Online Creation Communities
= "Online Creation Communities (OCCs) are collective action performed by individuals that cooperate, communicate and interact, mainly via a platform of participation in the Internet, with the goal of knowledge-making and which the resulting information al pool remains freely accessible and of collective property." [1]
Description
Mayo Fuster Morell:
Online Creation Communities (OCCs) are a set of individuals that communicate, interact and
collaborate; in several forms and degrees of participation which are ecosystemically
integrated; mainly via a
platform of participation on the Internet, on which they depend; and aiming at knowledge-making and sharing.
In order to approach OCCs it is useful to make an analytical distinction between two spaces. On the other hand, there is a platform of participation where participants interact and which can grow enormously.
On the other, there is a generally small provision body that provides the platform on which the community interacts. For example, the Wikimedia Foundation is the provider of the infrastructure within which the community of participants which build Wikipedia interact. NTIs lower the costs of established forms of collective action (Benkler, 2006). However, they still depend on interaction within an infrastructure. The provision of this infrastructure cannot be seen as a dysfunction or unimportant; instead it solves some of the questions this type of online collective action necessarily raises. For example, platform provision involves the control of servers and the domain name and other important components which sustain the interaction both technically and legally.
(http://wikis.fu-berlin.de/download/attachments/59080767/FusterMorell-Paper.pdf)
Governance
Mayo Fuster Morell:
"In the analysis of OCCs’ governance there is instead a need to look at both spaces (community around the knowledgemaking and infrastructure provision) and their particular connections, because both are important and have functions in the governing of OCCs. In this regard, my analysis search to enrich Benkler’s (2006) analysis of OCCs (or commons-based peer production) as this research does not leave the infrastructure aspects as environmental institutional conditions; but integrates in the analysis the necessary interface of CPBB, with its environment and how it (and its governance) shapes community action.
The OCCs can be classified in terms of how their provision spaces function.
Two main axes concerning the infrastructure provision strategies can be distinguished: open versus closed to community involvement in infrastructure provision, and freedom and autonomy versus dependency on the infrastructure (netenabler versus blackbox).
...
Five main models of online infrastructure provision can be distinguished:
- Corporation services,
- mission enterprises,
- university networks,
- representational foundations and
- assemblearian collective self-provision
Each option of these models has advantages and disadvantages, and importantly, these models differently shape the communities generated in terms of participation growth and type of collaboration established." (http://wikis.fu-berlin.de/download/attachments/59080767/FusterMorell-Paper.pdf)