💡 In simple words: Wikipedia is run by the people who write it, with open rules everyone can read and improve. WikiDeal wants to run its marketplaces the same way: by the people who use them.

🎯 In 20 seconds (scientific summary): Initial hypothesis, foundational innovation number two: applying the same governance as Wikipedia to deals and marketplaces instead of encyclopedic knowledge. Open participation, transparent rules and community decision making are intended to replace ownership and control by third-party structures.

On this page:

What is it?
Status
State of the art

Wikipedia Governance

Foundational innovation, WikiDeal R&D. Status: initial hypothesis, page under construction, basis for discussion.

What is it?

Wikipedia Governance is the second foundational concept of WikiDeal, together with Participative Agreement Design: the same governance as Wikipedia, applied to deals and marketplaces instead of encyclopedic knowledge. The starting hypothesis is that what worked for knowledge (open participation, transparent versioned content, community decision making, dispute resolution by the community itself) can be adapted to commerce.

WikiDeal's governance is intended as a hybrid of three proven sources: the open, wiki-style rule-making of Wikipedia and the free software movement, the at-cost financial management and user ownership of cooperatives, and the Swiss practice of collegial executives at every level, elected by an assembly of delegates. The full model is described on the Governance page. However, because WikiDeal aims to build a "digital" global marketplace, the governance of Wikimedia (which has been operating Wikipedia and other wikis since 2001) provides a fundamental source of inspiration that we slightly adapt for this context.

Additionally, for its 25th anniversary, the Wikimedia movement has defined 3 key pillars: freedom, equity, and reliability (liberté, équité et fiabilité). These three pillars resonate perfectly with the values and objectives of WikiDeal.

The elements inspired by the Wikimedia Foundation practices are documented on the Wikimedia references page, and WikiDeal's own governance structures are described across the Gov portal.

Status

This page is under construction. The concept is an initial hypothesis of the WikiDeal R&D programme; its formulation and its name are open for discussion.

State of the art

Applying Wikipedia-style governance to marketplaces starts from a body of academic work that studies how Wikipedia actually governs itself. The studies below inform this exploration; they do not claim that the transfer to commerce will succeed.

Andrea Forte, Vanessa Larco and Amy Bruckman (2009), Decentralization in Wikipedia Governance, Journal of Management Information Systems, 26(1): doi:10.2753/MIS0742-1222260103.
Piotr Konieczny (2009), Governance, Organization, and Democracy on the Internet: The Iron Law and the Evolution of Wikipedia, Sociological Forum, 24(1): doi:10.1111/j.1573-7861.2008.01090.x.
Brian Butler, Elisabeth Joyce and Jacqueline Pike (2008), Don't look now, but we've created a bureaucracy: the nature and roles of policies and rules in Wikipedia, Proceedings of CHI 2008: doi:10.1145/1357054.1357227.
Dariusz Jemielniak (2014), Common Knowledge? An Ethnography of Wikipedia, Stanford University Press: book page on Wikipedia.
Aaron Halfaker, R. Stuart Geiger, Jonathan T. Morgan and John Riedl (2013), The Rise and Decline of an Open Collaboration System: How Wikipedia's Reaction to Popularity Is Causing Its Decline, American Behavioral Scientist, 57(5): doi:10.1177/0002764212469365.
Elinor Ostrom (1990), Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action, Cambridge University Press: doi:10.1017/CBO9780511807763 · author page on Wikipedia.