A More Virtuous Society

Peer Production as a Means of Increasing Public Virtue
Peer production in its most basic form presents an opportunity for, and promotes, virtue to flourish amongst human beings. In our class, so far, we've talked largely about open source and the peer production model as a relatively new concept, but another, older, example still exists. Across the world, local and national historical societies exist in order to create a vibrant image of the past. However, unlike historical works by individual authors, historical societies rely largely upon the generosity of people to donate historical documents, pictures, and objects. People will give up family heirlooms to help historical societies to paint more accurate images of the past (in the other-regarding sense of virtue) and to place their family name in the histories, to feel as if they're contributing to the community, and because it is perfectly voluntary (self-regarding virtue). The peer production model can, and has, helped to build a better, more virtuous, and more informed society. Even if the information compiled through Wikipedia wasn't widely disseminated, it would still increase the general public knowledge by encouraging contributors to look deeper into subjects before posting articles. A desire to sound (and be regarded) as authoritative, as well as a desire to increase public knowledge on a topic (or to make life easier for the public) does, and will continue to, drive people to contribute to the open source movement. Moreover, their contributions to this movement will reinforce the virtues of contributing to society and improving the general standard of living.