User:OrenBochman/WGT/Communication and Coordination

Communication & Coordination

A simplified diagram of how consensus is reached

communication and coordination are deeply intertwined. However we can use game theory to coax them apart.

As is intimated from the consensus flow chart most wiki games include intermediate steps involving C² (coordination and communications). Certain modes of C² work like the ant-path meta-algorithm - quickly optimising resource and work. One such example is the responsible tagging protocol which aims to coordinate the editorial problems within the article - and so avoid any excess information. Other modes of C² can significantly increase the workload required to complete some tasks - easily to the point of failure.

Communication & Communication Failures

In Wiki game theory , communication is defined as "the process of reducing information asymmetries between agents". In most commonly known game theoretic situations (strategic form two player games like the prisoner's dilemma) there is an assumption that agents moves occur simultaneously with no communication or possibility of coordination. In case of a wiki almost all games are played under imperfect information.

• Information is termed as states of the world
• Each player's belief on the state of the world
• Each player's belief of other players beliefs on the state of the world
• And so on until what is called common knowledge (every one having and knowing about a state of the world).

communication failure

• In many scenarios agents provide inadequate information resulting a communication failure.
• Some editors will use a tag content as problematic (in their point of view) but many tags cannot be resolved without the omitted context. However the original action may simply be disingenuous and not a good faith attempt to improve the content.
• In the above scenario the event could provoke an edit war aimed at discrediting the main editor resulting in blocks and article protection. These result in significant added cost of editing. (User Space Replication & Committee discussion & Approval by an Admin & Time delay for each edit).
• communication failure can more commonly arise through the complexity and disjoint location of policy. Even when it does not contradict itself Policy without precedent and a consistent and normative enforcement leaves a significant information asymmetry in favor of experienced users. A typical scenario is one where a new comer is provided a communication message that is full of unlinked encoded policy references.
• Mixed signal - by sending an ambivalent or a mixed signal a communicator curtails the avenues of unambiguous response available in the next turn.
• Insult - Wikiquette violations will as a rule result in the users message being ignored. In mid to upper level forums xDR wikiquette offenses will be initially humored, but as more opinions join the opinion will shift from content/procedural dispute to the Wikiquette violations.
• Legal Threats - Making legal threats is frowned upon though in reality legal action is always a possibility. This means that a legal threat is treated as cheap talk on Wikipedia. The anonymous nature of Wikipedia promotes this attitude - on a social network like Facebook a legal threat has an immediate target and the offence is harder to remove.

Evolution Common Knowledge

On the other hand perfect rationality in Game Theory also allows to specify what agent know, and what they know that others know and so forth up to a "common knowledge" indicating perfect transparency. It is necessary to align agents' preferences vectors. The cost is that of writing the messages required if they all occur in a single coordination space. However if it is necessary to communicate using many disjoint coordination spaces than messages (as described in the banning of a vandal)

agent 1 bears a cost of creating messages (writing) while agent 2 has a cost reading

Recommendations

Lists of Agents should delist inactive agents (e.g. admins, check user etc.)