>Does the creative subversion of an open
>community help us imagine stronger models
>for such communities, or merely undermine
>them?

It absolutely strengthens them.

The fact is, even the most anarchist system
needs a constitution. Even the statement,
"We have no rules," IS a constitution of
sorts. Communities react to any member's
activity. The activity could be banned, it
could become the new norm, it could be
ignored, or it could destroy the community.
By collective agreement, certain protocols
must be observed; we don't need an
adversarial judicial process to deal with
abuses of community members or common
resources.

But - the process of discussing incursions
against the (understood) collective social
contract is itself a strengthening process.
Creative subversion, by pointing out logical
flaws, foolishness, overlooked options, silly
rules, etc, can only be good.

I remember in Air Cadets (a serious top-down
hierarchy, but without particularly strict
membership rules), a guy realized that the
rule-book had no provision against huge
sideburns. So he grew these great honkers
and our commander was in a blinding fit
trying to convince the guy to shave them.
Such assertions of individual will, and
pointing out how arbitrary and silly ALL the
rules were, helped save my soul from that
ridiculous organization. In an open
community, there would be no central
authority to freak out, and anyone who DID
freak out would be marking themselves as
idiots, rather than the system itself. The
big-sideburn guy would have made his point
and probably gotten bored of it, given us all
a chuckle, and gotten back to participation.
Instead, in the closed system, it
precipitated a crisis of authoritarianism.