I will comment on Charles' paper.

Richard - I enjoyed your paper. It was quite thorough and you did a superb job of documenting your observations and relating them back to the course material—two things with which I definitely struggled. I would, however, like to push your discussion of how applying more of the concepts from the course could improve the community at Milliways.

You commented that Milliways had very few ways of measuring and establishing reputation, and stated that a quantifiable means of establishing reputation would not benefit the community. Based on your description, I take it that the reputation system has grown organically through personal relationships and has stabilized around small cliques or coteries of players at different times, and that these sections of the community do not often interact.

I'm imagining award for quality role-play or writing—perhaps given once a month or less frequently. Players could submit their best works, and the winners would be listed somewhere more or less permanent on the site. Such a system might both provide incentives for creating higher-quality work, and encourage players within the game to interact with players they normally wouldn't have, due to their reputation.

I also imagine that there are two types of players within the game—those who excel at the synchronous, AIM Chat Room, and those whose strength lies in their asynchronous writing. Are the AIM Chat Room sessions logged and posted? If not, how might posting those logs change the balance within the community?

Matt,

You did a nice job of showing concrete examples of concepts from your community.  

First of all, I have to admit that I was surprised by the rareness of conflict at Cool Running. The designation of Clubhouse forum is an efficient mechanism for conflict management. You said you hadn’t yet witnessed any spillover of arguments from the Clubhouse forum into the strictly running-related forums. I understand that the main reason runners go to the site is to find a supportive environment in which they can form relationships. But don’t they even argue in subtle ways in the running forums? Can there be any explanations for rareness of conflict other than being a mature community?

Cool Running lacks a formal reputation system. From what I’ve heard and read until now, members are generally intrinsically motivated people. For this reason, I get the sense that it would disturb the community, creating an artificial peer pressure. Do you think it would be really beneficial for them to have the reputation system or do you think that visible recognition would reduce their motivation? 

It was interesting to see how social comparison is an essential part of the Cool Running community. As I understood, it is not the norm of the community to express downward, contrastive comparisons against other members (although it would be interesting to see some of those). As a final comment, I would expect to see a little bit more on how members self-regulate as a result of these comparison processes.

A very interesting and
comprehensive article Erika. I like the fact that you include explanations of
the concepts we are working with, but also keep them brief so the emphasis
remains on what you found in your community.

I was intrigued that 'social
loafing' was an active phenomenon in the BaW community, especially given our
increasing understanding of attention as a limited resource. I almost wonder if
we need a new term here, one that would also refer to an 'unfair' use of a
community's resources, but which would better reflect this more active version
of it than the word 'loafing' does. It was also interesting to see the
moderators suggesting that newbies *should* be loafers until they have a better
sense of the community's shared repertoire. Is there a useful link here between
social loafing and our earlier readings (Oldenberg, Kim, etc) about the life
cycle of members?

I did have a question about
the lack of "reifications of the past behavior of members." If "all
traces of community participation are recorded and archived" then it would
seem that these records constitute potential reifications. For example, two new
members may draw different conclusions from their reviews of one established
member's traces on the blog, wiki, message board, etc. That raises the
possibility of a negotiation between their different conclusions, and those of
other members, and therefore, these traces could constitute 'points of focus.'

Another interesting aspect of
the BaW community is the possible tension between the informal, even 'playful,'
tone of the member's interactions and the fact that they have all registered
under their real names as EFL/ESL professionals. As you note, in a situation
like this, anti-social or inconsiderate behavior could have professional consequences.
I wonder if the directors have particular strategies for preventing this
potential chilling effect from undermining the "playful, low pressure
atmosphere"? 

 David, I really enjoyed reading your paper. Particularly, I liked the "conflict and its management" part - your analysis on how the community has managed disruptive behaviors. Detailed comments are available in the file I've attached.

Oops...I just realized that I cannot attach a file when I comment..I'll create a separate posting.  

  
*By the way, I have to say sorry for this late comment. I've put my comments on a hard copy of your paper and it took so long to post here. I'm a super-procrastinator :(

I'll comment on this.

Overall, I thought your paper was very strong, well written, and descriptive.  I got a clear understanding of how conflict is managed, the reputation systems, and the affects of social presence on user behavior at 43T.  I especially liked your recommendations on improving the reputation system by adding the cheers into user profiles.  Here are just some few minor things I would add:

1.  You mentioned social loafing as a potential problem with mechanism to counteract it.  Has social loafing ever been brought up by the membership or the moderators?

2.  You talked about a cheap identities issue where users who have been "nuked" can come back under a new identify.  How widespread is that issue and what effects does it have on the community?  Are moderators and users spending more of their time having to deal with them?  What are the effects?

3.  A concerte example from a user would be helpful in illustrating the effects of social persence on behavior.  

Other than this, the paper was a great read. 
 

I enjoyed the commentary about social loafing. From what I've seen of the site I have to agree that most people on the site are social loafers in the sense that we talk about them - they are just there to post and manage their own goals.

But, I have a slightly different opinion on social loafing. I don't think it's possible to socially loaf on a site like 43Things or Blogger. Even if you never comment on another person's goals or cheer anyone, just the fact that your goals exists and the site publishes them for all to see negates, in my opinion, the social loafing.

If there was a way, for example, to create private goals that nobody else could see then I would say social loafing can certainly take place.

However, I personally have adopted several goals from other users just because I happend on their page while following a trail of goals from person to person. You randomly show up somewhere and say "Aha! I've been meaning to do that in my life too!"

In this way, that particular user wasn't socially loafing. I gained benefit from his asychronous discussion (adding his goal) with me.

I am sorry these comments are so late. Hopefully they are still of some use to you.

General comments

I was interested in reading this paper because of the convention in some wiki of using real names, which is often stated but rarely explained or defended. (I think it is because of the situation of the first wiki, which was basically used to support the meetings of a professional group that met regularly in person.)

In your introduction you state that real names allows reputation to spread from the internet to the real world. But much of your paper describes a two-way process — where the “shadow of the future” or the possibility of real-world consequences to online activity helps to regulate behavior, but additionally pre-existing aspects of a participant’s identity, background, etc. influences their entry into and activity in an online community.

Beyond that, I think that your positioning of use of real names as a barrier to entry to a community, and the tension between community safety / policing and conservation of limited resources is effective, and well-illustrated by many of the details throughout the paper.

Specific comments

§ 1.1 and § 1.2: I was confused about the pseudonymous rooms in KW community. Is there a distinction between rooms where participants are identified by pseudonyms and rooms where they are identified by IP address? The distinction may be important since, if participants choose their own pseudonyms, they could maintain their pseudonym(s) over time, whereas IP address identifications would probably be more transient as participants log in from different networks, etc.

§ 1.3: in the situation you describe, use of real names would only help with spam if there was really a way to warrant someone’s name and/or keep them from signing up for multiple accounts. In other words, what keeps a spammer from creating a bunch of accounts under plausible-sounding yet fake names, and then abusing the trust of participants?

§ 3: this is very interesting. Part of the audience “present” in an asynchronous conversation is the set of people who could read or participate in the future, even if the conversation is transferred offline. Where do you think the outer limits of this social presence of others are? Is there a sense that a participant is writing for posterity, or just that within some timeframe (matching the typical pace of conversation in the particular community), other people will see and react to what is being written?

I wish I knew more about Mixi after reading this paper! It seems like an interesting social networking space, distinct from the ones I'm familiar with.

You mention at the end of the first page/beginning of the second page that each user's number of friends is publicly viewable. You also note that there seems to be less of a phenomenon of friend collecting on Mixi as there is on US-based sites. I am curious to know more about this -- are there communications between Mixi members or other publicly viewable information that suggest that Mixi members don't pay much attention to the friend count? I know your paper isn't necessarily a comparison of Mixi to American social networking sites, but I'd be interested to hear your ideas about why this might be.

I wonder if perhaps the uniqueness of identity construction in Mixi might have something to do with how reputation is assigned/created in Mixi? I find it interesting that users don't post pictures of themselves. In combination with a friend total, one's picture is a pretty clear indicator of reputation and identity in an American social networking site (e.g., you can tell who the popular girls are). I'm intruiged by what other mechanisms might indicate one's reputation in Mixi?

This paper has given me a lot to think about, especially in terms of comparisons to American social networking sites.

I would like to comment on this paper as well, if that is ok with the class.

I kept comparing with Cyworld to see what is different, and tried to think about whether it could be causing from different web design issue or the culture of the society, or just the culture of the community that emerged. Let me list some of the points that I thought were interesting:

The large size communities have positive tones in Mixi: You're saying that although it is an anti-something, it won't have decrying messages for certain issues. I wonder why that happens -- is it just the culture of the whole Mixi community? Being nice? It seems that people are pretty laid back in terms of the conversations that's going on -- for example, the 'slacking community' -- entertainment based. I wonder if that is just one example, or the whole color of the community is like that.

Popularity is determined by the number of the friends the member has: You said they normally do not make friends with those who they met online (when we talked in class). Then does that mean popular person on Mixi would most likely to be popular in offline as well?

 かんばてね終わりまで。

Great paper, Ryan. I was particularly impressed with the reifications implemented by Simutronics to keep the game working smoothly. I don't spend a lot of time in multiplayer games, and I hadn't put much thought into the importance of policy. The policies related to combat seem downright innovative, for lack of a better word. It made me wonder if widespread MMORPGs have similar policies surrounding death and the belongings of dead players. I'd be curious to know if you've contrasted your findings with other communities. Regardless, the reifications you mention seem very important for keeping players invested in the community.

I liked the rundown of gnomes and goats -- it seemed like a crystalline example of larger trends for conflict in your community.

In your discussion of comparisons and goals, I wondered about other goals besides attaining new circles (akin to experience levels, for those who didn't read the paper). It seems like goals could be defined more broadly. I might have a goal to get better at roleplaying my character's personality, or to make friends, or to amass certain materials to unlock new items (as you mentioned in class). Even without a comparison system, it seems like there are many important goals to be attained, some of which may cross over the in-character/out-of-character boundary.

I really appreciated your definition of the joint enterprise as "interactive conflict." It reminded me of how some discussion-based communities have social norms of snarkiness or abusive criticism. However, I think your idea goes deeper, to fundamental concerns of good narrative. Roleplaying is storytelling, and without good dramatic tension, your roleplay could break down. In light of all this, I thought your recommended design changes were well-tailored and exciting. The branding and failure message ideas in particular made intuitive sense to me.

Great paper Youn-ah! You covered every topic thoroughly and with interesting examples. It was also an enjoyable read.

On the topic of conflict management, I'd be curious to know how effective Cyword's responses to the stalking problem have been. Was the "Secret guest book" feature enough for your friend to re-open her Minihompy? Stalking seems an especially intractable problem, becuase it's not just one individual person's problem. As your example illustrates, if someone is being stalked, chances are all of his/her 1st degree friends are being stalked as well. Since a single stalker can affect so many people, its not hard to imagine a how several stalkers could really wreak havoc across the entire community, altering the otherwise open and sociable culture.

I found it interesting that community members only place a secondary importance on the Minihompy owner ratings, because these do not reflect how many different people the owner interacts with, which is what people really care about. I guess this would be a good example of how ecommunity designers can't always anticipate what tools and reifications will be important to the community.

In tems of popularity, or being 'famous', are there large disparities between the owner rating profiles of regular members, 'celebrities' and 'class-B stars'? I'm guessing that there are, since celebs and class-Bs interact with so many people and therefore don't have a lot of time for really cultivating friendships, like giving gifts and regularly visiting all of the Minihompys of their friends. Are their reciprocality ratings lower than those members with only a small group of very intimate friends? Maybe the owner rating device is a nice way to remind the community that quality is just as important as quanitity when it comes to friendship.

Jina,

Once again, I enjoyed reading your research about Cyworld. It seems like a fun, socially-active place to visit and I only wish I could communicate in Korean to understand the screenshots better!

I thought this paper did an excellent job of providing examples of concepts from the readings, especially with goal-setting. It would have been nice to see a bit more detail on this, actually-- when you mentioned the one student who started with low GRE scores and later (via the community) improving his performance, it made me want to know even more about whether he serves as an exemplar in the community, how the history of such performance gains are maintained for others to remember over long periods of time, and exactly what kind of artifacts are left behind from people who have been inspired by this person's improvement.

Some questions that I had:

1. In terms of leaving comments in others’ minihompies—can it be any kind of comment or is there an expected minimum level of thoughtfulness expected to go into the comments you leave? For instance, on Myspace, some of my friends put “have a good weekend” messages/pictures into all of their friends' comments spaces, so when I see I have received one of these, it feels rather like an impersonal batch process. I don’t reciprocate unless someone leaves me a more personalized message, like "hi Nika, how are you? I really like your new pictures-- post more like them!". Does this level of expectation occur in Cyworld or not?

2. The example of Hyo-Ju’s il-chon pyong: if her boyfriend’s il-chon pyong appears at the top of the listing, does that mean that Hyo-Ju made this a setting somewhere or does the system use some sort of algorithm to determine how to rank them?I hope this question makes sense.
 

Jina,

I enjoyed reading your paper. Since nika commented on it already, im only going to talk about the comparisons to mixi, because I know it’s a topic you are interested in.

You mention lurking as a form of social loafing in this context – by not providing reactions, they are not contributing to the ‘visible attention’ endowment of the site. On mixi, there is an “ashi-ato” page, which lets you see everyone who visited your site. This lets lurkers show up in someway, and lets you know when there is an upswing in lurker traffic to your page for some reason…. say if you posted something interesting. That’s very interesting about people wanting to accumulate visible, explicit attention on their pages.

I haven’t seen any incidences of spam on mixi… since there is spam on cyworld, im wondering why. Mixi does not seem to be policed at all… how is spam sent on cyworld? Cant groups block spammers from posting to their group? Mixi does not let non-friends post on other people’s boards. Is this how spam is done on cyworld? It seems like the account creation rules are onerous – real name, SNN, address.

I love the enjoyable internet culture campaign. On mixi, I feel like many people are new to social networking, new to the net in general, and not very tech savy. I heard that korea is far more computer literate than japan, but is this also the case on cyworld?

Another major difference seems to be the presence of celebrities. That’s crazy about celebrities getting 10k visits a day. I think I get like 10 visits a day on mixi =) Mixi does not keep track of or make public # of visits a day, or total visits. Cyworld seems geared far more towards pushing ‘popularity contest’ buttons than mixi.

Mixi has English study clubs also, but I haven’t seen nyuugakushiken clubs yet… im sure they must be out there, maybe just below my radar. That’s so interesting about the GRE clubs.