Shirky's Advice: Leave Social Contracts Incomplete

The quirkily eloquent Clay Shirky, described by our Gov 2.0 Summit host Tim O'Reilly as the "Oscar Wilde of the Internet," just wrapped up a quick 10-minute talk during this morning's opening session on the subject of how to make collaborative social software experiments go right. On the "go right" side of the spectrum, Shirky highlighted Washington DC's Apps for Democracy contest. That contest drew in dozens of submissions from developers who created innovative uses of the city's robust data catalog. But sometimes these projects go miserably, horribly badly. Case in point, the L.A. Times' 2005 "wikitorial" experiment, where the paper asked readers to work together to edit an editorial on the Iraq War. The project, boasted about in press release after press release, imploded in on itself, and the paper had to shut it down. In that latter case, what went wrong?

The problem with the L.A. Times wikitorial experiment that Apps for Democracy managed to avoid is, said Shirky, that the social contract between those running the newspaper's experiment and potential collaborators was too articulated, too structured, too direct. The imposing structure that the L.A. Times put into place when they started their project killed any sense of playful experimentation. What's more, when something that had once been collaborative now turns into something transactional, people begin thinking about how to beat the system -- like, said Shirky, how parents fined for picking up their kids late at daycare start to simply pay the fee and leave the kids stewing for a bit.

With those lessons in mind, Shirky highlighted three keys to how government can create successful social software experiments:

• The contract with users has to be complete enough to get users interested, but open-ended enough not to squash that interest.
• The invitation to collaborate must leave room for creativity. Otherwise, said Shirky, users feel like minimum wage workers "without even getting minimum wage."
• And, citing the L.A. Times' PR ramp up in advance of the wikitorials launch, Shirky warned that the more that you take credit for future success in advance, the less likely that success is ever going to happen.

Useful advice as more and more in government try to crack the nut of how to turn citizens into collaborators.