Session 7

My previous post was about the SOPAC of Oakville Public Library developed by Bibliocommons. I had a very hard time finding any abuses or misuses of Bibliocommons, it is still very new and the ability for users to interact is limited, particularly interaction visible to the general public. So for this session I will be looking at management and conflict at LibraryThing.

From their About page- “LibraryThing is an online service to help people catalog their books easily. You can access your catalog from anywhere—even on your mobile phone. Because everyone catalogs together, LibraryThing also connects people with the same books, comes up with suggestions for what to read next, and so forth.”
Many libraries have added LibraryThing features directly into their OPACS. These features include reviews and book recommendations. Patrons can link to the main website of LibraryThing and see the vast community that exists there.

The privacy policy and terms of use of LibraryThing is located here

There is a talk and group feature at LibraryThing and that is where most of the community building takes place. In the terms of use LibraryThing specifically outlines what is not allowed in talk/groups:

• Do not make personal attacks. As Wikipedia's policy states, "Comment on content, not on the contributor."
  
• Do not use LibraryThing as an advertising medium. Egregious commercial solicitation is forbidden. No matter how great your novel, this does apply to authors.
  
• Do not spam user comments or group invitations. Inviting people in your town to a new group is okay; inviting hundreds of members is not.
  
• Do not repost flagged content in Talk. If you believed you were flagged unfairly, go ahead and discuss the issue (without getting personal). You can discuss it, with short selections. But you may NOT repost it. If people want to read it, they can; Talk allows you to click something to see the flagged content.
  
• Do not create "pointless," "meaningless" or "random" groups. We give all groups the benefit of the doubt, but the creation of multiple, duplicative and contentless groups is against these terms.
  

SPAM
Spam is in virtually every online community and LibraryThing is no exception. Users can create a spam profile or spam comments. When users find spam comments there is a “flag abuse” link to report it. I didn’t find a "flag abuse" link on profiles or groups. However, I did find a forum where users report instances of spam they have come across.



From what I’ve seen these are taken down fairly quickly. I did manage to take a screenshot before this spam group was taken down by an administrator.

Here is what you see when a profile has been taken down.


The removal of spam comments can be done without the assistance of administrators. This is also the case for abusive comments. Any comment can be flagged for abuse by any user. Once a comment has been flagged four times it is deleted. This allows community members some control on the oversight of the site, which according to the study by Cosley et al is just as good as expert oversight. Of course one can see how this can be abused. Users can create “sock puppets” to remove a comment that they disagree or take issue with. (Gazan)
Users are encouraged to be polite and work out differences civilly. LibraryThing states in their terms of use that “in extreme cases - if you feel that you're being harassed, or if a flame war begins, please email email [sic]Tim at tim@librarything.com or Abby at abby@librarything.com.”


PERSONAL ATTACKS
It was difficult to find a vicious personal attack. I imagine those are removed quickly but I did find some squabbling and commenting on contributors instead of content which is specifically mentioned as a no-no in the terms of service.
Here’s a link to the entire thread…it’s pretty long so here is a screenshot where a reference is made to name-calling.

Foul language is rampant throughout LibraryThing. LibraryThing prohibits children under 13. Children 13 and over may participate with the permission and guidance of their parents. I did find use of a certain highly pejorative term. Here's the screenshot.

The slur is directed at an anime character and not a contributor, so does that make it okay?


POINTLESS GROUPS
LibraryThing specifically state the creation of pointless, meaningless or random groups is against its terms. However I did find one seemingly pointless group.

Creating a pointless group is not as grievous an infraction as what some Goons have done in Second Life but it still can be a hassle. It is annoying to wade through meaningless groups to find something worthwhile. Contentless groups lessen the value of all groups.

While LibraryThing forbids pointless groups they do allow groups and discussion on topics other than books. Here’s a link to the complete list of groups and as you can see the range of topics is vast. There is even an Off topic group created by LibraryThing founder Tim Spalding. Here users can discuss whatever.


LibraryThing like Answerbag has, for the most part, embraced the change from factual content to social content. LibraryThing is a self-aware community. There is even a group for recommendations and suggestions for the site.


Overall I found it difficult to find examples of violations of the terms and even more difficult to find inter-personal conflict. The community seems to be well behaved and respectful.



The fact that the subject of the site is books may have something to due with the overall civility of the community. The stereotype of bookworms and those passionate about books is that they are intelligent and well-educated as well as quiet and meek, not people you would imagine starting a flame war or hacking a book profile. Of course this is a stereotype and generalization, I’m sure there are plenty of rogue users causing problems at LibraryThing. It is likely the administrators of LibraryThing can relate to the letters from users of Answerbag demanding special privileges or complaining about other users shown in the reading “Understanding the Rogue User.” (Gazan) And the case of one checker hacking movie titles by replacing information entered by other subjects in the study by Cosley shows that if takes just one rogue user to create a lot of work and frustration for many others. (Cosley, pg.7) 

Session 6

For my final project I am exploring social tagging of library resources and SOPACs (social online public access catalogs). While I am exploring many different library websites and catalogs I will focus this discussion on one in particular, Bibliocommons. In the summer of 2008, Oakville Public Library (Ontario, Canada) unveiled their new SOPAC created by Bibliocommons. According to their website, Bibliocommons is “a complete social discovery tool for libraries …transforming online library catalogues from searchable inventory systems into engaging social discovery environments.” (http://bibliocommons.com/)

Online identity in Bibliocommons is not as broad as social networking sites such as Myspace or Facebook but it is not nonexistent. There are two main ways a user can create an online identity in Bibliocommons, through their username and through their collection. In the reading “Signals in Social Supernets” Donath states that on social networking sites identity can be established by how many friends one has, how much activity is on their page, how often do they comment on their friends pages and vice versa. And the reading “Social Network Profiles as Taste Performances” analyzed the lists of interests on Myspace profiles exploring the language, coherence and substance of profile interest lists.

While identity on Bibliocommons may not be as obvious as on the SNSs Donath and Liu studied there are signals given by what a person’s username is and what they have added to their collection. Users are not required to use real names so users can signal part of their identity by creating a funny, clever, anonymous or straightforward name. Another way users can express their identity is by adding library materials to their collection. They can also rate, review, and tag items. However, this activity is not documented on a user’s “page”; it is included only on the page for the particular item. 

Here's a screenshot of the page for the book 1984. 

Particularly interesting is the "connect with others" area. Bibliocommons encourages library users to socially connect with others.

When you click on a user, you are taken to that user’s collection. No demographic or personal information is listed about the user only what they have added to their collection.
Here’s a screenshot of the user Library75's collection.

I can formulate in my mind an identity for this person based on the materials they have included and their username. This person has a lot of kid’s books, which leads me to believe they have a young child or children. It’s also possible that the person was born in the year 1975 because the username includes the digits 75. Of course I can’t be sure of this. The 75 could be random or for another reason.

Informal use scenario #1:
Nancy is looking for a good book to read. Nancy is busy and doesn’t have as much time as she’d like to read. Therefore, she would like a book recommended by someone she trusts. She uses the library’s online catalog to see what her friends have added to their collection.

With Bibliocommons users can “trust” a particular user. (check the screenshot of Library75 to see that you can trust or ignore a user). Trusting is anonymous so users don’t know if they’ve been trusted or ignored. Here’s a screenshot explaining a little more about “trusting” someone.

Informal use scenario #2:
Carl is looking for a book he heard about on the radio. He doesn’t remember the author or the title just that it was about the Spanish Civil War. He uses the library’s online catalog and searches the tags to find the book, he thinks he’ll remember the title if he sees it.

In this case, if he uses Bibliocommons he is out of luck because there are no results for a search of tags for Spanish civil war. Bibliocommons is new and does not allow the general public to tag (you must have a library card) therefore it is understandable that the number of tags is low. For the tags to be useful more participation by the users is needed. Hopefully Carl can find and tag the book so others after him may find it more easily. 

In terms of online identity Bibliocommons does not enable much of an identity to be created. Users can only evaluate other users based on their username and collection. Still if a user has added many items to their collection other users can likely make safe assumptions about their particular tastes.

Session 5: Social Q&A vs. public and academic libraries

For this session I chose to compare social Q&A sites and online reference service provided by public and academic librarians. Libraries now make available a variety of channels for users to ask librarians reference questions. In addition to the old standbys, phone and in person service; email, chat and IM are now offered. Our own library has an Ask-A-Librarian service via chat:



We are already familiar with social answering sites thanks to our Answerbag assignment from Session 3. Both social Q&A sites and ask-a-librarian services have a similar purpose, to provide answers to questions. I think very few would argue that the answers found on social Q&A sites are more informative and reliable then from an ask-a-librarian service. Yet despite this droves are visiting sites such as Yahoo! Answers and Answerbag and asking serious reference questions. The unreliability of the information found on social Q&A sites is a major weakness. A major weakness of online ask-a-librarian services is usability and awareness of said services. So in what ways can the weaknesses and strengths of these two services inform the other?

One weakness of ask-a-librarian services is, to put it bluntly: they’re boring. Most library online reference service sites are spartan and lack the fun bells and whistles of social Q&A sites. Funding is part of the problem but perhaps also the perspective of the librarians creating these sites and services has an impact. As an associate university librarian said from a 2003 OCLC report: “Librarians have made retrieval and accuracy a god—disregarding what users’ preferences are. ” (http://www.oclc.org/reports/escan/social/satisfaction.htm )


So what do users prefer? Well one lesson gained from social Q&A sites is users like the ability to create an online identity. Social Q&A sites let users upload a picture or avatar and enter personal information like interests and activities. I imagine it wouldn’t be too difficult for a university library or public library to allow for users to create a profile. Our Laulima system gives us the ability to do that. Here’s mine:

Users shouldn't be the only ones creating profiles, the actual librarians answering questions should be encouraged to provide substantial profiles. From our reading by Dempsey: “Connaway and Radford (2007) note how students are sometimes reluctant to use virtual reference because they do not want to interact with somebody who remains anonymous or who they do not know, even if it is a library service.” Use of profiles might make some users a bit more comfortable speaking up about their information needs.

Most social Q&A sites have searchable archives. This is helpful for information seekers because they can quickly find their answer without waiting. Most library reference services do not have a searchable archive. While its true library web sites often provide subject bibliographies and faqs they rarely provide transcripts of resolved reference questions. I think it would be a benefit to all to allow users to view previous reference questions and their answers. Of course with this, the issue of privacy can be a roadblock. Perhaps a way around that is providing users with a choice of hiding their question or remaining anonymous.

With an archive users can see what people have asked previously and what kind of response they received. This can lessen the fears some may have of asking a librarian a question. From my own experience and from projects in other classes I believe many people are not comfortable using library reference services. There are various reasons why this may be the case whether a person is shy, prefers to find information on their own or views librarians as unapproachable. By showing the past experiences of information seekers users can gain confidence that the librarian will not be mean and bite their head off. Users may even find the answer to their question or at least the means to find it.

Now that we have examined how libraries can learn from social Q&A sites what can libraries teach them? As stated earlier I believe the major drawback to social Q &A sites is the unreliability and likelihood of receiving inaccurate or unhelpful information. Librarians are trained to provide trustworthy reference service; a user on Yahoo! Answers is most likely not. One way I think social Q&A sites can build trust is by using and identifying experts. A lot of social Q &A sites have categories. I imagine that in addition to all the other categories you can create one called “ask an expert”. Trained professionals would only answer questions in this category. In a way you are simply including an ask-a-librarian service within the social Q&A site; of course the experts wouldn’t have to be librarians but simply well researched in a particular field. This would cost money and to be honest I don’t really see social Q&A sites adopting this but it is a way of addressing the lack of trained professional service that librarians provide.

A lot of what librarians do is teaching patrons what is available and how to navigate all the different resources to find an answer. Librarians don’t only provide answers but they provide directions to answers (go here or look there). One way that social Q&A sites can help users find information is by in addition to allowing users to answer questions also provide informational links. Librarians provide subject bibliographies. Perhaps social Q&A sites can do the same. I imagine on the “home” page of each category links to trustworthy sites can be shown. Users can still answer questions and they may choose to ignore these links but at least they are there.


Another way to work towards ensuring trustworthy answers is by altering the points system. Reward factual and accurate answers and punish false ones. However, I don’t see that being very popular with the users of the sites. The users of Yahoo! Answers and Answerbag have manipulated and created what those sites are. They are happy with the social forum where they can spout off whatever questions or opinions they have. Jacob Leibenluft says in the reading “A Librarian’s Worse Nightmare”:

“After all, while Yahoo! Answers and its peers are classified as reference tools, what they actually provide is social networking. ”

I agree with this statement.  Yahoo Answers and others like it should not classify themselves as reference tools. But I think, for the most part, they don't. Answerbag says it is “a community of people helping others.” 

I also believe there should be disclaimers on the reliability and accuracy of the information found on the site. Answerbag, on the "about us" page, warns users to be cautious of trusting the information found on the site. That’s great but would it hurt them to plug the library somewhere on the page? ;)

From my examination of social Q&A sites and library reference services I found that while at the surface they may look similar under closer inspection they provide very different services. Even so, they can inform each other. 

Social Q &A sites are more of a social networking service while online library reference service is a no nonsense reference service. Libraries have done a lot over the past few years to provide trustworthy reference service in a myriad of ways so users can choose what is most convenient and comfortable. Yet I believe many people don’t have librarian at the top of their list on who to consult for their information needs. There is still a lot of work to be done to promote the reference services librarians provide. Taking steps to make reference services more user-friendly like providing profiles and searchable archives may make library reference service more popular and successful. Social Q&A sites are good at what they do, providing a forum for users to share thoughts and opinions. They are not so good at providing accurate and factual information. Using librarians or other trained professionals as well as incorporating subject bibliographies could help with this weakness.

Session 4 Trust mechanisms

For the session 4 assignment I examined the trust mechanisms in place at two websites: couchsurfing.com and thisplaceiknow.com. Couchsurfing.com was mentioned in the reading by Massa and sounded right up my alley. And I chose thisplaceiknow.com for no other reason then I was looking for a travel-related site. The reading by Massa was easy to read and written in a language I could understand, which is slightly different from the readings from the Proceedings of the 42nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. These readings made me wish I paid more attention in the political science measures and analysis classes I took as an undergrad. A lot of it went over my head (I never knew friending a friend of a friend was formally called Triadic Closure Bias, LOL ( from Forming Social Networks of Trust to Incentivize Cooperation)) But back to the two websites.

Couchsurfing.com is a place where people can find free lodging. Everyone has a profile and it displays whether you are able to host travelers or maybe just offer a ‘coffee or a drink.’ Because offering your home to someone or entering a stranger’s home can be potentially dangerous, strong trust mechanism are essential for this site. There are such mechanisms in place. One is ‘vouching for.’ From the website: “When someone is vouched for, it signifies an elevated level of trust in the community. The only way to become vouched for is to be extremely trusted by someone who has been vouched for by three other members. You must know each other in the real world. If you are a trusted friend, the vouched member can vouch for you. Once you have been vouched for three times, you can in turn vouch for members you sincerely believe to be trustworthy . “ This may make things difficult for new members to get involved but couchsurfing has suggestions for new members: “Are you new to CouchSurfing and don't know any members just yet? Easy. Go and surf with someone, or host someone, or just meet someone in your hometown who has been vouched for three times. After they meet you and get to know you, they can vouch for you.” It may be a challenge to be vouched for but finding other users near you and spending time with them seems to be the easiest step. Of course this mechanism can be manipulated. Someone who has the ability to vouch can possibly be bought or corrupt in some way. A lot is dependent on the integrity of the users. One has to have faith that the majority of people are honest and not corrupt and the trust mechanisms work as they should.

Another way to evaluate the trustworthiness of a potential host or hosted is through their references. Here people can say whether they have met this person and describe their experiences with them, this includes whether they surfed with them or hosted them or are just friends with them.

One more way to determine whether a person is a psychokiller or not is through their friends. Each profile includes friends (if they have any). Included with pictures of "friends" is information like whether they have met face to face, the level of their friendship, how they became friends, as well as a small text contribution (optional).

Here's some pics from a random profile, I found most profiles have a lot of information. That's good because more information can lead to more trust and an easier and more accurate determination of who this person is.

The other site I examined was www.thisplaceiknow.com At this site people post reviews of different places all over the world (though it looks like the vast majority is in the US), it can be a restaurant, park, city, landmark, etc. As opposed to couchsurfer this site does not have extensive trust mechanisms in place. Getting advice on where to go is not typically approached with as much caution as sharing a roof but still some trust is involved. Often when I travel my time is limited, I am not able to see and experience everything so good tips on where to go are appreciated, and bad tips are frustrating. I believe the idea of this site is great but the reality of the site is not. There are few trust mechanisms in place, anyone with an email address can join and put whatever nonsense they like. As evidenced from this.

I will be removing this as soon as I find out how, I don’t want to mess up the site . Though I will be interested to see if someone catches it first and has it removed. After all there are now only 1402 places on the site, so if any administrators are monitoring new places added it won’t be hard to find.

Like couchsurfer.com and many other sites thisplaceiknow.com includes profile pages, which in a way is a trust mechanism. It is way to learn more about the real person behind the online screen name. At this site profile pages include "friends" and self-disclosed information about interests, hobbies, hometown, etc. The information listed is not nearly as extensive as at couchsurfing.com. There also seems to be more instances of tongue-in-cheek humor and goofing around. It’s hard to tell from the limited information provided if a given person has similar tastes and whether I would trust them for travel advice.

A lot of the findings of the readings are backed up in my examination for session 4.
The reading by Massa describes some differences between trust relationships in the real world and online. Two differences that occurred on the site couchsurfing.com were “explicitness and visibility of trust statements” and “disproportion in positive trust.” Disproportion in positive trust is particularly interesting to me. Couchsurfing.com states that there have been: "2,453,253 positive experiences, which is an incredibly high 99.802 percent of all member experiences!" Nearly 100% of experiences were positive. Do you think that is truly the case? Perhaps when a negative experience or a neutral but bordering on negative experience occurs people choose to not provide feedback. Perhaps there is fear of retaliation if you provide negative feedback. Such a proportion of positive feedback may lead you to distrust or suspect this particular trust mechanism. Luckily there are other mechanisms on the site that lessen the fears users may have with hosting or being hosted.

The reading by Eryilmaz, et. al. described trust issues in an emergency response information system. The study found that “Monrovia City EOC staff wanted to see some form of verification in order to trust the information posted.” Couchsurfers.com has a verification process that involves locking your name and making a donation using a credit card to verify your address, verification is optional and is another mechanism to build trust on the site. Another finding from this reading was that the different entities used their own terminology that was not understood by all entities involved. The study found the need for a common terminology. While I did not find an exact correlation there is the simple fact that human beings trust people that look, sound and act similar to them. If you view a profile with a lot of slang that you don’t understand that may lead you to bypass that person for someone more like yourself and therefore more trustworthy. (of course there are other variables on why you may or may not trust someone, life experience being one major one) Then again you could be a particularly brave person and more interested in “bridging”, if so you would likely pursue people with different views and backgrounds than yourself but that doesn’t necessarily mean you trust them more, right?

A mechanism for verification would certainly help the site thisplaceiknow.com. Currently there is no way to verify the information posted. I would recommend being able to “vote” on a posting as well as a profile. You can vote on whether a posted place or profile is helpful or not. This could help to weed out false or too little information. The reading Gleave et. al. explored the idea of social roles in online communities. I believe thisplaceIknow would benefit from leaders emerging and becoming key contributors. It is difficult to tell who is administrating the site and if anyone is working to filter out false information.

Overall I found the trust mechanisms of the site couchsurfing.com to be excellent and thisplaceIknow.com to be poor. At thisplaceiknow.com there are too few mechanisms in place and the ones in place do not elicit a great deal of trust. It should be noted however that iknowthisplace.com has much fewer users than couchsurfer.com. I think a lot more users and more ways to express trust statements would vastly improve the site.

In terms of a final project, gosh I'm having a hard time finding a topic. Earlier I expressed interest in looking at the differences between online relationships and offline, the differences in etiquette and how different are these relationships. I think that they are more similiar than many realize. Hmm, I'm still thinking about it. Maybe I can gain some inspiration from my classmates or join a classmate with a project. I'll keep you updated.

UPDATE on final project proposal 3/8 11:33AM:

I’m not sure if my proposal will be accepted because it veers a bit from the topics covered in the syllabus. For my final project I would like to explore Google Books (GB), it’s relationship with libraries and I would specifically like to address the way in which it “catalogues” the digitized books. (I am also taking cataloguing this semester and it’s always nice when you can put together what you’ve learned from other classes.) I imagine in my paper I will provide some background information on GB and its relationship with various libraries. Then I will examine the way GB catalogues, the metadata used. I will compare this to MARC and Library of Congress Subject Headings used in traditional “brick and mortar” libraries. I wonder if GB are using these standards. I will also examine what GB and traditional libraries can learn from each other regarding accurate and user-friendly information retrieval. In terms of research, I like the First Monday online journal, I did find one article regarding this topic there: http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/1972/1847 I will also search Library and Information Science Abstracts, scholarly cataloguing journals, as well as the always helpful big databases like Academic Search Premiere and Lexis Nexus. I will search Google Books information releases, I’m not sure how transparent they are regarding cataloguing, indexing and metadata. Finally I will examine online resources including blog posts, of course I will be careful with these sources, but I believe they can be helpful and can lead one to more scholarly and “trustworthy” sources.

Update 11:52 

I might have jumped the gun a bit on my proposal, I can see how this might not be appropriate for this class as there seems to be a lack of "social" involved. I guess I got a little excited because it is something I am interested in. So if this proposal is shot down my second proposal would be to examine user tagging in academic and public libraries. I would explore what it is, are any libraries currently doing it, what are the pitfalls, drawbacks. I guess the big question is "Is it worthwhile, should libraries embrace user tagging of library resources?" 

I would use the same resources mentioned above. 

Session 3: Answerbag

This week we were instructed to join the site Answerbag.com (AB) and challenged to fulfill at least 2 of 4 goals. I did complete two of these goals, I had a question rate over 40 points and I had another question which received 8 answers. My profile is here: http://www.answerbag.com/profile/?id=867962 I crafted the majority of my strategy to reach these goals by lurking and observing what was popular on the site. There were a few points from the readings which were influential in crafting my strategy and helped me to understand the AB community.

The article by Catherine Ridings and David Gefen found that most people “hang out” in virtual communities to seek information. Of course when reading this article I thought to myself how important the purpose of the site is to the reason why people join and participate. Ridings states that, yes, there was a difference in motivation for communities that are “centered on an individual’s freely chosen interest” versus “serious, and sometimes not so voluntary, life matters.” To understand AB and it’s purpose a little better I visited the about page. From the AB about page: “We're here to help you connect with others and to find and share knowledge about topics ranging from celebrity trivia and home cleaning tips to Russian name origins and particle physics.” I found it interesting that it says ‘share knowledge’, yes, knowledge was shared but more often than not opinion was shared. And opinion in particular I solicited to accomplish the goals set out for me. Though I should say it’s true that you can get answers on topics such as celebrity trivia, home cleaning, and particle physics. I asked questions on these topics and received helpful answers, the physics question took a little longer to get an answer but eventually it happened. Just out of curiosity, I did ask the question “Why are you on Answerbag.” Many said for fun while others mention knowledge sharing, you can see the question here: http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/1285003.

I was much more successful when asking opinion questions than simple straightforward questions. When I did answer a simple straightforward question no answers followed mine and I was awarded some points but not nearly 40. It seemed to me that people were on AB more for fun and laughs then to get real answers to serious questions. Given my experiences on AB I was surprised the Ridings and Gefen study found entertainment to be a relatively low motivator.

One of the readings which shed a bit of light on AB and helped in reaching the goal of a question with 8 or more answers or 40 or more points was the article “Using Social Psychology to Motivate Contributions to Online Communities.” The authors found that people will contribute more to online communities when they believe that their contributions will be unique. I tried to ask questions that could receive unique answers as well as give respondents an opportunity to express their individuality and personality.

Also interesting from this reading was the finding that: “individuals contributed when… they were given specific and challenging goals.” The use of levels and rank in AB capitalizes on this finding in a way. The more points you get the higher the level you are placed and your level and rank is there for everyone to see. (This also goes along with Proposition 6 and 7 from the Tedjalmulia article-

6-As group identity within a community increases, participation and contributions will increase. And

7-The more visible a person’s actions are to other community members, the more he or she will contribute and participate.)

I did not pay much attention to my level but I can see how some people can become obsessed. AB places a concrete and challenging goal in front of you by having different levels. I believe this use of levels and rank encourages people to keep coming back and contributing.

The article by Tedjalmulia and others discusses feedback and its positive effect on contributions. I tried to use this idea to help reach my goals but my results were mixed. AB allows feedback in the form of points as well as comments. I gave points away relatively freely as I hoped people would do the same for me. I also commented often on answers to my questions. I was hoping that this would help me gain points and get more answers. This was not always the case. In one particular instance I think my comments may have led the inflow of answers to come to a screeching halt. I had gotten a lot of responses, 11, quickly and I decided to thank everyone. Once I did this I did not receive any more answers. I can only speculate as to why and it may be coincidence but perhaps people who may have answered saw that I had commented and assumed I had received what I wanted and the topic was over. In some instances it seemed comments got me more points but I can’t be sure.

The paper by Schrock was interesting but not specifically helpful in reaching my goals on AB. Most of the findings described, including these:

"Extroversion and self–disclosure were positively correlated with the many–to–many and one–to–one clusters, and self–disclosure was correlated only with the many–to–many cluster. MySpace users were specifically more likely to be users of one–to–one as well as many–to–many technology clusters."

I did not find surprising. What was surprising was the gender differences found in the study. I guess I, and I believe others, still see the internet as dominated by white males.

A few of my own insights into AB:

There is a community there. There are a number of people who are what you could call heavy users. I found one comment thread that seemed to involve some of these heavy users. It is here: http://www.answerbag.com/a_view/5452121 I don’t know what they are talking about but they seem to have some familiarity with each other, I’m sure they see the same people over and over again.

I think a questioner’s level and ranking make a difference in the number of answers. I tried to mirror other questions that had received a lot of answers and points but I was not as highly successful. I also found an example of the same question asked with very different results. The question was: do you want to know the exact time of your death. Someone of high rank asked on Sept 26, 2006 (http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/77598); now I don’t know what their level was exactly at the time but looking at their points history it was sizable. Their question received 118 answers and got 43 points. Now someone else asked a similar question, “Would you want to know the date of your death, and how it happened?” (http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/603775) This was asked by someone at level 1 on Feb 17, 2008. It received 19 answers and 14 points. Perhaps people need to pay their dues and become more recognizable and trustworthy to gain the most responses and points.

While I am not likely to visit AB again, this was a fun exercise and helpful to gain an understanding of the motivations of people joining and contributing to online communities. These insights can be useful in my future professional life as a librarian.

Update Wednesday 2/18: This morning I had this message in my inbox "Good news, we have an answer to your question." No, not good news, not for me at least. A question I got 49 points on was rejected as a duplicate. Arggg. I understand why AB does this, the questions are always open, and this sets them apart from Yahoo Answers. (which was started after AB) Also, I'd like to note that I did not realize at the time that duplicate questions were rejected, I was not attempting to be unique only to get answers and points. Anyway, as far as I'm concerned I still accomplished this goal, I mean I had over 40 points as of 11:59 HST Sunday Feb. 15, ;).

Session 2

Galston’s piece was thought provoking and I agree with the vast majority of points made. One assumption he makes that I don’t necessarily agree with is:

“One of the great problems of contemporary American society and politics is the proliferation of narrow groups and the weakening of structures that create incentives for accommodation.”

I think narrow groups have always existed in America and America has only grown more integrated with time, from the efforts of the civil rights movement of the 60s to a new call for action for gay rights in the last few years. I don’t think narrow groups are the problem. America was very segregated in the past. Look at the Amish community who cuts themselves off from “English society.” Actually this reading made me think of Rumspringa. This is where Amish teenagers have the freedom to explore the world outside of the Amish community then they must decide whether to join the Amish community and become baptized or reject the community and possibly be banned from contact with their family members or other members of the community for life. This is a situation where the cost of leaving the community is very high and its no wonder that most choose to stay with the Amish. But this is an extreme example; there is no accommodation offered in this situation, it’s all or nothing.


Would Galston admire the Amish society? He admires the small town in Portugal he visited where he saw an example of what he views is a community.
His description of Portugal made me think of Dolceacqua, a very small village in Italy, where my husband spent a lot of time growing up and where we lived for three months. It was similar to the Portuguese town; a tight knit community where there is "mutual familiarity, stable social patterns, and shared experience." My husband often expressed the idea that in Dolceacqua you can’t stay mad at people for too long because you’re going to have to see them again day after day. Anyway, Galston states that a higher percentage of young people stay in this small community compared to other small towns in western Europe. Aren’t there other factors involved than personal choice? In Docleacqua the young people don’t stay because there are no jobs. It has little to do with the strength of the community. Necessities of life like lack of food, shelter, safety and stability can tear apart even the strongest held communities.


The short article by Weeks about a mother (jokingly) threatening to kill her child explored the idea of social responsibility on the web. I agree with this quote from David C. Evans:

"the full array of human tendencies — constructive, destructive, pro-social, anti-social, conservative and risky — to be expressed in social media, as they are in any other arenas of social life."

And while in many ways I agree with Professor BJ Fogg: “Text is an impoverished medium for communicating emotion, intent, real meaning." I also believe that the issue of social responsibility on the web is not much different from the real world.

Professor BJ Fogg is quoted as stating, “people will respond to people who sound like they are in trouble — online or off. That's just normal human behavior." I could argue that people are just as likely to not respond to people who sound like they are in trouble online or off. What about the Bystander Effect? There are numerous examples of people witnessing brutal attacks, rapes and even murders and doing nothing about it. The thought is that the more people are there the more the sense of responsibility is diffused, basically everyone thinks someone else will do something about it. One of the first cases of the Bystander Effect occurred in 1964, after the good-old-days Galston mentions of social life on the stoop in Chicago in the 1950s where everyone took care of everyone else. So did the bystander effect come about because of the loss of tightly knit communities in America, I don’t know? But I don’t believe that those people who tried to intervene in the Twitter case did so because they felt responsible as a member of a community, the community of human beings perhaps but not more than that.

So does the Internet strength community? This question was left unanswered and what I decided to explore. I joined the social network http://www.iseecolor.com/ I didn’t know a lot about it and the site doesn’t really explain itself or give itself a particular mission, I liked that. It also has a lot of active members. Here’s a screenshot of the home page.

As you can see there are different ways you can communicate, you can start a thread in a group, post comments on members walls or use the chat feature. Within twenty four hours of signing up I received three wall posts that were just advertisements, this was disappointing and I received one friend request from someone I don’t know. The groups section is where I had the most fun. Here’s a screenshot of some of the most active groups


The majority of them seem to be about sex. Going through these groups was good for a laugh; people were flirty, fun and funny and didn’t take things to an uncomfortable point. The Married People Issues Group was a group where members had the chance to voice an issue or concern and get feedback from others. This would seem to be a community building exercise so I focused on this group. There were people with (it appears but you can’t be sure) real problems asking for advice. I was uncomfortable commenting because I didn’t have any advice to give. I've never been one to give advice, it's just not part of my personality. Since it was part of the assignment to interact I forced myself and made a comment on an issue not so serious. Here’s a screenshot.


In terms of whether my interacting helped to answer my question of whether Internet strengthens community, I’d say no. It was much too short of a time period. I think if I posted a question or an issue to the Married Peoples Issues Group than that would have helped. But I was really not comfortable with posting a real issue I have and then announcing it to all of you nor was I comfortable with making an issue up. The majority of the people who commented were sincere and thoughtful in their replies and I didn’t want to deceive anyone. So, I mostly lurked. Did I see a community? In some ways yes, in other ways no, depends on how you define community (not another definition question I had enough of that last session☺). I think that the people who posted their issues appreciated the comments and gained some different perspectives, they seemed to walk away happy and a little more confidant moving forward. Here’s one example of the original poster appreciative of a commenter and updating everyone on what happened regarding their issue.

People are happy and a need was met, that’s great. Like Galston says “Online groups can fulfill important emotional and utilitarian needs. But they must not be taken as comprehensive models of a future society.” Duh, people will always need face-to-face interaction, and I don’t know anyone trying to stop that. When I think about the issues of social computing that have come up in our readings, social responsibility, narcissism, surveillance and the impact of inclusion or exclusion I see parallels in the real world, I don’t think these issues are truly as unique as they may seem. More and more this quote from the Weeks article rings true to me:

"People are people both online and offline, so although social media may change how we interact with others, it's unlikely to change core human concepts of friendship and community," says David C. Evans, founder of the social media research company Psychster Inc.
"The new media for social behavior is like a new volcanic island in the ocean that is being populated by plants and animals: Although there will be a slight evolution in how things look and act, the basic form will reflect its origins."

These issues have been examined and debated by psychologists and socialists for ages; social computing gives than more to talk about and a slightly different tint but at its core the issues are the same online or offline. Perhaps a question I’d like to explore for a final project is: are these issues truly unique to the social computing environment, I’m not 100% convinced.

Defining the term, is there a need?

Social computing is an umbrella term for technologies and virtual spaces that allow users to create, describe and share content, and for the communities that arise around them.

Is social computing a term for the technologies or for the act of using those technologies? The definition above seems to describe a noun where I see it as more of a verb. The way I interpret it is: social computing is an umbrella term used to describe the act of using the myriad technologies and virtual spaces that allow users to create, describe and share content. I also believe, for the most part, the term social computing and others term like it: social software, social networks, online community and Web 2.0 are all unnecessary. After all if there was truly a need for such a term wouldn’t one have been decided on by society by now. There is a term for wikis and blogs because one is needed. I believe that the ways people can “socially compute” are so different that a term to describe all of them, which may give the impression they are similar in some way, is wrong and unnecessary. Having a personal blog is vastly different than a band’s myspace profile or a wiki used at work. The only thing they have in common is they involve people interacting (social) on a computer (computing). Perhaps some believe that this one thing in common (interacting on a computer) is so influential that all the technologies can be compared and contrasted; that they are in the same species. I mildly disagree. Perhaps the same genus, but I think MUDs are a different species that a wiki used at work to explain the procedures to open the library.

The majority of our readings focused on one particular vehicle people use to “socially compute”. The exception is the article Sociology and, of and in Web 2.0: Some Initial Considerations which did give an outline of different technologies used.
It seems an article that tries to incorporate all the different technologies of social computing spends more time on attempting to define the term than on an actual examination of the technologies. However, I do believe there are similarities between some social computing technologies (like blogging and social networking) and that perspective and knowledge can be gained from comparing them.

The articles that focused on blogs I found particularly interesting as I myself have a personal blog. It is for family and friends primarily. It was a revelation to me that many bloggers “want readers but they did not necessarily want to hear a lot from those readers.” (p. 227) I never thought about this approach of blogging at arms length. I had to examine my own thoughts on readers commenting on my blog. I have always felt that I welcomed it and I liked it when readers did comment. However I have not received any negative comments, perhaps I would feel different if I were to receive a negative comment and would I allow it to be shown on the blog?, probably not.

In this class I am interested in exploring the different motivations people have for creating an online presence. I am also interested in the differences between interacting online and offline.