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The Virtues Of Moderation, James Grimmelmann
The Virtues Of Moderation, James Grimmelmann
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
On a Friday in 2005, the Los Angeles Times launched an experiment: a “wikitorial” on the Iraq War that any of the paper’s readers could edit. By Sunday, the experiment had ended in abject failure: vandals overran it with crude profanity and graphic pornography. The wikitorial took its inspiration and its technology from Wikipedia, but missed something essential about how the “the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit” staves off abuse while maintaining its core commitment to open participation.
The difference is moderation: the governance mechanisms that structure participation in a community to facilitate cooperation and prevent abuse. Town meetings …
Law And Ethics Of Experiments On Social Media Users, James Grimmelmann
Law And Ethics Of Experiments On Social Media Users, James Grimmelmann
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
If you were on Facebook in January 2012, there is a chance that it tried to make you sad. If you were on OkCupid, there is a chance that it tried to match you up with someone incompatible. These were social psychology experiments: Facebook and OkCupid systematically manipulated people's environments to test their reactions. Academics doing similar experiments in a university setting would typically need to obtain informed consent from participants and approval from an Institutional Review Board (IRB). But Facebook and OkCupid, and the academics working with Facebook, had neither. This, I believe, is a problem.
These experiments offer …