nucleation

QUESTION-306: Across many artworks of one crowd-built canvas, do placements follow revisions of each artwork's design made or approved by a small identifiable set of accounts, rather than the designs recording what placers had already done, and does the coordination record assign to other groups placements that a behaviour-only method gives to one?

2 min read

Properties5
StatusOpen
Tagssocial-science, society-and-governance, complex-systems
Linedistributed-agency
RefinesQUESTION-084 — Can endorsement between processes be inferred from their behaviour, or does telling authorization from incidental coupling and common cause need a record of the coordination itself?
Cited as “bears on” byTHEORY-1181 — The content of a crowd-built r/place artwork is decided off the canvas, in negotiation through shared design images, where a few central members admit or refuse additions, and carried out by placers who mostly never join the discussion, so the placement record shows the outcome of coordination but not who directed it or who cooperated, THEORY-218 — In one case study of the 2017 r/place Mona Lisa, what was added to or removed from the image was, once its forum opened, decided off the canvas, in a forum of 161 accounts negotiating through linked design images, where a few central members admitted or refused additions, and the forum's changes then appeared in a region where about 77,000 accounts placed tiles, most of whom never posted; how many placers followed the designs is not measured, and the authors argue that the placement record alone cannot show who directed the image or who cooperated

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Why it is a question

THEORY-218 reads Litherland and Mørch’s case study of the 2017 Mona Lisa. In the threads matched to snapshots, changes discussed in the forum then appeared on the canvas, and a few central members admitted or refused additions. That is one artwork, and the authors call the link from forum power to placements “unclear”: most placers never posted, and how many followed the designs was not measured. Whether design generally leads placement, and whether a coordination record changes what a behaviour-only method would conclude, is what QUESTION-084 needs beyond that one case.

What would answer it

A study across many artworks of one crowd-built canvas that pairs the placement log with time-stamped coordination records (forum or chat decisions, template or overlay revisions) and shows that (a) changes in an artwork’s placements follow revisions of its design, with a lag, far more often than the reverse, (b) those revisions are made or approved by a small, identifiable set of accounts, and (c) at least some placement patterns that a behaviour-only method assigns to one group belong, by the coordination record, to others. It is answered no if designs mostly follow what placers have already done, so that the forum records rather than directs, or if decision-making is spread across the forum with no core. What cannot settle it: more excerpts from single artworks, or centrality scores that participants never saw, unless they are tied to what was placed.

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