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<blockquote>The man who takes money from a bank acts as if the bank were a commons. How do we prevent such action? Certainly not by trying to control his behavior solely by a verbal appeal to his sense of responsibility. Rather than rely on propaganda we...insist that a bank is not a commons; we seek the definite social arrangements that will keep it from becoming a commons. That we thereby infringe on the freedom of would-be robbers we neither deny nor regret. The morality of bank-robbing is particularly easy to understand because we accept complete prohibition of this activity. We are willing to say "Thou shalt not rob banks," without providing for exceptions.</blockquote>
<blockquote>The man who takes money from a bank acts as if the bank were a commons. How do we prevent such action? Certainly not by trying to control his behavior solely by a verbal appeal to his sense of responsibility. Rather than rely on propaganda we...insist that a bank is not a commons; we seek the definite social arrangements that will keep it from becoming a commons. That we thereby infringe on the freedom of would-be robbers we neither deny nor regret. The morality of bank-robbing is particularly easy to understand because we accept complete prohibition of this activity. We are willing to say "Thou shalt not rob banks," without providing for exceptions.</blockquote>
Garrett Hardin asserts that bank robbery is a one-way street. But a post-TARP<ref>[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubled_Asset_Relief_Program Troubled Asset Relief Program]</ref> world has shown us that bank robbery can go the other way: banks robbing the common taxpayer. Although public reaction ranged from fear to pronounced skepticism to outrage over the idea of taxpayers footing the bill for a calamity imposed by Wall Street, large banks and other actors in the economy's financial sector, the major media covered this "man bites dog" story largely from the industry perspective. Thus, the industry got what it wanted with taxpayers picking up the tab, even though legislation to "bail out banks" was widely opposed.<ref>[http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/business/federal_bailout/september_2008/only_28_support_federal_bailout_plan Only 28% Support Federal Bailout Plan]</ref> But a more actively engaged citizenry might have pushed back more effectively. In other words, a large enough group of regular citizens, perhaps with their voices collectively channeled through their community's civic wiki, might have effectively said "banks shall not rob the people," without providing for exceptions.
Garrett Hardin asserts that bank robbery is a one-way street. But a post-TARP<ref>[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubled_Asset_Relief_Program Troubled Asset Relief Program]</ref> world has shown us that bank robbery can go the other way: banks robbing the common taxpayer. Although public reaction ranged from fear to pronounced skepticism to outrage over the idea of taxpayers footing the bill for a calamity imposed by Wall Street, large banks and other actors in the economy's financial sector, the major media covered this "man bites dog" story largely from the industry perspective. Thus, the industry got what it wanted with taxpayers picking up the tab, even though legislation to "bail out banks" was widely opposed.<ref>[http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/business/federal_bailout/september_2008/only_28_support_federal_bailout_plan Only 28% Support Federal Bailout Plan]</ref> But a more actively engaged citizenry might have pushed back more effectively. In other words, a large enough group of regular citizens, perhaps with their voices collectively channeled through their community's civic wiki, might have effectively said "banks shall not rob the people," without providing for exceptions.
== Civic Wikis and Direct Democracy ==
The process is called participatory budgeting and it is practiced in more than 1,200 municipalities worldwide today. Chicago's 49th Ward became the first US community to adopt the practice in 2009.<ref>[http://www.commondreams.org/video/2010/12/07-0 Direct Democracy in Chicago]: Chicago's 49th Ward first US government to adopt Brazilian practice of letting the people make their own budgets</ref>


== Civic Wiki Building Blocks ==
== Civic Wiki Building Blocks ==

Revision as of 20:33, 8 December 2010

A city wiki is a web site that serves as a knowledge base and social network for a specific city, town or village. Smaller communities that surround the main city (suburbs, unincorporated areas, metro regions, etc.) are sometimes associated with a city wiki, even if the particular geographical entity is also represented by its own wiki. The "wiki" feature of the web site suggests that the web site's software allows for easy content contributions from the community.

PortlandWiki is a city wiki dedicated to serving as a knowledge, information and social hub for Portland, Oregon. An additional goal for PortlandWiki is to give voice to the many communities that make Portland the marvelous city it is.

Civil Society and Civic Spaces[1]

Why create and maintain a city wiki (or civic wiki)?

Perhaps you're familiar with the Nigerian Igbo proverb "Ora na azu nwa" (It takes the community/village to raise a child),[2] or at least with the version of this proverb that found its way onto a book by Hillary Rodham Clinton[3] or by children's author Jane Cowen-Fletcher.[4] Similarly, it also takes healthy communities to make a successful society.

Throughout the ages, healthy human communities have benefited from common areas where individuals and groups from the community came together to exchange information, knowledge, gossip, goods, services and so on. In hunter-gatherer societies, a community commons might consist of the simple community campfire, or extend to a much larger "common-pool resource area"[5] shared by more than one tribe. Later, as humans formed into agrarian and industrial societies, parks, plazas, the village commons and similar spaces accessible to the whole community opened up.

An established commons often fell under the covetous gaze of one powerful interest or another. In fact, the real "tragedy of the commons" was not its over-exploitation by its legitimate stewards, as posited by Garrett Hardin[6], but the constant temptation felt by a few to take it from the community. Indeed, the main threats to a given community's commons usually involved its expropriation for private gain of one sort or another. The rich, powerful and/or well-connected (socially, politically, militarily or otherwise) could (and still can) take control of a commons from the commoners--who almost always outnumber them--by virtue of their wealth, power and connections.

So where does the civic wiki come in? Wiki technology (essentially read/write web editing tools that people with rudimentary computing skills can master fairly quickly) and the platform this technology operates on (the world wide web) offers a unique opportunity for members of any community to strongly influence how their community is governed. But that's just the beginning. A community wiki can serve as the community's historical archive, bulletin board, media center (as in a "read/write" daily news paper, television channel and radio station), knowledge commons and so on. It can perform all these functions without the guiding hand (visible or otherwise) of any "authority," dogma or ideology.

The practical effects are potentially profound. For instance, in "The Tragedy of the Commons," Garrett Hardin argues for the social benefits of "mutually agreed upon coercion," asking readers to "consider bank-robbing."

The man who takes money from a bank acts as if the bank were a commons. How do we prevent such action? Certainly not by trying to control his behavior solely by a verbal appeal to his sense of responsibility. Rather than rely on propaganda we...insist that a bank is not a commons; we seek the definite social arrangements that will keep it from becoming a commons. That we thereby infringe on the freedom of would-be robbers we neither deny nor regret. The morality of bank-robbing is particularly easy to understand because we accept complete prohibition of this activity. We are willing to say "Thou shalt not rob banks," without providing for exceptions.

Garrett Hardin asserts that bank robbery is a one-way street. But a post-TARP[7] world has shown us that bank robbery can go the other way: banks robbing the common taxpayer. Although public reaction ranged from fear to pronounced skepticism to outrage over the idea of taxpayers footing the bill for a calamity imposed by Wall Street, large banks and other actors in the economy's financial sector, the major media covered this "man bites dog" story largely from the industry perspective. Thus, the industry got what it wanted with taxpayers picking up the tab, even though legislation to "bail out banks" was widely opposed.[8] But a more actively engaged citizenry might have pushed back more effectively. In other words, a large enough group of regular citizens, perhaps with their voices collectively channeled through their community's civic wiki, might have effectively said "banks shall not rob the people," without providing for exceptions.

Civic Wikis and Direct Democracy

The process is called participatory budgeting and it is practiced in more than 1,200 municipalities worldwide today. Chicago's 49th Ward became the first US community to adopt the practice in 2009.[9]


Civic Wiki Building Blocks

The easy part of launching a new civic wiki, or any wiki for that mater, is choosing an appropriate wiki platform and installing the software on a server. Not that this task is always easy, but compared to what comes next, it's the proverbial "walk in the park." We'll come to the software choices and installation tips later. For now, let's review the major challenges to launching and sustaining a civic wiki.

For starters, let's draw from the experiences of the bold city wiki sysops who preceded PortlandWiki and have long since established successful city wikis. The list of "steps" shown below start off as condensed versions of the wise nuggets found in "Guidelines for running a City Wiki"[10] by Mark Krenz from Bloomingpedia, and the words of wisdom from Davis Wiki's Philip Neustrom as imparted to PortlandWiki's own Michael Andersen in his article "Welcome to Davis, Calif.: Six lessons from the world’s best local wiki."[11]

References

  1. ↑ Civil Society for Itself and in the Public Sphere: Comparative Research on Globalization, Cities and Civic Space in Pacific Asia (Douglass 2003)
  2. ↑ Ora na-azu nwa: the figure of the child in third-generation Nigerian novels. (Critical essay)
  3. ↑ It Takes a Village, By Hillary Rodham Clinton
  4. ↑ It Takes a Village, By Jane Cowen-Fletcher
  5. ↑ Land Tenure: Common-pool Resource Areas
  6. ↑ "The Tragedy of the Commons", By Garrett Hardin (Published in Science, December 13, 1968)
  7. ↑ Troubled Asset Relief Program
  8. ↑ Only 28% Support Federal Bailout Plan
  9. ↑ Direct Democracy in Chicago: Chicago's 49th Ward first US government to adopt Brazilian practice of letting the people make their own budgets
  10. ↑ "Guidelines for running a City Wiki" by Mark Krenz (Original at dead link. This is the Archive.org cached version.)
  11. ↑ "Welcome to Davis, Calif.: Six lessons from the world’s best local wiki" | By Michael Andersen | Nov. 6, 2009

External Links

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