Scarce and necessary resources

[lordsmerf]

One of the truisms when it comes to studying bureaucracies is that it doesn't matter what the org chart says, you only have as much authority as you have power. In organizations power comes from control of scarce but necessary resources. The most common one is money. If you control the budget, you can make people do what you want. It can also

Comments

[clehrich]

I have actually thought about this a fair bit, because when I was in the process of putting Shadows in the Fog up on the web at Trevis Martin's request, I wanted structured access and control, but was largely talked out of most of it.

There is of course the radical divide between top-level poster and everyone else, which manifests in two main ways: top-level posters can set topics, and they can post very long whereas responses must be 4000 characters max, at least on LJ.

Beyond that, I think the only thing I know of is being first. On this topic, for example, I get first dibs, so my comment will be read more. On other topics, only the blog owner may ever know I posted. If I post a response to a responder, two people know, but that's it.

I think you can partly undermine this radical divide by cross-referencing replies in your own blog: "I posted this topic because userblarg said in this thread that [quote]." But you are still the gatekeeper, whether you like it or not

[lordsmerf]

No, that's all good stuff. I hadn't considered the "I'm first" thing, or at least not as control of a scarce resource. However, I think it is. When I was more involved in forums sometimes I wouldn't engage in a thread not because I didn't find the original post interesting, but because there were already ten more posts and they were taking the discussion in a different direction than I was interested in following.

Thomas

[clehrich]

Yeah, it's a funny thing, isn't it? The first post sets the broad topic, but the next two or so determine the direction, I find. The moderator's job on a forum is usually to say, "hey, can we get back to the beginning, please?" On a blog the main guy usually just says what the hell and either posts a new version of the same topic or moves on to the next thing. So getting in first hits does matter. I don't know to what one should attribute this, but there you go.

And I got in first here, so neener neener nyah nyah to the rest of you. Just let's keep the intellectual level wicked high. :P