The Cathedral and the Bazaar by Eric S. Raymond is a very influential paper and was our most recent reading assignment. Our blog assignment has caused me to think of ways that I can incorporate Raymond’s theories in professional settings, which I will try to elaborate in this post.
In this article, Raymond praises the open source method of software design and development, which allows users to access a product’s source code and report any problems they find in it and possible solutions to these problems. Raymond described that in at least two instances, when users were able to access the beta versions of open source programming, they were able to quickly find the source and then solution to almost any bug in the software. This occurred partly because users each looked at the problem and looked for solutions in different ways, which increased the chance that at least one of them would find a quick route to finding and/or solving a bug in the software. Raymond’s idea can be summed up in a statement he gives early in the article, “Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow”.
It is very interesting how this idea of increasing collaboration from Internet users has led to so much social good. For example in my last post, you will remember that I commented on the rise of citizen journalism, which is, among other things, helping solve the public problem of a current dearth of investigative reporting. Raymond states in his article. “If you treat your beta-testers as if they’re your most valuable resource, they will respond by becoming your most valuable resource”. More broadly we are seeing that if we treat citizen internet users as if they are valuable resources, there is potential for them to be just that.
In terms of ways I may be able to utilize this information in the future, I tried to think about a group of organizations I have worked for in the past, particularly Jewish and Israel organizations, and think of ways that if I return to working for them, I can help them capitalize on these concepts. I know that there are plenty of Jewish people, or people interested in Jewish issues, who would like to more actively help and contribute to Jewish causes, they just do not know how. Applying the Cathedral and Bazaar lessons, opens up tons of opportunities for them to contribute.
First there are many organizations that believe there is a strong anti-Israel bias in certain media outlets. These organizations can post transcripts of news programs in question or articles from newspapers in question and ask their subscribers to identify and report any bias they see. This will save staff members tons of time while engaging subscribers on a whole new level. This is similar to a campaign led by the Guardian that we read about in an earlier reading “Four Crowdsourcing Lessons from the Guardian’s (spectacular) expenses – scandal experiment”. Organizations can similarly post speeches in Arabic or Farsi by leaders of Hamas or Iran that are inflammatory, and ask its linguistically skilled volunteer users to translate them so they can better utilize them in their materials.
Jewish organizations can also use a wiki for different problems facing the community. Organizations can post a problem, such as poverty, or the rise in tuition for Jewish day schools and ask their users to offer solutions. Users may suggest ideas that staff never would have thought of and then can capitilize on.
Finally, this type of user-interaction could perhaps make one of the greatest contributions when it comes to Jewish learning. One of the most challenging aspects of Jewish learning is trying to link all the ancient Jewish texts that are discussing similar topics, to each other. An organization could post tons of sources on the web and then ask knowledgeable users to start hyperlinking sources that relate to each other, they could even hyperlink specific words that reference each other. Organizations could also post tons of ancient texts in Aramaic, Hebrew, and even Arabic, that have not yet been translated into English, and ask users to supply translations, similar to how facebook and google are asking users to help them translate their content. The results could open whole new areas of Jewish learning to the non-Aramaic, Hebrew or Arabic-speaking, interested readers.
In sum upon further reflection of the concepts in the Cathedral and the Bazaar, I realize that there are lots of issues that are currently “bugging” the Jewish and Israel organizational community; by implementing some of Raymond’s concepts, perhaps on whole new levels we will see that “Given enough eyeballs” perhaps most “bugs are” really “shallow”.
