[FM Discuss] the nature of authorship

[Greg Urban]

Hi Adam:

I'm not sure what 'romantic notion of authorship' is. Can you say more
what that is?

Are you talking about the popular image of an author as a creator?
In my experience as a tech writer, I feel more like a construction worker.

Greg

On Sun, Apr 12, 2009 at 6:57 AM, Emma Jane Hogbin <emma at hicktech.com> wrote:
> 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
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