In the beginning there was Usenet. It was a wonderful microcosmos of technical expertise and niche hobbies. Then 1993 came and the constant flood of new users overwhelmed the culture and ability to enforce norms [1]. Truthfully, it didn't begin with Usenet. It's the old dilemma of universal access and freedom versus mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon. Even before that, Aristotle wrote "That which is common to the greatest number gets the least amount of care. Men pay most attention to what is their own: they care less for what is common." Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it.[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
bmer|2 years ago
"That which is the common to the greatest number gets the least amount of care..." is not a universal law, and it is easy to think of counterexamples. Without listing these, here are some axes that can govern which side of well-cared-for resources in the commons may end up:
- the extent to which people hold cooperation to be an important ingredient, versus dispensable - the extent to which people are able to trust others, versus not - the extent to which a commonly held resource is considered as much a personal resource, as a common one, versus purely common and otherwise inconsequential - the extent to which people are able to value the importance (and impact) of small, consistent actions versus grand(iose) ones - the extent to which people are willing to learn from mistakes and change, versus the extent to which people feel entrenched and defensive
Most of these come down to education, culture, and type of previous interactions with other humans.