Two very simple games of experimental economics can decode the rules of the blogosphere and the web. They expose basic functions of the society - of any society - and consequently teach us how to be better bloggers, surfers, users, contributors.
The Ultimatum Game
A very interesting game in experimental economics is the Ultimatum Game. It takes place between two players, who play it only once.
An amount of money (lets say 100$) is to be shared between the players. A coin is flipped to determine which player will decide how the money will be split. The other player, the “responder” can either accept the deal and the money is split as the first player proposed or he can refuse the deal and neither player gets any money. The game is simple, but the results stand against any rational thinking:
- 2/3 of the experimental subjects offer between $40-$50.
- Only 4% offers less than $20 and
- more than the half of the responders reject offers smaller than 20% of the total.
The Public Goods Games
A development of the Ultimatum Game is the Public Goods Game.
In this game 4 participants have to decide how much to invest in a common pot. Each one has a starting amount of money and the option to keep what they don’t invest in the pot. The total amount invested (each decides without knowing how much the others invested), is multiplied and then divided equally among the players.
But this game is played in rounds and after each round the amount invested by each player is revealed.
Also in some of the games, players were allowed to spend part of their pool for the privilege of fining each other.
In other games, the players were rotated among different groups, so that individuals did not have the opportunity to encounter each other again.
The results of the game are intriguing:
- In the games, where fining was allowed participators made more generous contributions in the pot, but without the punishment collaboration collapsed.
- Even though there was no possibility for future interaction, very often players punished free riders and reported that they did it because they were angry at the cheaters.
The hidden rules of the games
Someone who knows and has studied the games can extract 3 simple rules in order to understand them.
- People tend to be more generous than a strategy of rational self-interest predicts.
- People will penalize cheaters, even at some expense to themselves.
- These tendencies tend to influence individuals to behave in such ways that benefit the group.
But the reactions of the participants are not only to be seen in our ‘cultivated’ society. They seem to follow a universal pattern.
In some organisms and some human societies, individuals have been so willing to cooperate that they apparently act against their own self-interest in order to provide benefit to others. Why do antelope hunters in Tanzania and turtle fishermen off Australia expend their energy providing game for tribal feasts, even at the expense of their own families? Biologists think the answer is something called “costly signaling”: The hunters are letting others know that they are good citizens and good providers and therefore food husband and partner material.
Very often the hunters are sharing their catch at the expense of their time and their shares in order to send this “costly signal”. The others, who perceive this signal, tend to trust it because of the cost the hunters paid to signal it.
In the end this evolves to a reputation contest.
To biologists Pollock and Dugatkin, reputation evolved as a measure of an individual’s willingness to reciprocate, thereby raising the probability that the individual will be chosen as a partner in reciprocally cooperative activities like food-sharing, mating and hunting together.
So, a fourth rule emerges: reputation is the secret ingredient in cooperation.
The Cyberspace
It seems, that the way we react, when being part of a community is something coded in our DNA.
But is it really so?
The web is a place, where the conventions of identity, rules, society, space and time are very flexible. If these fundamental rules of collaborative societies would have value in the cyberspace, then we - the cyberspace inhabitants - could learn a great deal about our interactions in this non-world.
If we were to see cyberspace under the perspective of rational self interest strategies, then bloggers and users would:
- link only their friends or people who linked them first
- they would submit someones content only if he/she submitted their own
- never participated in any open source or free project
- they would never post in forums
Is there penalization in the web?
I can easily have multiple accounts in any community. I can promote my content tenfold, I can leave annoying comments on other blogs, I can delete wiki submissions and with a simple change of my IP address, remain unpunished. The only punishment is not even in the realms of the cyberspace; it incorporates the real world.
If the group behaves generously and penalizing, then this tendency will influence the individuals to be also generous. But if there is no penalty for any misbehavior, then - the game rules say - users have no reason to be generous. Instead, they act according to their self-interest.
Luckily, that’s where the stabilizing factor comes along: Reputation.
Maybe the punishment laws of the cyberspace are loose, but it works so well due to reputation.
Users with high reputation are highly acknowledged and trusted by other users. If a user has low reputation he is not trusted by many users, but it is a trust he/she can built with generosity. Similarly, when a trusted, popular user ‘misbehaves’ may not be directly penalized, but he/she will lose his/her popularity.
The lesson
If you have reached reading so far, then the lesson is pretty self-explanatory. Consider your goals when being online. Why do you participate in all these communities? Why do you blog?
To reach your goals, you have to first give something to the community. You must start building on your reputation. It is a slow process, because web users are very cautious (remember they can’t really punish you), but it is worth. In the end you will get back what you gave. Your generosity will be repaid. If you want:
…more traffic to your blog, then start by sending traffic to other blogs. Help other users start their blog, participate in their discussions.
…your submissions to reach the front page, vote other submissions first.
…better software, help the community develop better software. Send your feedback, the bugs you find,your code.
To succeed your goals in cyberspace you must be generous and patient.
They don’t know it but the comments of Terry and Paul inspired me for this post.
Howard Rheingold’s book “Smart Mobs” has been a valuable resource.
Almost a week ago there was a great buzz about a relatively new wiki, called wikileaks. One of the reasons for this popularity burst was, that this 
one computer can make a difference - can provide to the commons. In one way or another our participation in the social web is self-interested. We vote other submission, because we hope people will vote ours too; we comment on other blogs to learn more about a subject and hopefully receive a comment on our work; we use news aggregators so that we will not have to search for the most interesting news in this sea of data.
computer for their research. You can actually use the idle time on your computer (any computer, any OS) to cure diseases, study global warming, discover life in other plants, etc. These projects are based on the ideals of 
