Hi Christian and all!
7 months (219 days) ago Christian Siefkes wrote:
But for the other aspects,
smaller and more specialized projects seem preferable, since the internal
organization of a huge project might become difficult and bureaucratic,
and
the maintainers or admins of a huge project could become disturbingly
influential in regard to the goal setting process.
[...]
Current projects tend to combine a _meritocratic_ element (participants
trust "maintainers" and other specialists to "do the right thing") with a
_democratic_ element (projects strive for _consensus_ or _rough
consensus_
among the participants, people "vote with their feet" by choosing which
projects to support). Note that the _meritocratic_ element is far from
being autocratic: since maintainers cannot order anyone around, they have
to _convince_ participants that their decisions make sense--if the
project
members feel their decisions to be unfair or incompetent, they will
sooner
or later leave the project or start looking for a new maintainer.
In the first quote you basically say that powerful maintainers "could
become disturbingly influential in regard to the goal setting
process".
In the second quote you describe the handling of maintainer issues in
existing peer production projects which are mainly based on the fact
that contributors are volunteers [1]_.
.. [1] Which BTW only applies to those who are not required to
contribute in order to benefit from the project via weighted
labor.
I don't see why the first is a problem when the second is in place
[2]_.
.. [2] Which implies that it *will* be a problem for the abstract
laborers.
For me a maintainer is not really different from other contributors.
S/he does a work needed by the project and as a maintainer he has no
alienated reasons for this work and so always acts in the best
interest of the goals of the project - at least ideally. In practice
this is enforced by the checks and balances you gave. Of course a main
question are the goals of the project but defininig different goals to
me more looks like a case for a fork.
Now I don't understand why in your opinion a maintainer "could become
disturbingly influential in regard to the goal setting process". What
can be disturbing? May be you can come up with an example?
Grüße
Stefan
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