puzzle of Openness (Chaebin Park 박채빈)

 

1. Summarize in your own words the materials that you read

I reread Chapter 3, 'Good Faith Collaboration' from 'Good Faith Collaboration'. 

Reagle explores the complexity of "openness," which is a core principle of Wikipedia. While Wikipedia can contribute, this openness is not absolute. Thus, in Wikipedia's editing, certain guidelines, norms, and rules play a role in helping to enable collaboration with minimal confusion. Riggle stresses that true openness requires a balance. It means that openness should be flexible enough to encourage readers to freely and actively contribute, but it should also be structured enough to prevent fake news, rumors, and information abuse. This chapter emphasizes that openness is not a lack of structure, but a carefully managed environment that promotes sustainable collaboration.




2. Mention any new, interesting, or unusual items that you learned through the lecture


One of the most interesting things about this chapter is Joe Freeman's concept of “tyranny of structurelessness”. According to him, the lack of structure when a group is operated under ambiguous or anarchic conditions "becomes a disguise of the strong or the lucky trying to establish absolute dominance over the people." This explains how a completely unstructured environment can result in power. I think this suggests that even 'open' systems like Wikipedia can rely on invisible forms of structure and power.





3. Identify at least one question, concern, or discussion angle that is either problematic in some respect or could have been elaborated more


One area where we can go into more detail is how Wikipedia practically implements the balance between openness and order. This chapter discusses the need for structure and flexibility, but there is no in-depth exploration of how disputes are resolved or what happens when community norms conflict with the notion of openness. So readers can ponder those areas. 


For example, how does Wikipedia prevent gatekeeping or the dictatorship of experienced editors?




Comments

  1. Lee JaehyunMay 29, 2025 at 11:11 PM

    I totally agree with your concern about This chapter of Reagle's book. As I read this chapter past, This chapter doesn't tell us about the details of flexibility and sustainability of the structure. I thought it was very superficial. If reagle proposed several examples like - what happens when community norms conflict with the notion of openness... as you said, This chapter would have touched the reader's hearts.

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