Meritocracy in anomymous systems? ★ 2.10.11

Anonymous utilises meritocracy, Max Halupka and Cassandra Star, argue. An excerpt from the Abstract:

Anonymous employs aspects of meritocracy in formulating collective decisions. With all members utilising the same user-name, individualism is nonexistent. As such, the merit of an argument is based solely on its content as opposed to a pre-constructed perception of the individual and their perceived history or standing in the group. Furthermore, an individual’s mastery of the group’s culture denotes their involvement within the community and the level of their understanding in relation to its founding ideology.

That’s gibberish. Meritocracy inherently requires the ability to identify a person or at least an online persona. Meritocracy is about achieving reputation over time by certain actions of the reputable individual and the expectations and interests of the distinguishing group and the transfer of authority to the reputable person by the group. But if all individuals run around in Guy Fawkes masks and call themselves Anonymous, how do you tell the reputable person apart from the schmucks? Well, they have their leaders du jour who lead ad hoc and thereby rise through the structureless and leaderless ranks and achieve authority.

Anonymous though should not be considered a true example of a meritocracy. We argue that Anonymous utilises elements of meritocracy within its democratic decision making process, specifically the concept of merit4. These elements are drawn upon to construct an ad hoc hierarchy, filter community communications and dictate an individual’s level of involvement in the creation of multimedia pertaining to a specific cause. …

Comments which are seemingly better informed have the potential, in this instance, to influence the opinions and direction of the community as a whole as opposed to those which denote a presence of ignorance or unrealistic expectations.

Is a system that allows for taking the lead ad-hoc based on superior skills a meritocracy? There are similarities, but I doubt it’s a meritocratic system.