Tonight's discussion with my fine colleague Colin is turning out some delightful new terminology. To go with the bottom-up creative production I mentioned earlier, here's another one: communitywashing.
We currently seem to love the word "social." We tend to call many things social, even if they aren't necessarily. And we assume that sociality is something practised in communities. Which means that we make some pretty bad classification mistakes.
Two examples: An angsty poem written by one person and then posted on Facebook for the viewing pleasure of the author's friends is not a social production. It is an individual production, from the tortured creative soul of one author. While it is available for the consumption and comment of a community (as long as the author has Facebook friends), it is not community content. Ditto the more involved example of (most) fan fiction. While the work is generally situated within a community of interest (whether that be fans of Star Trek, Harry Potter or Twilight), it is, once again, not a production of that community, merely an artefact of the community produced by one of its members. There is (generally) no communal creation involved.
And yet we tend to think of this stuff as community content. Which is a little irritating to pedants who like to see things properly classified (like me!). Naturally, this new word of mine (I'm calling it mine because I've spotted it only twice in the wild already, with the assistance of our good friend Google) exists to call out such problematic classifications.
You are engaging in communitywashing when you attribute the idea of community production to something that has been produced on a community-focused platform, but which has not been produced communally. If it's the work of one person, it's not community produced. This means that the majority of Wikipedia entries are community production, whereas the majority of blog posts, Facebook notes, tweets or similar largely solitary bits of output are not. And if they're referred to in such a way, then what we have on our hands is, you guessed it! A case of communitywashing.
Pedantry satisfied.
We currently seem to love the word "social." We tend to call many things social, even if they aren't necessarily. And we assume that sociality is something practised in communities. Which means that we make some pretty bad classification mistakes.
Two examples: An angsty poem written by one person and then posted on Facebook for the viewing pleasure of the author's friends is not a social production. It is an individual production, from the tortured creative soul of one author. While it is available for the consumption and comment of a community (as long as the author has Facebook friends), it is not community content. Ditto the more involved example of (most) fan fiction. While the work is generally situated within a community of interest (whether that be fans of Star Trek, Harry Potter or Twilight), it is, once again, not a production of that community, merely an artefact of the community produced by one of its members. There is (generally) no communal creation involved.
And yet we tend to think of this stuff as community content. Which is a little irritating to pedants who like to see things properly classified (like me!). Naturally, this new word of mine (I'm calling it mine because I've spotted it only twice in the wild already, with the assistance of our good friend Google) exists to call out such problematic classifications.
You are engaging in communitywashing when you attribute the idea of community production to something that has been produced on a community-focused platform, but which has not been produced communally. If it's the work of one person, it's not community produced. This means that the majority of Wikipedia entries are community production, whereas the majority of blog posts, Facebook notes, tweets or similar largely solitary bits of output are not. And if they're referred to in such a way, then what we have on our hands is, you guessed it! A case of communitywashing.
Pedantry satisfied.
I feel that way about Ubuntu. There seems to be a miscommunication/misunderstanding about the idea of community. The way I see it is Canonical are providing something (the OS) to the community but sometimes it seems like the users assume they have as much control as a Canonical employee, which just isn't true.