Regulating behavior in Cool Running

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.