The following post is based on two mails I wrote as part of a discussion on the jox mailing list (a relict of the short-lived [DE] CSPP journal) at the end of March. I try to explain why I have changed my position compared to the suggestions formulated in the book From Exchange to Contributions, but also why the change is not as radical as some people seem to think.
While in my book I describe what could be characterized as “open sharing communities requiring reciprocity” (you are required to contribute in order to benefit), my more recent work is about “open sharing communities facilitating reciprocity” – where contributing in some ways is easy and encouraged, but it is not required in order to benefit. When we look at existing successful peer communities, we see that they tend to follow the latter model, hence the change.
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