[FM Discuss] motivations

[Andy Oram]

I tend to stress the rewards that are impersonal and non-reputation based for a community project like FLOSS Manuals. I think that's what Adam and Emma have been saying too.

But there's no simple answer, and I'll stress in this email that there are many arguments on all sides.

One informal study I conducted suggested that altruism and the desire to support a community are very strong. But it also suggested that reputation could be a strong motivator, too:

http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2007/06/14/why-do-people-write-free-documentation-results-of-a-survey.html

Most doc sites (ranging from mailing lists to wikis) don't try to harness the potential to promote reputation.

But indulging in writers' egos (whether a romantic attachment or other) introduces extra messiness into a collaborative process that is already complicated and requires delicacy. Here's one example that you might not have thought about where ego attachment can complicate things: at O'Reilly, we routinely ask an author to update his book. The author is too busy to do the job but won't admit it. He doesn't want to share his book with anyone--so he strings us along for several months without accomplishing anything.

Andy