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.