I am currently reading the work of Noah E Friedkin surronding Norm Formation in social influence networks. In his paper he explores the norm formation of workers in a 1939 high tech industry, The Bank Wiring Observation Room, where workers for Western Electic Company made electronic switching boards. He found that even though two groups only had weak ties joining the clicks they came to a agreed upon normal quotiant for a days work. The study of Norm Formation in weblog space would be a facinating challange. But these norms are what make people trust eachother enough to cooperatively solve problems. That is at the core of leveraging the social capital in human networks. In the elustrious words of Rodney King "Why can't we all just get along?"

Is it just me or is weblogspace looking more and more like a group mind?  A new organism.  If so, this is the first example of this ever.  Why not write about the mechanics of this?   How can a 1/2 million smart people (1/3 on UserLand, 1/3 on Blogger, and 1/3 on other systems) and 5-10 m readers cooperate to create a new paradigm for conscious life?  How can we incorporate more people without becomming too chaotic for any advancement?  Is this worthwhile? [John Robb's Radio Weblog]

Is E-mail the Killer App?. ...In March, 1998, MITRE, a non-profit corporation and a leader in knowledge sharing practices, created a "thank you" database. It works like this: Whenever someone replies with a "thank you," the entire e-mail thread can be cc'd to a "thank you" e-mail box. The "thank you" e-mail is copied to MITRE's database and the knowledge sharer (the recipient of the "thank you" e-mail) is recorded as an "expert." The "expert" is credited for sharing his knowledge. Each time someone retrieves that "thank you" e-mail, the expert is awarded a "hit." Each day, the number of "thank you" e-mails and "hits" are totaled and experts are recognized on the organization's intranet as knowledge sharing champions. A "Top Knowledge Sharer" is rewarded with a MITRE-funded training class (up to $3,000) of the recipient's choice.

... This "thank you" e-mail system follows Tom Davenport's idea of "baking" knowledge into work. Davenport, in a recent Harvard Business School Review article posits:

"The key to success . . . is to bake specialized knowledge into the jobs of highly skilled workers—to make the knowledge so readily accessible that it can’t be avoided. While there are several ways to bake knowledge into knowledge work, the most promising approach is to embed it into the technology that knowledge workers use to do their jobs. That approach ensures that knowledge management is no longer a separate activity requiring additional time and motivation." [excited utterances]

Wow. A great post on overcoming cultural hurdles with some simple, proven (and low-tech!) techniques. I'll have to e-mail a friend of mine who's a higher-up at MITRE and see how successful this has been. Thanks to Joy for spotlighting this. I see a lot of parallels to using weblogs for a similar purpose.