What is Barn Raising?

BarnRaising occurs when a community actively decides to come to the same place at the same time to help achieve some specific goal. The goal may be of direct interest to a subset of the community, such as raising a new barn for an individual community member, or it may be a superordinated goal, of interest to the entire community, such as a new school.

Make the impossible possible. It's pretty much impossible for one person to raise a barn. The main part of the process is taking two framed walls that have been built lying on the ground and raising them to vertical. Thus BarnRaising demands collaboration in a way that other activities do not.

Make friends. A barn raising tends to be a situation where you raise the walls of a barn, then you have a big party with everyone who's around. That's where the social aspect of it comes from. Lift some walls, rejoice and dance.

Benefits to the community, and to the individuals involved are:

• A typical BarnRaising generates a sense of accomplishment within a short period of time. This is a collaboration booster, and generates good will.
• The people helping expect to learn about how to raise barns, and other community lore, which will help them when it comes to their own barn.
• Barn raising is fun, as a social event! Having a barn to raise does more than just get people together and let them talk. It gives them something to talk about.
• When the tables are turned, the barn owner does the same for anyone else, so there is an IteratedPrisonersDilemma.
• When the entire town helps someone build a barn, then that person is beholden to the entire town, so it creates new and strengthens existing social bonds.
• It keeps the collective healthy. When your neighbour is tied up working on her own barn, little time and attention is available to the community. When she gets her own problems solved quickly, she can attend to the needs of the community.

Wikis and Barn Raising

• Wikis thrive on asynchronous, gradual improvement, and BarnRaising events are rare, but important. Some tentative experiments with coordinating community action on MeatBall:MeatBallWiki∞ can be seen on MeatBall:BarnRaisingNominations∞. There is also a MeatBall:BarnStar∞ award for exceptional BarnRaising.
• BarnRaising is part of the difference between Slashdot and Wiki. With Slashdot the barn is already raised, the opening statement already written before you start, and everyone just sits around bitching about it.

Source: MeatBall:BarnRainsing∞

CategoryWiki