The Journal of Peer Production - New perspectives on the implications of peer production for social change New perspectives on the implications of peer production for social change
Reviews (Prototypes as Agents of Transition) image

Review A

Reviewer: A

1) Is the subject matter relevant?

Yes. This article handles the practical considerations of an experimental process that involves widespread engagement of participants as peers within the domain of community networking and alternative internet infrastructures. This subject, and the tensions that are the focal point of the argument, are certainly relevant to the journal. Insofar as these networking and democratic governance arrangements are presented as desired futures, the article is relevant to the issue theme, although “transition” is not a foregrounded theme of the article.

2) Is the treatment of the subject matter intellectually interesting? Are there citations or bodies of literature you think are essential to which the author has not referred?

Yes. The treatment of the subject is based on practical considerations and reflections which are useful for building up a theory of practise within an important area of work. Community Networks are an interesting domain with digital and material and geographical elements. This article will be of interest to technologists interested in decentralized web infrastructure, to scholars interested in HCI, participatory design and commoning.

If this article is based on empirical, or action research, that could be more clearly stated, as that would be another good contribution, especially since many of the tensions relate to tensions between academic and community norms!!

The author’s choice of citations is well selected and deep, but there is not a lot of reference to participatory design in the context of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) or even community wireless networking literature that I could see. I invite the author(s) to consider the work of scholars in the Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) community, including (but not limitted to) Lilly Irani, Ishtiaque Ahmed, and Chris Le Dantec who have significantly advanced the way that the term “infrasctructuring” is applied to social design processes, as well as some of the epistemic tensions between academic and community peers mentioned in the article.

3) Are there any noticeable problems with the author’s means of validating assumptions or making judgments?

There is no detailed statement of methodology, and the author’s position and involvement in the situation are unclear.

4) Is the article well written?

By and large the article is readable, but significant revisions should be made before publication.

There are numerous grammatical errors and irregularities throughout the text, some of which make the text difficult to understand. Sometimes pronouns refer to the wrong noun phrase, or are missing (e.g. there are several instances where “enabled to [verb]” is written, but who is enabled? Who is the subject?) There are some problems with list agreement on page 2. Some idioms are misused, e.g. “flushed out” (where something hidden is brought into the open) is used where the (admittedly very similar) “fleshed out” is appropriate (meaning providing more detail where it was previously sparse), or vice versa.

Structurally, there are alterations that could be considered. For example, theoretical concepts are sometimes presented very close to practical discussions without sufficient (e.g. lifeworld p5, “design-in-use”). Some adherence to more formal conventions, such as presenting the key theoretical concepts as “background” at the beginning of the work might help to position them as more relevant to the article throughout. Empirical details about the case are presented throughout, but it might help to begin with a solid description. This is mostly accomplished in Section 2, but the first three paragraphs present further background.

The conclusion of the article could be strengthened- as it stands, it doesn’t quite serve as a critique of how tensions in MAZI were/are handled, nor does it really explore how these tensions were mitigated (if at all) during the process. Articulating the authour’s standpoint and relationship to the work could help with that, especially if they want to be honest about criticizing their peers, or a project they do feel strongly about.

Tensions are presented well, but were they addressed during the process? If so, that discussion would be very interesting. If not, then can the authors contribute any thoughts on their potential resolution?

Some signposting sentences would help a lot, and there are a few paragraphs where the topic sentence is at the bottom!

5) Are there portions of the article that you recommend be shortened, excised or expanded?

In general, I think that the empirical descriptions, but especially the discussion of tensions, are very interesting. I believe they could easily be expanded, even at the cost of trimming some of the content handling concepts from the literature. Applying theoretical concepts to the discussions could help flesh them out as well. Many concepts introduced earlier on for analysis don’t return for the discussion, but would be interesting points for synthesis.

A more unified description of the MAZI project entities and their relations could also help.

In sum: expand discussion to offer a concrete view and solifidy conclusion; expand and unify initial description of case where possible; trim and compress theoretical background concepts and ensure they are relevant from beginning to end.

Review B

Review C