Regulation of Algorithmic Errors in Digital Commons Platforms : Managing the Conformity-Creativity Conundrum

Algorithmic management is blamed for its over-standardization effects, which would benefit the platform owners only, and have discriminatory effects. Good practices and norms in the development and deployment of such techniques have been proposed. Here, we posit that 1) over-standardization and discrepancies are hardly avoidable on the long run; 2) it is an issue for any platform, as it decreases its creativity and thus its attractiveness; 3) counterbalancing this is not one of technical limitations, but of socio-technical arrangements.It is thus essential to study how algorithms are monitored, by whom, to what end, in different types of platform. Here we studied Wikipedia, where contributions are managed by user-controlled algorithms. We show that this management has the same consequences as in private platforms: over-standardization of contributions, difficulties for newcomers to understand the platform's rules, and reinforcement of the project hierarchy between (1) the controlees and (2) the controllers or “policy-makers”. However, online discussion spaces provide controlees with feedback spaces about algorithmic control, and over time, allow them to be included in the project policy-making. It allows for better algorithms' discrepancies long-term monitoring and facilitates the platform's creativity and sustainability