Re: [gaia] Comments on: draft-irtf-gaia-alternative-network-deployments

[Mitar <[e-mail]>]

Hi!

On Mon, Apr 11, 2016 at 5:49 PM, Arjuna Sathiaseelan
<[e-mail]> wrote:
> we cant be running around other mailing lists asking for feedback...

That is an interesting field work approach. So anthropologists should
just sit in their offices waiting for people to come to them?

You are working on describing community networks, then it would be
useful to reach to community networks to be able to study them and get
their input. For example, this is a fairly recent project I remember
seeing messages around:

http://p2pvalue.eu/

I got surveys from them, even interview requests, all based on organic
dissemination of information through various means.

In the Internet era it is not so hard to ask around a bit for one
e-mail about a survey or feedback to circulate around. I got it now. I
responded. It seems it is too late. But it did happen. So with some
effort it could happen also in previously.

> I still dont understand whats your point about this misinterpretation?

I wrote a longer e-mail with all the details, where I point many
issues, smaller and larger, but the main issue I have is that
community networks are mostly presented through the economic
perspective. That they exist because of economic incentives. This is
like saying that people participate in free software projects because
software is gratis. It might be, but there is an enormous set of other
reasons as well.

Frankly, if you really wanted to do this right, you should do a survey
and ask participants in community networks for their motivations, why
they are doing that. Then you get those free form responses and read
them and create categories. It is pretty normal social sciences
approach. And then once you figure this out you write it out in a
document. We found out this and this. Alternatively, you can cite
other studies doing that instead. Do you have such studies which
analyze motivations behind people doing community networks?

What I did was just give you some new datapoints to show you that your
data is lacking. Even I do not know all the reasons people
participate. But I know from my long participation in these networks,
that your approach is too simplistic, lack major points, and
especially if it is meant as a document to help wider Internet
community get understanding of this community networks (and other
alternative networks) phenomena, then it is doing a disservice because
after reading your document people could conclude "oh, they just want
cheap Internet", which is very far of from what is really the heart of
the community.

Yes, often community networks are the only way to get to the Internet
for many people, but besides being just Internet access, they know
that it is critical for participants being equal and empowered
members. It is important that it is a community. That when a peer
comes to your door to help you mount an antenna, you not just fix the
antenna, but you become friends, you talk, drink, eat. When you will
do a similar thing with your commercial WISP serviceperson? Maybe, but
probably not.


Mitar

-- 
http://mitar.tnode.com/
https://twitter.com/mitar_m