The Information Commons/Governance

Any group that attempts to manage a common resource (e.g., aquifers, judicial systems, pastures) for optimal sustainable production must solve a set of problems in order to create institutions for collective action; there is some evidence that following a small set of design principles in creating these institutions can overcome these problems.

The actual method of governance for a respective information commons may vary depending on the intended goal. In the form of websites, informations commons will usually adjust their approach based on the level of user involvement versus control by those who own the commons in question. Some prominent examples include:

• Wikipedia - The governance on this site typically involves a hierarchy of editors with varying degrees of privileges on how much control they have over edits.
• Internet Archive - Although this information commons contains little content that is originally produced by the site owners, there is little governance on this site beyond how the administrators operate the site's web crawlers for archiving.