More importantly, these 4 moderators act as gatekeeper to who can join the mailing list. Massa's article talked about 'worthiness' in OC and in this instance, only those who were from the same cohort are 'worthy' to be part of this OC. This also falls in line with Gleave et al article about preventing vandalism from unidentified users and at the same time, ensure some privacy and freedom to express opinions amongst friends.
When it comes to social capital and trust, the main test is when someone request to join the OC. One can subscribe by sending an email to the moderators. An automated message will be sent back to verify their 'worthiness' through a set of questions that only people from the same class would know. The set includes questions such as naming three senior teachers we had, the regent and vice regent(s) of the class. They are also to provide some personal detail to verify their identity based on our knowledge of friends and class members (sometimes, it helps to check with our yearbook as we can't necessarily remember all 240+ friends from school). When one has been approved to be a member, a notice is sent out to the regent and vice regents about a new member where we would normally announce their arrival to the community. Another notice is sent out to the new member regarding rules and regulations of the OC (refer to screenshot below - the rule and welcome txt files are sent out when a new member is approved. The subscribe txt file is sent out to verify their 'worthiness' before hand).
Unlike the majority of OCs, personal identity has to be revealed when joining this OC. Members can create an avatar and nickname but their message needs to bear a signature that is recognizable by fellow members. In this regard, online persona is crucial to establish social capital (Williams 2006) and other's perception of the member. This way, others can respond accordingly to the poster i.e. with friendly jabs as we know each other well.
To increase and keep up with social capital and trust (Allen, Colombo, and Whitaker 2009), also to keep each other up to date about themselves, the group has spawned online spin offs/other OCs/SNS via friendster group (in earlier years), facebook group, twitter lists, linkedin group, and blackberry message groups. Note in the screenshot below the fluctuation of message posting in the OC. The recent spike of postings is because of the advent of blackberry and other smartphones where it becomes easier and more convenient to check and reply to a thread. Concurrently, interactions are happening in blackberry group message and since the group is capped at 30 participants each, members still rely on the OC for their information and updates.
The second OC I am using for this posting is the Taylor's College Alumni Association page (800+ members) and group (290+ people like it) on Facebook. I attended this institution in my early college years. The two OCs compared here are of similar theme, alumni communities. As opposed to the first OC, it has a really low entry barrier i.e. requires a facebook account (everybody has one nowadays), press 'like' button for page or request to join for the group. There are 6 moderators for the group page. There is not as much as interaction between members here, mostly announcements of events, pictures, or job opportunities posted by the moderators. The discussion forum are very much under utilized. Occasionally, I would receive a message from the group/page regarding an upcoming event.
The difference in interaction intensity perhaps comes from the fact that the second OC is administered by the institution/alma mater whereas the first OC is fully run by alumni for alumni. The first OC is very well defined; only for a specific year's class members, meanwhile the second OC is open to any Taylor's college alumni that encompasses more than 10 different programs located in 3 campuses. Thus, what is valued (worthiness and interestingness) differs, discouraging members to freely post questions or start a thread in the second case.
Suggestions for the OCs
The first OC is build based on a mailing list structure. It is a rather web 1.0 concept. Yahoo! has worked to improve the features here and there but perhaps a more comprehensive upgrade is needed if they are to keep up with the current onslaught of SNS that integrated many of web 2.0 elements. However, they also need to be careful not to make too drastic of a change as this might potentially turn off current users from fully embracing the idea of change. User friendliness and intuitiveness is key here.
The second OC can use more fine tuning when it comes to segmenting its members. It is nice to have the main alumni group but to foster better communication, it could segment their members based on the programs they used to be in, i.e. I was part of the American Degree Program, meanwhile others might be part of the Business School or Law School. Perhaps the OC is low on the priority list because compared to the Taylor's College page on Facebook, it is really low on the reach level (290+ like versus 18k+ like) and interactions (current postings on the wall and discussion topics).
Tentative final project idea
I am interested in looking at how social computing can be useful in reference management, i.e. using software such as WizFolio and Mendeley. If you are not familiar with them, they are similar to Zotero and EndNote. They offer freemium service where the basic features are free with paying options for more advanced capabilities. I am looking forward to work with a fellow blogger in the class for this project.
Some research questions I would like to help address: 1. how WizFolio shared collections and Mendeley groups can contribute to the scholarly activities through collaboration? 2. What are their social capital/trust mechanism? How does this impact question 1? It would be great if you can give me comments, feedbacks, or suggestions regarding this final project topic and perhaps methodology to collect the data for it.
References
Allen, Stuart M., Gualtiero Colombo, Roger M. Whitaker (2009). Forming Social Networks of Trust to Incentivize Cooperation. Proceedings of the 42nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Waikoloa, HI, 5-8 January 2009.
Eryilmaz, Evren, Mitch Cochran and Sumonta Kasemvilas (2009). Establishing Trust Management in an Open Source Collaborative Information Repository: An Emergency Response Information System Case Study. Proceedings of the 42nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Waikoloa, HI, 5-8 January 2009.
Gleave, Eric, Howard T. Welser, Thomas M. Lento and Marc A. Smith (2009).
Massa, Paolo (2006). A Survey of Trust Use and Modeling in Current Real Systems. Trust in E-services: Technologies, Practices and Challenges. Idea Group.
Williams, D. (2006). On and Off the 'Net: Scales for Social Capital in an Online Era. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 11(2), article 11.
Great post! I find it interesting that your first OC that you chose to look at is very closed with a barrier to entry that cannot be overcome (it is a pre-requisite that only specific alumni can join). Your OC truly demonstrates the idea of continuing physical relationships on-line, as opposed to creating new relationships. Interestingly, your OC relies much on “real” information from its members, as opposed to pseudo names. Therefore, this may change the way that people interact, as their actions are linked directly to them, as opposed to a pseudo name that could be changed. It is also interesting to see that members of your OC decided to make their own subgroups in other OCs. I wonder if these groups are spanning and adding “new relationships” or solely staying within the same context as your alumni class group.
ReplyDeleteWhen comparing the first OC to the second, I liked that you made the distinction about the moderators and who were perceived to have high social capital (Gleave, 2009). In this sense, your first OC really looked like it promoted interaction due to the group culture. However, the second OC seemed to be more official, where members felt less free to express their thoughts.
I thought that you made a terrific recommendation regarding the Yahoo! group. In a sense, they should update their tools to allow more actions on the part of their members. However, I do understand that changing the tools too much may deter their current user base. I do wonder about how they should implement changes, as Facebook made many changes that users did and did not like, but the Facebook still remains as the largest social network.
Regarding your final project idea, I think that it is interesting to see how these tools can be implemented and useful in reference management. Regarding how Wizfolio and Mendeley can contribute to scholarly activities though collaboration, I am wondering if these tools promote scholarly discourse. Or, does it promote a specific aspect or aspects in scholarship practice? In this sense, I wonder about other options that may help to promote scholarly activity like the Facebook or other OCs. Regarding social capital, I am wondering how much of this deals with real life reputation. For instance, if a person with a highly positive reputation were to use this tool, how many others would jump aboard? Also, where does trust play a role in this? Very good topic; I am looking forward to hearing more about it!
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ReplyDeleteThat's a really clever idea of the first OC, to give little quizzes to gain entry into the community. I'm part of another alumni group and we're always having random people asking to join our Facebook page, but we have no idea who they are. This might be a really good idea. If it works for banking, email, and other such sites, then it should be enough to provide security for a SNS.
ReplyDeleteHmm... as far as methodology, short of asking these sites to hand over their user logs :P, maybe you could go the traditional route of surveying with a Google doc, or creating your own profile in these groups, and "friending" (I don't know the terminology they use) users from a variety of groups/backgrounds. Sorry, I wish I could give more descriptive ways to collect the quantitative data you need, I'm not familiar with those sites; do you have any more details/thoughts on them?
I like how you compared two communities which seem to ultimatley have similar goals but go about it different ways. The first community seems to do a better job bringing users together despite the fact that you describe it more as "1.0" -- the second community - facebook group - is less about maintaining relationships & more about posting events. I find this to be true about many facebook group pages. It's hard to know who is on the page, hard to follow updates (poor format for this sort of information), and hard to keep up with users on the page (have to go to their individual pages).
ReplyDeleteAs far as your final project idea goes, I checked out the two communities you listed. They seem like useful tools for group work esp. Students working on projects together could share what they find while dong research. I suppose libraries could help train students on how to use tools like these, what were you thinking? There is probably not a lot out there in terms of scholarly lit on the impact these tools (since they appear to be new) so you may have to do a fair amount of primary research. Is there any way to look at the pages of current users to see how they are currently collaborating, or is this kept private? Interesting & cutting-edge though - good luck!
Fantastic post Erenst. Why am I not surprised that you are a regent in a bustling OC? You seem well-suited for the task...you are a proven connector with well maintained relationships with friends from a former time and place.
ReplyDeleteYou made a good point about the quality of the OC depending on the hosts. Small, exclusive groups can rapidly attract others...any seen Social Network?
I joined Mendeley for this course and am curious about it, especially as it relates to open access of scholarly material. My roommate is Phd candidate and she was telling me ideal publications have a large impact factor. I wonder about this and the scholars motivation to drive up their cited by counts. It kind of reminds me of Google Scholar's inflated citation counts. Whoa! I don't know where that cynical point of view came from! I am sure Mendeley will create connections between relevant research(ers) and act as a filter for all the information overload that exists and/or inaccessibility issues that occur in scholar works. I am looking forward to learning more from your findings.
Btw, good luck tomorrow on your presentation. I wish I could be there but I have to work. Dang!
I think there is some kind of similar communities as you described in China too that are quite popular, actually, the fact that one can communicate with there high school, college, or even elementary school classmates online is very appealing, and to me, it seems like there is a reletavily close tie within these communication, like what the materials mentioned - "Bonding Social Capital".
ReplyDeleteAnd about the two communities in your case, it is interesting although it seems like the second one (Taylor's College Alumni Association page) is more "technically advanced", from your description, the first one is more active and taken more seriously. I think it's maybe because of the entry barrier is higher, and apparently, users tend to believe the ones they can identity and know in their real life. And this is quite a good trust mechanism when it comes to online communities of types alike.
For your final project idea: I've never been to the sites you mentioned, but they sound interesting. I have used a site call easybibli (or something like this) but the results weren't that correct and accurate. So, I think charging some fees from the users and use the money to improve the technology or hiring some professional maybe a good idea. Is this a trust mechanism? I'm not sure, but it does make the site more "trustable" to me:)
Other than the fact that you were supposed to explore a community you weren't already familiar with ;), very good post. Regents are essentially human spam filters, and while there are more nuanced senses of trust and social capital in other types of communities, it's an effective example.
ReplyDeleteYour final project idea is excellent but has the danger of becoming unwieldy if it is too focused on the technology or the limitations inherent in the scholarly citation process. You might think of layers of trust inside social reference management, which might include selective notification of friends' cites, which reference to trust, trust in the site itself, etc., and streamline your research question to one or a few of these. As long as you stay focused on the social computing aspects of these tools I think you have an interesting and workable final project topic.
Great post! Your first social network using Yahoo Groups was of particular interest. The idea that everyone needs to be first approved and represent their real life person seems to make a huge difference in the activities of the members. As Palabra also mentioned, this seems to mirror one of the themes in the movie about Facebook, The Social Network. They claim that the early success of Facebook was due to the exclusivity of the site. Facebook is now open to the public, but they still do implement groups where each member might need to be approved depending on the settings of the group. Perhaps this feature of the website will mimic more closely the community of the first site you mention rather than the second.
ReplyDeleteI like the first online community you introduced, which ask a new member questions for verifying that they are alumni of the community. I think the idea of asking questions about the community and making new members provide information is good for maintaining members’ motivation to contribute to the community and making them feel more connected to other members. Also, I think the security questions may be helpful for other social networking sites to prevent identity theft.
ReplyDeleteaw c'mon Blogger!
ReplyDeleteI made a long comment entry to respond to each and everyone of you. I tried to preview it and it came up with an error message. Then, I can't go back to my writings! argh... frustrating!
lesson: copy comment before continuing!
All commenters: thank you for your comments and feedback for the project. cheers.
Your first OC is intriguing. It's interesting that not only do you have a place for alumni to keep in contact with one another, but it's an active community. I'm not sure if it's a customary thing, for members of your graduating class to keep in touch, but for me, for a group that consists essentially a bunch of weak ties, the group doesn't really hold together that well. The fact that it is a gated community makes it stand out even more.
ReplyDeleteThe description you gave of your second OC seems like a standard Facebook group, where it is easy to reach out and gather members, but because of the ease of access, it may come off as impersonal and turn into a current events message board. Not that this is a purely negative thing -- keeping people connected through events can stimulate interaction away from the OC, in actual face-to-face meetings.
For your final project idea, I'm not sure of how I would approach it. Perhaps look at how WizFolio and Mendely extend the capabilities of a product like Endnote with the addition of SNS. Does it help people connect to others with similar topics? Does it help users to brainstorm ideas? Does it make collaboration between research partners easier? Just some questions that maybe you've already thought of, or maybe not.