The Commons-based ecosystem is based on peer-production and collaboration of peers contributing to a common good. Yet, to the extent that this operates outside of the market economy, we cannot rely on traditional market mechanisms (such as pricing) to estimate the value of Commons-based Peer Production (CBPP).

Sabir is a system that can resolve some of the most recurrent problems encountered within CBPP communities. The system is composed of three layers that will help us:

1. Understanding the social value - as opposed to market value - of different CBPP communities, so as to compare them to one another.
2. Identifying the value generated by individuals contributing to the Commons and evaluating it through a common denominator of value.
3. Creating an interface between the market and the CBPP ecosystem so that the two can interact, and benefit from each other.

Let’s see how it works in practice.

The business market place is saturated with systems within systems of hierarchical operations and a lot of them have different pros and cons. When it comes to Commons-based Peer Production for example, you will find that it’s a lot different from how traditional businesses work. In order to get the most out of it though, you can either get enough experience and expertise so that you can handle it yourself or use a partner system that can help you achieve the same effect. Yes, these systems will cost money again but running an efficient CBPP will yield even more profit that significantly offsets the cost. You can find coupon code amazon offers that can give you the chance to test it out before committing too.

1. Understanding and comparing the social value of different CBPP communities

Lets’ assume an ecosystem composed of 4 Commons-based entities: Wikipedia, Creative Commons, OpenStreetMap and CouchSurfing.  We would like to understand their overall Social Value, as perceived by the other members of the ecosystem.

• We invite each Commons-based entity to assign a certain weight to others, according to how they perceive them. The aggregation of the weight received (proportionally to the sender’s social value) will constitute the Social Value of the entity.
• In the figure we can see an example of the Social Value indicator where Wikipedia has plenty of value (1500, and a larger circle) because of receiving plenty of weight. Couchsurfing is small, but still it has 200 because even if it’s only receiving a 0.1 of weight, it comes from the largely valued Wikipedia.

2. Understanding the value generated by individuals contributing to the Commons

Now let’s look at how gratification works.

• Each Commons-based entity can gratify its contributors according to the considered importance of each task. In the figure, Wikipedia, with a Social Value of 1500 issues 12,500 wikipedia-tokens (WP-tokens).
• In this moment, Wikipedia is adopting a strategy of prioritizing the quality rather than the quantity of its articles, so it decides to reward article reviews the most, followed by donations and then the creation of new articles.  Thus, in the figure, Wikipedia rewards with 20 WP-tokens all those providing an in-depth review of existing articles, 15 WP-tokens for each donation over $200, and 10 WP-tokens for each article created longer than a stub that is accepted by the community.

• This way, it is providing some kind of reward to its contributors, and slightly direct the flow of contributions towards the tasks that are most needed at the moment.

3. Creating an interface between the market and the Commons-based ecosystem

Finally, let’s see the benefits of the Sabir system for the contributors, as an interface between the market and the Commons-based ecosystem.

• Nowadays, Alice is contributing to various Commons-based entities but, since she’s not earning any money from this effort, she cannot benefit from the products provided by the market system (i.e. burgers and ice cream from McDonald’s in this case) unless she actually decides to play the market game by getting a remunerated job.
• Tomorrow, thanks to Sabir, Alice will be able to express the value that she has been contributing to the Commons through a common denominator (the amount of sabir she has accumulated in her wallet), which can be easily understood by market actors.
• In this example, WcDonald’s recognizes the value of the Commons and has implemented a specific policy to reward Commons contributors with free burgers and free or discounted ice creams, depending on the amount of value contributed to the Commons.
• Hence, Alice is happy since she can keep contributing to the Commons, knowing that the time she spends doing so will counts towards obtaining free burgers and ice cream from WcDonald’s. Bob also contributed to the Commons, but to a lesser extent, and he’s therefore only entitled to a discount on the ice cream.