Managing disruptive behavior through non-hierarchical governance: Crowdsourcing in League of Legends and Weibo

Disruptive behaviors such as flaming and vandalism have been part of the Internet since its beginning. Various models of hierarchical governance have been established and managed in different online venues, with both successes and failures. Recently, a new model of non-hierarchical governance has emerged using crowdsourcing technology to allow an online community to manage itself. How do people view and work with non-hierarchical governance? In this paper, we present an interview study with people from two sites: the video game League of Legends and Weibo, a microblogging site in China. We found that people were passionate about participation in crowdsourcing, but at the same time, struggled with the system, and acted beyond their designated role within the system. We derive implications for designing online non-hierarchical governance from our research.