[FM Discuss] the nature of authorship

[Emma Jane Hogbin]

On Sun, Apr 12, 2009 at 6:52 AM, Andy Oram <andyo at oreilly.com> wrote:
> FLOSS Manuals encourages participation by recognizing contributors. I don't think that most of them have a strong vision of what the book should be, and such people would have trouble contributing no matter how you organize the work and the resulting material. Some people might do more if recognition were more precise.

Aha. And there be the discussion of motivating factors. :) Andy, you
felt "threatened" by others contributing to your chapter and so you
were motivated to make your own improvements. That is an external
motivation.

Different kinds of recognition attract different kinds of people.
Leader boards, barn stars, karma points are a few of the ways that
online communities give external rewards to contributors. When the
results are tallied and displayed as a leader board people who are
motivated by competition and "first", "top" and "best" will flock to
the project. Tallied results keep those who need an external motivator
attached to a project. In this environment, competitions are
successful and can attract new competitors. But there always needs to
be an external motivator as part of the reward system.

Tallied results do not, however, necessarily attract those who like to
work collaboratively or have other "internal" sources of motivation.
Internally motivated behaviour requires no threat ("don't touch my
chapter") or reward ("you got to the top of the leader board!").
Although the numbers of people who are attracted may be smaller,
internally motivated individuals are more likely to stay committed to
a project because they provide their own rewards.

The trick, of course, is to provide the right motivations for a range
of people so that you attract and retain largest number of productive
contributors. And also to be aware of the contributors you are losing
by adopting one dominant style of motivation.

regards,
emma