What defines the value of a social network? Is it its users or is it the network itself? Who should have the last word in a self-organizing community? The users or the administrators?
The digg debate, although resolved raises some very important issues on the future of self-organizing platforms.

The users

The top diggers yesterday revolted against Digg, because it enabled a new, more ’strict’ algorithm. The debatable part of this algorithm is, that when a post is dugg by you and your 100 friends, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it will reach the frontpage.

So what the algorithm brings in, is diversity. Top diggers disregarded this variable, since it treats their posts (and consequently their network) unfair. The logic behind this revolt is, that

Top users are top users because they submit high qaulity material. They should not be required to get more diggs simply because of the great job they have been doing to reach that top user status.

I don’t see this as a plausible argument. These communities give control to the end user; every end user and not only a ruling few. Regardless of the quality of content these top-users provide, they are considered authorities in their platforms (may it be digg, stumbleupon, slashdot, etc) and their opinion is highly praised. This authority alone, is a reason for their content to be promoted. Sometimes regular users are digging top-user content, just because it is top-user content.

The network

Digg (and all sites of the kind) started out with a main principle of self-organization. They provided the tools for the creation of an active community, which discovers and promotes content - and let it self-organize.
Indeed, the presence of administrators is very subtle in most cases.

But the functionality of such communities doesn’t rely only on self-organization.
Indirect control is sometimes required. When users post spam, when they have multiple accounts, when they behave improperly, an administrator is needed to set things right.

Similarly when these networks are actually managed by few top users, then another main principle of the system is at stake. Diversity.
Without diversity, the content is usually about the same subjects and very often from the same sources.
But when Digg decided to control this behavior and give the opportunity to other users to bring content forward, the ruling diggers revolted.

It is of course logical. They have worked hard to create a steady friends network, which in a way guarantees lots of diggs for every post they make.

The resolution

After this mini-revolution, digg founders came forward and explained their position. The way I see it, they diplomatically remained on their position on the subject, saying that content will not be directly undermined when posted by a top digger, but it will have trouble reaching the front page if it is promoted only by their friends. I find it fair.
In the drilldown, where the discussion was held the question posed at their last post is:

If Digg is a game then we are ready to play for keeps. What happens if the most powerful users in the community decide to leave? Will others join? Is Digg anything without us? Let’s prove it.

Would the community fall apart because the top users aren’t a part of it anymore? Would the quality of the content degrade?
I don’t think so. Digg is a very popular social network. The move, that digg did opens the road

• for more users to submit content
• for more users to join the network (hence more diversity)
• for more users to participate actively in the community

The issue

I believe that the value of a network is mostly defined by the users participating in it. But the way the network indirectly regulates the community is a fundamental aspect for the success of the system.
What do you think? Should digg stay out of the way and let the community evolve the way it was evolving, or was it a good decision to endorse a more strict perspective of popularity?

In the late ’90s Marvin Minsky published a book called ‘Mentopolis’. He documented the human brain as a distributed network, consisting of a multiple agents, where each one of those agents is responsiple for just one operation. In the picture below, for example, he proposed that in order for our brain to recognize an apple all these agents should be set in motion. The ‘color’ agent should collect his information and send it to the ‘look to’ agent, who in his turn would communicate with the ‘place’ agent and so forth. My interest in this network (called the find-machine by Minsky) is not its credibility but its properties and attributes.

Emergent networks

The system Minsky composed was a typical example of an emergent network, namely a system with multiple agents dynamically interacting in multiple ways, following local rules and oblivious to any higher-level instructions. Minsky visualized a perfectly functioning system, with absolutely no central control. The nodes (meaning the agents) are interacting in order for their microbehavior (sorting color, size, etc.) to result in a macrobehavior (perceiving the object). Such organizations are present in nature (see the work of Deborah Gordon on the emergent behavior of ants), computer software and even in the structure of cities and are giving us a glimpse of networks, which correctly aggregate information.

Emergent systems function so perfectly, because they work with neighbor interaction, feedback, pattern recognition and indirect control. They are designed to learn from the ground level, to take advantage of local knowledge for an upper goal. Through interaction, they are capable of recognizing patterns and indirectly controlling the whole system.

Emergent social web

I’m not implying that the social web undertakes a completely emergent behavior. We are dealing neither with oblivious users nor with pattern recognition systems (at least not yet). But still there are perfectly functioning communities, which adopt the traits of an emergent behavior (probably slashdot, wikipedia and the linux operating system being the most profound examples). There is not any administrator – at least not in the traditional sense – leading the community. The users are self organized, sometimes each one responsible for a specific activity and always working together to provide quality material. Under that perspective we are experiencing the formation of online emergent networks, which are developing a life of their own – a life without any central control.

But what makes such behavior so successful? As I argued on my previous post regarding aggregation of knowledge (and your additions are mostly welcome on this), their success lies on:

• diversity
• independence
• indirect control
• self-organization

Conclusion

If such systems (and among them is the World Wide Web itself) manage so successfully to collect knowledge without any central power, why should we accept the control of any authority, which would define who posts which article and who links where? Years of experience show us that such ‘problems’ of the web can regulate themselves.

In following posts I will concentrate explicitly on each of the above-named traits of emergent networks with the hope of justifying my thesis, that expertise is not the only path to knowledge.

For this post the book of Steven Johnson: Emergence and of Marvin Minsky: Mentopolis (where the photo also comes from; original was in german, I translated it) where of great assistance.