Are You a Digital Sharecropper?

Phenwoods: Sharecropping has extreme negative connotations in the US because it was basically a way for landowners to have slaves after slavery was abolished. The landowners would charge for the land and seed, and take a percentage of the profit. The workers could never make enough money to pay off the debt, and were stuck in the arrangement forever.

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Svish:

ā€œto err on the side ofā€ means, that if youā€™re going to get it wrong, itā€™s better to get it wrong in this way, rather than get it wrong the other way.

ā€œto err on the side of cautionā€ is a common usage, and itā€™s saying ā€œI wasnā€™t sure how much risk to take, so Iā€™m probably not taking the right amount of risk, but Iā€™m going to intentionally take less risk (more caution) than I think I could get away with.ā€

Youā€™re driving down a road, and donā€™t know the speed limit. How fast do you go? You take a guess at the limit; now, do you go that limit, do you go 5 over your guessed limit, or 5 under your guessed limit? If you err on the side of caution, youā€™ll go 5 under.

I think you do yourself a disservice by comparing sites like stackoverflow to sharecropping. People contributing to the social web are generally not compelled by poverty and lack of opportunity.

The metaphor doesnā€™t work for me.

There have been people making profits on social gatherings for a long time. A restaurant will be happy to host a party for you. A bar will want you to come in and socialize. Thereā€™s nothing fundamentally new about FaceBook. Instead of paying for food or liquor, Iā€™m having ads pop up and (if I feel like it) providing information and photos and maybe apps and whatever.

Similarly, Iā€™ve contributed on StackOverflow (and have a rep > 10K) and Wikipedia. Answers and corrections are not something I feel I need to treasure. I can always have more ideas and write more stuff. I get a good feeling when people like what Iā€™ve done, or benefit from it, and this is a quick and easy way to get that feeling. Iā€™ve coded on what would have been an open source project if it didnā€™t have a noncommercial license. Again, I didnā€™t get a dime, but who cares, as long as itā€™s something I like doing? Nor do I feel this is like sharecropping, as thereā€™s no obligation involved.

There are limits, of course. Like many people, I donā€™t want to feel ripped off, and this includes free labor to enrich others more than I like. (I believe this is one reason for the popularity of the Gnu General Public License.) I donā€™t want to feel like I have to do something Iā€™m not getting paid for.

My advice would be to do as you like, and not worry overmuch about people making money off your contributions. If you feel youā€™re being taken advantage of, or it stops being fun, stop.

Sure, Iā€™d write for free. I got my first job by donating time writing, translating, and taking pictures for Runnerā€™s World. But there should be a clear expectation in the commercial space that if I contribute to your website, you had jolly well better allow me to advertise my goods (MY website, where I sell my book). And, of course, thatā€™s sure to evoke hesitation in at least some of these public benefactorsā€™ mindsā€¦

Ahh capitalism. That wonderful exploitative system that we all know and love.

But, as you say, the means of production are totally in the hands of the developers. If there was a significant movement towards abandoning this type of work, weā€™d see those companies tits up.

This doesnā€™t make the companies any less sleazy, though.

Squidoo.com does the same thing, but they offer 50% of the revenue to the user! now thatā€™s smart!

@Svish
"To err on the side ofā€¦" is a common phrase at least in English-English. Err on the side of your own brand would mean itā€™s safer to buil your own brand.
Most common is ā€œErr on the side of cautionā€ means if you are going to do something do the safer version

I think this just means that we are about to see banner ads all over stack overflow just like the ones on server fault.

Itā€™s a good question. Iā€™m not entirely sure itā€™s a sustainable model; nor am I entirely sure its an ethical model(actually Iā€™m pretty sure it can be very skeevy ethically).

I participate(Q and A) in stackoverflow/superuser because they are a Net Benefit to me.

I think itā€™s a little dangerous to bring it all back to the individual. In a place like StackOverflow, I really think most people are contributing not for personal gain (other than popularity), but hopefully in an attempt to make the world a better place (and by extension, make their lives easier).

Iā€™m more interested in seeing that the big sites properly respect their contributed content, than I am worried about getting a fair share of the pie. We all have hobbies we are willing to do for free, and we all want to leave behind some legacy. If that benefits someone else, it is fine so long as they take on the responsibility for safeguarding our efforts in the future (nothing is really free is it?). Itā€™s only when they grossly exploit it, or alter history for their own purposes that I start to get frustrated. Otherwise, a gift is a gift, especially if I gave it freely.

Paul.

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Most people simply do not have the gumption or the drive to build their own brand but may have the skill set or interest to create good content. So, they are happy to be contributors to something larger than themselves.

Plus, some folks are just shy.

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@sep332

Thanks for explaining the context, that explains a alot.

But, this context just makes the whole analogy even more ridiculous (and rather offensive). In no way is someone adding to a community site comparable to a penniless ex-slave, being forced to borrow money to buy seed at an exorbitant interest rate.

Hey Jeff,

Transparent accounting goes a long way with some people, including me. A body of content like Stack Overflow may produce piles of money, or none, and itā€™s impossible to tell which from looking at it. But if I had an income statement to look at, I could be more confident in my decisions about whether to write content for free.

(this assumes there is no other value to me in writing content, which obviously isnā€™t really true for my SO example.)

Most people wouldnā€™t want to publish their budgets. I probably should have addressed this comment ā€œHey Joelā€ because he may be more opposed to the idea. But if you do it Iā€™d love to see what happens.

Well, then why on Earth is anyone posting comments for this article since the comments are creative works being given away for free to the website?!? OMG, youā€™re inciting us to comment on the article and taking advantage of us!1!one!1!

Those so-called share cropping websites provide a service in exchange for the userā€™s efforts, even if it is something as basic as providing free hosting for the userā€™s content. Iā€™ve uploaded song titles to CDDB because I was hoping that the next time I wanted to look up a CD, the song names and information would be there and it felt like a fair trade.

Simply put, effort does not have to be converted directly into money for an exchange to be fair.

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The useful information Iā€™ve gleaned from SO is plenty of payment for any contributions Iā€™ve made. Iā€™m just glad that all that content is under CC license and is indexed by Google for easy access. Itā€™s about getting things done, right?

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Facebook is pure evil!

Is your content attributed to you, or is it part of a communal pool?
What rights do you have for the content youā€™ve contributed?

I assume youā€™re being ironic urging us to ask these questions, when your own site doesnā€™t provide an EULA for contributors, only the CC for consumers.

Okay, what is the difference between Wikipedia and Digg ā€“ two profitable websites that allow users to post information and share it without paying for user contributions and StackOverflow that does the same thing?

Sure, you can argue that StackOverflow is helpful to fellow developers, but I bet that 5% of the users post most of the answers. Certainly theyā€™re not getting out what they put in! All theyā€™re doing is sharecropping for StackOverflow!

I look at it a bit differently. StackOverflow deserves its money because it organized the information to be useful to users. Users who post most of the answers are building up reputations that can help them with their careers. Plus, by seeing what others are doing, it is helping them understand their software better.

I would say the same with Wikipedia. Itā€™s turned into a treasure trove of useful ā€“ if not always accurate ā€“ information. What do contributors get out of spending so much time at sites like Facebook and ThisNext.com? I really canā€™t say. Many theyā€™re also building reputations that helps them with their career. Maybe theyā€™re making on line friends. But, I am not going to say that people are being used because theyā€™re free labor for for-profit websites.

As long as you know thereā€™s no money involved, I think itā€™s fine, and self-limiting,
unlike many ā€œFree and Open Sourceā€ projects Iā€™ve seen which look like methods to
sucker (Oops! I meant ā€œharnessā€) the momā€™s-basement kids into writing
business-oriented software systems for free.

Obvious ThatGuyInTheBack has no idea how Open Source Software even works. Almost 90% of the people who contribute to Linux are actually paid to work on Linux. They work for Google, IBM, Palm, and other companies that heavily depend upon Linux for their business. These companies find people who know Linux inside and out to help their company, and these people spend much of their time working on the Linux kernel itself.

Look at almost all of the big OSS projects, and youā€™ll see that most are actually developed by paid employees. This includes FireFox, WebKit, Subversion, KDE, Gnome, and the entire range of Apache projects. Most of the OSS packages is written by people who are paid to code those packages.

When there are college students doing extensive coding, they are either paid interns via projects like Googleā€™s Summer of Code or are also learning and building reputations which will help them in their future career.

The idea that OSS software is built by a bunch of geeky kids in their Momā€™s basement is used by companies that build proprietary software to smear their OSS competitors.

The joy of reuniting with some long lost friend with the help of social networking site is unmatched to what the business derives out of running the website.