Читать книгу The Handbook of Peer Production - Группа авторов - Страница 95

To outsiders it may seem strange, but anyone who has spent time in open source communities or editing Wikipedia will know that humor plays an important role in peer production. Although such humor is significant for many reasons (including smoothing over conflicts or acting as a kind of “communal gift”), it has a specific relationship to the value of meritocracy (Coleman, 2013, p. 105). As Coleman points out, humor and craftiness in general allows hackers to draw attention to their technical competence in a socially acceptable way (Coleman, 2013). To write a script or piece of documentation that is funny to another expert coder, one has to play with form (conventions and corresponding expectations), and thus one must demonstrate a deep familiarity with the programming language, programming styles, algorithmic techniques, and general approaches to solving problems. Similarly, to make jokes that draw on or highlight Wikipedia’s complex set of policies and guidelines or key events from its history one must be steeped within them. In Bourdieu’s terminology, we could say that such clever software developers or Wikipedians are signaling their cultural capital, or command of the various skills, knowledge, and competences that will allow them to succeed within a particular field or project.