Abstract:
People often implicitly ascribe the quality of peer–production projects such as Project Gutenberg or Wikipedia to what I call “laws” of quality. These are drawn from Open Source software development and it is not clear how applicable they are outside the realm of software. I look at examples from peer production projects to ask whether faith in these laws does not so much guarantee quality as hide the need for improvement.

...the studies recorded the mishaps suffered by 147,000 people, drawn from the general population in 15 countries.

Strikingly, it appears that there is a discrete group of people who suffer the most accidents: 1 in 29 people have a 50 per cent higher chance of having an accident than the rest of the population.

I pass on. Fading gold sky. A mother watches from her doorway. She calls her children home in their dark language. High wall: beyond strings twanged. Night sky moon, violet, colour of Molly's new garters. Strings. Listen. A girl playing one of these instruments what do you call them: dulcimers. I pass.

James Joyce, Ulysses.