BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:researchseminars.org CALSCALE:GREGORIAN X-WR-CALNAME:researchseminars.org BEGIN:VEVENT SUMMARY:Aashka Tank DTSTART:20230726T160000Z DTEND:20230726T170000Z DTSTAMP:20260417T093956Z UID:Metagov/158 DESCRIPTION:Title: On Governance Archeology\nby Aashka Tank as part of Metagovernance S eminar\n\n\nAbstract\nHow different is a historical diamond industry commu nity offering loyal merchants access to more precious stones from a Web3 p latform\, which allows skilled creators to join it\, giving its starred me mbers token-gated access to certain discords? Not very - an elite merchant can bid on a stone and sell it independently\, a creator can network effe ctively and land a larger project. The same mechanism of positive reinforc ement is at play : if you bolster the institution by adhering to its rules \, and contribute positively to it\, you can leverage its collective power for personal gain. \n\n\nThis link is unsurprising given that both self- governing institutions and online communities were formed to supplement\, if not actively subvert\, flawed structures that dictate rules based on ce ntralised authority. Being in the room where Reserve Bank of India officia ls walked in to shut down a blockchain panel seemed akin to watching Dutch officials’ encirclement of strongholds of the Minangbakau clan. However \, while the panel crumbled and the wing of the organisation creating self -regulatory mechanisms for crypto-based lending platforms soon collapsed\, the Minangbakau held their own. Moreover\, they succeeded in doing so wit hout ceding power or agreeing to pay exorbitant taxes to the Dutch. Perha ps\, then\, online communities could do well to learn from and harness the institutional mechanisms that made these historical tribes so robust. \n \n\nGovernance Archaeology is a detailed repository of historical communit ies and encodes their mechanisms\, cultural values and norms\, and meta-me chanisms. It has already yielded novel insights that defy popular beliefs about self-governance\, such as the notion communities can govern most eff ectively within smaller groups and by using hierarchies. However\, by anal ysing communities spanning across centuries and continents\, it is clear t hat independent of size and purpose\, collective governance works better w hen institutions “1) allow members to collectively articulate and amend the rules\, and 2) define and enforce appropriate forms of redress for tho se who misbehave” (Carugati\, Nepozitek\, 2022). \n\n\nHowever\, there are a myriad of means to achieve these two ends\, and which mix of mechani sms works is still difficult to objectively pin down\, especially given th e remarkable diversity of applications of self-governance in the current c ontext. \n\nBut surely\, one thinks\, this is not new knowledge. A simila r database mapping the governance mechanisms of modern communities would b e more useful for cross-pollination\, and grafting of institutional techni ques from one arena or platform to another. This is exactly what Govbase d oes. \n\nAnd yes\, historical communities\, while fascinating in and of t hemselves\, did not have ground-breaking mechanisms : they used committees \, councils\, petitions and monitoring\, much as we do today\, to govern e ffectively. \n\n\nSo why is it important to build a bridge between Govern ance Archaeology and Govbase? It’s because labels in and of themselves m ean very little until we’re clear about how they work in practise. A sim ple example would be deterring individuals from swindling other users on o nline platforms. The obvious\, technical solution would be charging a heft y fine or disabling the profiles of cheaters on the platform. An online co mmunity facing this issue could look around to find other Web3 platforms u sing smart contract based solutions which\, instead of tracking down viola tors\, attempt to prevent violations in real time. But even these are susc eptible to reentrancy attacks\, or more subtle scams like integer underflo w/overflow. Essentially\, when the solution is technical\, there will be w ays around it. Where there is a law\, there will be a loophole. \n\n\nBut what if online communities could look to the past for inspiration? Raid G uild could see that merchant guilds\, where goods were of substantial valu e and obtaining redress through courts was erratic\, if not impossible\, p unished cheaters in a less conventional way. Not only were they expelled\, they were publicly shamed. Their portraits were hung in guild meeting hal ls and clubs\, where they were slandered by their peers and denied entry. So\, Raid Guild might use this to put up pictographs of ostracised former members on its home page and create a strong cognisance within its communi ty of certain kinds of behaviour being unacceptable. \n\n\nSince historic al communities much precede digital\, even technical trappings\, their nor mative mechanisms are especially cogent. Thus\, their insights could be of value. \n\n\nHaving said that\, these insights must be distilled\, becau se some of them simply aren’t feasible today. Kinship ties or alliances through marriage may be efficacious mechanisms\, but obviously cannot be r eplicated in a virtual environment. \n\n\nIt should require minimal effor t for an online community to deploy tools from the past\, and the ideal ex perience would look like this : the user opens the Mechanisms view of Govb ase\, filters the table to show only those mechanisms which belong to the ontology of Governance Archaeology\, and can see how an institutional stru cture fits into the broader design. Positive reinforcement\, for instance\ , is a subclass of ‘ambiguous or informal decision making’ and is a co mponent of the wide spanning category ‘values\, ideologies\, incentives\ , and other motivations.’ If this is of interest to the online community \, it can also look at other mechanisms which belong to the category of in formal decision making\, like criticism or handshakes\, and read the recor ds of these to understand how they worked in specific historical communiti es.\n LOCATION:https://researchseminars.org/talk/Metagov/158/ END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR