Picture a large, cool, warehouse-like room with a large circle of chairs. Most of us are desperately clinging to a large foam cup of coffee and nervously tapping our feet. It’s my turn to stand up.
Hello everyone. My name is Aubree and I am a recovering WoW addict.
Hi Aubree
I’m not sure if they have groups like AA for World of Warcraft addicts, but sometimes I feel like it would have been helpful when trying to give the game up. Much to my excitement, however, my knowledge of the game hasn’t been a complete suck of my brain – it’s proven somewhat useful in the readings of this class and in understanding principles that are becoming more and more important in the collaborative environments around us.
Naturally, the chapter in Novecks Wiki Government that discusses Designing for Collaborative Democracy was of particular interest to me, as World of Warcraft is used to depict concepts of ‘groupness’.
In the book, one of the central themes revolves around the idea of lawmakers and politicians accessing information from ‘regular’ citizens in order to improve decision making and other processes. This term ‘groupness’ speaks to the individuals becoming aware of themselves as groups and how collaboration of knowledge is inherently more effective and efficient than individual knowledge.
Wiki Government also uses an example of this approach to groupness in the ‘real’ world as an emergency room team. Each individual brings skill to the situation that in itself would likely not be enough to do the patient any good. Multiple things need to happen at once. Or, I like to think that even if each team member was able to do each of the tasks expertly well (such as transporting the patient, preparing a shot, or the use of a surgery tool), they wouldn’t effectively be able to do them all at once. So they need each other to function as a successful unit. I liked the termed used in the book ‘plug compatible’, which was to support the point that people can be a force that helps us extend our own selves. That we can be more with others than what we could have been if we were by ourselves merely by realizing the value of collaboration within a situation or instance.
Being the above stated recovering WoW addict, I have seen how this also works in the virtual gaming world. It’s uncanny how similar it is to the real life example of the ER. Just as Noveck mentions, a specific example of collaboration success in WoW is the component of Guilds. Guilds are completely run by the players, not the creators of the game – they are truly a collaboration between individuals. They allow for players to ‘group’ (join to quest or fight as a unit), trade abilities, skills, or items, and build social relationships with other players in the game. By working together with others in a group, your individual character elevates itself much faster than if going it alone. I know this from personal experience. When I first started the game, I had heard a lot of things about people that ‘played WoW’ and I didn’t want to interact with ‘weirdos’. So I played completely solo. I didn’t advance very much and certainly not quickly. In joining a guild and experiencing raids, instances, or general questing with other players – I found that I not only was able to accomplish things more efficiently, I learned skills from those players that made me inherently better at the game. Most importantly, even if players had similar abilities or skills, it was the power of using them in a collaborative way that made us impenetrable to adversaries. One would aggro (hold the enemies attention to themselves at close range), another would do a ranged attack or send in a ‘pet’, one player would provide shielding, and yet another player would heal any wounds as they occurred. Even if I, as one character, could physically perform each of those abilities, I would never be able to do them all at the same time like we were able to as a group working together as one.
So I would consider myself a classic example of what Noveck was saying can sometimes be a challenge when creating a collaborative effort to achieving a goal. Making a group of individuals aware that they could be so much more if they looked beyond themselves can be hard to do if they’ve always seen themselves as only one unit.
Bringing it back around to Noveck’s points, I think that the Peer-to-Patent program illustrates a great success. Experts are typically only that. They know their topic well, but outside the realm of their topic, they’re likely to be a lot less knowledgeable or useful. For something as open as patents (for anything and everything!), having a staff that could be experts on any possible application seems absurd. It IS absurd. Noveck’s method of utilizing citizen experts demonstrates the power in using collaboration for success. Much like killing a dragon in World of Warcraft. 😉
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