In my work environment I almost never encounter anyone saying to me, “This is a meritocracy”. Do you?
I never hear political scientists or even politicians refer to our society as a meritocracy. What would it mean to say such a thing? I think it would come across as harsh, to the point of absurdity. What would we do with those who don’t warrant our merit? Cut them adrift? Expose them in infancy upon a high bare rock? It just doesn’t sound plausible. In the community context, even if some aspects of it are calibrated by merit, as a whole I think we would have to say, “This is our community. No one gets left behind.”
So why do I hear, “This is a meritocracy,” so often in various free and open source gatherings. It is said with pride and no small amount of beating of chests. But what does it mean?
Meaning, of course, might be tied to intention. I think what is intended by the claim in the open source context is that great technical merit will be rewarded by substantial affirmation. And who could argue with that? I like to see great scientists win Noble prizes. I see nothing wrong in showing our appreciation for their accomplishments. But the claim to being a meritocracy goes far beyond this. It indicates that decisions and, more important, who gets to make decisions will be determined on the basis of merit. Indeed, it suggests that only those with merit ought to make decisions.
Of course the claim is always bounded by a context. Thus: This is a meritocracy. That which is not this is not a meritocracy. To join our meritocracy, you must agree to our rules. And the first rule of our meritocracy is that only those with merit get to decide the rules.
Whatever.
As …ocracies go, this is fairly typical. After all, a democracy simply replaces those with merit by the mob, or demos. In either case, rules still get made by someone (or some group) after all.
But what happens when you try to marry a meritocracy with the notion of community? These days I regularly hear tell of the open source community, or community building around an open source project. That sounds nice, doesn’t it? But if community in these uses is simply equivalent to our gang, then all that has been said is that you want to increase the size of your project. Adding the word community doesn’t add anything new.
Should it?
I’ll rephrase my question. Does the notion of community mean something more or different than group?
I think it does. I think the notion of community encompasses all the interactions between individuals of a certain group. For example, think of a small town. There are people of all ages there, including infants. There are people engaged in a wide variety of activities not all of which are commensurate. Most important, while there may be decision-making procedures, of whatever kind, these are not defining for membership in the community.
As this is a point I’m struggling to make clear, forgive me for taking another run at it.
In my town, infants, small children, even young adults are not directly participatory in the decision-making processes. They do not have a vote. But that does not make them any less members of my community. Moreover the transition to the full decision-making process is based on something completely out of the control of any member of the community: age. And that is a curious thing.
Without presuming that I’ve fully clarified that, I’ll press on.
What happens when a small open source development project of one or two (or more) developers decides to set about building a community around the project? I would have thought that meant the project was setting out to broaden its base. But surely it doesn’t just want more bodies. It must want more roles, i.e. more things that different people can do for the project. Moreover the project leadership must be thinking that by building such a community they are somehow shoring up the foundations of the project itself.
And they would be right to think so.
A broad based community open source project has a whole range of individuals – by analogy, the infants, children, teenagers, adults, and elderly. And it won’t be true in such a community that everyone does the same thing, or has the same skills, or can be judged on the same scale.
It’s the reason a meritocracy breaks down in the face of real community.
Meritocracies are great for tight little projects. There is no reason to argue against them. Communities are great for large amorphous groupings of people that have curiously self-sustaining constituencies (probably because they keep having children!).
Whether the two can be brought together, however, remains an open question.