I was shocked. We were in the brainstorming phase of developing a new collaboration portal and the possibilities were flying. It was exciting to see people from many disciplines enthusiastic about working together more effectively through improved communication, document management, and tools for capturing business processes. Inevitably, the conversation moved to "actions" - what needed to be done to achieve all these great benefits. Always the pragmatist, I was the one who added the topic of "governance" to the list.

After an audible pause, the objections came faster than bullets. "We want this portal to be open, we want this to be like Wikipedia - everyone gets to contribute equally." We don't need to be managed from the top.

I pointed out that Wikipedia isn't exactly a free-for-all, citing that it takes organization to have volunteers clean up "inappropriate entries" with the astounding efficiency Wikipedia boasts. Some agreed, but, clearly suggesting the need for governance led to the group's conclusion that I did not have the appropriate open, self-organizing spirit that would be essential to the project's success. Despite the misperceptions, a little research shows "open" does not mean "ungoverned."

Far from being an unnecessary restriction, appropriate governance is critical to the success of any collaborative effort. We can examine this through a closer look at Wikipedia and other recent "open" endeavors, distilling out some "common" themes that hint at the reasons behind such success. We can see governance evolving toward collaboration and community over centralized policy and decision making.

Wiki-Success
Though founded on "open" governance principles, Wikipedia isn't a shining beacon of anarchy; it's actually a paragon of governing success. In analyzing that success, it was pretty easy to establish that Wikipedia is "as reliable" as other encyclopedia resources. That discussion is outside the scope of this article, but suffice it to say that whatever the governance behind Wikipedia, it has managed to produce a product comparable in quality to commercial products. Wikipedia's adoption has been revolutionary.

In an excellent paper, Andrea Forte and Amy Bruckman detail the multi-faceted governance that supports Wikipedia. They state that "...our analysis describes Wikipedia as an organization with highly refined policies, norms, and a technological architecture that supports organizational ideals of consensus building and discussion."

They go on, "It seems almost miraculous that editors don't get permanently bogged down in ‘edit wars' and that real work gets done at all." Can you relate to this quote? As a developer, I have recollections of similar and often interminable discussions of how code should be structured, requirements managed, projects sized, and other rules-based arguments that prolific, let's-get-down-to-it coders often consider superfluous. (The Apache community actually defines a term for this - the Bike Shed Argument - what color should the bike shed be? The argument is so trivial anyone can have an opinion - and the result is endless arguing.) Yet, in order for their work to achieve its desired result, these rules need to be in place or much of their efforts will be lost. There is definitely a need to achieve balance between free expression and some "governance" in order to channel those diversified perspectives into productive output.