Balance generated content – towards the end of user generated content?

There seems to be a slow and fundamental shift happening in the distribution of power inside information communities. After the unbalanced and unfair “experts empire” we all grew up in came the equally unbalanced and unfair “all users are equal” doctrine.

In the first case, communities were dominated by a bunch of people who thought they had all the knowledge. Age, experience, diplomas were conditioning the position on the ladder.

Then users (we) took the power back by quietly building resources that became more and more authoritative and rich, capitalizing on the mathematical fact that millions of brains would logically surpass even the brightest experts. Number of contributions, appreciation of the community, presence. This is how the new kings were made.

Suddenly being an expert was a almost shameful thing. Expertise had to be a thing of the past because it was, by essence, not democratic, breaking the equality we were all seeking after years of frustration.

Thing is, we probably overreacted. Kicking out the experts was not the answer. We do not all contribute the same value. Somebody who has carved violins all his life should have more editing power than me on Wikipedia’s Stradivarius page.

Balance is the answer. As usual.

And it starts to show on the web. The most advanced communities are indeed a “balance act” between three types of people:

• the users, the legendary and volatile “content generators”, needed to scale the system to a dimension where it starts to matter.
• the drivers, those building the community framework and, indirectly, allowing the participation incentives to flourish.
• the experts, bringing credibility to the whole edifice by sharing their extensive knowledge of their part of the knowledge long tail.

See OhMyNews. I met their international director Jean K. Min a few weeks ago. He told me that journalists (in my classification, the “drivers”) were an indispensable part of their user-centric community, because there was a need to “protect users from themselves”. You can’t let citizen reporters write anything without fact checking what is published. Because reporting false information gets you sued! And who do citizen reporters turn to when they need to cover a precise issue? Experts. These three roles are needed to ensure the best possible information.

See the Bayosphere experiment. When Dan Gilmor analyzed the project’s failure, he talked about users needing “some direction and a framework”. Again, users should not be left to themselves, but be forced to respect by a set of rules. Control is in their interest again.

See Rue89, the newest citizen journalism player in France. Their slogan is “Your information revolution” and their recipe simple: Journalists, Experts, Users.

We are moving away from the “all users are born equal” utopia, and entering a more balanced, productive and sustainable era where powers are divided again. What has changed is how roles get attributed, not what roles are composing the information landscape.

Further proof technological innovation does not necessarily destroy the establishment. It simply forces a reorganization of the forces. A healthy mechanism of our society, ensuring that power doesn’t stay in the same hands for too long.