Democratic power structures in virtual communities

Abstract

Many social networks and cooperative systems provide spaces for public discourse and opinion formation, but the operators alone determine how these spaces are designed, who may enter them and what rules apply to their use. Although their systems and platforms accommodate virtual communities, they largely elude the influence of the public and the people participating there. This paper describes common organizational, operational and technological solutions for the design of democratized virtual communities. In detail a Voting pattern is presented.