Elftown is a SNS for fantasy enthusiasts. It's a wiki, meaning users can create their own pages and, to a lesser extent, edit the pages of others. This technology allows users -- or 'Elftowners,' as they're called -- an unusual degree of creative control over the 'look and feel' of their site. Opportunities for expression are legion -- via simple manipulations of an easy-to-understand pseudo-HTML design script, Elftowners can create pages for practically any purpose and embed texts, paintings, and graphic designs into the shared environment with ease. There is a team of administrators called the Elftown Council that have the power to remove uploads and even suspend accounts, but from what I can tell, this power is rarely if ever abused. Rather, council members seem content to stay within the bounds of their prescribed duties, trolling the site for copyright violations and breaches of the Elftown obscenity policy and occasionally performing a little bit of maintenance. Their exclusive curatorial access to the site's most heavily trafficked pages allows them to feature the work of users that otherwise wouldn't get much exposure, adding a cultural incentive to council participation. Anyone may 'run' for a council position -- although in truth, it helps to have friends in high places if you want to get in.
So Elftown is one of those online environments where, in theory, anything goes -- although in practice, the prevailing interest in fantasy and sci-fi and the surprising abundance of parents on the site do place some restrictions on what passes as acceptable speech, behavior, and conduct. Nevertheless, the site's DIY sensibility has appealed to a large number of would-be artists, making the Elftown community one that places a high premium on individual expression. People on Elftown like to like to create their own fun; rather than waste hours on Farmville or some other third-party application developed for a secure content site, they'd prefer to waste hours immersed in an interactive text-based role playing game or critiquing their friend's latest comic. In order to play, one must be willing to put themselves out there. It takes assertiveness; one has to feel comfortable in the identity s/he has created for her/himself. What's needed, then, is for people to play nice enough to where others won't feel threatened -- in effect, a tolerant community ethos.
After having spent some time living among the the people of Elftown, I must say I've come to appreciate the community's dedication to diversity. They revel in a technology that minimizes the degrees of hierarchical separation from one user to the next and makes equal access to the community and its culture for all not a pipe dream, but a fact. It is true that the majority of what goes on in Elftown is classifiably stupid. People there dally away God knows how much time rendering sexy portraits of pin-up anime nymphs to hang next to their profile pictures and blowing each other to smithereens with torrents of chatspeak, to name but two of the more popular pastimes I observed there.
But the silliness of it all shouldn't distract from the site's potential as a model for other online community projects. I'm reminded of Jenkins. Imagine, for instance, a social networking wiki similarly devoted to individual expression with a larger goal, such as creating political dialogue or developing funds and resources for an important cause. Is this sort of thing even possible, or would the degree of organization required in pursuing a cause make participation ultimately a matter of rank? Could it be that fully collaborative online environments like Elftown are simply not the best places for serious, purposeful discussions?
To answer the question you pose in the last paragraph, I would have to say that the Elftown model probably would not work for serious discussions. The fact that Elftown is a recreational site allows its users the freedom to interact with each other in a low-stakes environment. It sounds like a place where one user's efforts don't necessarily have a negative impact on another user's ability to enjoy or use the site.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, politics is often a zero-sum game, where if one side 'wins' the other side 'loses.' I doubt a disjointed, non-hierarchical model similar to Elftown would be able to function if its users discussed high-stakes issues.
However, I think it could work to develop funds for an important cause. In this case, users more or less agree on a desired outcome, so there's less potential for fighting amongst users (and less need for a hierarchy).
My theory is that if these types of conversations are happening then we need to let them play out and develop. I understand that Elftown is for fun, but if not here, where? Like professor Davis said, there seems to be a lack of meeting places. Although the stakes may be low, they are still important, if that makes sense.
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