I had 2 viewpoints for each of the readings this week, how it related to our Answerbag assignment, and how it stood on its own. The 2 big papers were Ridings and Ling. Ridings’ research was a study on why people joined online communities. She covered many of the possible reasons, including a need to belong, finding information, achieving goals, etc. However, she refers back to the literatures that cite these reasons, literature that covered face-to-face (F2F) groups. Much discussion about the basis for extending those motivations to include online communities. In fact, many of those examples have problems when being used in an online context. For example, she points out the most frequently cited reason to join a virtual community is to access information. But could the large number of information websites available be the reason for this? While one could join a bowling website to find out information about bowling, it is less likely one joins a bowling league just to ask bowlers about bowling. Another motivation she lists is recreation, specifically adventure MUDs; But does recreation automatically include social interactions? There are people that join real world communities for jogging or surfing, but those activities can be completely solitary events. Ridings’ recreation seems to imply only those that are socially interactive, which makes me think the recreation portion is not even relevant, only the social interaction. Another issue I took with the research is that while it was quick to point out that previous literature was limited in the community size being studied, this study only had 27 communities! One could easily find 27 communities for a single topic. In fact, it almost seems as if you could select a community just to fit into a category that you are looking for. For example, just taking a cursory glance at the sample websites, it isn’t hard to guess that communities for conceiving a child or PhD students would be under the category for social support, where the communities for back pain or wine would be for information. Ok I don’t think I meant to type (re: flame) this much about Ridings.
Ling’s paper tied a lot closer to our Answerbag assignment, and I used ideas from it when I posted to Answerbag. She lists several hypotheses about how to increase participation from users in an online movie rating/discussion community (which I also have a problem with), and then the experiment and results for each. I tried to use the suggestions that would counter social loafing in my Answerbag posts. Specifically, making users realize their effort (re: comments or answers) was important and unique (by responding to everything), and making them feel like we shared similar interests (by agreeing with what they said). Unfortunately, this did not work too well. I managed to get one question to have 8+ answers, but the rest were big failures (another one got 7). I decided to try the opposite approach, similar to the realization that Ling made regarding similar groups: that while such groups might help users feel more comfortable, too many people with similar ideas will reduce the amount of uniqueness. Heterogenic groups might serve to create better dialogue discussing topics where users will have opposing viewpoints. I asked several new questions that were more controversial (difficult to do without repeating questions that had already been asked), and then taking a devil’s advocate view when responding to comments. This approach not only gave me more people that responded, but also a lot more points rewarded to both my questions and answers! I even got a “one of the best answers” as a response! Some of Ling’s other hypotheses were harder to accomplish in our context, such as having goals or incentives, and in the end, I was only able to achieve 1 of the 4 goals (receive 8+ responses to several questions). I found it very difficult to sustain a conversation via comments to an answer, and in most cases, only 1 person would reply, and usually not more than 1-2 times. Regarding the scoring, I managed to get a few questions with over 20 points, and in time they might hit 40, but perhaps I wasn’t controversial enough.
The Tedjamulia paper describes a model for studies on contributions to online communities. I was a little confused whether the proposed factors could be practically used to attract new users or to convert current lurkers to become better participants. Many of the propositions do tie in with Ling’s research, and I do think they are valid. In fact, several of them are connected to Web 2.0 applications (i.e. ease of use and interesting content), which might help explain its success. However, I think one important factor they ignore is the value of any contribution. Users who make posts just to incite an argument, or to attack another person do not really contribute anything to the community. In fact, many such users might be the most “famous” person in a given community because of their high post counts, and willingness to attack anyone on any topic, but provide little to no knowledge or resources back to the community as a whole.
Speaking of Web 2.0, Java’s Twitter paper is a nice way to conclude what I feel like is more of a rant than a potential discussion about these papers! I was less concerned with all of the social network statistics, but more rather about why users microblog. I think it identifies with many of the motivations listed in the earlier readings: the feeling of being in a similar group (assuming those are the people reading your Tweets), the uniqueness of your contributions (obviously), and your contribution to the “group.” The last reason is based on an assumption that people are reading your Tweets at all, but as Java points out in the paper, most Twitter users were invited by friends to use the service, and so you can almost automatically assume that at least 1 person will care about what you are typing.
So does this mean Web 2.0 technology such as Twitter or Facebook fill the quota for how to maximize user contributions? Is this what makes them, and other Web 2.0 applications, so successful? It almost seems as if online communities didn’t really become increasingly popular and sustainable until the Web 2.0 revolution (based on my own experiences anyway). The Answerbag assignment was a good demonstration of user-contributed content, with a democratic method of determining value. And before I forget, my username on Answerbag is bacardi.
edit: Woohoo! One of my answers broke the 40 pt (59!) and I reached my 2nd goal! (a bit late doh) I was actually particularly happy with that answer 🙂
Brooklyn Surfer 
February 20, 2009 at 11:32 am |
I’m interested in your viewpoint about recreational activities and social interaction. You ask, does recreation automatically include social interaction. A good question in both real life and online life. It seems that there are basically two philosophical positions. There are people who are more motivated by the experience and the relationship with others engaging in the activity is secondary. On the other side, there are people who engage in an activity to meet people – the relationship is primary and the activity is the means to begin or maintain the relationship. I’m a competitive outrigger canoe paddler and we find that members of our club are pretty well polarized on either side of this motivation question. It was interesting to me that you selected jogging and surfing as examples of potentially solitary recreation activities. My husband has been an avid jogger for years and my boys are surfers – and both activities are anything but solitary. They are individual activities but there are obviously cultures and communities around these activities. As a newbie to social networking sites, I’m still at the point that I’m trying to understand online communities within the framework of activities that are familiar to me, thus the self disclosing commentary. So far it seems to me that there are those same two motivation points as well for people participating in on line communities.
Thanks for your comment, “users who make posts just to incite an argument, or to attack another person do not really contribute anything to the community”. I totally agree with you!
February 21, 2009 at 10:52 pm |
I really like your point about the value of contribution. It was an element that frustrated me in the readings and trying to achieve our goals in Answerbag. I’ve posted elsewhere about the frivolous nature that seems to ride the surface of Answerbag…it’s harder to find the gold beneath all the fluff, so to speak. And the external motivation of our assignment wasn’t quite enough for me to join in the frivolity to a degree that may have allowed me to reach more goals.
I am also intrigued by the discussion about recreation and social interaction. Thank you Dneise, for your thoughts, they provided sort of an aHA moment for me! There’s a bit of the chicken or the egg arguement in there….
February 22, 2009 at 12:22 am |
‘grats on your achievement of two of the goals (albeit a bit late). I was only able to achieve one in the time allotted, and still haven’t achieved another. The fact that you got an answer to be rated high is all the more impressive to me, I just couldn’t figure out how to do that (thus, my strategy focused more on the questions side than the answers side).
“Users who make posts just to incite an argument, or to attack another person do not really contribute anything to the community.” I wonder if this entirely true. Sometimes the “trolls” and “flamebaiters” while not directly contributing to the community, can add a bit of flavor to a community (and by doing so may be able to get some lurker, who otherwise wouldn’t contribute, to actually fire back some sort of response, maybe that’s the first step to getting the lurker to become a contributor instead). Also, who’s to say that they weren’t just trying to be “controversial” and were just mis-understood (due to lack of non-verbal cues, etc.) or misunderstood the “norms” of the forum? Of course, chronic trolls/flamebaiters probably don’t fall under this last part, but they still may be of some source of amusement to a new user. Personally, though, I can’t stand them, but then again, I tend to fall under the lurker/non-contributor category myself.
February 22, 2009 at 8:49 am |
Regarding your comments about why people use Twitter, I agree that people want to be part of a group and want to contribute to that group. One of the highest compliments on Twitter is to be “retweeted,” meaning that one of your tweets was interesting enough to be repeated to others. In Answerbag, a similar experience would be when someone answers your question or comments on your answer. In an online community, it is the interaction that makes you feel a part of the whole. I also agree with you and Denise about users who don’t contribute, but incite arguments or attack others. Although online interaction is not a face-to-face, does it mean we still can’t be respectful to one another?
February 22, 2009 at 6:04 pm |
@David, you’re definitely right.. there are levels of flaming and trolling, and small amounts of it might produce positive results (i.e. draw out a lurker). But just as (or even more) likely, these people can drive away productive users if they feel they are being attacked all the time, or cause newcomers to avoid the site if they see that the site is just people arguing.
(This part goes to Junie as well) I play an online web based football simulation game, and I tend to do a lot of flaming and attack others. It’s not an online persona I have, since I also do the same free spirited trash talking when I play real sports. However, where people in real life can see me smile, laugh, and tell from my tone of voice that it’s just all in the spirit of the game, “lol” or smilies don’t convey the same message as well and I’m considered disrespectful…
February 22, 2009 at 10:46 pm |
I wondered the same thing about recreation equaling participation, although I can’t quite agree with the idea that jogging and surfing don’t lend themselves to community interaction. I’m more of an individual sports kind of girl (swim team, horseback riding), than a team person, and I’ve never felt isolated from the other swimmers or riders. I do agree, however, that just because you say you’re doing something for fun doesn’t mean you’re also hoping for social interaction.
I have to say, too, that the fact that you can’t trash talk on the internet is one of its great downfalls. Maybe someday we’ll help text evolve to the point where there are the equivalent of non-verbal cues. I’m not exactly sure what they’d be, but it would be interesting to see.