Last month’s World of Warcraft conference was covered in an article in Science today. (“Slaying Monsters for Science“) The article is very entertainingly written, but points at a significant culture clash between the online world and the scientific community.
The article details the author’s efforts in co-organizing the conference. While it was the first one held in WoW, and possibly the first in an MMO, it was of course far from the first in a virtual world. In any given week, some dozen or so academic and professional conferences take place in Second Life, and have for several years. The author shows no recognition of the fact that he was on well-trod territory. His “lessons learned” are commonplaces for the most casual attendee of a virtual worlds meeting: the speakers aren’t privileged over the audience; communication is non-linear and multi-tracked, text chat offers a number of advantages as a medium.
He describes the cost of learning those lessons, noting the same things I did in my coverage of the first day’s session: the moderators tried to force the event into the mold of a physcial-world meeting and failed, and once they failed, the medium proved its value.
What accounts for this? I find it very odd – surely the other conference organizers had attended virtual worlds events. Or, possibly not: one thing I’ve noticed is a tendency for many – not all, but many – game researchers to be completely ignorant of, if not outright hostile to, non-game worlds. The converse is also true, and the great benefit for the conference for me was to open my eyes to the value of MMOs for my own work in community governance.
Academic stovepiping is hardly anything new, and I hope that this conference will end up being a step towards breaking it down, and at least getting MMO and VW researchers talking – and sharing best practices for future events.
Nearly half the article, though, is an attempt to grapple with some fundamental and deeply interesting issues: the nature of identity, the role and value of credentialing, and the values of transparency and disclosure, and how they play out in virtual worlds.
I’m new to the study of science, and I don’t really understand the role that credentialing plays in the culture of science. I’m a lawyer, and in law, “brand name” and ranking is critical at every stage of one’s career, as a stand-in measure for intellectual quality and (less these days, but still importantly) social class. Assuming credentialing works the same way for scientists, let’s look at how it is and isn’t used.
In hiring? As a means of generating a first impression, absolutely. In social circumstances, for establishing a pecking order, it’s a factor. How much weight it would be given would depend on the insecurity of the person involved, and their ability to perceive and act on social nuances. At a cocktail party, it would be a factor in play along with title/position/funding, physical presence, charisma, attractiveness, conversational skills, and other factors. In a round-table discussion, I think it would count for little at all.
So, how does credentialing come into play at a virtual-worlds conference? Obviously, it plays a role in speaker selection: you want experts in their field. Now, how is expertise judged? I’d expect, on publication record, first and foremost. Institutional affiliation might come second, and academic background third. An excellent paper by an autodidact might be let in, to be sure – and it might be acknowledged that not all experts hold institutional positions.
My academic/professional background is in the space exploration field. I’ve chaired panels, presented papers, served on the boards of organizations. I’m not an astrophysicist; I’m a lawyer. My legal credentials are excellent: a top law school, years at top global law firms. Yet, my credentials aren’t in the sciences at all. But my place was never challenged: the people I worked with, from NASA center directors to Apollo moonwalkers, judged me by the quality of my publications, and welcomed my participation.
This seems reasonable, and the natural outcome of my analysis of the role of credentialing: mine served to say that I was generally smart, and capable of working within an institutional context, as a threshold. From there, it was up to me to demonstrate that I had something interesting and valuable to contribute. Having done that, *that* was then what I was judged on.
The author of the Science article seems to lose that thread of utility as he grapples with the issue. Much of his discussion focuses on the credentialling *of the audience* – as a corollary to the discovery that in virtual worlds, it’s very hard to privilege one speaker out of a group.
By my analysis above, there’s no reason to credential the audience – if they have something useful to say, they’re on the same plane as the speaker (provided the speaker has something useful to say). If not, they can be ignored. If they’re openly disruptive, or griefing, there are other options.
The question the author seems to be struggling with is, “How should we know whether to listen to these members of the audience?” He’d like to know their professional affiliations and academic backgrounds in order to make that decision.
I’d posit that a better solution would be to listen. If their comments are intelligent, welcome them.
I fully disclose my identity in professional situations, including my membership in the Science Guild – after all, I’m looking to build a professional reputation. I see that reputation as not growing from where I go to school or who I work with, but from the quality of my participation. So, I want that participation tied to my name, so that it might be remembered.
That said, I have an anonymous alt in Wow, so I can play without guild chatter, and have alts in SL that I’ve used even less than my main, fully identified, account. I recognize the value of anonymity, and I’m all for it.
I could see an experiment, though, if I were someone who didn’t need to accrue social capital in this community: just participate. Just participate, and see if I get the same level of recognition for my contributions without the brand names attached.
Given how disconcerted the author was over participants who apparently declined to brand-identify, I suspect I’m not the only one to be thinking along those lines.
Is this a good thing or a bad thing? It’s certainly a radical challenge to the higher educational system, one that universities have been confronting for some time. More and more, what they offer is simply branding: education and training can be obtained anywhere, often for free. Business schools in particular face a serious problem in that regard. Schools of science can offer access to equipment that few can manage on their own, and their place is a more secure one.
I’m fortunate: while I don’t really understand all the social anxieties the article expresses, I’m largely insulated from them. I have a high-status brand package (NYU Law, Columbia, top law firms, etc.) and other indicia of status and privilege: I’m a middle aged, married, white male. I’ve got a lot of social capital, at least some of which is freely convertible, as my space experience showed.
Having it, I’m at liberty to devalue it, and to expect to be judged on the quality of my contributions. If I didn’t have the branding, or if I’d invested professionally and emotionally to a greater degree in credentialing systems, I might find the meritocracy inherent in the technological base of virtual worlds to be quite threatening.
As it is, it strikes me as liberating, and as promising to empower many more bright minds than the old system could ever accommodate.
It will be very interesting, though, to watch the two systems clash and struggle to understand and integrate with each other. The Science article is valuable for bringing this clash of cultures and values to widespread attention.