Session 3 week 1

After I completed the readings, I did my share of lurking on answerbag.com. My initial impression was: “This site is huge.” As we can see in the extensive list of categories and subcategories, the site contains bits and pieces of information about pretty much anything and everything. So, what is anserbag.com? The site offers the following mission statement: “Ask questions and share your knowledge with the world here on Answerbag. Get the best answers where there are no duplicate questions and questions are always open - our community of over 864,000 will find your answer.” Then why do people participate in answebag? When and why do they post questions and answers? Ridings and Gefen pursue a similar question in their research (i.e. why people join virtual communities) and suggest overall, people join online communities for social support, recreation, friendship, and exchange of information. I believe all these motivations quite fittingly explain the group dynamics of answerbag.com.

One feature that caught my eye while lurking was “Leaderboard.” It shows the most recent ranking of top-rated answerbag members who have accumulated most points in both questions and answers. So, this competitive environment likely serves as a motivating factor for some AB members. In other words, some AB members stick around and perhaps enjoy being in competition to earn points and get recognized. (This echoes what Albrecht et al called “extrinsic reinforcement” – that some users are drawn to those online communities that offer “rewards like gifts, social recognition, and feedback.”)

Because our assignment was to actively participate in answerbag and meet certain goals by the deadline, I observed what types of questions and answers have been posted and have received high ratings/points (i.e. “Greatest Q&A”). I also randomly picked categories and observed their conversations and noticed that a number of interactions were built around topics related to “favorite” things. I tried this format (i.e. What/Who/Where is your favorite ---?) in several of my questions and had some success.

In crafting my strategy, I also remembered from one of the readings from session 2 (i.e. Weeks), suggesting that people are more responsive, online or off, to people “who sound they are in trouble.” So I tested this hypothesis in my interactions and posted a few questions asking for help and advice (both in somewhat real and hypothetical situations) in the areas of “cooking and recipes,” “health and fitness,” and “computers.” I used such phrases like: “I need help for a relative who has such and such disease...”; “I want to learn how to cook---.”; “I’m looking for---.” Most of my questions were returned immediately but did not accumulate enough points/answers to reach the target.

On a different note, it was amazing to see how quickly people responded to some of my questions. To a certain extent, some AB contributors (esp. regulars) perhaps share the “extroverted” personality discussed in the Schrock piece? – that they “desire for socialization with others . . . Extroverts are described as sociable, lively, active, assertive, care-free, dominant, venturesome and sensation-seeking.” This type of spontaneous and somewhat synchronous communication almost resembles aspects of user intentions in Twitter (i.e. daily chatter, conversations, sharing information) as Java and Finin et al highlight in their study even though AB and Twitter operate within quite different frameworks, i.e. openly accessible site versus personalized network of “friends.”

In a nutshell, I was able to meet one of the four benchmarks: One of your questions must draw 8 or more answers. Out of 44 questions I posted, 5 of them met this goal. My most successful questions were:
1) What goes best pie? (Dessert; 20 answers; 30 points)
2) Do you have to have coffee every morning? Why? Why not? (Food and Dining; 9 answers; 15 points)
3) What do you NOT like to add to your coffee? (Drinks; 8 answers; 23 points)
4) What would you do if you won the billion dollar lottery? (Finance; 8 answers; 17 points)
5) Which Asian food do you prefer: Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese, Korean, Japanese or Indian? (Food and Dining; 8 answers; 7 points)

Why I succeeded: I found the following passage in Albrecht et al particularly relevant: “Proposition 10: Participants with high commitment to achieving a goal will likely work harder to achieve the goal than individuals with low commitment.” Having a goal to meet within a given timeline kept me going. I posted random questions persistently to complete the assignment.

Why I failed: How would I explain my underperformance then? Albrecht et al discuss in Proposition 5: “As ease of use and interesting content increase, more individuals will want to participate and contribute.” Here I am particularly looking at the “ease of use” part. Perhaps what happened was the opposite of what Proposition 5 suggests: I was not at ease with how answerbag operates and failed to, in some way, manipulate the system effectively to earn as many points as required: i.e. the complex and finely designed hierarchy in regards to the ranking and rating is still a puzzle to me; I haven’t quite understood what “Comments” and “Moderation” would do to my points.

Simply put, my questions and answers were not interesting enough, and in some cases I picked “wrong” categories. For instance, to test the water, I first picked a sub-category that I like talking about and know something about. But this category had a comparatively small readership (i.e. even the top-rated questions have accumulated about only 40 points, whereas “Greatest Q&A” in more popular categories I have visited has scored 100-200 points, or even more). Perhaps not the best (and most strategic) move if you are doing this exercise to reach the target point count by the deadline.

In addition, the site runs a thorough check on duplicates after questions were posted and automatically inactivates duplicates, when detected. This is how I lost four questions worthy of over 30 points a few days after they were posted. (I received e-mail notice, “Good news, we have an answer to your question.”)

One quick note on my behavioral pattern on answerbag.com: I kept going back to the same category, “Food and Dining.” By the second/third day, it became almost an automatic reflex to go straight to that category rather than taking different routes. What do I make of it other than just saying, “I like talking about food”? Ling and Beenen et al offer some insight from a social psychological point of view: “People will contribute more to online communities when they believe that they are similar rather than dissimilar to other in the group” (p 5). And this line of observation, linking the broadly termed “similarity” (i.e. common interest) and active participation, speaks for those online communities I have joined in the past few weeks. Perhaps the homogeneity (i.e. boyd and Ellison from Week 1), however it is defined, is one motivating factor behind the sustained and lively online conversations.

Social aspects of social computing

Galston proposes that the emerging online groups are by and large “paradigmatic examples of voluntary community.” Members join the groups by choice and are bonded by shared interests, “affective ties,” and a sense of “mutual obligation.” They may leave the group at will, since the majority of online groups operate on fluid membership. Galston also suggest that these principles of online community reflect two prevailing values in American society: “individual choice” and “the longing for community.” After reading the rest of the assigned articles, I began to wonder Galston’s notion of “voluntary community” may be overly idealistic that could cloud sometimes messy and unforeseen consequences of online communications.

Albrechtslund, especially in the section “Life after social networking,” offers an insight in regards to alarming consequences of social networking. The author points out that our personal history on social network sites could become an unexpected source of distress after our departure from online community. Referring specifically to careless online behavior of youngsters who reveal too much personal information, the records of their activity could be “embarrassingly accessible later on.” When it comes to risks of disclosing personal information on social networking sites, Rossen discusses another distressing situation that could impact the lives and careers of not only youngsters but adults. A survey conducted in 2006 shows that 40 percent of employers would refer to personal profile of candidates on social networking sites such as the Facebook in the hiring process. There were even cases in which employers called off their job offers after consulting job seekers’ online profile.

To turn attention to the Weeks and Rossen pieces, each focuses on the nature of human behavior in online environment and compares it to real-life counterpart. Overall, Weeks tends to highlight parallels between online and off-line behavior. For instance, regardless of online or off line, “people will respond to people who sound like they are in trouble.” Some of Rossen’s discussions, in contrast, illuminate the peculiarity of online communications. To take on example, many users disguise and shift their (true) identity and become “protean selves,” a concept she borrowed from Robert Jay Lifton.

The LaRosse piece, while focusing on online behavior, is an empirical study of correlations between the Internet use and depression. For “moderately depressed populations” with heavy use of the Web such as students, Internet communications could provide a means of social support thus alleviate depression. At the same time, Internet communications could cause depression for inexperienced users, who feel overwhelmed by technical difficulties of navigating themselves on the Internet.

When it comes to a tendency to stay out or opt out of the Internet, Bigge pursues the subject from a unique perspective. He examines a phenomenon called “neo-Luddite movement” whose aim is “to reduce or control the technology that is all around us and to question its utility.” He argues as more voluntary social network sites take up online space, users are left with two extreme and polarized courses of action to take: “the constant, self-generated surveillance” of such sites and “the self-negation” that involves complete avoidance of social networking.

The Hague piece makes a stimulating observation about the usefulness of “micromedia” such as web blogs, podcast, and vlog. Hague suggests the increasing use of micromedia undermines our creativity and our ability to think innovatively in business mainly because we are “fooled” and blindfolded by the premise of their “usefulness.” To highlight this point, the author observes how bloggers misuse and misrepresent the concepts and the language of economics. One illuminating example comes from a blog post by “Seth,” who lamented that “bloggers blog too much: they’re littering an “attention commons.”” The author takes issues with Seth’s comment because of the careless and mindless use of the economic concept, “commons.” In today’s online environment, as Hague points out, attention is “no longer a commons” because it is “about individual expectations and preferences.” When we have limited media to disseminate and absorb information, we would likely end up paying attention to things we are not even remotely interested in and sharing virtual space with others whose interests, values, worldviews are uncompromisingly contradicting with our own. Such a situation may find a parallel in the concept of a commons such as park, where people from all walks of life share that space. But online space has now become more personalized and individualized (thanks to an array of technological options of micromedia) that we could choose to not to share that space with complete strangers.

Going back to Hague’s discussion about the ill-fated impact of micromedia on creativity and ability to think critically, isn’t it too pessimistic to say that “usefulness [of micromedia] is the enemy of creativity”? If online environment gives users plenty of room to build personal and individual space based on their choices and preferences (remind me of Galston’s “voluntary community), could the same space also generate innovative, productive, and engaging interactions, and perhaps cultivate creativity? Isn’t it too simplistic to blame the downfall of creativity on the utilitarian thinking (believing that everything must be useful)? Isn’t it up to individual users to decide what is useful and what is not?

To pursue these questions, I joined two online communities of Southeast Asia enthusiasts, since this is a topic I am a little familiar with (my academic background is in Southeast Asia studies). I am still finding clue to respond to my questions, but here is what I have been observing in the last few days.

The first community I joined is a study group on Southeast Asia in general (available from http://groups.yahoo.com/group/southeast-asian-studies/; 32 members as of 1 Feb 2009). The second group (available from http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=10760920401; 287 members as of 1 Feb 2009) focuses on archaeology and history. Hoping to relate my social networking experience to my broad interest in the use of the Web in academic research, I have also started to observe interactions in a blog group of academic librarians. The site is currently being renewed and scheduled to restart on February 1, 2009 with new features such as posting of a monthly discussion theme related to technology and information seeking (see screenshot). I have not seen any new blog post today. But I am planning to stay tuned and participate in upcoming discussions. On a different note, I located these groups in an academic blogging portal called BlogScholar.com.




As for the two online Southeast Asia groups, I have been part of these communities only for a few days and am still getting the feel of it. As a newcomer to the world of social computing, it has been quite a technical challenge to fully explore and utilize tools of communication (just like inexperienced users in the LaRosse piece). But one thing that caught my eye is that blog posts and discussion boards are not updated frequently. Some message board was not updated since March 2008 (see screenshot), and a lot of blog comments do not go beyond self-introduction.




But one resource that is current with substantial content is “Newsblogs” on topics related to archaeology and early history in Southeast Asia (see screenshot). The site is available from the archaeology-history group homepage and it does not require sign-up or login. Having read several newsblogs, I am finding this site quite resourceful and informative about Southeast Asian archaeology, if not nurturing creativity. For instance, I have just learned about a new website on ethnic populations in the region; a recent official dialogue between Thailand and Cambodia about the “smuggled artefacts” from Cambodia; current preservation projects in Burma etc. We don’t often get this kind of “raw data” from classroom readings. The coverage of the Newsblogs is broad, discussing most of eleven countries in the region, and the blog posts are updated almost daily and written professionally with relevant citations. I don’t know if other members have felt the same way, but if you get what you need by lurking, why bother blogging or even signing up for the facebook group...?