Questions, Insights, Connections

Leave your question, insight, and/or connection for each class here. I don't expect this to be more than 4 to 6 sentences. Make sure it's unique to you. For example:

Here is my unique question (or insight or connection).... And it is signed. -Reagle (talk) 19:54, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Be careful of overwriting others' edit or losing your own: always copy your text before saving in case you have to submit it again.

Jan 13 Fri - Persuasion

I thought this article, "The science of persuasion" by Robert B. Cialdini was quite interesting. First, I didn't know that the basic six tendencies of human behavior when generating a positive response were, "reciprocation, consistency, social validation, liking, authority and scarcity." (pg.76) Putting all these things in a similar context makes sense, however, it all seems way more complicated than I thought. I always believed that people like to give and receive something in return, but I didn't know all these factors were a part of decision making.

I also thought it was interesting the fact that the number of people who donated to Disabled American Veterans organization basically doubled when they were offered a set of free personalized address labels, the conversion rate of nearly 50% seems extremely high to me, from 18 percent to 35 percent just for one silly present. It really makes me question how human beings and their brains work, most likely, many people that did choose to donate the second time around when the gift was offered did not even use the gift.

Social validation was one of the factors that best applies to me. Many time in New York we simply stop because many people seem to be looking at something. If you notice someone starring somewhere you immediately think, there's something to pay attention to and you proceed to do the same thing. This, along with all the other factors mentioned on this article that influence or persuade a person to say yes or to engage in a specific activity are factors that is very apparent in our everyday life -- and that is incredibly interesting. -Haivanessa (talk) 18:17, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

Haivanessa, good engagement with the text. Be careful of "X is interesting" (or "insightful" or "fascinating"), it makes for slack reading. Show me how it is so or start with a sharp quote, surprising fact, controversial statement, or something funny. -Reagle (talk) 17:29, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

Both "The Science of Persuasion" and the chapter on "Encouraging Contribution to Online Communities" in Building Successful Online Communities discuss various techniques to encourage people to take a particular action. Both readings summarize methodology that increases a person's likelihood to react or respond in a certain way. What I found most interesting about these readings is that they both include techniques that appear to contradict one another. In particular, the ideas that people are more likely to comply with requests from those who are similar to themselves, yet they are also more likely to comply with requests from people of authority. The article exemplifies a study where college students were more likely to give money to a solicitor if the solicitor mentioned that they were also a student. However, in the book chapter, a study is mentioned where students are more likely to respond to a survey if it comes from a professor (an authority) than if it comes from another student. With these examples, and with many of the other concepts for persuasion/encouragement, how can one decide which concept will be most effective for a particular situation? -Soperm (talk) 04:07, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

Soperm, nice contrast and good question; many people use A/B testing know to determine what's most effective. -Reagle (talk) 17:29, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

QIC #1: I enjoyed Chapter 2 in Building Successful Online Communities by Robert Kraut and Paul Resnick, as it focused on the motivation behind engagement in online communities. Design claims 3 (contributions increase when people are asked to complete tasks they're interested in) and 4 (contributions increase when individuals are asked versus large groups) were specifically interesting to me, particularly as they dealt with the more human aspects of motivation (Kraut & Resnick, 27-29). From my past co-op experience, I found that organizations often seek to identify and speak to the largest number of people possible; however, according to design claim 3 and 4, people are more likely to contribute if they are singled out and asked to do something they're interested in. In this reading, it seemed like combining a few (select) design tactics might increase efficacy. A question I'd like to explore further in class would be whether these design claims can be combined, and whether or not their efficacy changes when they are?

In addition, I was fascinated by "The Science of Persuasion" by Robert Cialdini. As I read the article, it became clear how often the six basic tendencies of human behavior are used in marketing campaigns, whether consciously or unconsciously (Cialdini, 76). I found consistency to be the most compelling out of the six behaviors, particularly because of the example Cialdini provides concerning the restaurant's reservation tactics: by encouraging public commitments, restaurant owners are able to motivate individuals to honor reservation commitments (Cialdini, 78). It was interesting to see how minor language changes can produce vastly different human motivational responses. EH9890 (talk) 20:16, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

EH9890 , good engagement and questions, be wary of "interesting" and remember to sign. -Reagle (talk) 17:29, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

Jan 17 Tue - A/B testing

What is A/B testing? That was my initial question. So, I first Googled it in order to have a general idea before reading the article. By what I understood, it's basically presenting two versions of the same web page to the same kind of people in order to find out which one works best.

This is quite amazing actually. I recently opened my own business so I think it's important to learn about this -- but my question is: how is it possible to create two different versions of the same website? Wouldn't two different pages needed to be created?

On the article. "The a/b test: Inside the Technology That's Changing the Rules of Business" by Brian Christian, I found interesting that by placing different labels into a button in which the end goal was the same (to get subscribers) the conversion rate would change to dramatically to 18.6 percent. I can see why "learn more" is a better button label than "sign up" because it assures that you're only asking for more information and not officially invested in the website.

After reading all these information, I get an idea of what A/B testing is. I don't know if it's the same but I've done a form of A/B testing when it comes to advertisements, but I don't actually understand how would it work with an actual webpage? How could I make two different home pages at the same time? Haivanessa (talk) 22:47, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

Haivanessa, I'll show a demo in class today. -Reagle (talk) 17:39, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

Same as Haivanessa, I had to double check what is the exact definition and purpose of A/B Testing. The A/B testing can also be referred as split testing, meaning that two versions of a website are created. By creating two versions of a websites helps to differentiate their pros and cons, which therefore provide facts of why one version is more user friendly, receives more click, sufficient, etc than the other version.

The article, "The A/B test: Inside The Technology That's Changing The Rules of Business", provides numerous examples of how A/B Testing is currently being used in business and tech worlds. But I would like to reflect on the particular example from the text: "...editors at a news site, for example, might have sat around a table for 15 minutes trying to decide on the best phrasing for an important headline, they can simply run all the proposed headlines and let the testing decide." I think by applying A/B testing towards finalizing decisions would be less time-consuming as well as more oriented towards what appeals to clients/users (e.g. catchy phrase in the title, more user friendly, etc.)

Haivanessa, in my opinion, the A/B Testing is used by creating to betas for websites, which therefore are introduced to a certain group of people (such as clients). Therefore, their testing results are analyzed and the particular version of a website is introduced to the public audience.

Etozzi (talk) 17:06, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Etozzi, I think that's how it started, but presently, on big sites, I suspect it is always happening. -Reagle (talk) 17:39, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

QIC #1

I also have to Google what A/B testing means before I start to read the article. After doing some research I found out that A/B testing is a fantastic method and marketing strategy to figure out web page performance by comparing two versions and look at the differences. The article got my attention by introducing it with a funny and interesting story about Dan Siroker, who tried to cut the enormous line by sneaking in a back entrance and lied about having a meeting. The author also gave a few examples of how effective A/B testing method is. In the article the author also talked about the fundamental rules of business and four principles of A/B testing, which are, choose everything, data makes the call, the risk is making only tiny improvements, and data can make the very idea of lessons obsolete. I really like the second principle because I agree on that the person at the top doesn't have to always be the one who makes the call.

Haivanessa, it is just my thought and pure opinion and I am not sure how exactly A/B testing works, but I think the company might create two redirecting URL for example if you click it from the ads from Facebook and look up from Google it has different URLs so they can track how people get into the two different web pages?

Ginachu1993 (talk) 20:53, 16 January 2017 (UTC)Ginachu1993

Ginachu1993, good specifics and glad you are numbering your QIC, don't lose track! -Reagle (talk) 17:39, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

QIC #1

I have vaguely heard about A/B testing before. This particular article explained it in terms of Google. It gives clear insight into the benefits of A/B testing for large corporations and suggests that it can better serve a company rather than decisions made by top management - HiPPO (Highest-paid person's opinion).

A/B testing is essentially a way to test different versions of the same web page to derive results that theorise the optimal design aspects of the page. A/B testing generates information to distinguish features/words/media that work better than others and draws more traction to the website, but the test does not explain WHY that is.

The author rules out the benefits of making decisions using intuition and vision, as done by Apple. I think A/B testing is a useful tool however, I value the power of intuition and the potential of a creative mind in producing innovative ideas that data and computers fail to contribute. I agree that the HiPPO should not be the only one making the decision, as this results in a biased opinion, nevertheless, a team of intellectual, creative personnel of varying ages should provide their opinions.

A/B testing is a great tool that can be used to support web design and other small changes to websites however, I feel that it should be used alongside traditional managerial decision making and it should not be used to replace it.

Vanishadans (talk) 02:06, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

Vanishadans, glad to see you are taking on the HiPPO vs A/B question. -Reagle (talk) 17:39, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

QIC #1

A/B testing is decently familiar to my knowledge. It is actually something that I have worked with a lot on co-op within marketing related efforts. I currently work at a SaaS tech company where I have experience within email marketing. As for A/B testing, we constantly test email subject lines in correlation with open and click through rate.

Most recently with my work I have played around with personalization tokens. For example a subject line I would test in order for a recipeint to download an e-book about increasing ROI would be, "7 tips to help [Insert company personalization token] increase ROI this month" vs. "How to increase ROI." In these efforts we have found that inserting an individuals name or company inclined them to click open the email at a higher rate.

Simiarly, asking questions can be compelling to test in A/B format. Take the example above - you may be more inclined to open an email with a subject line "How does can [insert company here]'s marketing efforts increase ROI?" vs "learn how marketing efforts go hand in hand with your ROI." Sperry21 (talk) 02:43, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

Sperry21, good to have folks with experience on this. -Reagle (talk) 17:39, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

QIC #2

This week's readings, a Wired piece by Brian Christian entitled, "The A/B test: Inside the technology that's changing the rules of business," a Wikipedia article concerning its fundraising campaign's A/B testing, and a piece by Dr. Reagle on Wikipedia, all centered on how the design and culture of online communities affects its ultimate success. Regarding A/B testing, I found Wired's introspective take on A/B testing a necessary critique of a prevalent tactic. While I was glad to learn about A/B testing as a whole and software that makes it easier for non-programmers, I was most intrigued by the concept proposed in the article that, while A/B testing makes marketing campaigns more effective, it could be curtailing true improvements in terms of the product or service. According to the piece in Wired, small changes do not always amount to a big change, and sometimes, the only thing that can save a business is a radical shift that cannot be accomplished through A/B testing. However, the article seemed to posit that A/B testing's prevalence could be dulling our ability to identify when this shift is truly needed. While it did continue on to mention that HiPPO's (highest paid person in the office) may be able to counteract this dulling of the senses as long as they're aware of the issue, I'd like to explore in class how someone knows when a major change is necessary. In addition, I'd like to discuss if the practical application of A/B testing can be accomplished in real life circumstances, as the article seems to think it's mostly, but not completely, impractical in this circumstance. EH9890 (talk) 04:31, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

EH9890, good and substantive engagement with and across readings. -Reagle (talk) 17:39, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

QIC #2 In the Wired article, "The A/B Test: Inside the Technology That's Changing the Rules of Business," it is mentioned that the abilities of A/B Testing and the success it helps foster has made it so businesses don't need to consider why a customer would choose A over B, because the data simply shows that A is preferred and the business can just go along with it. It raises the question: is attempting to understand the customer an obsolete practice? As long as programs like Optimizely test and determine the online designs and practices that lead to the most interaction, it seems there is no reason for the people in the company to know the human thought behind the interaction. They don't need to know reasoning to help them make future decisions, because they can just run A/B tests for those future decisions, as well. The one potential issue that the article addresses for relying on A/B testing is that it can cause companies to stick with testing many small changes, rather than risking one huge change. While there is a lesson for many companies to not get caught up in details and disregard big ideas, it seems that on a day-to-day basis, A/B testing small details can have a great affect on a company's success---as exemplified in the data on the Wikimedia page about the language for a fundraising banner. The customer's input makes a lot of difference but on a larger scale---as Henry Ford and Steve Jobs both acknowledged---sometimes it is up to the company to tell the customer what they want. -Soperm (talk) 04:58, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

Soperm, good specifics via Ford and Jobs. (BTW: speaking of an author, Brian Christian, is more active/direct than "it is mentioned") -Reagle (talk) 17:39, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

QIC #1 In the assigned reading "The A/B Test: Inside the Technology that's Changing the Rules of Business" by Wired, we learned about the history and use of A/B testing. It's interesting to see that some of my fellow classmates said that they Googled what A/B testing was as Google was one of the examples of A/B test users who benefit from it. A/B testing is the comparison of altered websites that use the reactions/responses (how many visitors, how long they stayed on the page, if they subscribed) as unknowing focus-groups to find the most successful version. I think this is especially important, because this testing not only tells you which version was more successful, but it is also able to measure in real metrics how successful or not a version is compared to a baseline version. For example, the black and white photo of the Obama family was 13.1% more successful that the default turquoise photo of just Barack. This entire method changes business models away from relying on "HiPPOs" or other assumptions. "Assumptions tend to be wrong" - Siroker. With this new way of testing web page variants, incorrect assumptions are filtered out and the users are choosing how they are marketed to best without even knowing it. Acosta94 (talk) 12:20, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

Acosta94, good details -Reagle (talk) 17:39, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

QIC #1 In the reading titled "The A/B Test: Inside the Technology that's Changing the Rules of Business" the part that stuck out to me the most was when the author mentions "the risk is only making tiny improvements." I like that they mention the fact that A/B testing has some limitations - one being that it is entirely possible companies could play it safe and not risk making big changes to their platforms in lieu of just making small gradual changes. This makes me wonder how it is possible to incentivize for larger changes using A/B testing? ChloeGendron (talk) 14:53, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

ChloeGendron, I'm not sure you can, you need HiPPOs, or maybe an AI program (ask me about AI and the game GO) -Reagle (talk) 17:39, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

QIC#1 In the Wired article titled "The A/B Test: Inside the Technology that's Changing the Rules of Business" I found lots of terms that I wasnt familiar with that helped me develop my overall understanding of A/B testing. I have heard and read about A/B testing before, and almost always relating to a buisness' strategy to develop and grow. What intrigued me was about the hierarchy of companies and how A/B testing could sometimes interfere with the "HIPPOs". The internal business dynamic between employees is a huge factor on a company's sucess. It was interesting to learn that the most powerful and recognizable companies out right now, such as Google have been at the forefront of A/B testing, dating back to the early 2000s. In a time where consumers are constantly changing what they are interested in, and what appeals to the norm of society, A/B testing should be a technique that all companies should understand and use to their advantages.Jared Fong (talk) 15:06, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

Jared Fong, I think most all companies do now, but perhaps they are overly reliant? (BTW: there's some typos in your prose.)-Reagle (talk) 17:39, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

QIC #1 At my first Northeastern Coop, I worked at a media-buying agency that often utilized A/B testing. While I did learn about the A/B testing and how to read the results to improve performance, I never truly learned the way in which these tests were affecting the company I worked for overall. The Wired article "The A/B Test: Inside The Technology That's Changing The Rules Of Business" said things that were both surprising and predictable. This Wired article says that many developers say, "that A/B has probably reduced the number of big, dramatic changes to their products" (Christian, 2012). At first this surprised me, given how often A/B tests are relied on by big companies that seem to be growing exponentially in popularity. However, I then thought of a common phrase I have heard through out the years: 'the bigger the risk, the bigger the reward'. In reality, the changes made through A/B testing are often extremely slight, in order to make users feel comfortable. Therefore, it really is not surprising that the use of the A/B tests is leading to companies making less and less big, dramatic changes. Taking a step back, I think it is important to realize that regardless of how one defines innovation, this Wired article sends a message about collaboration. It is important to recognize both the strengths and limitations of certain techniques, and to find a happy medium when making changes to better a company's future. This ties in with Wikipedia's collaborative culture, and the idea that people make sense of the world around them through a mixture of unique ideas and attitudes toward innovations. Halserena (talk) 16:49, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

Halserena, a nicely polished response! -Reagle (talk) 17:39, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

Jan 20 Fri - Gaming motivation

I thought chapter 2 of the book Building successful online communities: Evidence-based social design by Robert E. Kraut was intriguing because social psychology plays a large role in the formation of online communities, especially among social media platforms. In this chapter, Kraut found the roles of social sciences in the design of systems like mailing lists, discussion forums, wikis, and social networks, offering a way that behavior on those platforms might help us understand human behavior better. For example, many times, the way someone reacts towards something has a lot to do with their mental state and what is expected of them -- and not too much with the context of things.

My understanding of the main idea is that it takes more than one person to really create a successful community such as Instagram, Snapchat & etc., there are many hands are at work making such social media platforms famous today. I think a good question is - What counts as a successful community? As Kraut and Resnick's defines, success is "a common ground between the interests of platforms and the interests of individual communities. A successful community attracts people and maintains its size over time. Furthermore, to be successful, online communities need the people who participate in them to contribute the resources on which the group's existence is built." But one's definition of success is ambiguous -- so where is the line between global success and your own?

Haivanessa (talk) 20:53, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

Ch.2 of Robert E. Kraut and Resnick's book and your paper on Revenge ratings on Photo.net were both interesting reads. Your paper was especially intruiging to me because of my love for photography and for one of the most popular photo sharing apps Instagram . One thing that I found particularly interesting was the boundaries that have been drawn as far as critique editing is concerned between the two sites. Both instagram and Photo.net allow for image sharing and subsequent communication between artists and their viewers however the extent to which it is socially acceptable to edit another's photo's are vastly different between the two communities. In the older community (Photo.net) the only socially acceptable form of critique editing would be to re-crop a photo to share with the artist. On Instagram however a piece of original content can be completely altered to convey a different message for a different audience and while it may not be celebrated among the community it is certainly tolerated. I think this difference is representative of the boundaries (or lack thereof) in new online communities compared to some of the older ones.

NUrb93

QIC #2 --- Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.10.161.176 (talk) 22:18, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

On page 47 of Chapter 2 in Building successful online communities: Evidence-based social design by Robert E. Kraut I found Design Claim #17 very interesting. Kraut discusses how feedback - especially positive feedback - is motivational. This can come in many forms, even nonverbal. An example given in the chapter is that of a website called 43Things where people post personal goals and other uses can choose to encourage them by clicking the "cheer" button. It's interesting to see how this behavior also displays itself when individuals post photos on Instagram or a status on Facebook. The more "likes" they receive the more validated (motivated?) they might feel in how they display themselves to those in their online community. Since this feedback is given publicly, it makes me wonder how many people change their behaviors accordingly (post new types of statuses/photos) when negative feedback is given i.e. no likes, mean comments, etc. ChloeGendron (talk) 00:01, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

QIC #2 People are motivated through rewards. Time and time again this theory has been proven to be right. Chapter 2 from Kraut's book "Building Successful Online Communities" discusses this notion in detail. It gives the example of people being rewarded in gaming through social contact, by playing against other players, being in control and receiving feedback.

The textbook chapter and your article "Revenge rating and tweak critique" compliment each other on the messages in that they suggest that people get motivated on online communities such as Instagram or photosig.com, when someone likes or comments on their picture. The question that recurs in my mind is whether this motivates all Instagram or online platform users, and if so, is it a healthy means to be motived by?

The textbook chapter states that people's motives differentiate on the basis of their involvement in a community, their status, level of competence, etc. I agree with Reiss's sixteen motives theory to a large extent as it acknowledges that "different people value the different joys at different levels."

I often think whether we as millennials give too much importance to our interactions with people online, and whether these interactions carry any weight or significance in the "likers" or "commenter's" lives.

Vanishadans (talk) 00:25, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

QIC #3

Motivation can be inspired intrinsically or extrinsically but, in either case, there is a "sweet spot" of rewarding action and behavior. Chapter 2 in Building Successful Online Communities explores the ways in which a person can be motivated intrinsically and extrinsically. Kraut and Resnick focus on four types of intrinsic motivation: social contact, optimal challenge, mastery, and competition. Online communities and games can utilize these four motivations to encourage people to continue to interact, post, or play on their site. For example, games can set clear goals and offer feedback when a goal is completed. These, ideally, will make a person feel fulfilled and confident. What I found most interesting is that the effect of over-rewarding---setting goals too low or offering excessive and insincere feedback---negatively affects motivation just as much as under-rewarding. The same goes for extrinsic motivations, such as monetary rewards. However, for extrinsic motivation, over-rewarding may lead to people "gaming" motivation. People will fulfill requests with minimum effort to receive the reward, which does not help the people or the site that is attempting to motivate participation. Also, attempting to offer extrinsic motivation can diminish a pre-existing intrinsic motivation. Wikipedia functions as a site where intrinsically motivated people can contribute. If Wikipedia were to start offering monetary rewards to contributors, the amount of people contributing may stay the same or go up, but Kraut and Resnick's chapter suggests that the quality of the posts would significantly decrease. --Soperm (talk) 05:00, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

QIC 2:

Today's society revolves around how we are seen by others and how it can benefit each one of us. Chapter 2 of Building successful online communities: Evidence-based social design by Robert E. Kraut and Paul Resnick, discusses the issue of 'gaming' which therefore 'motivates' people to do certain things. These 'certain things' are activities, hobbies, or random actions that a person does on the daily basis. Anything we do or post in public, is reviewed by others. The textbook addressed such action as the social contract, which means that we compete for power with others around us and therefore receive support (such as popularity through likes, sharing, comments, etc) as well as popularity.

Chapter 2 discusses an example of Sermo, which is an online community for doctors. The site is dedicated for doctors to post their experiences and case consults, in order to receive opinions of other doctors through the use of survey polls. Based on the personal experience, when I finish to read an article, I ignore to take any surveys, which serve as a reflection of an article. Although, we would think that people who are called 'doctors' would be dedicated and feel responsible for contributing to the studies of others, but as this example shows - we are wrong! The reading stated: "In order to encourage physicians to respond to polls on the site, some of which come from outside parties, physicians were offered monetary payments for responding to those polls. The rewards seemed to influence a few doctors to game the system in the first few months that it was in operation." People are willing to do work as long as he or she will be rewarded for the completed work.

Unfortunately, today's society 'tells' us that nothing can be done for free. If you make a Facebook post or upload a photo on Instagram, other user should recognize and like it. if we do something then our work should be recognized by others, therefore we will recognize the work of others. Unfortunately, this is the truth - being recognized is becoming an 'addiction', which is motivating us to do more. Etozzi (talk) 16:13, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

QIC #2

Chapter 2 concentrates on what motivates people to do something they normally may not do. Something I found most appealing in this chapter was Enhancing the Expectancy Value of Group Outcomes. This sections talks about how people will be more willing to contribute to an online community if they believe what they are writing has an impact on the success of the group. I think this is especially important because when companies have online platforms they use, it can be hard to get employees to get involved. Additionally, when someone is new to a space it can be intimidating to just start contributing.

How do we encourage these two different types of people to contribute? Chapter 2 suggests that the collective effort model is a solution. Another suggestions was to cap the number of users such as in a group chat- I believe this falls into the Scarcity section of persuasion. This is because since less people have access to a group or a chat, it makes it more desirable and people will want to be a stronger influence in the group. For some people this may also be one of the four intrinsic motivators "social contact" or even "competition", since they want to be in the group chat to contact other people as well as the competition to make it into a small, possibly selective, group.

This chapter essentially is teaching us how to approach people to convince them that they want to do whatever it is you want them to do. Sometimes the motivators are obvious, but sometimes it seems to be manipulation. Is it less fair if a person isn't aware? - Acosta94 (talk) 16:26, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

Acosta94, motivation via manipulation: as you suggest, transparency; also, is the subject acting in their own interest? Or does that just punt the question? -Reagle (talk) 17:49, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

QIC #2: This half of Chapter 2: Encouraging Contribution to Online Communities had me very confused. Time and time again this chapter made me think of exclusivity and its interaction with many of the design claims. Design Claims 23, 33, and 34 all seem to present the idea that rewards and exclusivity of thought will motivate people to contribute more to online communities. I think that the ideas of these three claims make a lot of sense, and that people do like feeling like they will be rewarded for ideas, and that their ideas are unique when in an exclusive group. That said, I think design claims 16, 22, and 35 are saying the opposite of this. These three design claims are saying that people react well when they have social contact with other contributors, they receive comparative feedback, and they see others making similar contributions to their own. These claims also make sense to me, as people like feeling the support of a community and similarity to those around them. How, though, does one differentiate between peoples desire to feel like they are a part of something exclusive and peoples desire to feel like they are in a tight knit community? Each of the design claims make sense on their own, which makes me feel like certain online communities decide on their own individual motivators as well. Regardless, the opposition between the design claims I discussed still make me question what people are truly motivated by. Halserena (talk) 17:05, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

Halserena, could you not feel like you are in an exclusive groups of like minded people? Wouldn't this be stronger than an exclusive group of dissimilar people? Both can overlap, sometimes strengthening sometimes weakening. -Reagle (talk) 17:49, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

QIC #1: I found both Chapter 2 of Kraut and Resnick and Professor Reagle's piece on Photo.net very interesting to read within the context of our class. While I was reading Professor Reagle's piece, I was reminded of a newer online/mobile photo sharing platform called VSCO. I've known about VSCO for a while now, but I didn't think much of it until it was brought up in a meeting I attended while on my last co-op at New Balance. My team was thinking about integrating the platform into a future marketing campaign. According to its website, VSCO is "an art and technology company empowering and inspiring people everywhere to create, discover, and connect". The idea behind it is that everyone should be able to post original content without the pressure associated with peer critique. In that way, it contrasts sites like Instagram, which place a huge emphasis on ratings and rankings. With VSCO, photos can't be "liked" or commented on, which eliminates the idea that peer evaluation needs to be quantified. I think this begs the question: what specific purpose do individuals have for posting content on public platforms? Is it a means of self affirmation or is it purely expressive? -Marinamano (talk) 18:13, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

Jan 27 Fri - Kohn on motivation

In this paper Kohn argues that offering rewards with the goal of persuading someone to get good grades, do good work or act in certain manner does not work because of many reasons such as -- pay not being a motivator, which for some might not be a problem but in the long run people do tend to do better work if they are getting paid.

As Kohn mentioned, encouraging people to compete for rewards causes them to see each other as rivals, which potentially can get in the way of good work getting done and when the rewards stop, the progress can backlash, causing people to perform poorly as a sign of protest.

There are many other reasons why Kohn thinks rewards has a negative effect rather than a positive effect. I've never heard of Patreon, but I do think what they offer is in fact really unique because rather than you be competing against other people, you're competing for yourself, so if your work is good, it might get funded. Unlike this website called viewbug.com that has different contests where people compete against each other to win different prices. The problem is, only one person wins and at many times it ends up being discouraging because there's way too much to compete with. Patreon in a way changes that because it gives everyone a chance to showcase their art without competing against each other; considering that photography is a unique art Patreon allows it to have a true influence over people and that determines if they invest or don't, whereas Viewbug most of the times don't showcase your photo because there's just not enough engagement so you don't really feel like you're getting a fair chance.

Haivanessa (talk) 01:34, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

QIC #3

On page 68 from the Kahn reading, "Cutting The Interest Rate: The Fifth Reason Rewards Fail" the author describes Intrinsic motivation, which he describes as "enjoying what one does for its own sake." In the Whitacre article under the "Backwards" header, he explains that Gittip targets users who "act out of intrinsic motivation." I think that doing something because you genuinely want to do that thing and receive genuine happiness from the action is vital to living a successful life. Even with doing trivial everyday tasks I think that it is important to act out of intrinsic motivation.

If Extrinsic motivation happens because the individual is seeking external rewards (praise, good grades, money, etc.) then why is it that the users of Gittip are intrinsically motivated, when money is the main factor? The users are dependent on it to pay their bills, the sheer essence of this is extrinsic. What, aside from money, are they getting from this community? Later in the Whitacre piece he discusses how the Gittip community is "healthy and full of trust" but I think I'm having a hard time understanding this online community. We can see that these relationlike ships are powerful enough to resolve resentment, but what relationships are these? Are the relationships online and offline? Did they begin on one then move to the other? - ChloeGendron (talk) 00:53, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

QIC #1

For this chapter, I would like to make a connection to Kohn's paper from the "real world". Kohn's argument was that extrinsic motivators or rewards such as pay for example is not always the best way to motivate people, and that it actually does not always work in the motivators favor.

Reading Kohn's paper I could not stop linking to a business class I took in my sophomore year in Northeastern, which covered a lot about motivation, and especially motivating employees. We learned in this class that just like Kohn argued using "pay" as a motivator or reward does not work when motivating your employees, however an interesting finding was that when motivating physical labor employees, the money reward proved to work. There was an increase in productivity whenever the pay reward increased. And that is because rewards are very similar to punishment meaning using them actually affects the employees emotions and cognitive behavior, causing them to stress. This does not affect physical labor employees, as they do not use a lot of brain and emotional work while preforming their tasks.

However this research showed that when motivating employees that used a lot of thinking and brain labor in their jobs, the money reward actually caused their performance to drop significantly due to the stress the reward causes. It has the same affect as telling the employees that if they do not complete their job they will be punished. Which causes them to preform poorly.

The best way to motivate office employees was to actually make sure that they are financially stable and comfortable, and that they feel no need to seek extra pay, when that is accomplished employees preform better as there financial fears are out of the way causing less stress to their lives. Salmanbinsultan (talk) 01:01, 26 January 2017 (UTC)salmanbinsultan

QIC #2

Kohn's main argument in "Cutting the Interest Rate: The Fifth Reason Rewards Fail" is that rewards and punishments (extrinsic motivators) are proven to be less successful than intrinsic motivators at motivating people. The idea is that people with intrinsic motivation (coming from within oneself) "pursue optimal challenges, display greater innovativeness, and tend to perform better under challenging conditions". Kohn references several studies that worked to prove that extrinsic rewards negatively affect intrinsic motivation, and that while effects of rewards do last, the effects are the opposite of what we want. I've decided to apply these ideas to my experience working as a server at Barcelona in the South End. While working there is incredibly fun and intrinsically rewarding, there are times when extrinsic rewards and punishments are put into practice.

For example, there will be times throughout the night when a manager decides to implement a contest for all of the servers on shift. They'll announce that those who can sell the most of x tapa will receive some type of monetary reward. While enticing as that sounds, I know that realistically I will not win because I have a lot of experienced coworkers. This affirms what Kohn discusses on page 80 about competing against other people. He shares that "when success is turned into winning, an outcome available to only one person, by definition--the consequences include a drastic reduction in interest. And it's true! Instead of motivating me to win, this impromptu contest only serves to take a backseat on my list of priorities because I know I will not.

The second example I can think of is more of a punishment type of extrinsic motivator. Recently, we were informed that we would all have to take a proficiency test to ensure that we are all well-educated on Barcelona and its culture, products, service, etc. We were told that if we did not pass the exam, we would be taken off the schedule for the following week. My coworkers and I were stressed and started cramming information only to be able to regurgitate it later. In retrospect, I think this was an extremely unsuccessful technique. Instead of inspiring us to learn about Barcelona's culture through intrinsic motivation (i.e. learning about our wine list simply because it's interesting to us), we had to memorize otherwise useless facts. In the end, we did OK, but I don't think much of what we learned stuck, and it certainly did not make our work more interesting.

I'll conclude with what Kohn says on page 88-- that "extrinsic motivators have the capacity to reduce interest not only in the task itself but in the strategies we might use to brighten the task", which I think perfectly exemplifies my time working at Barcelona. I love working there because of the intrinsic reward it gives me, and not simply because I am paid or rewarded. Marinamano (talk) 22:25, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

Marinamano, (QIC #2) The same ideas rang true to myself upon reading Kohn's article, "Cutting the Interest Rate: The Fifth Reason Rewards Fail." Whenever I discuss motivations based upon rewards and punishments I immediately think to the workplace and my experiences as a Northeastern co-op. Typically I like a reward system as I believe it motivates me to do "better" work or work to my best of capabilities. However, extrinsic motivations, in certain circumstances, can do the opposite - which is one of Khon's main arguments. One idea that came to mind was actually the overarching idea of being a co-op. At my co-op, there are over 1500 people I work with. My job requires me to work with the sales team a lot where there are many intrinsic motivators that prompt sales teams to sell more. My company offers 1000 dollars to the top sales rep every month. Being associated as a co-op has its own downfalls. I often times think that I feel much less valued than full time employees and always feel the same way you do at Barcelona - that there is competition that is far greater at selling than me. Because of this, I do not have an intrinsic motivation to actually keep up with those selling around me because frankly, I think there is no shot I would win that money. However, much like the marker case Kohn explains, I feel like I can sell our product much better with less pressure and rewards, because i actually WANT to and feel self rewarded when I do make a sale. This is similar to how the kids felt that were not given a certificate to draw with markers, and also to how you felt with your competition at work. Sperry21 (talk) 17:51, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

QIC #3

In his article, Kohn argues that extrinsic motivators result in loss of interest in a task. He supports the argument that intrinsic motivation sustains interest. Kohn refers to extrinsic motivation in contexts where people gain rewards for completing a task. Intrinsic motivation is when one is sincerely interested in carrying out a task.

His findings were surprising, as in many situations, it is assumed that when people are given rewards they will be more motivated to carry out a task. For example, in teaching, teachers usually provide students with a "gold star" or another form of incentive for completing homework or answering a question in class. The same goes for the grading system, in which people get rewarded a grade in return for their academic work.

He suggests ways to encourage intrinsic motivation, one being to let subjects decide their own rewards, another to provide a reward that is similar to their current one. For example, the reward for reading a book is another book, instead of a chocolate bar.

Kohn's arguments seem convincing, I can relate them to many of my personal experiences. However, I feel that everyone's reasons and reactions to rewards are subjective and cannot be generalised. He talks about differences in reactions in people who have been raised in an upper class, middle class and lower class household. He found that people in lower class households value rewards more and are likely to complete work for extrinsic motivation. But, are they likely to complete work at their optimum level? Or are they just getting by to gain the reward?

Vanishadans (talk) 02:14, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

QIC #1

In Alfie Kohn's work, Cutting the Interest Rate: The Fifth Reason Rewards Fail, he argues that extrinsic motivation is inferior to intrinsic motivation when trying to get someone to do a task. He explains that, "If our goal is quality, or a lasting commitment to a value or behavior, no artificial incentive can match the power of intrinsic motivation," (p. 68). This 'power of intrinsic motivation' he's referring to can be better explained as the will to do something for one's own enjoyment. Kohn argues that intrinsic motivation will not only outweigh extrinsic motivation, but will also produce better performance from the one being motivated. He references one research study that furthers this point and concluded that, "Intrinsically motivated people function in performance settings in much the same way those high in achievement motivation do: They pursue optimal challenges, display greater innovativeness, and tend to perform better under challenging conditions," (p. 69).

One part of Kohn's text I found particularly interesting was when he discusses an experiment that was conducted in a Head Start classroom. In the experiment, preschoolers were given the opportunity to draw with Magic Markers in their classroom. Some of these students were told that if they drew pictures they would receive a special certificate and some of the students had no knowledge of the certificates. The study observed these students over a two week time period and concluded that the students who were told they would receive the certificates became less interested in drawing with the Magic Markers than those who had no idea of the certificates. The results of this experiment further proved Kohn's argument of the power of intrinsic motivation, as the students who did not know of any reward continued blissfully using the markers while those who then came to expect the reward grew disinterested. It also highlighted his argument that extrinsic rewards reduce intrinsic motivation, or that people loose interest in something when they are going to be rewarded for doing it.

Sabbatessa (talk) 02:59, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

QIC #1: Kohn's chapter talks about rewards and punishment and he argues this by giving an example of extrinsic and intrinsic motivators. To put it in simple form, Kohn says that extrinsic motivation occurs when people gain external rewards such as money, praise, fame, etc... While intrinsic motivation are internal rewards, so the motivation you get when you set yourself a goal to complete a task and it's accomplished.

I enjoyed the reading as it was a reassurance that rewards still happen whether it's male/female, adult/child, everyone likes to get rewards even for the smallest matters. I can relate to a lot of his arguments with my own personal experience but one example I liked that he shared in this chapter was on the study with the yogurt fruit drink.

Leann Birch is the researcher and her colleagues took a group of children and got them to drink a fruity yogurt drink that they have never tasted before. Three groups were made, some were handed the entire glass with nothing else, some received a praise after finsihing it such as "oh you finsihed the entire drink good job" and some were given a free movie ticket for drinking it. The prediction was made that children that are getting a praise or something out of it, consumed more of the yogurt fruity drink. This goes to show that if a reward is satisfying enough and if it's something worth doing anything for, people are more likely to do it. Drinking a yogurt drink for a free movie ticket is an attractive offer, which is why a lot of people are more likely to drink the yogurt drink whether they like it or not. What the researcher found out is those who liked the beverage didn't actually get a reward, but those got a reward found the beverage "less appealing".

I feel that everyone reacts to rewards in their own way but at the end of the day the same conclusion can be drawn out that people like rewards. He also talks about rewards in people's classes so lower, middle, and upper class households, and what he found out was intriguing and that is people in the lower class seek rewards and value them not for themselves but for the external factors. (e.g. money). And he says that "one time reward for doing something you used to enjoy can kill your interest" so in a way they are killing their own interest to gain somThing for a extrinsic motivation. But, do people constantly do things that "kill their interest" just to get money (extrinsic motivation)? (e.g. people in sedentary jobs, if they have skills why don't they just quit and do something they like, versus something that makes them miserable?)

Anchalvasandani (talk)

QIC #4

In his article "Resentment," Chad Whitacre, creator of Gittip, suggests that his website is not like other doomed "Effort for Payment" strategies but is in fact the opposite. Developers first create and release open-source software, and then they are paid. But according to Kohn in his chapter, "Cutting the Interest Rate: The Fifth Reason Rewards Fail," introducing a reward, after someone already engages in an activity for no reward, will ultimately cause the person to lose interest. Kohn uses the examples of Mark Lepper's studies of preschool children who enjoyed using Magic Markers. The children first used Magic Markers, were offered a reward for using the markers, and then were shown to later have less interest in using Magic Markers than they had before the reward experiment. This suggests, therefore, that those who enjoy creating open-source software for free will lose their interest in sharing free software. This would occur under the (likely) condition that the reward income from Gittip for a developer goes down. With a steady stream of reward/income, it is possible that the developers would perpetually continue to share their open-source software. However, if donators to Gittip end their monthly payments, the reward would drop and, as Kohn makes evident, the developers' interest in creating would decrease. --Soperm (talk) 05:52, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

QIC #3

This week's readings focused on the work of Alfie Kohn, specifically Cutting the Interest Rate: The Fifth Reason Rewards Fail. The piece concerned itself with motivation, and discussed the relationship and effects of extrinsic motivations, such as rewards, on intrinsic motivation factors. Kohn spent considerable time providing ample examples of research studies that focused on how providing individuals with rewards decreased their overall productivity. The examples provided, such as those concerning children and coloring tools, exemplified the process in an easily understood way. Kohn discredited age, sex, and race and social class as influencing factors on the outcome of reward centric behavior, with the caveat that not a lot of specific studies had been conducted just yet. The connection drawn between this behavior and human's instincts to remain in control of their own situations resonated strongly; as someone that has worked in professional environments, creating reward systems or implementing strict deadlines have, in my personal experience, created a strong sense of dread concerning the project, which parallels Kohn's reasoning. The strong focus on intrinsic motivation throughout the piece creates an understanding that the best way to motivate individuals is to play to their intrinsic goals and minimize the damage caused by rewards by offering them after the task has been completed, keeping them from being too obvious, or to parallel the rewards as close to the desired behavior as possible, among others strategies. My question concerning Kohn's work centers on how it is applied in practical work environments. What would some of his solutions to the rewards problem look like, and are there any studies that identified how productive they were? EH9890 (talk) 06:18, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

QIC #1

In Kraut Chapter 5, something that stood out to me was Design Claim 4, which stated, "Making it easy for users to share content from a community site... will increase the visibility of the community..." I was able to connect this design claim to a friend's current situation. Right now, she is searching for 2 new roommates sign onto her lease for next year. She needs to find the new tenants by the end of the month, or else her landlord will begin showing the apartment, and she will likely be forced to move. She posted the listing for the apartment on a number of housing groups, but didn't get many responses. She was confused because the apartment was nice, the rent was reasonable, and it was in an optimal location.

So, she asked me to take a look at the listing. I realized that the problem was that she had posted a link to the Northeastern Housing website, which makes students sign in. This was extra effort that many were not willing to extend. Ideally, she wanted a number of applicants to choose from, but had barely gotten any. That was, until I posted the same exact entry directly to the Facebook group, so that the pictures and text were immediately visible. The problem hadn't been that nobody was looking for an apartment, or that hers was subpar, it was that the process of looking at her listing required too much effort. To draw the connection back to online communities, one can conclude that when the goal of a group is attracting newcomers rather than exclusivity, it is in the group's best interest to create as few barriers to entry as possible. Angeladav (talk)

Angeladav, did you read the wrong thing for today? -Reagle (talk) 21:14, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

QIC #3

The three main readings this week worked in tandem to discuss the way in which extrinsic motivators are shown to devalue intrinsic motivation and natural interest in certain subjects and actions. Kohn's Chapter 5 immediately reminded me of a discussion I recently had in my advocacy writing class about schoolwork and the tendency to procrastinate. These readings answered a question I often asked myself - "Why do I procrastinate?" I have been fortunate enough to enjoy most of my classes at Northeastern University and to have a genuine interest in the subject matter. That said, looking back, I have definitely felt a decline in interest in certain things when I am being graded or tested as an outcome.

To learn that extrinsic motivators lead to decline in intrinsic motivation did not surprise me at all, and the more I read the more the argument made sense. I was constantly reminded of moments in my own life where I had been motivated to complete something to receive a reward of some sort, whether it be at a Girl Scout meeting or at a swim meet. What's the harm? That's what I used to think...until reading Kohn's Chapter 5. I was shocked and upset when Kohn began discussing the vicious circle and long term effects of extrinsic motivators on intrinsic motivation and natural interest. Kohn explains that "as rewards continue to co-opt intrinsic motivation and preclude intrinsic satisfaction, the extrinsic needs...become stronger in themselves" (83). This whole discussion made me realize that this reward system can truly become an addiction, and affect the reasons that people decide to take action in any area of life. These extrinsic motivators can affect not only the way people affect a task, but even how people affect and treat one another (Kohn, 77). To think that a procedure so relied upon in society can hold so much power over people's motivations is scary.

This weeks readings made me think of my own motivations as an individual, especially when it comes to social media. I tell myself that I post a picture because I like the quality of my photography, but is that truly the case? So many social media applications today revolve around the idea of posting something for some type of reward, whether it be a like, retweet or favorite. I am wondering whether or not the social media platforms of todays generation are inhibiting peoples intrinsic motivations when it comes to socializing with peers? In that case, we should be worried about the future of individuals ability to communicate and socialize with one another when there is no reward motivating them to do so. Halserena (talk) 17:08, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

QIC #3

Alfie Kohn describes the motives for behaviors in his work "Cutting the Interest Rate: The Fifth Reason Rewards Fail". He approached this not as 'do this and you'll get a reward' rather he waited until after something was done to reward. There is a lot of talk through the Kohn reading and even in this thread about intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation, as we've already learned about from a previous reading. However, how can you really determine if something is intrinsic? If someone believes they might get a reward, wouldn't that seem to motivate them intrinsically even though they have not been promised anything?

In the reading "Resentment", the author speaks about Gittip and its flaws. Gittip is a way to give cash to other people once a week and it is suppose to have no strings attached. The author of "Resentment" argues that this is not a reward-based system as the action happens before any reward is promised. This is similar to one of the Kohn experiments. Something that specifically stuck out to me was when the author said "There are two gifts on Gittip...the money on Gittip is the second gift, a reciprocal gift, given in view of the first. This ties directly to what we have been talking in about in class as to what makes someone do something. Coming back to my original question, is it considered intrinsic or extrinsic motivation if a person believes they may be rewarded for an action they otherwise may not do even though they have not been promised? -Acosta94 (talk) 17:01, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

Acosta94, as long as the motivation comes from outside (even if it is conditional, like a lottery) it is extrinsic. It is intrinsic when, if the person left to their own devices would do it. -Reagle (talk) 21:14, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

Jan 31 Tue - Relational commitment

QIC #3 - In today's society, reading comments within online communities is all too familiar as the world has become populated with hundreds of different forms of social media and online content. In fact, in his chapter, "The Bottom Half of the Web," Joseph Reagle describes the element of "intimate serendipity" as being a major factor in this digital driven, social commenting world. Reagle explains this term by saying, "people do relocate when an existing platform becomes overly populated by jerks, spammers, and ads or overly constrained by controls and filters. People often want a network where intimacy and serendipity are possible." This quotation got me thinking about my migration from Facebook to Instagram.

Facebook used to be my social media platform of choice (much like Reagle discusses about Twitter's popularity). Now-a-days I tend to think that Instagram is my favorite platform. I believe this explanation has to do with intimate serendipity. Facebook now appears to be a place where spam exists and people try to manipulate the web through stories, chain spam, gaming, and even false identities. As your Facebook friends begins to grow, you feel more like a little fish in a big pond, and less intimately connected to your network. On the other hand, I like to believe that Instagram has a more intimate setting where I find myself with less of a "friend" following. Similarly, because the social platform only allows pictures and videos, I feel as if it is less inhabited by those trying to gossip and spam. In fact, when Reagle mentions, "Although there are sites where being anonymous and a jerk is the norm, many people want to express their authentic selves without fearing attacks, manipulation, or unusual exposure and while remaining open to things that surprise and delight," I think that Instagram correlates most with that statement. In particular, comments are less intrusive as on Instagram you are not restricted to a certain character limit, but there is a time where the UI will cut off some text. I think this also has to do with Instagram's unwritten "social norms," where as places such as Facebook and Twitter are more text-driven and intrusive.

Overall, I resonated most with Instagram when thinking about "intimate serendipity." Feeling more connected with your followers as well as finding yourself in a place that is less populated by spammers, intrusive comments, larger comments, and more individuals is something I didn't realize is important. But looking at my social patterns evolving over the past few years I have began to think that in such a digital era, where millions of people are on their computer everyday, feeling a sense of identity backed by an intimate following of smaller groups gives me a sense of social purpose - where my opinion (or comment) matters. Much like Reagle concluded, "Online comment is reactive and short'"... It is to only question if social platforms will get bigger as we have more digital outlets and applications, or if people, such as myself, will start resonating more with smaller networks and groups - making commenting more meaningful. Sperry21 (talk) 00:43, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

QIC #3

Robert E. Kraut and Paul Resnick discussed three types of commitments that exist in online communities: affective commitment, normative commitment, and need-based commitment. These commitments can be described as having a personal connection to a particular group, a group's member, or the same beneficial goal. We join and make contributions to enrolled online communities, in order to connect and share similar experiences, help one each other, find answers, and benefit in the long run. By committing to a group, we sense a feeling of obligation to keep up as well as to make improvements and impact on a certain topic/issue, in order to achieve the same short or long term goals. We tend to commit to a group when it is unique and our needs are satisfied. Commitment to a group means that there should be a routine of contribution from its members, and on going conversation (such as sharing experiencing, facts, advices, etc). When these factors are met then our needs are filled. Once the routine is broken, a group's members will loose their interest and the commitment will be lost.

As Joseph M. Reagle Jr. stated in "The Bottom Half of the Web": "The online activity of masses of ordinary people might display the wisdom of the crowd or collective intelligence." Many online communities operate differently, but the most common style is to post images and photos, therefore to allow the group's members to make comments. As Reagle said: "Comment is communication, it is social, it is meant to be seen by others, and it is reactive: it follows or is in response to something and appears below a post on a blog." By having the right to comment in online communities, we provide our opinions and emotions in regards to something we feel passionate about. An action of making a comment in social medias means to provide your impact and commitment to a certain topic. Nowadays, we are being introduced to numerous online communities within social medias, which give us options of communicating, stalking, and observing each other or events on the daily basis. We share the same interest of learning and hearing facts about what someone did or what happened somewhere. Social media platforms make us addicted, and therefore 'committed' to the online communities that we are a part of. Etozzi (talk) 01:29, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

QIC #2

The connection I want to make for this QIC is to Professor Reagle’s article about “comment”. Comments are increasing becoming a way of online communication to our generation, and not just because we comment on each other’s posts, but also because people can see what others are commenting on and what they are saying about it. Another thing that is increasing in online communities is filtering content, and although filtering online content proved to be a good tool in controlling the content that is being exposed to our children, I think my generation has gotten too used to filtering things we don’t like or agree with out of our feed. And this is troubling because it makes us live in a bubble of our own where we only receive information that is already similar to what we agree with.

Online platforms such as Instagram now have a way of filtering comments that people leave on our photos and videos, we can now select certain words and phrases that are filtered out of our posts, and whenever someone uses these words their comment is simply not posted. I think this cause people from my generation to question or be skeptical about how we view people online personalities, everyone is trying to be correct to fit in those filters and fit into what is considered right. We cannot comment our real thoughts to a photo or video because we know that everyone else can see what we said and if that isn’t what they believe as correct we might get judged. I believe this is what caused the rise of new online communities such as Yik Yak, which as Professor Reagle mention the norm is to be an anonymous jerk, and although the goal isn’t to become a jerk on Yik Yak, we can clearly see a rise in “politically incorrect” content, because people are more comfortable voicing their opinions when they are anonymous. Salmanbinsultan (talk) 01:51, 31 January 2017 (UTC)salmanbinsultan

QIC #2

Social media is a user-generated content, which display wisdom of the crowd or collective intelligence. People nowadays love to be engaged to social media such as twitter, facebook, youtube, and instagram and in order to be involved they leave comment under the posts. This indicate that comment is social, a way people use to communicate with others. In this chapter, professor also talks about gossip, which is the central to understanding humanity and evaluative social chat. When we understand that people love to gossip, it is easier to predict that people will also leave abusive comment under the post.

A lot of platform either disable the comment function or fortified comment system by asking people to type in certain context, making the system more resistant to abuse. People will also relocate to a new platform when the existing platform has too many jerks, advertisements, and spammers. Although there are sites for people to remain anonymous and can voice any kind of abusive comments, there are still a lot of people who wants to express their authentic selves. People love to talk about themselves and it is no surprise for them to post comments sharing about their subjective experiences. I also found it interesting that two Harvard university neuroscientists concluded that disclosing information about the self is intrinsically rewarding because it triggers region of the brain that are associated with the mesolimbic dopamine reward system which proves that people choose to speak about themselves for the majority of the time.

From my personal experience, I can say that I am addicted to social media after the invention of smartphones. I spend a lot of time on facebook, instagram, and snapchat everyday and this is how I connect and contact with my friends. Instead of texting, we tag pictures, quotes, or memes all the time and it becomes a new norm for the people in this generation. It is also normal to see hurtful comments on instagram and facebook. I have also seen a lot of advertisement through social media. For intimate serendipity that is discussed in this chapter, I think i feel related to this concept because i feel connected with followers who agree on the same thing with me. Ginachu1993 (talk) 03:44, 31 January 2017 (UTC)ginachu1993

QIC #5

There are two types of relational or affective commitment: identity-based and bonds-based commitment. Based on the chapter “Encouraging Commitment in Online Communities” by Ren, Kraut, Kiesler, and Resnick, it seems that identity-based commitment is a stronger form of commitment. If someone can identify with the overarching group and its goals, they are more likely to be undeterred by member turnover. However, sites that emphasize bonds-based commitment—wherein the members join a group and remain in the community because of the relationships they build/have with other members—tend to have the most real-life success. For example, Facebook and Twitter are social networks which utilize bonds-based commitment to attract and retain members. If someone’s friends are all using a site, that person will want to use it too. While identity-based commitment is strengthened by anonymity and bonds-based commitment is strengthened by availing personal information, both forms of affective commitment grow when users areable to connect wit hin subgroups. A staple of commitment to a site or community is the allowance for membership to a subgroup within the community. When users can interact in a small group with people who are similar to themselves, they are more likely to commit and contribute to the group.

--Soperm (talk) 04:41, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

QIC #4

On page 8 of the Joseph M. Reagle Jr. reading, I found the part about commenting with real names quiet interesting. I find that most people do not want to comment something negative when they are not allowed to be anonymous - myself included. The quote given on this page "don't say anything you'd be ashamed to say in front of your mom" is so true. Most people adhere to that rule in real life, so how come on the internet it's not the same? Even when people are not allowed to be anonymous.

This leads to my question, that was prompted from page 16 of the same reading. People get into arguments over the internet all the time. On platforms from FaceBook to Twitter to my mom's cooking blog. Sometimes these fights are well-intentioned but often they're not. I see people fight in the comment sections of things ranging from politics to cute videos of dogs. So my question is, why? What's the point of trolls and haters? ChloeGendron (talk) 15:15, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

QIC #4

This week’s readings focused strongly on commitment, as exhibited in the reading from Kraut and Resnick, and on the power of commenting by Joseph Reagle. Kraut and Resnick explained the difficulty in getting users of a social network to commit to the network in question. As commitment increases engagement (77), achieving commitment from members is of strong importance to the success of the network. Kraut and Resnick propose two main types of commitment: identity-based commitment, wherein an individual bonds with the main messages and goals of a platform, and bonds-based commitment, wherein an individual bonds with other individuals using the platform (88). For an organization, it appears like it makes more sense to attempt to foster identity-based commitments using the design claims proposed by Kraut and Resnick, such as Design Claim 4. As specific members may choose to leave the platform or community, which would then decrease bonds-based commitment, organizations or communities may prefer to focus on identity-based commitment creation instead in order to best retain users. In addition, Reagle’s chapter on commenting showed how commenting can be used to foster relationships and connect people of a specific community, such as the Twitter community in the early days of its founding, as well as how it can be exploited and used negatively, as with the tweet bombing that happened later in Twitter’s timeline. My question this week revolves around examples of organizations that foster identity-based and bonds-based commitment strategies. Do organizations use both? Are there examples of a successful organization using one over the other, or one type of commitment tactic exclusively to success or failure? In addition, can comments be used to create identity or bonds-based commitment, and if so, do they work better for one type of commitment tactic than another? EH9890 (talk)

QIC 1:

After reading Kraut and Resnick's thoughts on commitment within communities, I found many similarities and connections to the communities I am a part of. The difference between identity-based commitment and bond-based commitment really stuck out to me. Identity-based commitment is when the connection to the group is above any connection to individuals. Because of this connection based on similar purposes and identity, members are more likely to stay in the community despite membership turnover (80-81). Bond-based attachment is dependent on the connections made with individuals within a community rather than identifying with the community as a whole. When members of a community are actually friends, it can lead to cohesiveness across the group (88). I personally have experienced both identity-based commitment and bond-based commitment in different communities I'm in. I am a part of the Northeastern University Dance Company (NUDANCO), and although I have many friends and acquaintances in the company, my love for dance and the need to participate in it as an activity is key. If my dance friends decided to leave the group, I know that I would continue to dance, audition, and teach even if I didn't know anyone because my part in the community is more important than personal relationships inside of the group. However, there are definitely subgroups (83) within NUDANCO that can create even stronger commitment than the group as a whole. For example, there are very few people who enjoy and excel at tap dancing, so the small group within NUDANCO that taps has named themselves "NUTAPCO" and has formed a commitment to the subgroup. These dancers often put NUTAPCO above other dances they make because they have such a commitment and connection to the small community within the company. Bond-based commitment on the other hand, is something that I experience in my sorority. Because of the amazing friendships and connections I have made within the group, I am more likely to put those friendships above the sorority as a whole. If for some reason, all of my "family" within the sorority or most of my close friends left the group, I would be much more likely to leave as well because they are my main connection to the community as a whole. Although I have amazing friendships in both my sorority and NUDANCO, it seems as though identity-based commitment leads to a more consistent and cohesive group dynamic. I'm curious if others agree, or if they find communities that they are more bonded to to be stronger overall. -M.vesey (talk) 16:31, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

QIC #2

In response to Salmanbinsultan’s QIC, I agree that much of the content we are viewing online and on social media is becoming, in a way, too filtered. I think this is especially interesting, and maybe alarming, when you think about how this filtered content is being used. As previously mentioned, it can be valuable to filter the content viewed by younger children. It can also be valuable to filter the content of your social feeds, if their only intended purpose is to socialize with like-minded people. I think this type of selected media diet becomes more dangerous, however, when people are utilizing their hyper-filtered social feeds for things like news consumption. If a person only follows pages or belongs to groups that reflect back their previously held opinions, then they might be missing the broader picture. If Facebook, for example, is one’s only source of news, then they are most likely getting an extorted and extremely biased view on current events. They might be reading comments that are persuasive, yet entirely inaccurate. With recent trends, they might be reading fake news. I believe this reflects identity-based commitment that people feel, often towards a specific political party in the context of news. I think this is dangerous because it creates an entire segment of the population that is largely ill informed or misinformed. It is easy to point to something you disagree with and say that you just don’t want to see it anymore, and it can be hard to fact check and verify everything that you read, but I think that it’s important to be aware of your media consumption. If we have the power to choose what we see, then we also have the responsibility to make sure we are viewing quality and verifiable sources. Angeladav (talk)

QIC #2

After reading Kraut and Resnick's (K&R) contributions about the types of commitments users make to online communities and Joseph Reagle's thoughts on the comment section and the role it plays in the social aspect of online communities I saw a clear connection between bond-based commitments K&R define and the comment section Reagle explains. For many sites I believe the comment section is the foundation for these bonds to build between users and between the site and its users. The comment section can be as informative or entertaining as the site itself if the community is active and diverse enough. In my personal experience I have found the comments made in response to an article or another users comment often challenge my own world view and provide a new point of view that I had not yet considered in relation to the same article. I personally do not participate in comment sections but I have found that if I scroll down other users often present the point of view that I held before reading the comment and the discussion that follows can be extremely relevant. Often times the comment section is a place that draws the consistent attention of both extremely active users and "lurkers" or users that view but do not participate actively in the discussions this can add an enriching element to any online community and can create the bond-based commitment the K&R referenced this chapter. User:NUrb93 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 18:19, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

According to Maeve Duggan research, “Mobile messaging and social media 2015”, found that “49 percent of smartphone owners between 18 and 29 use messaging apps like Kik, Whatsapp or iMessage, and 41 percent use apps that automatically delete sent messages, like Snapchat.” These results caught me by surprise, not only because the number of people who used social media platforms was much lower than those who use instant massager, but also because 41% of young adults rather use apps that automatically delete sent messages.

One of the big problems our society is facing today is finding the balance between good and bad social media usage. As we’ve talked about in class, many of us between the ages of 18-28 are concerned with what will happen to the future generations – will they enjoy face-to-face interactions or will all be done through a computer? I find this fear quite ironic because we were the ones that basically made social media platforms such a huge part of our lives. I think realizing that social media has a large influence over what we do is the first step to either stop engaging in unhealthy behaviors or better yet, finding a balance between the real and online world.

I also think slowly people are becoming more attentive to what happens on the internet which explains why nearly 50% of people rather use apps that automatically delete messages than actual text messages. During the past couple of years’ people started to fear their privacy which influenced them to either stop using social media platforms or learn better ways to use it – which I believe to be a good thing. The fear of something being on the web forever seems to be a big concern to many young adults and that is why social media usage and Facebook usage is somewhat decreasing.

Haivanessa (talk) 22:42, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

(QIC #2) In response to Haivanessa, I agree with your statement that one of the reasons people have switched to apps that automatically delete messages is that they are becoming more in tune with what goes out in the internet. Along with privacy, I believe that employers' job searching on social media platforms also plays a large part. Nowadays, I see the majority of my friends on social media using fake names or middle names in replace of last names as an effort to remain hidden from potential employers. Duncan also lists three reasons why she believes users have begun to sway away from social media; Facebook's shift in demographics to an older audience, a newfound realization of the permanence of pictures and posts on social media, and separating professional and personal lives on social media as I had previously mentioned.

As Duncan mentions in her article, "The great promise of social media was that they would create a powerful and open public sphere, in which ideas could spread and networks of political action could form." The creation of social media in such a public, open way may end up being it's overall downfall. Privacy is becoming more and more of a concern to individuals using these platforms, thus the rise of anonymous apps (like YikYak for example) we discussed in class the other day.

Circling back to what Professor Reagle asks in the schedule, how easy is it to leave a social network, speaking from personal experience I'd say its quite hard. Even after you delete a social media account you still have so much material floating out there that would take ages to track down and delete. I've been using Twitter a lot less than I used to, so I deleted the app and deleted my account as a whole. Even though I no longer have a Twitter, if I Goggle myself some tweets and Vine videos I made years ago still come up. I'm sure this reigns true over numerous other platforms, and that more millenials are coming to realize this the hard way.

Sabbatessa (talk) 17:50, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

QIC# 3 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Salmanbinsultan (talk • contribs) 23:51, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

In her article “So long social media” Felicity Duncan points out three major reasons why young people are leaving platforms such as Facebook to something such as Snapchat.

The first reasons is that our grandparents, parents and older relatives are on Facebook and we do not want them to see what we are up to at all times. This is very true in my case, I do not post anything to my Facebook without thinking a million times that this is something I don’t mind them seeing, which is why I don’t post half as much things to my Facebook as I do to my Instagram which has a relatively smaller circle of people and younger average age of friends.

The second and third reason is that pictures and post on Facebook are there forever, and that future employers might look at our profiles. And this is probably the biggest reason for me and probably for my fellow friends. My generation has been told ever since I was in the 9th grade that universities and employers WILL be viewing my Facebook and that a lot of their decisions are going to be based on my profile’s content, which is why I think there is a very obvious decline in posts on my Facebook around 2009, then around 2011 came Instagram which is a private photo sharing platform, which allowed me to post whatever I want and know exactly who is viewing my content. After that came Snapchat, which I started using in 2013, and since then, my Instagram usage has decline significantly.

Another reason I would like to add is that I personally use all three platforms that wee mentioned, I also use Whatsapp messenger for instant texting. I would say these four apps are the most I use on my phone, however I use for different reasons and to maintain different relationships. Generally my whatsapp and snapchat are reserved for the closest of friends, with my parents and family members on whatsapp to text. My Instagram is for people that I am friends with, but not necessary close to. After that is my largest circle which is Facebook, this platform is for group project messages and having people that I know from classes and would like to keep in contact with but not have them see my every move. Salmanbinsultan (talk) 18:07, 2 February 2017 (UTC)salmanbinsultan

QIC #3

When I was in high school my mom would always tell "Don't do anything you wouldn't do in front of me." before going out with friends or too a party. Of course, if I had done and said the same things with my friends at 16 as I do with my mother my social life in high school would end up consisting of Scrabble and re-runs of Law and Order SVU. Of all the points Felicity Duncan makes in her article about why teenagers are leaving Facebook, I think the point about older family members joining is the most prevalent. As Duncan notes, part of what makes social media apps and websites so appealing to younger individuals is the ability to market oneself to ones group of friends by carefully choosing which photos, videos and thoughts to post to these sites. Having been exposed to social media essentially since it's creation, this generation of younger users is hyperaware of the implications and possible consequences every post contains. It was not unheard of before older individuals joined Facebook to hear of peers getting grounded or punished because their parents learned of scandalous content they posted to their Facebook page. Yet people (especially teenagers) are not perfect, we are multifaceted individuals with needs and desires some of which are taboo or generally frowned upon by society. Before the migration of older individuals to Facebook, sharing pictures of oneself doing things like drinking before turning 21 were a way for online teenagers to establish how they would like to be perceived by their friends and it was often perceived as cool. Sharing that same photo these days is just plain stupid as almost every teenager is friends with at least one of their family members. Thus Facebook has lost this function as a place to express every side of how we perceive ourselves. Since the main purpose of Facebook is to serve as a place to do just that I believe kids are leaving because if we want to do the work to maintain an online profile of just the sides of ourselves we would like our parents to see we can just start a Linkedin page and add them there. NUrb93 (talk)

QIC #4

With, "more than 11% million young people fleeing from Facebook since 2011," and as they begin to migrate to areas with "narrowcast tools - like Messenger or Snapchat," there are many issues that these new intimate social options can place on today's digital world. In her article, "So Long Social Media: The Kids are Opting Out of the Online Public Sphere," scholar and professor Felicity Duncan of Cabrini College poses the challenges that "opting out" of social media for more intimate messaging settings based upon many different factors such as politics, news, social movement, and even advertising.

Ironically enough, in my last QIC I discussed my own migration from Facebook to Instagram, however it had a different basis from what Duncan states. My own personal reasoning is that Facebook started feeling too big, "scammy", and manipulative from an e-commerce perspective. Social platforms such as Instagram have provided me a smaller, intimate network, full of those who I am already connecting with - while also allowing me to peak into the "daily life" of many other individuals. Similarly, Duncan states three reasons as to why many young college students are migrating. The first she says is the idea of "my gran likes my profile picture." By this, Duncan means that social media is no longer a "young" thing, rather it is spear to other generations. A surprising fact to me was when she said, "48% of internet users over the age of 65 use Facebook." I wonder comparably how this has increased over the last decade. Next, Duncan states that "permanence and ephemerality" is a reason for migration. This one I agree with, but never actually truly thought about from my own perspective. When something is posted to Facebook you could say it is "forever" whereas outlets such as SnapChat, you have no need to police over what stays. SnapChat has become a major social media platform in my life - but for different reasons than Facebook and Instagram. Whereas FB and Instagram I can add others to my network that I may not know, I think SnapChat almost limits me from the "unwritten code" that you mostly will only add users that are already in your network, and with that said, they are in your tight knit network. Finally, her last reasons is "the professional and the personal". We are constantly warned by future employers and colleges that our accounts can be monitored - thus you may strategically alter your profile to make a "professional" self. In avenues such as SnapChat - you are inclined to post what may appear as your "true" self because what you post will not go beyond your own chosen, close network.

Duncan goes on to explain these implications affecting advertising numbers, issues with parents monitoring social network, and even the idea that less ideas can enter social networks from a social movement/political standpoint. Yes, I agree with all of these but it almost annoyed me to hear this harsh reality. In my perspective, social media was a place where you could chose what you want to post and have it be a sort of story of your life for onlookers to watch - no matter what public image you want of yourself. When I am posting my social content, or choosing platforms I want to share - I am not thinking about how it is affecting advertisers, politics, or even my parents. Rather, social is a place for me to express myself, not a money making machine. However, as mentioned, this is the reality we live in. It is almost as if social media has become part of the circle of life (metaphorically, obviously) and that if we eliminate it, many issues will arise and a lot of business, news, politics, and things we "care about" will be affected.

It is not surprising that this is a topic that is continued to be discussed. I remember even in the early age of college I watched a documentary called "cool hunters" which I kept in my mind while reading the Duncan article. According to wikipedia, cool hunting is, " a term coined in the early 1990s referring to a new breed of marketing professionals, called cool hunters. It is their job to make observations and predictions in changes of new or existing cultural trends. The word derives from the aesthetic of "cool". Cool hunting is often referred to as "Trend Spotting."^[1] I feel as if as cool hunting was applied to marketing professionals looking for trends in teens for clothing, music, and style - it is now something being carried into the social world. We are constantly looking for what is "cool" and i suppose that you can correlate the intimacy aspect of Duncan's article with "cool" and having some sort of exclusivity beyond just putting yourself out there in Facebook status's like you would years back. Possibly privacy is the new cool? Sperry21 (talk) 20:47, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

QIC #3 Felicity Duncan's piece on the changing landscape of social media confirmed what I already believe. She discusses that times are rapidly changing online--teens are turned off by platforms like Facebook for several reasons: the emergence of older generations online, the risk of permanence, and blurring the lines between personal and professional. Although I believe these things to be true, I think it's also important to consider what Kraut discusses on page 105 about needs-based commitment. He stresses that online communities must fulfill personal goals to ensure strong commitment. To relate this to my own social media use, I think about my growing disinterest in Facebook. While it's true that I now worry about my old bosses seeing my content, my Mom knowing everything about my weekend, and the fact that everything I post will be there forever, I am more concerned about what Facebook isn't anymore. When I first joined the site, people actually posted on each other's walls, they virtually "poked" each other, and there were even apps like "Bathroom Wall" where my peers could post anonymous comments about each other (a nightmare, but evidently crucial in Facebook's initial success). When I first joined Facebook, I had less than 100 friends and each post on my newsfeed carried significance. When I scroll through my newsfeed now, I'm inundated with memes, video links, and now political commentary--none of which are fulfilling my personal goals. I see posts from people with names that I don't recognize or see photos of people I do not know. Interestingly, I think memes are so popular because for the users involved, they satisfy some type of personal interaction. Regardless of which platform they're shared on, it's because they actually connect peers. I think you can argue that social media gained popularity because of how it connected people together. How can people continue to connect when their networks grow too large or become flooded with messages that have no meaning to them? Now, I choose apps like Snapchat and Groupme or even regular old iMessage because the intrinsic rewards are far greater. I'll hold onto Facebook for the time being because it for me it acts as a database where I can find friends of friends or look back at photos from 2008, but I don't foresee it becoming my app of choice any time soon. Marinamano (talk) 21:32, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

QIC #6

In the Kraut and Resnick chapter, normative commitment and needs-based commitment are explored. Both forms of commitment require users to be motivated by the goals of the group that they are in. For a group to achieve normative commitment, it should highlight achievements and progress towards the goal. For needs-based commitment, the site or group needs to understand its users’ motivation for joining the group and provide experiences that align with that motivation. For example, if someone joins an online group to exchange information, it is imperative that the group is focused on sharing knowledge and answering questions. If the group were to stray from information sharing, the user motivated to learn will leave the group. Felicity Duncan, in her article from The Conversation, analyzes the way social media use has shifted among teens. Young people are using social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter less and less, and more often using intimate and “ephemeral” social media such as WhatsApp, GroupMe, and Snapchat. Duncan gives three reasons for this shift: the older generations have begun using Facebook, thus making it less cool; warnings that what you post online last forever makes permanent platforms intimidating; and future employers may look at social media, meaning people need to appear polished on their personal pages. While this is not normative or needs-based commitment changes, I believe it does reflect a change of bonds-based commitment. In other words, people joined Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram because their friends were on it and it allowed them to interact online, but now the platforms have become too big. Companies and families have infiltrated these sites so that they are no longer simply a way for friends to keep in touch. Social media is too public; but private conversations over iMessage or WhatsApp, or fleeting messages and pictures over Snapchat, better motivate bonds-based commitment. --Soperm (talk) 02:34, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

/*When I encountered this reading, somehow, it didn't surprise me. I remember when Facebook came out, my entire generation became obsessed with it. We would post anything and everything. The problem is, it became too public, Facebook serves like a resume of your personal life, every human being out there has access to all of your data, and that for me, has been the main reason why an entire generation has decreased their use of Facebook. Younger generations, as Duncan said, have moved on to snapchat, which frankly, I find much more sensible, since profiles aren't as public. When posting in Facebook, not only does your grandma like your picture as Duncan said when reflecting student's feelings, but just by googling yourself you will encounter that same post. But at the same time, when college students are asked where they get most of their news, a huge percentage of them will say its Facebook, which is why I believe the site won't suffer any loss, but rather it will embrace the new service it provides and exploit it the best way possible*/. ~~MariselaLW

MariselaLW, you need three tildas to sign; also you should number your QICs.

QIC #4

After reading Felicity Duncan's article on So long social media: the kids are opting out of the online public square, I began to think on the reasons why Facebook is experiencing a decrease of its active users. I agree with Duncan's statements that any photos, videos, and posts that you upload will exist in the online world forever. I agree that many of us worry about the admission offices, future employers, and even parents will come to the disagreement and judge our life styles. We worry about giving the wrong impression to our online friends and any other online users that view our profiles. These factors serve as reasons to why Facebook is experiencing a decline of users.

Although, I would like to bring to attention other factors of why Facebook might be experiencing such an issue. The majority of Facebook's users are from 20s to 30s. When we first registered on the website, it was the boom and rise of Facebook as the social platform. We were fascinated about being able to connect to a few of our friends as well as to upload photos that would be visible to our few friends and our online social circle would know everyone on such posts/photos. Due to Facebook's existence for couple of years now, its users became exhausted. I do not believe that its users (that registered back in 2007 or so) actually worry about the shared posts, I rather believe that we became mature as well as got bored and tired of scrolling through the news feed that is compiled of the accumulated friends through out these years. It is in human nature to get excited and addicted to new things that we are introduced to. We live in a society that constantly presents new inventions to us, therefore such inventions take away our attention from the old inventions. We constantly try out new things, and it takes time for us to realize what we actually like and need in our lives. I believe that the social platforms are like the rollercoasters. One day we are at the peak - obsessed with Facebook; another day we are on the bottom - bored and dislike Facebook. Etozzi (talk) 17:00, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

QIC #4

In Felicity Duncan’s article, So long social media: the kids are opting out of the online public square, she discusses the idea that young people are “transitioning out of using what we might term broadcast social media […] and switching instead to using narrowcast tools”. When I thought about my own social media behavior, I had never realized that I was one of the ‘young people’ doing exactly that.

I always figured that social media is social media; it’s basically all the same. Now, however, I’m realizing just how wrong I am. In finishing Kraut Chapter 3, I am now much more cognizant of the way in which social media sites and other online communities must manipulate and monitor their users in order to be successful. That said, I found that tactics to promote needs-based commitment seem much more harmful than those used to promote normative commitment.

Some of the manipulations to promote normative commitment include testimonials from other community members about their commitment, and priming norms of reciprocity. In manipulating needs-based commitment, users are often shown information about other communities in a negative light, and locked in to their communities through certain assets and community-only values.

I understand that because of an individuals form of commitment to a community, they are often treated a certain way in order to stay committed. However, I do not think it is right for designers to use negative manipulation tactics in needs-based communities like locking people in to a community. The idea of locking people in to a community by creating community-specific assets, like ones private historical data, seems selfish. Duncan’s article even made me think that some online communities might be resorting to locking in users for their own personal profit and to sell their own digital advertising.

To answer your question Professor, it is not easy to leave a network. Online communities are so obsessed with keeping their numbers up that it seems they have resorted to holding users hostage through personal data and other valuable community-based commodities. In regards to choosing an exemplar community, I'm not even sure how to define that anymore. I am left asking myself, what makes a community truly excellent -- is it all based on the number of users they have? Is it based on the ways in which communities slyly manipulate their users every day to keep them coming back? Halserena (talk) 17:06, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

In So Long social media : the kids are opting out of the online public square the author goes into detail about why teens are moving away from public social media platforms and preferring private ones. At first, I thought this was so funny, because I thought the point of social media is to be social. I didn't consider that Snapchat can be just as social as Facebook. The author claimed that the three main reasons teens are that 1. The demographic is shifting and now 48% of users are over the age of 65. 2. Permanence and ephemerality meaning that the photos on Facebook are 'forever' and teens spend a lot of time on how they present themselves. 3. Professional and the personal (I can relate to this one the most) young adults are constantly warned that people who impact their futures such as colleges and employers, as well as banks according to the article, will look at your Facebook. I understand not wanting certain photos to be public and stay public for long. If I Snapchat an embarrassing or inappropriate photo to my friends to be funny, I wouldn't want them to screenshot it because that defeats the purpose of the auto-delete feature.

The reading from Kraut Chapter 3 Encouraging Commitment in Online Communities one of the major claims was the 'people stay in a group only as long as they perceive the group and other members as being attractive and instrumental in fulfilling their personal goals' p. 105. This could explain the shift away from sites such as Facebook, because if everyone is worries about the content they are posting and who might have access to it (employed, banks, etc) then it would make sense for these people to leave Facebook as an entire group. In class, Sarah mentioned that she had an online chat at her co-op where there are groups for different topics, and that if someone strayed away from that topic they would be asked to leave. That made me think of why someone would leave a group; being that they would not want to stay in a group that would no longer be fulfilling the original goal of the group. I know some groups on Facebook such as 'Dogspotting' has rules set by the admins to assure that the group stay on topic and maintains a healthy environment.

This makes me wonder though, should these apps and websites me adjusted as the needs are adjusting? Facebook losing 11 million teens seems like a big deal. Should Facebook add a feature similar to Snapchats auto-delete? Or should it just maintain what it is as to not complicate things for its current users? What is going to be most successful for Facebook in terms of encouraging commitment from users?

Acosta94 (talk) 17:09, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

Acosta94, apparently FB was trying to buy SC through much of last year, and even offered $3 billion, but failed. I wonder if there is a way to expire old content on FB? -Reagle (talk) 18:09, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

QIC #2 - Anchal Vasandani:

I really liked the article "so long social media" as it felt like I was reading an article about myself. I have diverted my social media preferences to snapchat as well and receiving news from either friends, reuters (a news app) and snapchat. There is definitely a huge demographic shift to who is using snapchat/facebook/twitter/instagram, and I too agree with the author that Facebook is the one with the largest demographics, which the author clarifies as to why teens are shifting away from Facebook 1. The demographic is changing and now 48% of users are over the age of 65. (my grandparents fall in this category) 2. Photos on Facebook are 'forever' and teens spend a lot of time on how they present themselves. Facebook stores and remembers everything so teens want to make sure that the old photos of when they first joined facebook are not there on their profile, but little do they know facebook stores everything 3. The difference between keeping it classy and professional versus personal. I am a victim of this one because when I was applying for colleges I changed my facebook name so that no institution would be able to find me on Facebook.

So why is it that this is happening? The more people wake up and realize that Facebook and amongst the other social medias can keep your online life forever, the more they want to back out of it. Whereas snapchat having their timestamp rule makes people more comfortable sending inappropriate and ugly selfies to their friends. But how secure is snapchat? does it really dissapear?

In Kraut's chapter, it was a discussion on normative commitment to the online world. One of the things I could relate to in his chapter was the idea of reciprocity. The idea that if I hit a like on someones profile, they have to give me a like back. It doesn't matter if they like it or not, they just have to give me the like. This brings me back to three years ago when I had a talk with my communications professor at Suffolk about 'life is all about the likes' and he said 'well if it's about the likes, then you might as well drown yourself because are they really liking your photo, and do they really like you enough to be liking the photo.' Going back to that conversation now, no life is NOT about the likes, and it should not be about the likes. In class when we were having the discussion on ratings, it's just sad to think that life has become about this online world and it's ratings. Makes me think of the show black mirror, when everyone has to whip out their phone to rate one another on such minor things.

My question is what if we took out the like feature on facebook, and we just saw a photo and did not have to react to it in any way. If we truly like it we can just comment 'great pic', would people be genuine then?

Anchalvasandani (talk)

QIC #5

This week’s readings focused on the second half of chapter three in Kraut and Resnick, as well as on an article by Felicity Duncan titled, “So long social media: the kids are opting out of the online public square.” Kraut and Resnick, in this section of chapter three, focused strongly on normative commitment, or a commitment based on some specific commitment to the community’s purpose, which predates a user’s existence in the community (102). Kraut and Resnick also focused on needs-based commitment, which centers on the extrinsic benefits that community members receive from an online community, i.e., in-game or in-community money, etc. (105). What I found particularly engaging is how these concepts proposed by Kraut and Resnick resonates within Felicity Duncan’s article. Duncan was focused on explaining how teenagers today are moving away from “idealized” versions of their lives that they share publicly on platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, to more nuanced and “normal” depictions of themselves on social media platforms and communities that allow them to be themselves in a smaller niche environment, such as Snapchat. What is interesting here is that they’re able to give up any needs-based commitment (i.e., money they sunk into Facebook games, imitating Kraut and Resnick’s design claim 34, and the time and energy they spent on creating this personae, which tangentially relates to Kraut and Resnick’s design claim 32) in favor of a more personalized experience (107-110). While Snapchat has its own community, evident in the ability to post to collective stories watched by all users, and the ability to connect with anyone on the platform, it does allow more control into who you let into your own niche environment, and really focuses more on bonds-based commitment. I can see this trend reflected in my own use of social media, as well as in the use of social media by my peers. Often I find it's easier to connect and engage with friends and members of online communities when I have more personal control over who sees what I'm sharing; my friends seem to also prescribe to this thinking, as it evident by our levels of engagement over Facebook Messenger and Snapchat versus Facebook or Instagram. The perpetuation of an "ideal" individual on Facebook and Instagram has been explicitly called out in numerous articles online as dangerous, making the migration to other, more private social media platforms and online communities by teenagers make more anecdotal sense. EH9890 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 00:32, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Feb 07 Tue - Ethics (interlude)

QIC #7 - I found the studies conducted by OkCupid somehow obvious. The famous phrase “a photo is worth a thousand of words” was invented for a reason and as many studies have shown that a photo is actually much more valuable than text. When OkCupid did their “blind date” research, they found that once they photos were released many of conversations that were going well melted away. But this, in fact, comes as no surprise to me. Many people engage in online dating platforms for different reasons, however, many can agree that their main reason for signing up is to find someone who fits into what they are looking – and this of course, first includes looks then personality. When it comes to selecting between two partners who are equally nice, it’s obvious most people will go for the best looking one. That being said, people tend to be even pickier when online dating simply because they can, simply because they have more choices, that is why apps like Tinder became extremely successful – because it’s focusing on what people are initially looking for – someone they are attractive to – which then leads to a more interpersonal and romantic discovery.

I do think Facebook and OkCupid were ethical in their own ways. Most of their studies were anonymous and allowed for a better understanding of not only online communities but also communication as a whole. Many will argue that it’s an invasion of privacy and as we seen on the article from last week, “So long social media: the kids are opting out of the online public square” by Felicity Duncan we can see that in fact, fear of privacy is one of the main reason why Facebook usage has decreased and same goes to online dating – no one wants their boss to see them openly on a dating platform. However, I do believe, that it serves a higher purpose. Most likely, they are not directly interested in finding out how one person does things or engage in the internet, but rather as a whole which helps to find more effective methods of communication or in this case, it helps formulate a better online dating platform that is tailored to what people are looking – either way, although it can be argued that these studies are partly done to better these enterprises and generate more income, their main focus is also creating something that works better. So the question is – would you be willing to have less privacy if you knew the outcome would be helpful to you?

Haivanessa (talk) 23:13, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Haivanessa I thought you brought up a couple of really great points regarding the ethics of experimentation for Facebook and OkCupid. I agree with your point about OkCupid--I think one of the reasons why current online dating apps are so successful is because they allow for users to pre-screen their potential matches (that is, making sure they're attracted to them before "liking" them). However, I was intrigued by Christian Rudder's point about blind dating. He pointed out that blind matches actually evolved into more meaningful and deeper conversations. I think about dating apps now, and I wonder if conversations are ever that genuine on apps that are solely based on looks. Rudder pointed out that non-blind matches actually yielded some pretty negative results, which might be because attractive men ended up being terrible to talk to. Could it be possible that dating apps might be more successful (in the long run) if they aren't predicated on users' looks?

QIC #4 I appreciate that you are cool with online research, even if you are a subject. However, I acknowledge that I'm a little bit more skeptical. You brought up a good point from Duncan about reasons why young people are turning away from Facebook, but in personal experience, it's partly because of the invasive nature of Facebook that has be running for the hills. I find it so creepy when I'm shopping online for a particular item and then the next day I find it sitting on a banner add on my newsfeed. Maybe I'm a skeptic, but I'm not yet comfortable with the amount of data that Facebook, and other apps for that matter, have access to. And I'm especially uncomfortable with online research that participants don't know they're participating in. Amy Bruckman assures us that research is only done when there is participant consent, but arguably, no one really knows that they're being tested on. It will be interesting to see how the applications of our data evolves over the coming years. Marinamano (talk) 13:45, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

QIC #4

When it comes to the ethics of online research and studies or experiments conducted by websites such as Facebook and OkCupid, I think it is very difficult to find an answer that satisfied everyone. Some people find it unethical for Facebook to even conduct an experiment without notifying users while others find it perfectly acceptable to do.

Personally I think it is naïve to believe that with all the social media platforms and instant texting application that my generation uses nowadays, researchers are not conducting thousands of studies on us. That is because there is just a ton of data that is just sitting there waiting for someone to analyze and make something useful out of. And that is why I believe that these online experiments are ethical. We might not be used to them but I think it is completely fine for researcher to conduct them.

However, I think that all the published research should be anonymous and just give statistical results and not personal results. And this is where a lot of things get confused for me. Is it ethical to published research studying certain genders, races or religions without notifying the subjects? I don’t know. Because I think it will be more accurate data since the subjects don’t know that they are being studied. However in my opinion, and what I think fits my own personal ethics, it is ethical to conduct such studies as long as the results are published anonymously and are general, meaning they do not distinguish differences between the subjects in the experiment. Salmanbinsultan (talk) 00:04, 7 February 2017 (UTC)salmanbinsultan

QIC #5 When it comes to the studies that Facebook and OkCupid conducted, I'm truly not phased by them. It didn't concern me that they were tracking emotions, manipulating the good and bad posts that were seen or even blacked out photos from the dating site. While I suppose I can see the issue, since they were gathering data from users and tracking information and it was not written in their Data Use Policy, but to me this almost seems like a form of A/B Testing that we learned about a couple weeks ago. It seems like through these studies, they would be looking to improve their sites - OkCupid even admitting the site worked better when it was "blind".

In the conclusion Amy Bruckman article "Teaching Students to Study Online Communities Ethically" she states that even the most experienced human researchers find it difficult to study online communities with ethics since it's so new and always evolving new questions constantly arise. Above in the article, Bruckman explains her design decisions, ones that include "notation of the risks", "students open describe themselves as researchers" and consent forms must be filled out. Her approach is different than Facebook and OkCupid's blind approach, she is conspicuous.

Which leads to my question, which is better? Is it better to just update your Data Use Policy (assuming your users read it or never will but when they find out about the study they can't be mad because technically they've been informed if they agreed to the newest version of it) or being open, explain the study and then gain willing participants? ChloeGendron (talk) 13:39, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Feb 10 Fri - Pro-social norms

QIC #5

After reading "Be Nice: Wikipedia Norms for Supportive Communication, I automatically related the discussed Wikipedia norms to my life. The article explains collaborative norms that the Wikipedia members acknowledge while reviewing and editing each others work. There are certain policies, which are required to be followed in order to have a respectful and engaging online community. For example, every individual has his or her own opinion, which can lead to being defensive and argumentative with others. Although, it is important to be supportive of each others' work and ideas, in order to have a collaborative community. Wikipedia teaches its members how to develop a neutral point of view and to have a good faith. Wikipedia's members learn how to adopt such norms through celebrating each others' success with awarding a barnstar or by getting removed from the online community for disrespecting the work of other members. To be a part of a collaborative community, it is important to learn the norms of evaluation, conflict resolution, neutrality, empathy, and equality. In order to get the work done and provide an accurate information for the public, the balance of norms is critical. Therefore, such norms remind me of the daily situations in my life. I constantly face disagreements and chaos, but by being able to hold my emotions, respect others' opinions, and be an equal in the community - it helps to learn and achieve goals in life. If I presented myself as a superior and ignored others opinions then it will cause to be seen as an ignorant and disrespectful person. It is out of our norms, therefore such factors would lead to me being by myself and have a miserable life in a bubble. If we did not have globally established norms in either online or life communities then we would create chaos and not have a personal growth. Etozzi (talk) 01:14, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

QIC 5 When this article talked about the “lamest Edit Wars” it made me think about our in class discussion about when we were asked to help correct spelling. I had brought up that I was not sure if it was appropriate to change the English spelling of a word (so I didn’t as to not get in a lame edit war). All of section 1 is everything we’ve learned about Wikipedia so far including its creation, purpose, and policies. “...An online ‘prosocial’ community is one that exhibits behavior that is intentional, voluntary, and of benefit to others” When I read this, I agreed that these are the goals of Wikipedia, but then I thought about social media. Do social platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat align with these ideals? Joseph Reagle (2008) also agreed with this and made claims about the “good faith” collaborative culture as we learned about in previous readings. A qualitative study was conducted about the norms in content and interactions between Wikipedians with six criteria for pages. I personally like the use of the term “trolls” as people who personally cause mischief. One of the major findings was that conflict and drama are addictive, and this comes from ambiguity. I would say the main takeaway is that Wikipedians need to assume good faith if they want Wikipedia to function as its purpose of being a place to find knowledge on something quickly. People are more than welcome to add more if they know more. Some ongoing issues I see with this though are that there could be ongoing issues that live on for years on Wikipedia based on perspectives. Also, new events, people, things, etc are happening all the time; can Wikipedia reach a limit? In addition, should some content be phased out if it becomes irrelevant?

Acosta94 (talk) 03:20, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

QIC #4

In Chapter 4 of Building Successful Online Communities: Evidence-Based Social Design, the author discusses how normative behaviours come about. He suggests that people learn what is acceptable and unacceptable behaviour from observing others’ actions and adopting these norms. Cialdini suggested that people learn norms from salient behaviours, these are actions that stand out and point out to people what is appropriate to do in a situation.

He highlights that conflicts are inevitable in social interactions, and if they become personal and escalate they can derail a community, drawing attention away from the mission. He uses the example of Wikipedia to explain the concept, describing the problems that arise when editors disagree on the content that should appear on a certain page, especially for controversial topics. For example, on inauguration day this year when Trump was sworn in as President of the United States, many changes were made to his Wikipedia page creating conflicts between editors.

Likewise, on Wikipedia, these ‘manipulators’ generate conflict by wanting to reflect their own views, instead of presenting a neutral point of view. Furthermore, the tendency of people to create “shill” accounts or “sock puppets” degrades the validity of reviews on sites like TripAdvisor and Yelp. It may have become a norm for restaurants and stores to post these reviews on purpose, to increase ratings and lure more customers to their businesses. However, the question of ethics arises as they are using online communities to mislead potential customers.

Vanishadans (talk) 04:58, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

QIC #7 Kraut and Resnick analyze the ways in which online communities can manage behavior and interaction between members in Building Successful Online Communities. The first step is to minimize the effects of bad behavior. The second is to discourage members from engaging in bad behavior and encourage pro-social behavior. Kraut and Resnick recommend a separate conversation thread for off-topic conversations or arguments and an appeals process for bans or punishments to limit damage, and activity quotas and CAPTCHAs to put off scammers. Kraut and Resnick’s chapter and Joseph Reagle’s article “’Be Nice’: Wikipedia Norms for Supportive Communication” highlight the benefits of encouraging pro-social behavior in online communities. Wikipedia has a clear set of policies and guidelines that tell users how they should behave. Kraut and Resnick assert that in a community where positive behavior is publicly shown, users are more likely to adhere to the desired behavior. Individual feedback to behaviors (e.g. users appreciating certain comments and condemning others) will teach newer users the right and wrong ways to interact. Reagle’s article addresses the hundreds of norms that are encouraged on Wikipedia. Norms include Wikipedia’s official policies, as well as generally understood guidelines on how to behave and interact with others. In spite of all the design possibilities to prevent bad behavior and minimize its effects, “trolls” and users who deliberately oppose the expected pro-social behaviors are still rampant. What would the user experience be in a community with no rules, particularly in comparison to a community with extensive, strict policies about acceptable behavior? Is it possible for a community to have no official policies, or are people so self-regulating that policies will inevitably be established? --Soperm (talk) 05:21, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

QIC #6 Design claim #7, on page 135 of the Kraut and Resnick reading states, "a widely followed norm of ignoring trolls limits the damage they can do." This concept can be seen on every website that has a comments section. Trolls are everywhere, and they feed off of arguments and disruption. The Joseph Reagle article “’Be Nice’: Wikipedia Norms for Supportive Communication” also touches upon trolls who purposefully start arguments. Reagle states that it those who have good intentions can have a hard time dealing with this who are commenting with bad intentions. It is difficult not to fight back or stand up for yourself when someone is attacking your thoughts/work. Simply ignoring the trolls is more difficult than it seems. Not only does it require a ton of will-power, it also requires all users being able to recognize who is trolling and being able to follow the set norm that they are to be ignored. I can't help but connect this technique to celebrities and their social media pages. Celebrities receive an insane amount of negative comments from trolls on social media. In interviews you can often hear them say, "I keep myself sane by not reading the comments...", "...blocking out the negative...", etc. You also often can see some celebrities become weak and engage with the trolls in fights and stand up for themselves in the comments. ChloeGendron (talk) 15:29, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

QIC #6 This week, Kraut and Resnick discussed behavior in online communities, focusing on the most effective ways to regulate behavior. Kraut and Resnick outlined that there are two main types of behavior: normative, which is behavior considered acceptable by most member of an online community, and non-normative behavior, which is behavior that is outside of the norm for the community. While Kraut and Resnick did mention that online community members may exhibit non-normative behavior that isn't mean to be malicious, they used trolling and manipulation as two of the main sources of the off-color behavior. To regulate the behavior of online communities, Kraut and Resnick proposed several design claims. One that strongly stood out to me was design claim 12, which said that CAPTCHA systems should be utilized in order to control bad behavior such as the creation of fake accounts. Having taken a website design class, I have had first hand experience manually coding a CAPTCHA, as well as with their necessity for preventing the creation of fake accounts by bots. In addition, design claims 18 and 19, which say that having explicit rules and norms concerning user behavior and posting them prominently could increase normative behavior, seem to relate well to the Wikipedia norms outlined in “’Be Nice’: Wikipedia Norms for Supportive Communication.” Wikipedia has entire Wikipedia pages devoted to outlining its regulations on community behavior, which can be located easily within the site. The basic Wikipedia norms are easily found on the site, and disputes are resolved through discussion on a talk page. Once consensus is reached, users are generally held to that behavior. In this way, Wikipedia follows design claims 18 and 19. EH9890 (talk)

QIC #4

In response to ChloeGendron Claim #7 about ignoring trolls really grabbed my attention as well, and for similar reasons. Trolls do not just exist on the internet, there are many individuals I have come across throughout my life who's goal is to pester, annoy or anger others purely to get a reaction. I have also found that when one limits their outward reactions to the trolls comments, no matter how one might feel on the inside, the lack of reaction tends to kill a trolls energy. In fact, if one ignores the troll completely and allows them to babble on continuously to nobody in particular they tend to stop talking altogether or at least until the next event happens that will open up the door for their comments. It is when we engage Trolls that we actually feed them and give them more power. Unfortunately, my most apt example of this has to d with the recent Presidential election. Donald Trump's presidential campaign began as a joke to the average voter "You mean the guy from that stupid reality show? Yeah right!" His policies were so ridiculous and his rhetoric so callous that it must have been a joke, and it was to most people until the news channels realized that people liked hearing about it. News channels began shamelessly giving him more airtime to spew his ridiculous ideas which ironically added authenticity to his campaign. They allowed for his hate speech and un-orthodox behavior to stand on the same stage as professional diplomats who are well versed in politics. If news stations had resisted the urge to publicize Trumps campaign, the validity of his claims for power would have never been cemented and I do not think he would have made it past the primaries. In my opinion, our current president may be the most successful troll of all time. NUrb93 (talk)

QIC #3

"Be Nice: Wikipedia Norms for Supportive Communication" was a very relatable article that discussed norms that would pertain to my life. The article elaborates on collaborative norms that Wikipedia members view while editing other wiki's member works. This links to Kraut's chapter when he starts off the chapter with a well known metaphor "one bad apple spoils the barrel" indicating that we all need to be accepting of each other's work and we should help out whenever we see an error, and if there is one person constantly ruining other people's work it becomes a trend that no one wants in the online community. The chapter spoke about steps needed in order to minimize the "trolls" from ruining your wikipedia page and helping each other because it is one community that everyone is part of. The first step is to reduce all types of bad behavior and it's effects. The second step is to promote good behavior and demote all bad activities. The article and the chapter in short is trying to encourage people to be in a 'healthy' environment where they can help other people rather than ruining the community with hackers, foul language, and establishing a negative online space. Kraut said this in his chapter that, "personal insults may be the primary way to interact in one community, but frowned upon in another. Wikipedia expects writers to adopt a neutral point of view" - don't be biased, as everything should be seen from a open perspective. I feel like both the chapter and the article linked to my situations in life where my parents and I never see eye to eye on certain things but when I hear them out and control myself from reacting to it, it shows respect that I want to know their opinion so I will not interrupt them as they are sharing it. Similarly when we want to have a healthy non-judgmental community on wikipedia we have to respect what other people have to say/share, and if we know that this is going on a bad path we can be helpful and prevent that from happening. I have a question though for Professor Reagle, has there ever been a time where someone changed your work completely and you had to message them to 'cut it out' or stop hacking your page?

Anchalvasandani (talk)

QIC #1

The '"Be Nice": Wikipedia Norms for Supportive Communication' reading was very interesting to me because it is easy to take it in other contexts, specifically in context of different relationships people have in life. By that I mean that the way the norms, expectations and suggestions are explored in the paper make me think of real life (or non-virtual) conflicts and resolutions. Part 5 of this reading was most relevant because it reminded me the times I have used supportive or defensive communication, how that has impacted relationships as well the times when someone else has used these types of communication and how that impacted my views. It is very easy to lose oneself in the argument and communication loses its importance when only one person is contributing to the conversation. I thought ‘5.5 Supeririority and Equality’ was the most important part of the discussion because it raises the significance of respect between two conflicting parties and how that can really make or break the result of these conflicts. Since Wikipedia is a collaborative platform, it makes sense that everyone is considered to be equals; it is only fair.

The reading ends with the recognition that norms are not necessarily followed, and it comes together really well in my eyes because the title of the reading “Be Nice” is really emphasized here in a way that pretty much gives the reader the suggestion to ‘just be nice, okay?’

Rheab16 (talk) 18:13, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Feb 14 Tue - Compliance and norms

QIC #5 In the Kraut reading, I found that design claim 25 was very useful in explaining why internet trolls can exist. The design claim states that "verified identities and pictures reduce the incidence of norm violations" (p. 156). In other words, people are generally concerned with how they are perceived by others. This makes sense to me because often times, internet trolls are leaving comments on photos of people they do not know personally, like celebrities for example. Rarely do trolls interact online with people that they know they will see in real life. I immediately think of internet trolls in the context of social breaching as discussed by Harold Garfinkel. What if we decided to start trolling on our friends' Facebook pages, or maybe even friend's of friends who we don't know well? What if we started leaving mean or creepy comments on their photos? How might our peers perceive this when they know they came from us--someone they know in real life? Lastly, I want to bring up design claim 32, which discusses the specific people who perpetuate formal sanction online. For example on Wikipedia, they are called administrators. What do these roles look like on social media, and do they exist? I know that a user can report comments or content as inappropriate, but who actually does anything about it? What would it look like if these moderators had tangible identities on Facebook and other social media platforms?

For my social breaching project, I plan to conduct two different experiments to ensure that I'll get sufficient results. I plan to be a "sneaky snapchatter" where I'll screenshot every snapchat I receive over the course of a few days. I presume that my friends will probably be very confused and might even ask why I screenshotted their Snapchats. Secondly, I plan to be a "Facebook Picture Creeper" and will comment on photos of my friends from years ago. I chose this experiment because I find that old photos can be so entertaining, and it's sometimes obvious that my friends even forget those photos are still available to the public. I'm excited to see what my results will be. Marinamano (talk) 20:36, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

Marinamano, I don't think you need to do both, and even if you don't get many results, you can still engage with the concepts in a thoughtful way. -Reagle (talk) 18:27, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

QIC #5.

Researching a bit further into the social breaching experiments and looking a the article, "Studies in Ethnomethodology" by Harold Garfinkel, I came to realize that even though "breaking the norm" and going against the grain by challenging everyday expectations in society, you can achieve success in your career and life. According to the wikipedia article, "Breaching experiment", "The violation of the expectancy of shared verbal understanding between friends results in the subject expressing confusion and irritation." Often times, this irritation is what blocks us from participating in particular tasks because we often get symptoms of anxiety before challenging a situation.

Most recently in my work life, I have noticed that the most successful people in my company have been those who are willing to challenge social norms - (ie: negotiation on a sale, going against usual brand expectations, etc.) In fact, it is often in the workplace where everyday activities create routine interaction and problem solving strategies. Below are some examples from my own personal experience based on the text that I found relevant to this study:

1. In the book when Garfinkel discusses the conversation between parent and student (pg. 38), he showed how a student interpreted a conversation and indicated what descriptive words in the story the husband and wife should have said in order to understand what they were talking about... Often times in my own experience I have to explain projects that I am working on to others that may not understand where I am coming from. My boss often encourages me to use clear words of what I am talking about, even if it sounds repetitive to me. That way we can work on assuring that there is a common understanding to those who may not know the "everyday" projects/terminology my team and I working on. This created a common understanding between two parties.

2. In the wikipedia article, there is an example where students were asked to negotiate a price in a store. As a result, "Students felt anxiety in anticipation of the task and approaching the salesperson. However, this lessened once they began their interactions and were surprised by the possibility of succeeding"... In my own personal work experience, I have worked a bit with sales and have been taught techniques of negotiation in the work force. In particular, my boss asked me to try to negotiate a deal for a product we were purchasing. I felt anxious at first, but I recalled something my mother taught me when I was younger - "The worst they can say is no." By challenging the "norms" of such conversation and negotiating for a lower price - I actually succeeded. Now it is something I do when I purchase anything. It often takes challenging your norms to attain success you would not have otherwise.

Looking into my own social breaching experiment I have not come across any particular ideas - but I too have the sense of anxiety, especially in the online community sphere where I wonder if friends will judge me for appearing to do something "out of the ordinary." However, even if you look foolish or feel discomfort, challenging such everyday activities or opinions can lead to outcomes that may be more favorable than your expectations. I am excited to see what is to come.

Sperry21 (talk) 20:37, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

QIC #8

One of the four major ways to encourage compliance with norms in an online community, according to Kraut and Resnick in the chapter “Regulating Behavior in Online Communities,” is for those who may break norms to have the ability to save face. In other words, if a person behaves in a way that does not correspond with the expectations or rules of a community, the community should have mechanisms in place that allow the person to recover from the incident without shaming or embarrassing them. Kraut and Resnick use the example of MIT’s “stopit mechanism” for online interactions. A person reported for breaking a rule would receive a message that stated “someone using your account” committed an offense, and it tells the person to either change their password or, if they themselves committed the offense, to not repeat the act. This allows the person to save face and not be publicly shamed for an offense, which decreased the likelihood that they will commit the offense again. However, not all norms are rules. There are some expectations online that can be broken that aren’t offensive, but unexpected. Harold Garfinkel studied the effects of violations of social norms. He found that the subjects’ reactions were often to correct the experimenters’ violations. In Garfinkel’s experiments, the experimenters did not need to save face—because their social breeches were intentional—but their subjects attempted to save face for them. For the class’s experiments on social breaching, we will also purposefully be breaching social norms. I am curious to see if and how people’s friends will attempt to save face on their behalf.

--Soperm (talk) 04:53, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Soperm, MIT's Stopit!, a blast from the past. I was a student there back then. -Reagle (talk) 18:27, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

QIC #2

From what I understand from our ‘Breaching experiment’ reading, the activity seems to be a socio-psychological experiment, almost a joke that defies social cues in order to receive hypothesized reactions from the subjects. In relation to past class discussion, it certainly does not seem to be the most ethical practice considering the subjects have little to no clue about their participation. In that aspect, I do have my reservations about the assignment we are about to do. However, it does seem okay to do as a prank on my friends since I do not see myself doing something extremely extraordinary, and this is an online activity, which makes it easier on my conscience for some reason. This task is also quite different than the interpersonal conversational breaching experiment Garfinkel had his graduate students conduct. This part of the reading was very interesting to me because I do not know if I could personally do it. I cannot imagine how awkward that would be and certainly cannot imagine keeping a straight face throughout that weird conversation. Milgram’s residual rules are such that people agree and adhere to without knowing they do, unless someone breaks them. I thought about how much this applied to our everyday life in terms of how we act, behave and in terms of the language we use. For example, if I were to respond to a server with a “welcome” instead of a thank you, I would be embarrassed. Similarly in social media situations, a lot of rules are unsaid and assumed. Imagine taking a screenshot of every Snapchat I received or worse, Snapchats I just viewed and not received – the Snapchat stories. The thought of it is mortifying and makes me cringe, which is why I decided to this as my social breaching experiment. I will take a screenshot of every Snapchat story on my list, I think that will make my social life sufficiently absurd for the duration of the experiment.

Rheab16 (talk) 05:34, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

QIC #6 ?

This is definitely a fun topic to learn about. If you break it down, social breaching experiments can be anything that throws your friends and community off. Through the different design claims in Kraut & Resnick, I tried to only think of this applying to my social media and what would shock my friends. There's an unwritten set of rules, "background experiences", in different communities such as school, work, and home that people use to expect how social interactions should go. Some experiments, such as the at home ones, were clearly uncomfortable but others such as the Tic Tac Toe one was funny.

I think Residual Rules were interesting to read about because it made me realize how many of these rules exist in my own life. According to Milgrim, residual rules need to fit 2 criteria; 1: People must substantially agree on them and 2. People don't notice them until a violation occurs. This reminds me of Design claim 22: Community influence on rule making increases compliance with the rules. If I'm understanding this correctly, this does not actually mean that the entire community meets to go over the rules like a town meeting in Gilmore Girls. The major outcome of this claim is that when the community's norms have been violated and people notice this violation (criteria 2 from Milgrim) then people are less likely to continue the violation.

This chapter talks a lot about saving face, meaning an action that redeems someone for a previously bad action. I hope we can talk about different ways we can properly save face after our social breaching experiments. We were asked to think about the difference between moral and ethical in class. This is definitely something we need to think about during our social breaching experiments. Also, was it ethical to ask students in the Garfinkel experiments to do these experiments?

Acosta94 (talk)

Acosta94, great point about saving face; and I hoped we addressed your question about ethics. Sorry if I was confused today. -Reagle (talk) 21:25, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

QIC#2

What was most interesting to me was discussed in Design Claim 23 and how companies find "face-saving" ways to correct violations from bots, trolls and spammers. For us humans, the more severe the punishment is, the more likely that the person will not commit the offence or misbehavior. According to Kraut and Resnick, dealing with spammers and trolls is a different story. I agree with the fact that the best way to limit the spammer's effectiveness and actions is by reducing it's publicity and fame. The reason why some trolls get so popular is because of us consumers, giving them the attention they want. The less we pay attention to the trolls, the more likely they will find it less appealing to participate in the community.

Another thing I found interesting and didnt know was that the in the case of link spam, the bots dont post the links in online forums and comment sections for the readers to click on, but to get the attention of search engines. I also wasnt aware that search engines have a ranking system for websites. Generally, sites that have more incoming links, are higher ranked among search engines. Search engines also has mechanisms that make it so certain spammed links are not trusted and prevented from corrupting the search engine. To me it seems like a ongoing war between the spammers, trolls vs the people who manage the search engines, and the most effective way to dismantle the spammers and trolls are to create algorithms that block out the untrusted links and spam. This agrees with the deterrence theory that was mentioned in the reading. The worst the punishment and the more likely that the troll or spammer will agree that the benefits do not out weigh the costs, the less likely the misbehavior will happen.

I am familiar with Stanley Milgram's prision experiment and how the overall theme was that people wanted to "fit in" and listen to someone who "dressed the part". I have been thinking about my social breaching experiment and was wondering how people would react if I answered their question with another question, similar to Jeopardy. I am still thinking it out and how I would contribute this to an online community. Jared Fong (talk) 16:47, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Jared Fong, yes, the indent is to "exhume" online community norms with your experiment. -Reagle (talk) 18:27, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

QIC #7 Reading about the social breaching experiments on Wikipedia and in the Garfinkel reading this week highlighted more explicitly what we may be accomplishing with our own social breaching experiments. Essentially, in the Garfinkle reading, which was also summarized in the Wikipedia article, students were asked to break out of a social norm, or the normative behaviors of a community. They did this in a number of ways: they broke normative behavior within generalized conversations with friends, and they breached normative behavior within their families, first by observing familial interactions as if they were lodgers, and then by addressing and communicating with their family as if they were lodgers. The outcomes of these small experiments were engaging, as most friends and family members reacted as if something was wrong with the student, accusing them of being ill or too analytical. These types of reactions were echoed by similar experiments by Stanley Milgram, aimed at exploring interactions concerning seats on a subway and with cutting in lines. In these instances, experimenters observed that people were less likely to complain about giving up their seat, and more likely to give it up at all, when no explanation was attached to the action; in addition, people were more likely to complain when being cut in line if they were the ones directly affected, i.e., there was no buffer between them and the one cutting in line. My question concerning these experiments is, did the students or experimenters in the research go through IRB, and if they did not, are they ethical? It appears they did little harm, but in general, what is the process for these types of smaller experiments, i.e., those completed by students but reported on by other actors? In addition, are any of the design claims within Kraut and Resnick applicable to these experiments, and vice versa? The second half of chapter 4 that we read this week seemed to be aimed more with online communities than with communities in general. EH9890 (talk)

EH9890, this was during the "golden age" of social experimentation with no or a nascent IRB. (The Belmont Report was issued in 1978.)

QIC #5

Justification is defined as the action of showing something to be right or reasonable. I find that justification plays a major part in both social breaching experiments and in regulating online behavior. In terms of social breaching experiments, it seems respondents are most affected by justification of an action. In that case, justification is all about perception of the act that is occurring.

On the other hand, when regulating online behavior, justification is less about perception and more about action itself. Specifically we can think about Design Claim 23, which discusses ways to ‘save face’. Technical mechanisms that can help people undo actions or prohibit others from acting on their behalf are tools that help online users justify their actions. Users can feel more justified in posting what they want to post because they have the ability to control their posts. In this case, justification is created because people feel they have control over their actions.

I have seen more and more examples of justification on Instagram over the past year. Instagram continues to change their settings so users can delete their own comments and captions, as well as others comments on their own photos; this gives users complete control over their entire page and what is displayed to the public. While control mechanisms are constantly added to these social networks, I still question how much control a person has over their own content. People think that just because they have the ability to delete a comment, they have complete control over their online presence, and therefore more actions are justified. Should we really trust these social media mechanisms in order to justify our actions? Halserena (talk) 17:10, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

QIC #3

A social breaching experiment is used in social science to violate common understandings and norms that we practice everyday in life to better understand it. Scientists believe by studying people using breaching experiment, they can observe how people maintain their everyday life without any “orders”. After a while, people slowly don’t question the breaching experiment until someone told them the truth. I think our project two is going to be both interesting but scary. I have never heard of the name Breaching Experiment but I have seen a couple of Japanese and Taiwanese television shows doing similar experiments on people live on tv.

Garfinkel asked his graduate students to do a few experiment and I found them very interesting. Garfinkel’s students were doing the experiments at home and observe their family as if they were lodgers or engage conversation with the assumptions that the other person said was directed by hidden motives. Family and friends were reported to have hurt feelings and there were two students who tried with the strangers couldn’t even finish the experiment. After reading all the examples of this experiment in the past, I think it is something that we have to be careful of when we conduct the experiment because it might hurt people’s feelings.

Ginachu1993 (talk) 17:19, 14 February 2017 (UTC)ginachu1993

Ginachu1993, yes the Japanese prank shows are over the top! -Reagle (talk) 18:27, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

(QIC #3) In this week’s assigned reading from Kraut and Resnick, community regulation and norms are further discussed along with design claims to enhance compliance. They list four things that they believe will increase compliance to norms: commitment to the community, legitimacy of the norms, the ability to save face, and expectations about rewards for compliance or sanctions for non-compliance. Kraut and Resnick continue on and mention rewards and sanctions as ways to help prevent misbehavior. They discuss theories of deterrence, and argue these theories hold true that, “the decision to commit a crime or more generally to violate a norm is in part a rational decision,” and that most criminals will violate rules only when it “pays.”

One design claim I found particularly interesting was Design Claim 25, which according to Kraut and Resnick states, “verified identities and pictures will reduce the incidence of norm violations.” As we previously mentioned in class, people are more apt to break norms when they are doing so anonymously. Perpetrators become more bold with their misbehaviors online when they do not have their actual name or picture connected to it, thus they feel they cannot be held accountable for their actions. Although I have not fully ironed out all the details of my social breaching experiment, I hope to somehow incorporate this claim and verified vs. non-verified identities in my experiment. It would be interesting to compare how people act when they’re identities are confirmed and when they have a feeling of anonymity. Sabbatessa (talk) 17:22, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Sabbatessa, interesting, but it might be difficult to do as well. -Reagle (talk) 18:27, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

QIC #4 -

The most relatable design claim from kraut's reading that links to the breaching experiment would have to be design claim 23: Face-saving ways to correct norm violations increases compliance. The breaching experiment states that it seeks to examine people's reactions to violations of commonly accepted social rules or norms. In today's society speaking from personal experience I feel that when people feel violated on social media the last thing they want is for everyone to know about it and in this design claim it's saying that face saving is an act of obedience meaning that people want to constantly portray themselves as someone else/ or portray themselves as "normal" on social media. The example they gave in Kraut about a student sending an inappropriate message to the entire school e-mail is something that actually happened in my high school. A student got intoxicated and sent an e-mail out saying that the high school principal is a quote unquote "a dumbass." I personally never interacted with this student but I knew that his peers never wanted to be around him anymore, and he resorted to sitting in the library every single lunch break. This is all part of the external sanctions that are delivered within the community and how it affects a person's "face" from the community when they don't follow the regulations of how social media works/how everything functions, and they step out of the box to do what they want. It will eventually affect everyones perception of them in the online world. So in regard to the breaching experiment, I never post anything "crazy" or anything that would make my profile be at risk for people to talk about it, so I don't know if I want to draw that attention of portraying unexpected behavior online.

Anchalvasandani (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 17:41, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

QIC#5

For this week’s QIC, I wanted to talk about how people adopt norms and rules from different cultures, and how we also struggle with the switch of norms in the beginning.

I lived in four different countries in my lifetime and I have definitely struggled with changing cultural norms, from the accepted level of friendliness to how you interact with the opposite sex. Which is why I think throughout my life I have involuntarily done many real life social breach experiments.

Growing up and going to school in Saudi Arabia it was a social norm to just stand up and leave the classroom to go to the bathroom whenever you needed to, however when I was 15 I moved to a British boarding school in Switzerland, where we had to ask for permission to go to the bathroom. Its interesting to me how for the first 2 weeks in my new school I would just get up and go to the bathroom, which was breaking the norm and not accepted yet I was never directly told by any of my teachers that I was not allowed to do so, I was later contacted by my dorm supervisor who told me that many teachers have emailed him complaining me leaving in the middle of class to go to the bathroom.

This leads me to think that when conducting s social breach experiment you we might not get an immediate response because people feel vulnerable and intimidated by someone who is going against the norms. I might have actually intimidated my teachers when I just stood up and left class because they might have thought that I was being rude and since I can get up and go to the bathroom without asking I might also break another social norms and I might destroy the “face” they have in front of the other students if they do confront me in the middle of class. Salmanbinsultan (talk) 20:08, 14 February 2017 (UTC)salmanbinsultan

Feb 17 Fri - Community and collaboration

QIC #7

After reading chapter 3 "Good Faith Collaboration" of Joseph Reagle's book and Haiyi Zhu et al.'s article "Effects of Peer Feedback on Contribution: A Field Experiment in Wikipedia" my question for the week has to do with automated feedback tools ex: bots. In paragraph 18 of Reagle's reading, bots are briefly discussed with an example of their use when watching Wikipedia edits in real time for inappropriate content. When it comes to feedback on contributions, I'm wondering what 3 of the 4 types of feedback (positive, negative, and directive) would look like if the feedback was coming from bots and not human beings. The Zhu et al. study used feedback templates (12 for positive, 10 for negative and 9 for directive). They were very well designed and required a human to read the article to fill in the blanks in order to make it specific to the article in question. In some cases, the recipients of the feedback tried to talk back to the researchers in the study. This leads me to believe that it was clear that the researchers were human. If the study was tweaked, and the feedback was 1 or 2 templates for each feedback type and then just sent out at random to the new editors, I believe it would be less obvious that it was coming from a human. I'm wondering since the feedback would still apply, just not be so specific to the articles, how the participants would react? Would they be less inclined to talk back? Would the results still have shown that positive feedback increases general motivation, negative and directive feedback increase people's efforts on focal tasks and that these effects were stronger for new editors on Wikipedia? ChloeGendron (talk) 22:53, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

ChloeGendron, I imagine the base message was the closest to what you suggested, and that could've been compared to a sample of contributors who received no message. With respect to the types of feedback, I imagine AIs should be up to the task soon. -Reagle (talk) 17:43, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

QIC #7

Chapter 3 of "Good Faith Collaboration" was appropriately preluded with our readings on norms, as paragraph 10 mentions Etienne Wenger's community of practice where culture is defines as people who have a 'shared enterprise over time yielding a common identity and understanding of their environment'. As we've already learned, Wikipedians are suppose to Assume Good Faith (AGF). In Chapter 3 of Reagle's book, there are multiple reasons users are suppose to keep in mind to avoid assuming malice such as patience, humor, and my personal favorite - assume stupidity. The entire chapter aims to identify and explain Wikipedia's culture and what makes people react certain ways. This ties to the Zhu et al. reading which studied how people react to different criticisms. The four types of feedback one could receive were: 1: Positive Feedback 2: Negative Feedback 3: Direct Feedback 4: Social Feedback

Based on my understanding of the study, the researchers tested the four types of feedback using a formulated response. Additionally, there was a "newcomer" variable, which was interesting but hard to actually measure significance because we do not know the nature of their UX. I think there should have been a larger control group than just the 20%, and I can't help but wonder how much they were measuring the contributions of the users before this experiment. H2's methodology briefly mentions prior experience and ho important it is, but I did not notice this variable's significance mentioned again in the study. (NOTE: if someone else finds it, please let me know) I understand that they measured the time from the feedback to their next edit, but how is that measuring their past user behavior? The newcomer variable, helped prove their hypothesis that there would be a stronger effect on newcomers. There is some ambiguous phrasing in this study, such as in the Discussion section where it claims that 'The results basically confirm our hypotheses' - basically? It either does or it doesn't. Also, I can't help but question a study where every hypothesis is found to be true, but I guess it was just 3 and H1 and H2 both hypothesized that feedback (no matter the nature) would encourage more activity; it was just the nature of the activity that differed (focal task performance and general work motivation). I think the idea of this study is important, I just wish it was carried out differently, especially if the researchers had the available tools.

Acosta94 (talk)

Acosta94, great method questions. I expect 703 is a good sample size for this type of study (and they report on the statistical significance and effect size.) Also, does this help:

Receiver is a newcomer. This dummy variable indicates whether the receiver is a newcomer (1) or not (0). We define newcomers as editors with less than six months experience in Wikipedia and had received fewer than four messages before receiving our message.

- Reagle (talk) 17:43, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

QIC #6

I want to make a few comments on Zhu's study. First, while I agree with many of the arguments made by the researchers, I disagree with the assumption that social feedback should have little effect on focal task and improving task performance. I argue that in my experience, having strong social ties with coworkers or managers, increases my task performance because I want those to like me and value my contributions (which ties nicely in with one of Cialdini's 6 human behavior tendencies--"liking"). The researchers also postulate that when given positive feedback, people typically maintain their effort or even reduce it. This too is something that I disagree with. I have found that conversely, when given positive feedback, I tend to increase my effort on the task at hand. But is this a demonstration of effort or mere motivation? I think this then begs the need to distinguish between effort and motivation. For these purposes, should we start to think of effort and motivation as mutually exclusive? In this study, the research proves one of the hypotheses true: that negative feedback and direction increase people's efforts on focal tasks. However, this claim stands independently of what the study proves about positive feedback. To have a comprehensive discussion, we'd have to consider the participants' reasons of motivation. Did they put in more effort because they were intrinsically motivated by the task itself, or because they didn't want to be reprimanded by the community they participated in?

Second, I found the results about newcomers versus experienced editors to be very interesting. I can draw real-life comparisons from this discussion as well. The study found that experienced members perceived negative feedback as a challenge to their knowledge and expertise. I think of the few jobs I've had and what it felt like to be told what to do after I had been at each job for a while. I think it's certainly true that we inherently receive negative feedback better from our supervisors than from our subordinates. Furthermore, we are much more receptive to feedback in the workplace when we are new and still absorbing information about the work environment and of the job itself. Marinamano (talk) 20:13, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Marinamano, it might be that experienced Wikipedians aren't there for the social-bonds but the normative/need-based focus. -Reagle (talk) 17:43, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

(QIC #4) I'm writing in response to Marina's comment as I found myself thinking the same about Zhu's arguments made regarding his study. I also disagree with the assumption that social feedback should have little effect on focal task and improving task performance as I believe it is a big part in communicating results. Speaking from experience, in my current office everyone is required to have a sit down, weekly status update to discuss scope and performance that I find to be really beneficial. We are also required when hired to hold meet and greets with all members of the team to increase social ties between the team.

In addition to what Marina mentioned regarding social ties, I too find that I preform better when I know who I am working with and that communicating plays a huge part in overall job performance. However, since Zhu's study was completed on Wikipedia the arguments can be found to be more valid in comparison to a workplace environment.

One finding of Zhu's study that I found interesting was that newcomers were found to be more significantly effected by the feedback and social messages. While I do not disagree with these findings, I think that it could be argued that in some cases experienced members could be effected more as they have a larger stake and have been around longer to appreciate the feedback, positive or negative. For example, someone in an office setting who has just started out will have less to loose than someone who has been there for years and has invested more time and effort into their position there. However, playing devils advocate with myself, it can also be argued that a newcomer could be less secure in their position as a more experienced employee. Sabbatessa (talk) 23:11, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Sabbatessa, good points. (BTW: you want "affected.") -Reagle (talk) 17:43, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

QIC 2:

The most unexpected part of Reagle’s chapter on good faith was the conversation between Wikipedia users that resulted in apologies on both ends. The “Evolution” page on Wikipedia has controversy surrounding it due to difference in beliefs. Some Wikipedians believe in Creationism and therefore want Creationism to be included as a counter argument on the “Evolution” page. An example of one of these interactions is between a Creationist Wikipedian, Salva31 and scientific-minded Wikipedian, Banaby dawson. Surprisingly, after each reminding the other to contribute in “a spirit of cooperation”, Salva31 and other Wikipedians genuinely apologized to one another for escalating the argument.

I don’t spend much of my free time on Wikipedia, but I do spend it on other social media/entertainment platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. If a disagreement breaks out on any of these sites, there is rarely resolution or apologies made. It seems that arguments simply create larger divides between users whereas Wikipedia tries to keep users cooperative and civil. I find this incredibly refreshing and wish there was an easier way to do this across other channels. M.vesey (talk) 22:55, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

M.vesey, I think apologies are a fascinating topic; something I like to study more some day. -Reagle (talk) 17:43, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

QIC #3

I liked Reagle’s introductory disclaimer specifying the English-language Wikipedia, distinguishing his work from Wikipedia as a general concept. The “Good Faith Collaboration” chapter focused on two Wikipedia policies: Neutral Point of View and Assume Good Faith. The first half was about NPOV and while that was very interesting, my favorite part was “The Intersubjective Stance of Good Faith” because it was a less straightforward concept, newer concept for me. It began with a reference the interestingly titled “Writing for the Enemy” essay, which challenged my assumption that everyone on Wikipedia was friends or at least polite to one another; I had not considered the possibility of enmity or competition. I would like to point out that Reagle mentioned something I have said in a previous QIC, which is the fact that I find the Wikipedia norms to be “a great way to end an argument in real life.”

I thought that a large part of this section of the chapter had underlying implications about human ego being a major factor in causing and solving conflict. The two subsections in that I liked most were “Assuming the best of Others” and “Humor.” The fundamental attribution error mentioned in “Assuming the best of Others,” is the first time I related the reading to ego. “We often attribute the failures of other as evidence of a character flaw – but our own failings are construed as a circumstance of the environment.” This is basically saying we find faults in other but not in ourselves. Another time the ego stuck out to me was when he quotes the “Assume Stupidity” article claiming assuming other people as stupid is easier than assuming the other person has something against you. The whole concept here is that when Wikipedians edit your article, you cannot make it about yourself, it is not about you, it is about their kind intention towards the article as a collaborative effort. I think Wikipedia also tries to dissolve issues in humor that does not hurt someone’s ego. The “Don’t be a dick” policy is one that funnily and casually requests Wikipedians to be polite, while not being overly straightforward with that because someone might consider that as an arrogant sort of ‘attacking’ language. If something is funny, it already has the saving grace.

Rheab16 (talk) 16:33, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Rheab16, I'd love to go see when "Don't be a dick" was changed to "Don't be a jerk". Clearly, people have differing tastes/humor! I've asked the Wikipedian who did the rename, so we'll she what she says. -Reagle (talk) 17:43, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

QIC #3

While reading chapter 3 of Professor Reagle’s “Good Faith Collaboration,” I found the section about Neutral Point of View and Good Faith especially interesting, partially because it reminded me of questions I had about my own recent Wikipedia contributions. While researching my article for class, I learned some controversial information about the clothing retailer I have chosen to write about. The CEO of the company has allegedly been involved in sex scandals concerning underage girls. Initially, I was unsure what role, if any, this information should play in the article about the company. Though not necessarily as hot an issue as the debates attached to the “Evolution” article, this presented a conundrum. I was unable to find concrete evidence as to whether or not the scandal has effected the retailer’s sales or reputation, so I was forced to rely on my best judgement.

For now, I have decided to include a small subsection of the article dedicated to the CEO and his scandals. I made this decision knowing that the CEO did not have his own Wikipedia page I could link to, and that a large amount of the news articles about the company touched on the scandals. I’m not sure if I’ll continue to change the article, or if I’ll get any pushback from the Wikipedia community. Another thing I noticed while reading this chapter is that I now have to confront my own biases about the topic I’ve chosen. Since I was not aware of the controversial aspects of the company beforehand, my otherwise almost neutral view has evolved. I still tried to write everything from a neutral point of view, but I feared I might be more biased now that my perception of the company had changed. Angeladav (talk)

Angeladav, you might get some pushback; the best way to deal with that is to have reputable secondary sources speaking about the issue. -Reagle (talk) 17:43, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

QIC #6

When reading about the “Effects of Peer Feedback on Contribution on Wikipedia” I kept thinking about our class discussion on ethics. In terms of ethics, I think this study followed two of the three Belmont principles. In the papers section dedicated to ethics the researchers claim that they designed their experiment with the goal of observing how different types of messages “affect Wikipedia editors while at the same time minimizing potential risk to Wikipedia editor-participants”. By acknowledging the balance between rewards and hazards, it seems the researchers here are following the points of beneficence and justice. However, given that the recipients of messages were not directly told that they were a part of the experiment, I am not quite sure if respect for persons can be counted here. The study claims that they “did not try to hide the experimenters’ research affiliation”, but that in order to know they were a part of an experiment, a subject would have to go to a researchers user page and opt-out. I do not see this as an ethical way of respecting the people in this experiment. I believe subjects should have been told of their involvement in a much more direct way, instead of allowing them to possibly find out on their own through a Wikipedia editors user page.

This reading also made me think about my Research Methods class and our discussion on creating successful experiments. We discussed that in order for an experiment to be valid all groups must be the same (or as similar to one another as possible) at the beginning of a study. In terms of the study on peer feedback on Wikipedia, I am not totally sure their experiment can be considered valid from that viewpoint of all subjects being equal from the start. Although the researchers excluded blocked participants or those who had their article quickly deleted, they did not seem to truly survey their participants in any way prior to the experiment. While they did separate newcomers from experienced users, I think they should have gone a step further with the experienced users to make sure all subjects had similar amounts of feedback in the past. Some experienced users could have been more used to feedback then others, which in the end could create bias and affect the validity of the results. Halserena (talk) 17:05, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

QIC #1

"That while it may very well work in practice, it can never work in theory" is used to describe the use of good faith and NPOV. This quote seems fitting as contributors with differing opinions can disagree and release that frustration towards others in the online community. Much of Reagle's article discusses the neutrality policies of Wikipedia. When mentioning sportsmanship and impartiality in paragraph 43, I can't help to think but what must contributors write about organizations such as the Nazi's who had a negative effect on WWII, but yet there are still supporters out in the world today? Does this neutrality thinking also take away from using words such as "best" and "worst" when writing an article? For me, this is where I find the term unbiased to be dysfunctional as it can refer to being open-minded or disinterested, not creating a neutral ground for discussion for articles on Wikipedia. The four types of feedback identified by Zhu assist in creating a neutral outlook for these articles. Positive, negative, directed, and social feedback are used in an experiment to see how contributors reacted to each form of feedback. Not surprisingly, negative feedback did not go over well with any of the groups they studied as reduced motivation, especially the volatile type of comments often seen on Wikipedia forums between contributors. Can this be changed? Is there a better way to enforce and engage the online community with good faith and NPOV?

Car.caruso (talk) 17:22, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Feb 21 Tue - Moderation

QIC #8: How can a community stay a free community where everyone is given the same powers while also maintaining the same level of respect? I think, similar to the article “The Virtues of Moderation” by James Grimmelmann that the answer to this question is yet not 100% figured out. Consider a community as a place where everyone is given the same privileges, access and power and then think about what each individual’s definition of these words means?

I think right from the start its problematic to have a community where many have the same roles while carrying different understanding of what their job actually is. It does not surprise me that the Times stooped their “role-free” experiment in less than forty-eight hours. The platform was not prepared for this kind of experiment. If you look at Wikipedia, it probably took years for them to figure out how to effectively work this idea of a “role-free” community; and even after many attempts of maintaining the website professional and without vandalism, there’s still some that goes unnoticed – and this is a problem they continue to face today.

I also agree with what James said about moderation. What makes a free community like Wikipedia work and be successful is moderation. Some users in the community make it their priority to look at material that might need extra work or that needs to be deleted. For example, I recently posted an article about an Australian written and rather than deleting it right away the person that flagged the article gave me the opportunity to argue with him why this article should stay live on Wikipedia. That being said, moderation is the key to building a community and although Wikipedia is a role free community – users tend to put themselves into a subgroup and all these subgroups are the reason why the community still works today.

Haivanessa (talk) 17:24, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

QIC#6

For this week’s QIC, I would like to make a comment on the norm setting section of the Grimmelmann reading. I found community norms the most interesting part of online communities, as its something we experience and participate in even on a subconscious level. When starting this course, we were required to watch two video tutorial on Wikipedia’s usage and norms, and these videos gave explicit information about the norms that Wikipedia has, such as leaving a stamp at the end of comments or how to comment and speak to other wiki users on talk pages. And within a week of using Wikipedia I found myself comfortable with these norms that quickly became normal subconscious acts that I do when using Wikipedia. However 12 hours after posting my first article and moving it to a public space, I got a notification that my article was flagged and deleted, and immediately I felt like an outsider to the Wikipedia world, and felt a rejection even though I had already been warned that I might run into some trouble when publishing my first article. I panicked and I found myself emailing Professor Reagle to ask about how to I should deal with the situation and how to respond to the deletion, I did not want to break any more norms as I thought I had already broken one by posting an article that had to be deleted. But then I looked at the account that deleted my article and it was an admin’s account from 2004, but the description of the account seemed to contradict the wiki norms that I understood, it was clear that you were suppose to assume good faith in Wikipedia, yet this account is proud of catching trolls and spammers, which seems to contradict the good faith assumption. I was never contacted regarding my article nor told anything about what is wrong with it, which seemed odd to me. Salmanbinsultan (talk) 01:01, 21 February 2017 (UTC)salmanbinsultan

Salmanbinsultan, yes, we will talk about this today and more substantively when we discuss "RTFM." -Reagle (talk) 18:04, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

(QIC #5)

My first reaction when reading, “The Virtues of Moderation” by James Grimmelmann was that choosing the Iraq War as a topic of discussion was a bad idea from the start...i think it’s pretty obvious that it was heading south very fast. Regardless of the poor choice in topic, I believe that their “wikitorial” would still have been abused and resulted in a hot mess - they just added more fuel to the fire. It was predisposed to fail from the very start due to the absence of any sort of moderation. As Grimmelmann explains in his text, the key to the success of Wikipedia is their use of moderation. They have hundreds (maybe even thousands?) of users that are dedicated to making the organism that is Wikipedia survive, working around the clock to edit, delete, etc. (as we’ve all seen with our own articles…)

Along with Wikipedia and “wikitorial”, Grimmelmann discusses other case studies of moderation on MetaFilter and Reddit. I learned a lot from his article, I had not even heard of MetaFilter before reading it, but one thing I thought was really interesting was his discussion on Reddit’s transparency. I had no idea that the site “fuzzed” actual totals of upvotes and downvotes to prevent users from cheating, but now that I do know it’s something that I’ll be looking out for. More surprisingly, I didn’t know that Reddit sometimes “shadowbanned” members to make them think they were still active and posting content, when in reality Reddit was silently deleting their posts and ignoring their votes without their knowledge. Grimmelmann even states that, “Individual subreddit moderators frequently push their personal political agendas by using their power to secretly delete content,” and that, “Moderators have even been known to take bribes in exchange for promoting particular content” (pg. 96). I think that the ethics surrounding the practice of “shadowbanning” could even be argued, is it ethical to moderate like this without notifying the users? Certainly not when pushing personal agendas of moderators.

I was curious so I did a little research on shadowbanning and discovered it’s way more popular than I was aware, and in fact just days ago began to be employed on twitter. Sabbatessa (talk) 01:14, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Sabbatessa, yes, good catch on the Twitter story. -Reagle (talk) 18:04, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

QIC #6

Whether it be in the courtroom, a focus group, presidential debate, or even online, moderators have the power to facilitate communication. According to James Grimmelmann in his piece, "The Virtues of Moderation," "a community's moderator can promote posts or hide them, honor posters or shame them, recruit users or ban them. Their decisions influence what is seen, what is valued, what is said" (Grimmelman, 2015, p. 46.) In fact, when it comes to online communities, I was previously unaware just how influential and powerful moderators can be.

An important issue that Grimmelman discusses is community size. In a general sense, Grimmelman discusses that ideas that larger the size of the community means more use of the community, which means more congestion. With a larger community, moderators become increasingly essential for readers to find value that is indeed factual. Moreover, coming from the moderator size, the community must understand that it brings great difficulty to moderate a larger community. As a community grows, "it becomes easier for individuals and groups to resist a norm" (p. 73).

When it comes to Wikipedia I was not expecting this to play out as quickly as possible. As Grimmelman mentions, I thought I could "sneak in" to the community with my new article without getting any push back. With a larger community I expected moderators to be a bit lighter - however this was very wrong (considering my article was deleted). At first I was a bit angry, feeling as if the moderators were belittling me by correcting my work. I did not appreciate the tone I thought they put off on my talk page, as they made me feel as if I was unintelligent and writing the article for the "wrong reasons" (ie: paid promotion.) I didn't appreciate the moderators at first, or really understand exactly why they pushed back so hard on me. Agreeing with Salmanbinsultan, I felt like I wanted to give up after my article was deleted. Maybe it is this feeling of knowing exactly how hard the moderators work at pushing back, that Wikipedia is so successful. Why would someone create a page (real or a vandal) if they know it would be moderated so quickly. One must learn to be accurate and assume good faith, otherwise it is like their work is in a sense, useless and could even be gone before you know it.

After reading the Grimmelman piece I believe that I began to open my eyes a bit more for the need of these moderators. Had they not been so tough on my piece, we could see a whole new rendition of exactly what happened with the Times. Because they were able to catch my wrong doings so quickly, I saw just how dedication and invested they were in the community - they are the Wikipedia experts. They have learned and followed all the norms of the site and moderate all the congestion that appears on Wikipedia. The "anyone can edit" policy seemed almost too good to be true, and by learning the norms of wikipedia and the code book of this online community - it reiterated the fact that one must learn the norms of a community before diving straight in - otherwise, you may get pushed back on, or in my case, feel a bit embaressed or as an outsider of the community. Sperry21 (talk) 01:28, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Sperry21 Also, importantly, a community includes many members, with different personalities, who may not always agree. -Reagle (talk) 18:04, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

QIC #5

The scholarly article “The Virtues of Moderation” explains that Wikipedia strives on the following four moderators, moderators, software and surface designers, academics and journalists. Each of them have a role on the regulation and maintenance of the platform, either resulting to the flooding of users or it being a ghost site. Their roles are often interlinked, for example software and surface designers create the site for the moderators to use, based on their perception of their potential utilisation. A more user friendly site may increase the amount of moderators on the site, increasing the overall size of the online community. These software and surface designers also have to make the decision of whether or not to impose a fee to enter the community.

He discussed the imposition of a fee to crowd out participants that are not very intellectually invested in the purpose of the website. "Ex ante" pricing is an example where participants have to 'pay to play' (p.68). I find that to be an effective way to control the type of users, however, it could potentially block out users that are unwilling to pay even a small fee, refraining from optimising the openness aspect of the site. The author states that the important aspect of openness is democracy. He further accentuates that broad participation can help make moderation more effective. For instance, since Wikipedia is an open platform, anyone can edit information, it allows the site to withhold diverse information covering every topic. It regulates discussion and often arguments between users since the information is meant to be neutral and free from biases. The large amount of users on the site ensure frequent moderation of content.

However, on a paid site, with fewer moderators, it may make more sense to impose the fee, so that only knowledge and passionate users are motivated to post content. These people will most likely post legit information.

Vanishadans (talk) 04:56, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Vanishadans, pricing is an interesting but rarely used approach. -Reagle (talk) 18:04, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

QIC 3:

Just like Sabbatessa, I too learned a lot from James Grimmelman's article, "The Virtues of Moderation", especially on the case studies included. I had not heard of MetaFilter before reading this paper, but found it to be a surprising and appealing online community. The fact that the members of MetaFilter were able to save two women from human trafficking is incredible, and a great example of the positive community that the moderators have molded. I appreciate that inappropriate material is hidden in order to reinforce positive contributions from the community. By hiding negative behavior, the moderators make positive behavior the norm which encourages this from users. Additionally, when members do make mistakes, they are treated as well-intentioned and are meant to still be welcomed in the community. The moderators are respected not simply because of their authority or position, but because they have proven themselves to the community time and time again. As issues arise, the moderators handle them with patience and respect which improves patience, respect, and attitude overall in the online community. While I am sure there are downfalls to MetaFilter and problems definitely arise, I agree with Grimmelman that it is "a moderation success story" (p. 93). I think other online communities could definitely some of MetaFilter's approaches to moderation such as humility and courtesy. It is definitely a different type of community than Wikipedia with a differing moderation style, but it works and has clearly brought a sense of belonging to the users of MetaFilter. M.vesey (talk) 05:52, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

M.vesey, when people ask me for a good commenting community, I give MetaFilter as an example. -Reagle (talk) 18:04, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

QIC #4

"The Virtues of Moderation" by James Grimmelmann talks about online communities in reference to internet and wikipedia as semicommons, and the moderation of these. The story about Time's weird online experiment, I thought, was funny and quite stupid of them to do. How could an established, online, fairly well respected magazine that probably employees well educated people think that this experiment would go well and be fruitful in any way? I agree with Haivannesa's comments on the Time experiment: It IS problematic to have a community where misunderstand their jobs. It does not surprise me either that the Times stopped their “role-free” as soon as they did. I also would say that if Wikipedia were studied as an example, it should have considered that forming that kind of a community takes a lot more than a day or two.

I found the use and definition of the word semicommons “both common and private uses are important and impact significantly on each other" (Grimmelman, 2015, p. 4652) very interesting. I have never thought of the internet as a collaborative space and often forget that it is, in fact, a compilation of information from all kinds of people around the world. Another thing I had not considered is the fact that we could eventually "run out of space" so to speak. This reminds me of Scarcity from our "Science of persuasion" reading, in a similar but different context. If the online space is scarce, it is treated in a way for that reason and moderated accordingly as well. Also, the goals of moderation, in my mind, were just so that viewers (users/readers) were not ill-informed and the intention to raise awareness, pretty similar to productivity and openness.

Rheab16 (talk) 06:22, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Rheab16, fascinating connection. In class let's discuss how MetaFilter makes conversation scarce and valuable? -Reagle (talk) 18:04, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

QIC #2

I don't know why, but I often forget how important moderation is in online communities. Of course we've been taught that moderation should be a basic principle when making decisions in our own life, but that same has to apply to our online personas. There are so many people out there that want to vandalize and cause problems however they can and the internet is a pretty good place to do it thanks to its anonimity, that is why moderators really do play a key role in maintaining a positive and dynamic community.

After reading James Grimmelmann's reading, I can tell you I was most fascinated with the case studies, mainly because one gets to see how the theory helps explain the success- or lack thereof- moderating principles. It illustrates Wikipedia's outstanding job in creating and maintaining a huge, positive and collaborative community free of vandalism, abuse and falsehood- at least for the most part- by implementing norms and having moderators, read, edit and delete unnecessary content in situations. There clear guidelines and goals also help newcomers understand the community's goals and the ways to reach them. It also shows how lack of moderation can result in complete failure as with the LA Times. But the one I found most curious was Metafilter, for two reasons: one, the story of how a tragedy was stopped is nerve racking , and two, I really had never even heard of it, so it was really eye-opening to read about how the site works and why its moderation techniques are a success.

But what I learned most from this reading was that moderation is fundamental to an online community, but establishing norms from the beginning, that newcomers face as soon as they join, could also help in protecting the good intentioned people in the community, and warn those who want to mess with it.

MariselaLW (talk) 14:07, 21 February 2017 (UTC)MariselaLW

QIC #8

This week’s readings focused on, “The Virtues of Moderation,” by James Grimmelmann. Throughout this reading, I found many parallels to past readings in this class. As the piece specifically focused on moderation in online communities, using Wikipedia, The Los Angeles Times failed wiki, MetaFilter, and Reddit as examples of what moderation can look like in various online communities, it outlined the components that affect moderation and the different combinations these can produce. In outlining the grammar of moderation, Grimmelmann lists four main techniques used in moderation. These include exclusion, pricing, organization, and norm setting. These techniques correspond with design claims we read in Kraut and Resnick discussing ways to increase commitment and compliance in online communities. Exclusion, pricing, and norm setting in particular stood out to me, as we discussed how to regulate online communities extensively in class. Exclusion corresponds well to design claim one in chapter four of Kraut and Resnick, which discusses moderation systems' ability to remove messages that are inappropriate; pricing corresponds well to design claim 27 in chapter 4 of Kraut and Resnick concerning using prices to make undesirable actions harder to accomplish; and norm-setting spans several design claims that discuss the best ways in which to display and establish norms to increase compliance. Seeing how these techniques can be applied in moderation activity in actual online communities was an interesting parallel and further expanded on the topics we have been learning about in class. I do have a question, however: I was slightly confused by ex-ante and ex-post in the reading, which made the latter half of the reading slightly confusing. What is the specific difference between the two, and what are the pros and cons? The reading gave examples, but hearing more about the concepts would be helpful.

In addition, as a small, short comment, the Reddit case-study was of particular interest to me, as it is an online community with which I have more experience. Learning about the cons to Reddit's moderation system (specifically their deference to the community on controversial matters) was a fascinating facet of the community I hadn't given much thought to before. -EH9890 (talk)

QIC #8 In the reading 'The Virtues of Moderation', the author gives multiple reasons why moderation is important and who it effects. Within the first few pages, you get to learn about a failed Wikipedia inspired experiment by the LA Times (obviously we're going to look up what 'goatse' is after they tell you not to - gross). With little surprise, users vandalized this opportunity, which brought up the purpose of moderation. For the purpose of this article, moderation is described at "the governance mechanisms that structure participation in a community to facilitate cooperation and prevent abuse". The Article identifies four groups of people who are effected by moderation: 1. the moderators themselves 2. software and interface designers 3. academics such as technology, communications, and computer science 4. journalists. My QIC will concentrate on the moderators themselves, because it relates strongest to what we have been learning about in class.

On page 61, the article begins discussing Norm-Setting, where it claims that moderators have limited power over group norms. There is a lot of power in the users themselves and the strength of the community itself. The example given in the reading was that when a troll interrupts a community's conversation, a strong community can still prosper after it while the conversation will end in a weak community. This made me think of our class discussion where we talked about Reddit and Wikipedia admins and how it is up to them to make big calls such as to block users or send warnings. After that discussion, I believed that it was up to admins to keep a community functioning. However, after this article, it makes much more sense that it is up to the users because they are the ones who are (mostly) constantly upholding group norms. If everyone decided to breach a group's norms at the same time, would that group survive? If everyone in my life decided to use the social breach of responding to people through different communication methods (email, text, Snapchat), would we be able to maintain our relationships?

Acosta94 (talk)

QIC #4

James Grimmelmann’s The Virtues of Moderation details the importance of moderation, or governance mechanisms to prevent misuse within online communities. In reading this article, it becomes clear that the LA Times, who participated in an open-forum “wikitorial” experiment which became subject to abuse, would have benefitted from any of the moderation techniques employed by Wikipedia. While Wikipedians rely on a complex array of soft governance techniques dictated by social norms, the solution for the LA Times could have been much simpler. In my opinion, exclusion would have been most helpful in this experiment. This seems like the easiest way to filter out graphic content such as profanity and pornography without employing actual moderators. To accomplish this, the Times could have made use of any number of barriers to entry, ranging from the simple requirement to enter captchas before posting to the creation of accounts. The publication could have even limited contributions to paid subscribers. To me, this seems like an easy way to filter out those with ill-intentions. Surely it wouldn’t stop every troll, but having to go through the effort to set up an account, and eventually being blocked for posting obscene content, would deter many. The effort required to contribute would not be worth it for the more trivial trolls. While the LA Times community may have lost out on some potentially valuable contributions, overall they would have profited from this type of moderation. Simple moderation techniques like this do not create too large a barrier to entry, and in my opinion would not deter contributors with good intentions. In the end, the contributions being made would be more meaningful. If any of these small alterations had been made, perhaps the experiment wouldn’t have ended after only 48 hours. Angeladav (talk)

QIC #7

This fall I interned at a late night talk show in their social media department. Every week I would create an Industry Report that summarized updates and new techniques being used by major social media sites. During my internship there was a lot of discussion surrounding Facebook and their ‘fake news’ problem. Through my research I found out that Facebook was toying with the idea of using human moderators as opposed to algorithms to combat fake news. However, the idea of Facebook outsourcing to fact-checking organizations was met with a lot of resistance. To this day, Facebook’s action in regards to fake news remains a major discussion.

In reading “The Virtues of Moderation” by James Grimmelmann, I was reminded of Facebook’s fake news problem, especially in relation to how moderation can occur either automatically or manually. So far, I think the actions of Facebook in reaction to this fake news problem will create positive change. Facebook said they are going to work to “make it easier for users to report instances of fake news” (Pierson and Etehad, 2016). By allowing user-generated moderation, Facebook is allowing a human-touch to occur at a lower cost. In addition, by outsourcing to fact-checking organizations, Facebook is allowing for a higher quality of content, as well as a higher consideration for specific community norms.

While automated moderation may have been a cheaper option for Facebook, I think we need to consider Design Claim 6 in Chapter 4 of Kraut and Resnick. Design Claim 6 states that “filters of influence limits can reduce the damage of shill raters in recommender systems, but they do so at the cost of ignoring some useful information from honest raters” (135). If Facebook had implemented an algorithm to moderate news, I believe a lot of legitimate news would have been accidentally placed on the back burner.

I imagine that walking the line between automatic and manual moderation is tough for any company or organization. However, looking at the case of Facebook and their decisions thus far, I am impressed. Just two days ago Zuckerberg said that moving forward Facebook’s goal is “to help people see a more complete picture, not just alternate perspectives. We must be careful how we do this…” (Sterling, 2017). Furthermore, Zuckerberg said that fake news stems from a bigger problem that he hopes to address – a lack of social infrastructure and inclusivity for the community that is Facebook. I focused this discussion on Facebook and it's fake news problem because it demonstrates the importance of moderation in an online community, and the balancing act that must occur. Halserena (talk) 17:00, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

QIC #6

After reading James Grimmelmann's article, The Virtues of Moderation, I immediately began to outline policies and moderation rules of the social media platforms that I use every day. Every platform is certainly individual and prioritizes specific policies over others, therefore such factors make every website different. It all comes down to what a user is looking for in an online community. Of course, the majority of users agree on respecting each other in the cyber world, but there are numerous other factors that impact users' perception of which community to commit to. It depends if a user wants a strict online community, where there is no play time and user is responsible to post only accurate, cited, and finalized version of a post. In this case, Instagram can be an example. When you post a photo, you subconsciously respect rules of the public (such as photos should be appropriate for the norms of society). Once the post is on the public feed, other users ('friends') cannot edit or delete your post, but they can make comments or like the post. In contrast, a user might be more attracted to online communities where other members are eligible to edit and flag your posts. An example of such scenario is the Wikipedia community. Once an article is posted, it can be edited and flagged by the public. Many users value such factors of the online community, because they serve as a feedback for improving your posts.

Each online community has its own understanding of the freedom of speech and the rights that others have to criticize your opinion. But in all scenarios, admin/admins are the ones who are able to moderate all posts and therefore deletes them if they put communities in danger. For example, once my Wikipedia article became a public article, I was contacted by a Wikipedia editor in a respectful manner. The person contacted me outlining factors that are 'inappropriate' for the Wikipedia community, and how I should proceed going forward. The person clearly outlined solutions for solving such issues, which I greatly appreciate. I was approached with respect, but was also told that I am breaking certain policies of the community. I think it is an appropriate style of moderation of online communities, because you are given a warning (notice) of what you did wrong and how you can fix it. Etozzi (talk) 17:06, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

QIC#3

I found this week's reading to be particularly interesting. Grimmelmann mentions how online communities are watched over by moderators and these moderators are often just members of the community. They do no necessarily get paid, or have a materialist incentive to be the "good Samaritans" of the online community, but do it because it is something that they want to do. I found it particularly interesting on how they compare what protecting infulstructure in the normal world is like, versus protecting online communities by "promoting the sharing information to encourage extensive use by open access". On one hand, we believe that in order to protect, we need to moderate and control. Ideas of it being guarded and protection from the majority, is what makes people think that everything is okay and under control. According to online communities, open access is what thrives and and moderation is how online communities stay productive and not just filled with trolls and crap.

Relating to the real world, parts of the article reminded me of the Snowden case. In the part where Grimmelmann argues that the internet is a source is a resource that is owned and managed as a private property at one level, but as for the common at another. This is where the Snowden case became foggy. I understand that Grimmelmann is saying that some parts of the internet should be private and some should be public, but who gets to decide whether or not the material should be private or public. Snowden provided the general public with information that he believed the rest of the public needed to hear, even though it was information that can be seen as secretive and not for everyone. In theory, he is doing something that a vigilante would do, something that he inately felt the rest of the public should know and benefit from. Jared Fong (talk) 17:10, 21 February 2017 (UTC)JaredFongi (talk)

The scholarly article “The Virtues of Moderation” by James Grimmelmann discusses the importance of moderation in an open source community such as Wikipedia. He credits this as the primary way in which abuse of the community is avoided. Grimmelmann does make clear that there can be different interpretations of the term “moderation”, and that his breakdown of the term is as practised by moderators. In his article, Grimmelmann breaks down the basic verbs of moderation into for verbs: Excluding; Pricing; Organising; and Norm-setting. He describes these as the four principle techniques of Moderation.

One of the Case studies that he discusses in the article is “Reddit”, which is a popular crowd-sourced social news aggregation, web content rating and discussion website. I find the inclusion of Reddit in this discussion of moderation interesting, as I am a frequent user of the website. One of the most interesting parts of Reddit’s moderation techniques, which Grimmelmann only mentions in passing, is in the form of exclusion. The site depends on a a layer of distributed organisation in the form of user-established “subreddits”, which focus on discussion of a specific topic. Within these subreddits, moderators can enjoy substantial discretion with how strictly the subreddit is moderated. In my experience, this has led to a variety of different levels of strictness in moderation, changing from subreddit to subreddit. In particular the way in which the moderators deem posts that are innappriate or irrelevant often changes in a potentially high degree. This means that in terms of exclusion as a moderation technique, Reddit as a whole lacks consistency with the way in which it handles abusive content. Drishinb (talk) 17:12, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

QIC #8

Page 80 of the reading "Virtues of Moderation" by James Grimmelmann states: “But Wikipedia’s openness isn’t a mistake; it’s the source of its success. A community solves problems that official leaders wouldn’t even know were there.” This quote got me to thinking about a class I took last semester called Social Movements. During the first week of class, our professor asked us if we would rather have a movement where a few were in charge (leading meetings, keeping discussions on track, designated people to talk to the press, etc.) OR if we would rather have a free-flowing movement where every one is equal and people just volunteer to do whatever needs to get done. The class was torn. I never understood how a community would last without expressed leadership. Without leaders how would problems get solved? How would members know the course of action in order to solve it themselves. This exactly why Wikipedia is so unique. Users created the rules, are subject to change and interpret the rules how necessary. To go off of Haivanessa, when her article was flagged for deletion, she was given a fair chance to argue her case and ask to better her article. She wasn't shut down and told an expressed "no" she was given anther chance. When it comes to moderation and keeping users on the same page, even when roles are not defined. In most communities there are defined positions for members to keep things on track and moving along. Without this, most communities fail because people will start to step on other people's toes, members who contribute more will claim to be more important than those who do not, etc. On Wikipedia, those who use the site in moderation, are still considered useful because they are still contributing to the same end goal as those who might use the site more regularly. Of course there are edit wars or some people bicker about citing things a certain way but at the end of the day all users are contributing to the same work and making sure that work is up to standard is the most important thing. ChloeGendron (talk) 17:21, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

ChloeGendron, Interesting connection. In the WP book I discuss these issues of leadership and posit a model for these open communities called "authorial leadership." -Reagle (talk) 18:04, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

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QIC #7 was accidentally not saved as discussed with instructor Marinamano (talk) 19:57, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

QIC #5

This week's reading was really interesting. Moderation is a very well known and often practiced concept in my culture actually, so it was interesting to see it to use in an online community setting Grimmelmann's definition of moderation is the governance mechanisms that structure participation in a community to facilitate cooperation and prevent abuse. The dictionary's definition is, the avoidance of excess or extremes, especially in one's behavior or political opinions. My personal definition is, keeping your feelings balanced and to not go overboard with your feelings because you shouldn't make a decision based on temporary feelings to hurt other people. Three very different point of views of moderation, but they all have the same goal and that is to 'prevent abuse.' I like what JaredFong said in his QIC and that is that these moderators in the online community 'don't necessarily get paid, or have a materialist incentive to be good samaritans of the online community, but do it because it is something that they want to do.' it immediately made me think of Lily Singh who is an active video blogger on youtube. You may know her as iiSuperwomanii but she has come a long way from uploading regular videos just for her sake, to uploading MORE videos for what the public wants to see. She is one of the highest paid YouTube stars and is ranked 8th on Forbes with 2.5$ in her pocket. She is an example of a 'good samartian' in the online community because she does everythin gin moderation. She actually sets up a question poll on her FaceBook page asking viewers what it is that they want to see. She majored in psychology, so whatever topic they want to see presented she definitely knows how to present it. This is an example of doing what you want to do in the online community without harming anyone, but instead trying to reach out to them in a more 'fun' way. It is so true what the author says about the online world and that is, "A community's moderators can promote posts or hide them, honor posters or shame them, recruit users or ban them. Their decisions influence what is seen, what is valued, what is said" - Links to Lily Singh again, that she always wants to reach out and communicate with everyone that it impacts positively in her online activity.

Anchalvasandani (User talk:Anchalvasandani)

--- — Preceding unsigned comment added by Anchalvasandani (talk • contribs) 17:30, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Feb 24 Fri - Governance and banning

QIC #4 Ban is the formal prohibition from editing or making certain types of edits on the Wikipedia pages. There are five types of bans, site ban, article ban or page ban, topic ban, interaction ban, and exceptions to limited bans. Banning from editing Wikipedia page is different from blocking from it. Blocking is used by administrators to technically prevent an account or IP address from editing the Wikipedia page. Before I take Online Community, I have no idea that Wikipedia has a community and the contributors are called Wikipedians. I also have no idea that Wikipedia has so many policies and guidelines that created and developed by the community. I think it is very interesting to learn about all the rules in the Wikipedia community since we have to create a Wikipedia page for this class. There are a few groups and people who can ban an editor in the Wikipedia community and they are Arbitration Communities, Wikipedia Foundation, and Jimbo Wales. I think it is very reasonable for Wikipedia to develop these policies to maximize the quality of the encyclopedia and avoid conflicts.

Ginachu1993 (talk) 21:21, 23 February 2017 (UTC)Ginachu1993

BTW: Ginachu1993, it is the "Arbitration Committee." -Reagle (talk) 14:37, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

QIC #6 Chapter 5, “The Challenges of Consenses,” from your book discusses the differences between voting and polling. You state that Wikipedians believe that “Voting is evil.” I did not see a difference between voting and polling before reading about it in this chapter. It is interesting to consider that online communities such as Facebook use the ’polling’ function for people to come to conclusions on decisions. This feature was implemented by Facebook around five years ago, making it easier for a large or small online community to come to a consensus. The definition of consensus as stated in the chapter is “Any group in agreement about something whose opinion is the same as yours; antonym of cabal [i.e., those who disagree with you].” However, in my opinion, it may be harder to come a consensus through polling as it drives conversation and disputes when people express their individual opinions. Editing pages on Wikipedia is some sort of polling. The type of content creates controversies amongst moderators and as seen through our personal experience on attempting to publish our own Wikipedia articles, it is hard to come to consensus with the multiple moderators on Wikipedia.

I consider YouTube to be an online community. Only people who are logged into YouTube are allowed to ‘Thumbs up’ and ‘Thumbs down’ a video. This can be considered a way to “vote” for the video. It is questionable whether this is an ethical way to evaluate a video on an online community? Is it evil? Vanishadans (talk) 05:03, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

QIC #9 Wikipedia has been so successful as an open forum for so long largely because of the governance and banning systems they have in place. As discussed in a previous reading, “The Virtues of Moderation” by James Grimmelmann, the Los Angeles Times ran an experiment inspired by Wikipedia, where they allowed their readers to create and edit an article themselves. It quickly became overrun with offensive language and images, and had to be taken down. Wikipedia has processes in place so that when a user posts something deemed inappropriate or offensive, not only is the information taken down but the user is punished. Today’s readings revolve around effective ways to punish a user in an online community. For Wikipedia, League of Legends, and most other online communities, the answer appears to be timely notification of the ban (including the decision that was made and the user’s specific actions that led to the ban) and allowing the ban to be enacted by a sort of “jury of one’s peers.” The communities are microcosms of society. When someone breaks a rule, or law, they are read their rights and punished. In Wikipedia, punishments range from total website ban to being blocked from editing specific articles. However, like the American judicial system, some offenses are weightier and are sent to the Arbitration Committee to decide not only the individual’s punishment, but the precedent that will be set for related incidents in the future. Was this a decision that Jimmy Wales and other founders made purposefully, or did the style of governing simply tend to what is a familiar (and arguably proven effective)? In “The Challenges of Consensus,” you mention that a general guideline on Wikipedia is “Voting is Evil.” The belief is that voting is unfair and encourages groupthink; in essence, does more harm than good. I would be curious to learn about the history of voting to make decisions on Wikipedia, specifically with deciding punishments. Would voting tend to be better or worse than consensus for the user on trial? -Soperm (talk) 05:32, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

In Brendan Maher’s “Can a video game company tame toxic behavior”, he discusses the social, and anti social, behavior between players in an online game setting. He notes that this behavior often comes in the form of verbal sexual and racial harassment of varying degrees and runs rampant. In discussing the findings from Riot Games’ commissioned research into the social interaction in their online game, he also alludes to possible larger implications of the findings on other online games, However, when discussing this idea, I think that it is important to note how different online games can vary. In my personal experience as an avid gamer, I have found that different online games can vary in the general attitude and levels of toxic behavior to sometimes incredible amounts. I attribute this to the idea that every online game is in essence an online community of their own, with different attitudes and different norms. Throughout my experience, I have also noted that the varying attitudes can be influenced by the nature of a particular online game. I have found that online games that involve players competing with one another, such as League of Legends, Call of Duty and Battlefield, can be home to higher levels of toxic and abusive behavior. On the other hand, online games in which gameplay is quintessentially co-operative between players, such as Portal 2 and the Mass Effect 3 multiplayer, can have less toxic behavior and an attitude that encourages more teamwork and support. Drishinb (talk) 15:40, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

QIC #5 I found Brandon Maher's write up on League of Legends regulation especially interesting. Though I am not a gamer myself I grew up when Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft were making massive strides in their product development so exposure to these systems was inevitable. When Xbox live rose to popularity in the early 2000's "talking shit" to other gamers became a new part of the gaming experience. This new interactive and communal aspect of gaming added entertainment to the games but it also exposed younger players to mature themes, explicit language, and even threats that had not been experienced in-game before. I admire Riot Game's initiative to work on this issue because as technology develops, I believe the potential for video games to act as a storytelling medium and tool for developing problem solving skills is immense. It's a shame that younger individuals who like to play video games for the more wholesome qualities are subjected to unnecessary vulgarity and abuse from others in the community. I think the research being done on these communities will eventually be applied to the social sciences and offer more insights on how anonymity affects interpersonal communications. Do you think that if "gamer tags" were linked to individual's real life identities like usernames on social media would abuse go down or remain the same? - NUrb93

QIC #7

The gaming world is known for its harassing, vulgar, inappropriate, and hurting comments between players. The statistics show that the number of video players, who get affected by malicious comments, is growing. I do not play video games, but I am always surrounded by my guy friends who like to play killing, stabbing, and violent games. In the real world, they are very calm, polite, and respectful to everyone around them. Although, they completely change once they participate in the action of stabbing or killing another player in the game. They get excited about winning, which means killing more than other opponents. Their happiness is expressed by becoming loud and bullying other guys with comments that discourage and cause anger in others. Their loss is expressed by cursing, blaming others for losing, and any other actions that are outside of their 'reality' characters. Online games completely change the way people think and perceive things around them. Gamers become cruel, aggressive, and emotionless. I strongly believe that gamers 'black out' during games, and therefore do not understand or recall the actions/comments they make during the action of 'cyber killing'.

Brendan Maher discusses the way video game admins are 'punishing' players for inappropriate actions. Those players, who break the norms and policies of the games, receive 'reform cards'. These cards are meant to provide feedback to banned players. The goal of such cards is for the players to understand what they did wrong and avoid making the same mistakes in the future. Therefore, such players are monitored for the next few months, in order to see if any accomplishments are achieved. If not, then players are banned again. I think it is a great way to start controlling inappropriate actions in the cyber world of video games, but the full control of such players will still take years. Etozzi (talk) 17:10, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

QIC #9 All of today’s readings have to do with the ways in which a community deals with those who have done something against the community’s consensus on standards. After reading Wikipedia's banning policy, I never really thought about all the different ways a person can be banned. There's a site ban, article/page ban, topic ban, interaction ban, and so on. The page goes on to discuss the Arbitration Committee, who are the ones who decide band and restrictions. What I found interesting is the fact that there are not expressed time limits for the band. It’s basically said that once given the ban that the person is not allowed to do the activity until told otherwise. After your reading the chapter from your book, it got me thinking about consensus. If a community changes its mind, and they reevaluate the consensus, will there be backlash from those who has been previously punished by the now outdated standards? ChloeGendron (talk) 17:19, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

ChloeGendron, I see your point, but I think the bans are fairly stable, and even if someone's case/punishment was revisited, it would be very specific and not prompt claims from others of unfairness. -Reagle (talk) 18:03, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

Feb 28 Tue - Newcomer gateways

QIC #5

After reading The Challenges of Dealing with Newcomers, I learned that it is very important for a community or group to recruit for newcomers. Newcomers can be a source of innovation, new ideas, and other resources that the group needs.

I personally know that attracting newcomers is not an easy task. I am in a sorority and every semester we have recruitment events to attract for new sisters to join the sorority. There are so many different organizations in our school so in order to attract quality girls we have to work very hard to differentiate ourselves and be unique. Recruiting for new girls is very important because one day the old sisters are going to graduate and in order for our sorority to be sustainable, we need new people. In the book, there are five basic problems when dealing with newcomers and they are recruitment, selection, retention, socialization, and protection. I found selection and socialization the hardest throughout the recruiting process in our sorority. It is hard to find someone who is a good fit in our sorority but also get along with everyone. Sometimes we will find a girl who is ambitious and would contribute a lot in the sorority but then she is not clicking with a lot of people, or vice versa. Ginachu1993 (talk) 00:03, 28 February 2017 (UTC)ginachu1993

In response to Ginachu1993 's QIC:

QIC #5

I also agree with her in saying that a broader group and range of people allows for diversity in ideas and resources, I think that's a significant point in several settings. The sorority example shows that they strive to find unique individuals who would be good at collaborating and creating a nice environment for all members. I think this could be taken out of this context and placed in many more.

The one that comes to mind is in terms of racial issues and in light of the recent Oscars, it wouldn't be irrelevant to bring up the nominations from the past year (2016 awards, not this season). There was a #OscarsSoWhite hashtag trending on Twitter and other social media platforms. This was to signify that the diversity in ideas, resources, opinion and talent cannot be well explored if there is less opportunity for minority races. Non-white people are not necessarily newcomers, but they are new to Hollywood in that the proportions of who makes it to the big screens has a wide margin, the members of the academy as well are mostly white, and that reduces the chances of marginalized groups to be recognized. Maybe the people who claimed that the Oscars were open to all, and were fair and just could have benefitted if they read this specific chapter.

Rheab16 (talk) 18:03, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

QIC# 7:

Chapter 5’s design claims 1 through 16 deal with two problems. The first one is recruiting newcomers and the second one is selecting the right newcomers. I have selected design claim 10 to write my QIC and that is because I thought it was really accurate and it connects with something I know about an online community community Design claim 10 talks about how familiarity plays a role in attracting newcomers, and how the more the name of the community is in front of people the more likely they are to join this community. This claim I think is very important and very true, I joined snapchat back in 2012 before all these new feature were on it and before all the celebrities joined it. I joined the snapchat community because some kid in my high school discovered it and everyone in my high school started using it, however one of my close friend refused to download it and thought it was so stupid. After meeting up with him this past summer, he kept it talking about snapchat and how it was such an incredible idea and how it is his favorite social media community or platform, and he insisted and refused to believe that it is the same application that was around in high school, except without the filters and story feature. After talking to him about it I realized that he had joined it because many of the celebrities that he follows on his Instagram and many of his friends were posting there snapchat accounts and were talking about it, which made the “community” familiar to him and increased the likeliness that he tries it. Salmanbinsultan (talk) 01:11, 28 February 2017 (UTC)salmanbinsultan

QIC #10

In Building Successful Online Communities, Kraut and Resnick identify that new members to a community bring new perspectives and resources, however they’re not familiar with the policies or culture of the community and may cause problems. The authors list 5 problems relating to newcomers, including recruiting people to join, selecting the best fits to integrate into the community, retention, socializing the newcomers with veteran members to facilitate learning, and protection of the site’s goals against novice ideas. The open source software developing site Debian tackles many of these problems. To recruit members, they encourage “Advocates” to recommend friends and colleagues to the site. Debian also has a very thorough selection process. New members must already be active on the site to be considered for membership. The newcomer must submit an application where they discuss and prove complete understanding of Debian’s policies, principles, and goals. This is based on the material Debian has posted about the guidelines for software editing, as well as the social expectations on the site. An Application Manager guides the newcomer through the application process and decides whether they are the right fit for the community. The rigorous application process for membership weeds out those who are less serious about the community. Once an applicant has been accepted and becomes a Debian Developer (DD), they are more likely to commit to the site because of the intense application process. Positive interactions with other members also increases retention, which relates to the problem of socializing newcomers with older members. Applicants are assigned a “Sponsor” who acts as a mentor and reviews the applicant’s edits before they are posted. This also serves to protect the group from newcomers. While the mentor reviewing the applicant’s work can be framed as helpful guidance, it also acts as a way for veteran DDs to ensure the applicant’s edits follow the site’s guidelines and are not detrimental to the overall project.

-Soperm (talk) 05:16, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

QIC #7

I found Design Claim 2 to be quite intriguing, it stated that word-of-mouth recruiting is more powerful than impersonal advertising. This works because the review is coming from existing users who have already experienced the community, creating some level of trust between the potential new user and experienced user of the community. This also works in the advertising industry, since I would believe that people who have been personally referred to a product are more likely to purchase it than if they have heard about the product solely through impersonal advertisement. This is because impersonal ads may be fabricated to enhance the perceived usability and appeal of the product. Eckles (2007) claim supports this, he says that "these approaches leverage users' credibility with their friends in a way that is more powerful than any message that appears to come directly from the community itself.

Word-of-mouth recruiting can be compared to reviews by users of products on online communities such as Yelp and Amazon. However, the level of trust between consumers and the company may be depleted if companies post fake reviews by "sock puppets" in order to increase sales. However, if companies engage in genuinely in regards to reviews, they can use word-of-mouth recruiting to their advantage.

Using word-of mouth recruiting when recruiting candidates for jobs is also useful. It is often the case that people get offers due to their excellent networking skills, where recruiters and people influential in a company manage to recruit appropriate candidates by mentioning the job availability to their peers by word-of-mouth. Being referred to a a potential candidate from a peer or someone you trust puts the employer to ease since they trust their judgement of the candidate.

Vanishadans (talk) 05:21, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

QIC #3 I find design claim # 6 about impersonal advertising as a effective way to engage potential newcomers to a new online community particularly interesting. I have worked in advertising and have gone out into the field to try and bring in prospective clients to our events. Although I was first skeptical about going out and trying to get people to buy come to our event, I found that it can be successful. Not everyone is familiar with the specific content that we are presenting at our events, but many use some sort of heurstic processing to relate to what will be presented. In the past, when I have been asked about what working in advertising is like, I had constantly gotten the question about whether or not it is like the TV show, Mad Men. Although the show is based off of the original advertising people and agencies of the 1960s, I find that it doesnt relate to what I did at all. Mad Men was a common ground of knowledge between one group that worked in advertising and one group that had no idea what It was like. At times I would use the Mad Man relationship to help sell tickets to people who were not familiar with the advertising community. It had worked out quite well, considering that I had no prior connection with the clients. Similarly to how the reading stated that a celebrity endorsement with someone of high status can be enough to cause engagement, I used the idea of Mad Men to pursued people to come and attend our event.

User:Jared Fong (talk) 05:21, 28 February 2017 (UTC)Jared Fong (talk) 13:58, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

QIC #9

This week's readings focused on new members and the challenges associated with welcoming them to a new online community. Kraut and Resnick proposed that communities deal with five main problems when handling the introduction of newcomers: recruitment, selection, retention, socialization, and protection. What I found surprising throughout this chapter of Kraut and Resnick was that interpersonal methods of recruiting members has a higher success rate and eventual return on investment as a result than impersonal methods of recruiting or advertising. Working in marketing, I often spend time crafting messages for the more standard approach of impersonal advertising or marketing techniques, such as generic social media posts or mass emails. Reading Kraut and Resnick's reasoning behind the success of interpersonal recruiting methods made sense, and made me wonder if perhaps companies might spend at least a fraction more time on face-to-face marketing techniques when possible instead of mass advertisement production.

I also found Kraut and Resnick's design claim 5 concerning the use of influencers to be extremely true in practice. I am currently working for a startup and have been identifying potential social media influencers we can reach out to in order to spread awareness for our service. We have made a few successful connections, and have decided that influencer outreach is an area we'd like to continue to explore moving forward due to its ability to reach large swaths of our target market without a large amount of time, energy, or spend. It was interesting throughout this chapter to find these sorts of connections between Kraut and Resnick's design claims concerning recruiting new members and the marketing activities I complete on a weekly basis. I did have a question concerning the growth of online communities and the newcomer selection process. If an online community is just beginning, would it primarily focus on recruitment while largely ignoring the process of selection in order to gain as many members as possible? Does this depend on the type of online community (formed mainly for social connections, or for monetary gain) and the norms it's trying to establish? More information on the interconnection between these processes and online communities as they begin would be wonderful! -EH9890 (talk)

QIC #3 After reading Kraut's design claims in Chapter 5, I have decided to talk about #4 on my QIC. Kraut claims that "Making it easy for users to share content from a community site with their friends (e.g., via easy email, Twitter, Facebook, and similar links) will increase the visibility of the community among the users' friends and thereby increase the likelihood of them joining." It made me think about all the times I join a new site and when registering, they offer you to sign in through your Facebook. Whenever I see that option I instantly like the new site better, because not only did they save me the trouble of creating a new account, but because it already has access to my Facebook contacts and info, it is much easier to engage, and the opportunity of joining a new community much smoother. For example, when I first joined Spotify, I registered with a new email rather than my Facebook, and I had a hard time trying to figure out the ins and outs of the app, let alone know what my friends where listening to. But then someone told me to just get a new account through my Facebook, and when I did, it was so much easier to navigate through Spotify. I instantly had the offer to follow my friends to see what they were listening to, or finding new playlists, something that would've taken me much more time otherwise. MariselaLW (talk) 15:20, 28 February 2017 (UTC)MariselaLW

QIC #8

Kraut and Resnick discuss numerous claims, in regards to how to welcome and 'keep' newcomers on social media. In specific, I would like to discus two claims that I think are a good way of treating newcomers. Claim 2 states that "existing community members reach out to potential members whom they identify as potential candidates." For example, Uber, Facebook, LinkedIn have an option for existing members to send out invitations for their friends (others) to join the online community. Such option is beneficial for everyone: the sender receives a reward (such as a few free rides on Uber); the online community welcomes the newcomers that can be trustworthy (since they are friends of the already existing members); and the newcomers can rely on the reviews and interests in the particular online community based on the friends' opinions. Claim 2 also relates to claim 15, where existing members vouch for members. Therefore, the newcomers do not break policies or create chaos within the community. These two claims make the transition more smooth for both the newcomers and community as a whole. In addition, I think claim 12 is an efficient way to let newcomers in to online community. The claim states that "forcing potential new members to pay or wait makes people who value the community more likely to join and weeds out undesirables." It is in human psychology to want the things that are unachievable or hard to get. Therefore, the online community that has a waiting list to join, will welcome those newcomers, who really want to be a part and committed to such community. In conclusion, by having such rules for the newcomers, helps to filter out the newcomers and to not cause chaos. Etozzi (talk) 16:40, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

QIC 9

According to Kraut, the two sides that need to be thought about concentrations of when newcomers choose to join a community are "how the community should be designed to provide the information newcomers need to make a decision about joining and how the community should respond to the common moves that newcomers use when forming impressions of the community" p 181. Design claim 4 about making it easy for users to share content from a community with friends to increase the visibility of the community and increase likeliness to join made me immediately think of cross sharing on different social media platforms. Instagram makes it fairly easy to share your post to linked social media such as Facebook and Twitter. I think this follows the design claim both ways because friends on Facebook and Twitter may want to join Instagram. This is true for other online communities such as chats or discussion threads with the option to share to social media. When it comes to how a community can take active measures to make sure a newcomer fits into a community, Debian has a whole page about what steps they can take to being a "Debian Developer", and what they can do in the mean time to prepare. It was interesting to see the social contract, because it made me think of group norms.

Design Claim 5 says to use the most influential member of a community to recruit in social networks rather than have random referrals. I took Social Networks as a class at Northeastern and this person would be a "hub" because they can reach more people and have an impact on them. Hubs do not need to be a person with the most authority, rather they just need to be able to reach the most people. It is definitely interesting to see how the rules of social networks truly apply when trying to build an online community. (Maybe we can talk about this in class). This also falls into Cialdini's tools of persuasion, specifically authority and liking. By being influential, that means people want to be like you and that is why I believe liking is involved and authority would come from the fact that it is someone with more influential power than others.

Acosta94 (talk)

QIC #6

I liked this chapter of Kraut because in some ways it was relatable to my experiences of being a 'new user.' I found Design Claim #2 to be the most relatable to my life experiences and it states that, "word-of-mouth recruiting is substantially more powerful than impersonal advertising." It is so true though, if you think about it you are more likely to choose products that your friends have tried and have recommended to you, versus blindly choosing something new and not knowing if it will actually work. It definitely is more powerful than impersonal advertising, and I'm basing this off of my experiences with yelp. I used to always think yelp was never helpful, I did not believe that this application that had multiple reviews of certain places could help you make a decision about where you want to eat, or what bar do you want to go to at night. Instantly downloaded it the minute my friends said that it's the best application they have ever used, and now I'm hooked on it. It just shows that your perception can change 360 over something so small because of word-of-mouth and how your friends perceive things versus how you perceive things is so powerful.

I definitely think that this is stronger than impersonal advertising because sometimes I would see the yelp advertisement on facebook, or on instagram and I would ignore it completely. It took only two friends to change my mind that this is the greatest application out there to know what you feel like eating, doing, etc, and how easy it narrows down the options for you. I also think that when you're active on social media and you voice your opinion out in your own online community (share a FB status or instagram post about something), it is also a way of promoting something through word-of-mouth because people who are friends with you on these social networking sites will appreciate what you have to contribute to the community.

Anchalvasandani (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 16:53, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

QIC #8

Kraut and Resnick discuss the challenges of dealing with newcomers in Chapter 5 of Building Successful Online Communities. The first two major problems that online communities must work to solve are related to recruitment and selection. It is important to note that each of these problems reflect both the perspectives of the newcomers and those of the existing online members. To see the way in which some of these design claims are implemented in real life, we looked at the company Debian, which runs its own universal operating system. In Debian’s new members corner there was evidence of both recruiting and selection design claims (DC's).

In terms of recruitment, there is clear evidence that Debian relies on word-of-mouth tactics (DC 2), and interpersonal relationships when recruiting (DC's 4 & 5). This evidence is demonstrated in Debian’s glossary definitions and descriptions of the advocates and sponsors of potential new members. These advocates and sponsors are encouraged to know potential new members well, and to act as mentors of applicants as they go through the application process.

In regards to selection, I found evidence on both Debian’s new members corner page and their philosophy and procedures page. Both of these pages demonstrate their actions toward selecting the ‘right’ newcomers. Debian makes sure to provide detailed information to potential new members with an accurate and complete picture of what a member’s experience would be when they join (DC 11). This is demonstrated on the new members page when they list the privileges of Debian developers once their application is accepted. This is also demonstrated in the glossary definitions when specific memberships and titles are explained in detail, including those of an application manager and account manager. Debian also makes sure they have the correct selection of newcomers by requiring potential members to prove themselves. Debian emphasizes the fact that it is often “hard to find developers who can spend enough time on their Debian tasks […] therefore we require that prospective members have been actively involved in Debian for some time already.” In checking these applicants past involvement, they are relying on inspection of the quality of these applicants past work (DC 14). Furthermore, the advocates and sponsors assigned to applicants are in charge of looking into applicants’ credentials both inside and outside of Debian (DC 15). These sponsors or advocates are also often the people who provide referrals for these new members (DC 16).

I find it interesting that Debian seemed to focus more of their energy on selection instead of recruitment. Debian recruited on an interpersonal level, as well as allowing newcomers to find them through advertisements. However, Debian clearly cares about quality, and they take a lot of precautions when screening potential new members and reviewing applications. Overall, after reviewing Debian’s steps to recruit and select new members, I feel selection is much more important than the recruitment process. Recruitment is about quantity and selection is about quality. Halserena (talk) 16:57, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

Halserena, nice connections! -Reagle (talk) 17:07, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

QIC #5

Design Claim 1 in “The Challenges of Dealing with Newcomers” states that active recruiting via impersonal advertising leads to communities having access to a larger pool of prospective members. However, Design Claim 2 emphasizes that word-of-mouth recruiting is significantly more powerful than impersonal advertising. To me, the most compelling part of the chapter is imagining how many communities must struggle with finding the right balance between building a strong word-of-mouth reputation and utilizing impersonal advertising. On one hand, I see how impersonal advertising can be a valuable tool for certain online communities. The chapter mentions the success that gaming communities such as League of Legends have had with impersonal and commercial advertising. On the other, I imagine impersonal advertising could fall short or even act as a turn-off for prospective newcomers, especially if the community is chat based or isn’t necessarily easy to differentiate from other communities. In this case, communities must take an active recruitment stance in order to grow but must do so strategically. It seems that the best way to do this is by leveraging popular members within the community to recruit newcomers and, perhaps, by reaching out to internet personalities such as YouTubers and bloggers. This type of covert advertising exists in a space between personal recruiting and impersonal advertising. However, it’s easier said than done. The community would have to be attractive enough that internet personalities and brand ambassadors would be willing to represent it, and depending on follower count they might require significant compensation. Even a community that doesn’t turn a profit or is not interested in being run like a business might have to make calculated business decisions in order to expand, but I suppose the argument can also be made that if a community does not gain a certain amount of popularity naturally then it is not meant to be successful. Angeladav (talk)

QIC #7

Reading through Kraut's designs claim, the one that I was able to resonate with most was when he states that "word-of-mouth recruiting is substantially more powerful than impersonal advertising." Even beyond the online community world, this is something that is universal to all newcomers within a group. While on co-op at HubSpot, I run a customer referral program. In fact, our CEO even said that word of mouth referrals have the largest impact on the growth/sales of a company (and even online community). This is something that has also been reiterated in many business and marketing classes that I have taken at Northeastern University. People are generally trusting (unless otherwise proven not), thus when a friend, family, or college whom you consider close to you tells you that he/she believes that you will benefit from joining a community, or buying a product, most times than others you will trust their word.

Going back to running a referral program. When a referral is submitted, we want to reach out to these newcomers who we believe would be a good fit for our product. We welcome them cordially as newcomers so they are not confused, fell pressured to buy our product, or are not well educated out our product suite or company norms. This process is extremely important because if you fail to acknowledged a new comer, they might feel less inclined to purchase a product (or join the community) and will immediately feel like an outsider.

On the other hand, impersonal advertising is pretty obvous in the days of automation and personalization. I find myself targeting with impersonal ads that do not resonate with my interests. Because communities fail to approach you on a personal level, much like word of mouth does, it makes you feel less inclined to join because you do not feel valued as a member, nor are you completely positive if the community will fit your needs. Sperry21 (talk) 17:13, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

QIC #6

I liked this chapter of Kraut because in some ways it was relatable to my experiences of being a 'new user.' I found Design Claim #2 to be the most relatable to my life experiences and it states that, "word-of-mouth recruiting is substantially more powerful than impersonal advertising." It is so true though, if you think about it you are more likely to choose products that your friends have tried and have recommended to you, versus blindly choosing something new and not knowing if it will actually work. It definitely is more powerful than impersonal advertising, and I'm basing this off of my experiences with yelp. I used to always think yelp was never helpful, I did not believe that this application that had multiple reviews of certain places could help you make a decision about where you want to eat, or what bar do you want to go to at night. Instantly downloaded it the minute my friends said that it's the best application they have ever used, and now I'm hooked on it. It just shows that your perception can change 360 over something so small because of word-of-mouth and how your friends perceive things versus how you perceive things is so powerful.

I definitely think that this is stronger than impersonal advertising because sometimes I would see the yelp advertisement on facebook, or on instagram and I would ignore it completely. It took only two friends to change my mind that this is the greatest application out there to know what you feel like eating, doing, etc, and how easy it narrows down the options for you. I also think that when you're active on social media and you voice your opinion out in your own online community (share a FB status or instagram post about something), it is also a way of promoting something through word-of-mouth because people who are friends with you on these social networking sites will appreciate what you have to contribute to the community.

Anchalvasandani (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 16:53, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

QIC #6

Kraut and Resnick covered techniques on how to weed out undesirable newcomers in a growing community. Generally speaking, these undesirable newcomers are those who do not have the best interest of the community in mind when joining. Many of the recommendations on how to weed out undesirable newcomers included steps in the registration process that required the new members to disclose personal information such as their e-mail or invest some time into answering questions about their intentions on the sight. I found this interesting because I think that it backs up some of the the theories about trolls on the internet. Namely, that trolls are more drawn to sites that allow for anonymous participation and are generally more open to the public. Sites that require participants to pay for membership are generally less hampered by trolls for the same reason, not many trolls would pay money themselves just to get a rise out of people. I think that these points are noticeable because of the damning affects trolls can have on online communities, especially young ones. I will note this reading specifically as I look ahead towards our newcomer campaign assignment because I believe welcoming newcomers and a positive first impression are critical in building a successful community, online or otherwise.

NUrb93

QIC #8 Chapter 5 is all about the challenges of dealing with newcomers on particular online communities. The design claims I want to discuss are 12, 13, and 15. While reading these, I immediately thought of the app "The League", which is an online dating app that came out a few years ago and can only be used in several cities so far. Design claim 12 states that "forcing potential new members to pay or wait makes people who value the community more likely to join and weeds out undesirables". This is specifically true for The League because once you download the app, users are required to wait on a waitlist before they can start using it. According to the app, the waitlist is in place because The League works to create a small tight-knit, but diverse community of single people who will engage appropriately and frequently with the app. The idea being if the community is too large, the app won't succeed. This process of waiting is related to what Kraut and Resnick discuss on page 200: "those users who are willing to wait and remember to come back will create content that is more valuable to other members", which I think is true of The League. Only those who really want to find a match or engage with other singles will wait it out and continue to check on their status. Those who don't care as much or are simply there to troll may get bored while waiting and will eventually leave.

Design claim 13 states "forcing potential new members to undertake separating tasks will encourage those who are a good fit to the community to join while weeding out undesirables", which I think can also be applied to The League. While waiting on the waitlist, users are encouraged to update their profiles, edit their bio information, and even send personalized messages to recruit their friends. Each referral will bump the user up on the waitlist. Arguably, these tasks can be seen as inducing "self-selection" where they may lead to enhanced commitment, or in this case, access to the community. In addition, those who do not have genuine intentions for using the app will find that these tasks are not worth it and will eventually leave.

Lastly design claim 15 includes requiring potential members to provide external credentials as a screening process. On The League, you are required to link your Facebook page and LinkedIn page so that you never match with Facebook friends or LinkedIn contacts. But I think this also weeds out those who are either not employed or do not have Facebook accounts because they are strongly discouraged from using the app. In addition, users can select certain attributes about their potential matches like their level of education and whether or not they have a job. By not supplying these external credentials, users can be at a great disadvantage. Marinamano (talk) 17:32, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

QIC #6

Chapter 5 of Kraut and Resnick discusses new users and ways they can be successfully integrated into an online community. I personally identified most with Design Claim 2, which states “existing community members reach out to potential members whom they identify as potential candidates.” Many websites and apps that I use give the option to invite new members to join, and some of these apps also give incentives for those members. Some give incentives only to the existing member, but I think the most successful are the ones who give incentives to both the current member and the new user. For example, food delivery apps often give you the ability to give out a code to a new user that gives them free delivery, and in turn gives you a delivery credit once they redeem the code.

Another design claim I related to was Design Claim 12, which states “forcing new members to pay or wait makes people who value the community more likely to join and weeds out undesirables.” In my personal experience, I’ve signed up for a few different subscription boxes and have had a message pop up saying I was on a waitlist. Specifically for BirchBox and Ipsy, both beauty subscription boxes, I’ve had to wait before I was able to get my subscription started. In this case, I ended up removing myself from the Ipsy waitlist because I decided I didn't really want the box bad enough to wait for it. I really like this claim and think that even having a waitlist that is short, such as 48hrs, would be successful in deterring new members who are not dedicated enough to wait it out. Sabbatessa (talk) 17:37, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

Mar 03 Fri - Newcomer initiation

QIC #8

Upon reading "The Effect of Severity of Initiation on Liking for a Group," I asked myself the central question that was proposed by Professor Reagle: "Why do people sometimes feel such an affinity for groups that abuse them?" Before taking a dive into the article I was thinking that I would certainly not like to be in a group where I feel abused or challenged. As a newcomer to many communities beyond strictly social networking communities, I will continue to participate and engage with groups that give me praise or positive feedback. If a group was to troll, shame, manipulate, judge, initiate me intensely, or not "use good faith" towards my online actions, I would like to believe I would drop out of that network.

In his work, Author Elliot Arnson begins his study by stating his observation that "persons who go though a great deal of trouble of pain to attain something tend to value it more highly than a persons who attain the same thing with a minimum effort...Individuals who go through a severe initiation to fain admission to a club, organization [or online community] should tend to think more highly of that organization that those who do not" (p. 177). Arnson followed a method by choosing the "embarrassing" subject of sex to be discussed by groups of individual through several different test groups with different variables (severe, mild, control). Results showed that the differences for liking a group were a consequence of a negative experience. "Subjects who underwent a severe initiation perceived the group as being significantly more attractive than did those who underwent a mild initiation or no initiation" (p. 181).

Going back to my original thoughts before reading the study, I reconsidered my judgments on whether or not I would stay in a group if I felt abused by the group. Reconsidering this affinity in terms of embarrassment, I feel as if it would potentially allow me to feel more comfortable with the community the more I was able to connect with members, even under certain embarrassing circumstances (far different than my beginning hypothesis).

In fact, this study allowed me to look back in my experience within a Communication and Gender Class. This class was an 8 person class which were all female. Many different topics were discussed in which could be seen as embarrassing, like that in the study (feminism, sex, rape, body parts, etc.). Though feeling a bit awkward at first joining in on such conversations with 8 other females I have not met before, I began to notice that by opening up and participating in class readings/discussions allowed me to like the class much more. Talking about subjects and having other question my thoughts on sex, relationships, etc. allowed me to curate better conversations and feel more open to discuss. I feel as if this experience is something that is similar to those who felt enjoyment out of the embarrassment in Arnon's study.

Ultimately, If I was thrown in the study with mild affinity and initiation by blurting out words such as prostitute and virgin (like the mild condition group) I would feel much more uncomfortable and have less feelings of value and enjoyment as opposed to the severe test group. Often times initiation, and challenging someone will possible allow one to feel more open once they are welcomed into the group. Sperry21 (talk) 00:33, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

QIC #10 Design Claim #17 from Kraut’s Chapter 5 states, “entry barriers for newcomers may cause those who join to be more committed to the group and contribute more to it.” After reading the study that Aronson and Mills conducted in the reading, “The Effect of Severity of Initiation” I can see how this would be a logical claim. The study didn’t investigate the commitment and contribution levels of the female particiapnts in the study, rather they only measured if they group seemed more attractive based on the type of initiation they received (Severe, Mild & None), but I can connect this to something I have seen play out in real life. My friend is in a sorority at UNH, while they do not “haze” there are of course rituals that new members must complete in order to become members. Two years ago I guess a new member complained to the university and the sorority got put on probation, too scared to continue with the same rituals that they have been doing since the creation of the organization, they scaled back. My friend recently told me that it seems like new members since that date seem to care a lot less about the sorority, she truly thinks this has to do with the fact they didn’t go through new member rituals together. She says that those rituals create bonding moments for the pledge class and that they are memories that help tie them to their roots as a chapter, knowing that ever sister before them has had to go through it too. ChloeGendron (talk) 02:52, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

QIC #7 (in response to ChloeGendron )

After reading Aronson and Mills, "The Effect of Severity of Initiation on Liking for a Group," I also found myself thinking about sororities/fraternities as Chloe did. I too have heard horror stories about recruitment "hazing" from many friends and family. The new members that go through these hazing practices do so with the end goal of joining the fraternity/sorority, something that has great value to them. A friend of my roommate went into detail one night and told us a variety of initiation rituals that her sorority participates. Some of these "rituals" were so shocking I was surprised her sorority still had any members. Her defense of these practices was similar to what Chloe's friend at UNH had said, they make the bond between sisters stronger. As Aronson and Mills concluded in the results of their study, "Subjects who underwent a severe initiation perceived the group as being significantly more attractive than did those who underwent a mild initiation or no initiation," (p. 181). When applied to sorority sisters, the affinity they had for their sorority after recruitment and hazing had grown.

Design Claim #17 from this week's chapter of Kraut and Resnick claims that "entry barriers for newcomers may cause those who join to be more committed to the group and contribute more to it," (p. 213). This claim relates to the sorority and fraternity example I gave, but another example that came to my mind when reading was the United States Army. Of course those who join the army do so for a variety of reasons, but when they do join they all have to go through the same grueling basic training. This training can be seen as an entry barrier for newcomers as everyone has to complete it when they first join. I have had numerous friends who joined the army say that their basic training created such a strong bond between them they now refer to each other as brothers. (This is also highlighted in the Band of Brothers television show). Sabbatessa (talk) 02:40, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

QIC #9

Chapter 5 of the textbook discusses the challenges of dealing with newcomers and describing what kinds of things can be done to help assimilate members, retain them, and encourage them to contribute. The design claims discussed in this chapter help validate Aronson's work on initiation and liking for groups. Aronson found that generally, people are more attracted to the groups that they had to fight hard to enter. Although our discussion on newcomers will likely occupy the online space, I immediately thought of the job experiences I've had so far. Every time I start a new job, I'm reminded of how awful it is--that is, assimilating to a new group. In my experience, a new job involves some sort of initiation process, which can range on a number of scales like difficulty and length. Design claims 18 and 19 focus on encouraging newcomers to have friendly interactions with other members and encouraging them to reveal information about themselves with old-timers. I think these can be applied directly to the workplace. These positive experiences, like getting to know your coworkers or receiving positive feedback, can be hugely helpful when starting out somewhere new. In addition, a very important component to starting a new job is the training process, which may be formal or informal and varies from place to place. However, I believe this process is essential in assimilating newcomers. Design claim 22 says "by using formal, sequential, and collective socialization tactics, new members are likely to become more committed to the community, learn how to behave in it, and contribute more" (Kraut 215). Again this is especially important when starting new jobs. If a newcomer experiences a mediocre training, arguably the newcomer will have a much harder time assimilating and possibly staying with the group. It's imperative that the newcomer learns the shared norms of the group. In my own experience, I've quit a job simply because I was never properly trained and assimilated. Design claim 23 stresses the importance of providing old-timer mentorship to newcomers. I have found that mentors can be great resources, and likely help retain newcomers to various groups. Lastly to wrap up, after reflecting on my job experiences and membership in various groups, I agree that my liking for groups intensifies when the initiation process is difficult. I think this can be attributed to the idea that severe initiations require genuine investments as discussed by Aronson. Although this is a strong argument (and backed by research), I'd still like to learn more about why exactly that is and reasons why we feel bonded to the groups that are hard to join (ex. cognitive dissonance). I think there's still more to unpack here, and I'm looking forward to that discussion. Marinamano (talk) 21:40, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

QIC# 8

Design claims 17 through 25 deal with keeping new comers around, teaching them the ropes and protecting the group from the newcomers.

The design claim I choose to talk about in this QIC is design claim 21. It states the following “explicitly discouraging hostility towards newcomers who make mistakes can promote friendly initial interactions between newcomers and old timers”. I think this is very important in keeping newcomers around. Many online communities encourage friendliness towards the newcomers and Wikipedia is one of these communities, for example its “do not bite the newcomers” policy and the good faith assumption policy, these two policies encourage friendliness and discourage hostility. However in my first Wikipedia article the case was that my article was deleted before I got any interaction at all, which was a shame since I could not experience any of the things that some of my classmates did.

Some people in class talked about members being hostile and unfriendly with them, which is not a very welcoming thing to experience in your first Wikipedia contribution, this might cause the people who experience this to dislike Wikipedia and perhaps not use it after our assignment is done, however, some talked about having nice interaction with people who just tried to help them out and simply point out what can be done better and what needs improvement, and this in my opinion will most likely cause people to continue using Wikipedia even if its just for simple contributions and edits, because its a very welcoming experience that people are helping you in a nice way and in a non hostile way. Salmanbinsultan (talk) 19:48, 2 March 2017 (UTC)salmanbinsultan

QIC #8

The more you suffer to obtain something, the more you appreciate it. We all have experienced this first hand, whether it be in our jobs, classroom, friend groups, interactive video games or on online communities. Notice how you felt included when reading the previous sentence, since I used "we" instead of "I" or "you." Design claim 18 claims that "when newcomers have friendly interactions with existing community members soon after joining a community, they are more likely to stay longer and contribute more." It discusses that the use of inclusive language and emoticons between old and new members has a strong positive effect on retaining new members in the community. I believe this is true, being a part of several communities myself, positive interactions from more experienced personnel makes you feel more appreciated and validates your interactions with them as being positive and accepting. However, the question arises whether constant positive interactions are healthy for newcomers as they may take situations regarding the commencement of the community interactions lightly and may have to face consequences in the future. Using Wikipedia as an example, if old, more experienced members are lenient and over friendly to new members, the new members may take their behavior for granted and mess about while editing Wikipedia articles. not considering the negative consequences they will face due to violating the rules of the community. New users might think the older users "have their backs" and will help them maneuver the situation since they were being friendly with them previously. Hence, it may be more suitable to impose an initiation process in which older members are initially hostile with new members, making them appreciate the community so that they will abide by the rules in the future. This theory is supported by Design claim 17 which states that "Entry barriers for newcomers may cause those who join to be more committed to the group and contribute to it more."

Vanishadans (talk) 23:03, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

QIC #4

I have always been curious as to why is it that we love challenges so much? We go through so much for things that at times don't seem worth it, but it is true that it makes us value it much more. "The Effect of Severity of Initiation on Liking for a Group" provides an explanation of what motivates people to engage in certain actvivities only to be members of a group. The harder the process the more appealing a group is, for example, Private schools. Not only do you need the money to actually afford its insane tuitions, but you need letters of recommendations, tests, interviews, the harder the process, the more exclusive the school, and the more appealing to the crowd.

Entering a new group is never easy, no one likes being the rookie and the outsider. Kraut's design claims help smooth an otherwise painful process. Design claim 23: When old-timers provide newcomers formal mentorship the newcomers will become more committed to the community, learn how to behave in it and contribute more, resonated most with me when reflecting on my past co-op experience. My supervisor was a great mentor from the beginning and not only did that help me at the actual workplace but we eventually became friends and since I was living alone in New York at the time, she introduced me to the city on the weekends. I believe mentoring and showing newcomers the ins and outs helps build a positive environment within the community. -MariselaLW (talk) 20:02, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

MariselaLW, let's talk quickly before class about signing your QICs, still not working correctly. -Reagle (talk) 14:39, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Stepping up to a challenge and going through trouble to attain something does seem to make a person appreciate it much more. This is what Elliot Aronson and Judson Mills discuss in their article “The Effect of Severity of Initiation on Liking for a Group”. I find this fascinating as this is a trait that we find appearing in so many different settings and so many different walks of life, from classrooms to work environments to hobbies like video games. Aronson and Mills attribute this to the idea that the harder a process is, the more appealing a certain group can become. We see this in examples such as leading Universities, as well as the top companies in an industry. To become a member of these groups, you would need to apply, have good grades and letters of recommendations, to name a few requirements. All of this serves to make these groups more appealing by making it feel more exclusive to become a member of.

When someone does join one of these exclusive groups, however, Kraut’s design claims best describes that person’s behavior upon joining. Specifically, his Design Claim 17 describes this, which states “Entry barriers for newcomers may cause those who join to be more committed to the group and contribute to it more.” If we use the example of a leading university, a student who worked hard to go through the application process and got accepted comes into the school as a Freshman. That person, particularly during the start of their college experience, would make the most of their time by working hard in class, joining extracurricular clubs or joining frats or sororities. Drishinb (talk) 15:56, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

QIC #9

When reading “The Effect of Severity of Initiation on Liking for a Group”, I was constantly thinking about justification. I think a big reason that the participants appreciated their group more after a severe initiation is because they were forced to justify their actions. Out of curiosity, I started looking into studies and theories about justification. I found that there is an idea called effort justification, based on Festinger’s theory of cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance explains that people often change their attitudes or beliefs in an attempt to reduce discrepancy between contradicting ideas.

While this idea does make sense to me, it also made me ask some questions. Does it make a difference if the severe initiation required by a group is something that a person enjoys as opposed to hates? What if someone was required to undergo a severe initiation, but the initiation included something they actually wanted to do or enjoyed? For example, a comedy group may initiate their members by making them do stand up on a subway platform. While that might be embarrassing, members who want to join a comedy group probably enjoy humorous events like that and wouldn't be extremely opposed to that ritual. That initiation is very different from, say, a fraternity’s initiation where they make pledges lay in coffins for hours on end; it probably isn’t considered enjoyable by anyone to lie in a coffin.

I think that the more opposed to an initiation a person is, the more they will have to justify their actions. Therefore, the greater the opposition, the more committed they will feel. This is a scary thought to me. I feel like there is such a danger to using opposition to gain loyalty. Also, I question how legitimate loyalty can be when people are manipulated into it. I feel that negative initiation techniques, like the ones often talked about in regards to fraternities, are priming people to think in unhealthy ways. Why would someone think more highly of a group that has made him or her do something negative? Are initiation rituals leading to conditions like Stockholm syndrome? Halserena (talk) 17:00, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Halserena, great questions. I imagine there must also be a threshold that once exceeded makes a person complete disinterested. -Reagle (talk) 18:23, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

QIC #6

Our two readings were connected by one design claim (17): “Entry barriers for newcomers may cause those who join to be more committed to the group and contribute more to it.” It makes me think of the natural and general human thinking that determines if something is “worth” it or if someone “deserves” to receive an award, success or some form of recognition. I, personally, think of common critiques of people in Hollywood that goes along the lines of “he came from a wealthy family” or “her parents were famous actors” and then the idea of nepotism comes into play such as it’s use in career-setting. It seems as though taking the easy or more efficient way is not smart, but in fact, makes a person undeserving. Elliot Aronson proves this in ‘The effect of severity on initiation on liking for a group.’

An experiment was conducted to test the hypothesis people who suffer a bad initiation to become members increase their liking for the group – similar to the aforementioned design claim. The hypothesis was derived from Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance. The experiment was open to volunteering college women to join in discussion groups were randomly assigned to one of three experimental conditions: A Severe initiation condition (subjects read embarrassing material in front of the group), a Mild initiation condition (subjects read material to the group that was less embarrassing), and a Control condition (where subjects were not required to read anything to be part of the group). Subjects who endured severe initiation perceived the group as being considerably more appealing than did those who endured a mild initiation or no initiation.

Rheab16 (talk) 18:16, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Mar 07 Tue - NO CLASS

Mar 10 Fri - NO CLASS

Mar 14 Tue - SNOW DAY

Mar 17 Fri - DEBRIEF: Social breaching

Mar 21 Tue - Gratitude

QIC #11 Expressing gratitude, love and thankfulness for others in our various communities in life is vital. It shows others that they are important and welcome, that they are doing a good job. The article "Gratitude and its Dangers in Social Technologies" by Nate Matias touches upon a factor that raises a few questions for me. The article discusses how gratitude is closely related to reciprocity, therefore it can lead to favoritism. I've never thought about this before but by looking at the cluster shown in this article it seems like the most people are in fact reciprocating the thanks rather than being stand alone nodes. When is comes to welcoming newbies and thanking them for their contributions, I wonder if these stand alone nodes are those newbies. I also wonder if the bigger nodes in the cluster are representative of automated bots who give thanks to many people, so in return they also receive many thanks back. Could those large nodes also be very active and influential members of the community? Especially with this push for the WikiLove campaign, how exactly does this affect the way people give each other praise - is it genuine, or just for show to collect as many barnstars as possible? ChloeGendron (talk) 23:55, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

ChloeGendron, interesting questions about the nodes; I wish I knew more. -Reagle (talk) 17:10, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

QIC #9 It’s no surprise that gratitude goes a long way. In real life, we tend to be much happier when people acknowledge something we’ve done, even if its small. At times, gratitude can take even the simplest form, such as a smile – but often, it goes a long way. Because communication takes a different form online, people can’t tell how thankful someone is based on their facial expression, therefore, it’s important to make a bit more effort to show gratitude to those who are doing something well, for example, if you keep up with a blogger, many times she/he will be very happy just by knowing you read and enjoy their content.

The statistics mentioned in the article “WikiLove: An experiment in appreciation” By Howie Fung seen pretty realistic, as it says “being looked down on by more experienced editors” is the most likely to cause people to say they will edit less frequently (69% agreement), while “having others compliment you on your edits/articles” is the most likely to cause people to say they will edit more frequently (78% agreement).” Obviously when you receive positive feedback, whether is in real life or online, it’s more likely that you will make more effort to continue to do your best. I, being a newbie in Wikipedia wish some of the people who criticized my article would've been nicer to me; that would've probably given me a better impression of the platform.

Haivanessa (talk)

QIC #9

How is the power of "thanks" changing participation in online communities and encouraging belongingness? In his article, "Gratitude and It's Dangers in Social Technologies," scholar Nate Matias explores, "acknowledgment and gratitude, basic parts of online relationships that designers often set aside to focus on the tasks people do online." In his article, Matias builds off of Northwester University's Dan MacAdams to describe how gratitude has become part of our everyday lives. In fact, McAdams argues that this gratitude is an important part of the stories we tell ourselves about who we are. Moreover, this thankful perspective, defined by gratitude, is also linked to a higher well being and mental health.

It is also important to look at them in the terms of the workplace and what Matias explains behind the word "Kudos." According to the article, "when employees use Kudos to thank each other, the message is also shown to the employee's manager. Thanks over time is aggregated into a thanks reporting system that ties into an employee's quarterly review, bonuses, and even a rewards program that invites employees to cash in their pile of thanks for products." This is especially relevant in my workplace experiences. My company has a quarterly reward program where you reward someone with 100 dollars for doing above and beyond work in their job. This is then sent to our managers so you are not only getting a reward from another employee in the terms of physical cash, but gratitude that is then shown to your manager, which then is public recognition that may result in a later promotion. Moreover, as Matias concludes, "a simple "thank you" can become freighted with implications for someone's job security, promotion, and financial future." Gratitude, thanks, rewards, and kudos are more than simple recognition, but also can affect possible favoritism, long term success, and go hand-in-hand with determining your future in your workplace. I will conclude my QIC with a question I have just began to ask myself, if you receive no gratitude for your job how can others (and yourself) believe you are successful at what you are doing? How will this affect your long term trajectory within the workplace? And, how is this correlated to your self esteem as an employee? Sperry21 (talk) 14:57, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

QIC #9

To me, gratitude is being thankful for something without expecting to be reciprocated. However, when thought about the other way, when taking support from another,. the feeling of indebtedness arises whereby, it is natural to feel some sort of guilt or obligation to give back to that individual. In the Article "Indebtedness and Reciprocity in Local Online Exchange," Lampinen et.al investigated user experiences concerning exchange and reciprocity in local online exchange through in-dept interviews. One of their design implications suggested that individuals tend to accept support from those “of a kind they could themselves return on occasion." This result implies that online communities should design online exchange systems such that users will be aware of those who are in a similar situation than them, in terms of social-economic background, social affiliation, etc. This will potentially encourage positive responses to feelings of indebtedness. If you think about this concept in the real world, you are more likely to accept a gift from someone you know you can pay back equally, since it does not generate deep feelings of indebtedness as you are more likely to return the favor in the future. An interesting question to consider if giving too much generates a feeling of vulnerability, especially if the level of gratitude is not being matched?

Vanishadans (talk) 21:11, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

QIC #9

I really enjoyed reading about expressing gratitude online and Wikilove because up until this point in our class, I've felt that my experience with Wikipedia has been very off-putting. I didn't like how quick it was for another user to mark my page for speedy delete and how many of my classmates were harassed and targeted because we were new to the community. And as Howie Fung reminds us, being looked down upon by more experienced editors prevents new ones from making continuous contributions. So in response, I loved that I had the opportunity to spread Wikilove. I did this in a few ways. First, I was able to locate new users by their usernames and their corresponding join date. I selected three and posted on their talk pages, using a welcome template that I found. I also sent a "beer on me" to two users in our class. Along with positive feedback that we learned about earlier in the semester, I've found that expressing gratitude is hugely helpful in encouraging new members of a community to engage. I think you could argue that online communities (ie. social media, YouTube, online games) would not be what they are today without the presence of gratitude because there would be much less motivation to contribute. Although Wikilove seems to be a great addition to the Wikipedia community, I can't help but wonder if it's enough to keep new members active and engaged when more experienced users don't act in good faith. Marinamano (talk) 23:47, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

QIC #9

For this QIC I would like to comment on Vanessa’s QIC. The part where she mentioned the loss of facial expressions in online communications is very interesting, this is especially interesting because we might not realize how important gratitude is in our lives due to how we simply receive it through facial expressions. Going off of Vanessa’s Wikipedia example, I agree, had people expressed gratitude about the Wikipedia contribution first then criticized what they did not like rather than immediately expressing their dissatisfaction with the article, people would most likely have a positive feeling about joining the community. This was proven by the statistics in the Wikilove experiment article.

I have a thought about the final section of the Wikilove article, the author mentions certain things to study after launching the Wikilove feature, but I also think it would be very interesting to see which specific users disable the feature, as it seems to me that only a small percentage would go and disable that feature, and I would imagine them to be the very protective old users or Wikipedia. Salmanbinsultan (talk) 00:05, 21 March 2017 (UTC)salmanbinsultan

Salmanbinsultan, you can see not many people make use of the NoWiki Love template I count two! -Reagle (talk) 17:10, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

QIC #7

J. Nathan Matias’ Gratitude and its dangers in social technologies struck a chord with me firstly because of the title itself. I always assumed that gratitude would be the sentiment to pacify situations and not necessarily be the thing to cause issues in any way. I genuinely believed that expressing gratitude would is a “magic ingredient for getting favors” in return, even in the online world. However in the economy of thanks section showed us otherwise. It did not occur to me that favoritism and paternalism could be a byproduct of online gratitude. Appreciation, thanks, acknowledgement, credit, reward and review are several ways often not considered as separate and different parts of gratitude, however, the importance of these variations lead me to the “dark side of thanks.” I thought this was a very interesting because no one considers ‘Thank You’ s to be dangerous in general, similarly with gifts. This reading reminded me of our extrinsic motivation concepts, except those readings were a positive reflection but here, it is negative.

Rheab16 (talk)

QIC #8

This week's readings can be summed up in the simplest of terms with Howie Fung's introduction to his WikiLove article, "We all like to feel valued." This is true in all aspects of human life, we all like to feel valued and appreciated by others. As illustrated by the age-old saying, a smile goes a long way, acts of gratitude can be as simple as a smile across someones face. Gratitude can even be used as a motivator for positive user behavior in an online community.

When reading the articles assigned this week, one thing that really caught my attention was Matias's discussion of the harmful side of gratitude in his article, Gratitude and its Dangers in Social Technologies. He listed three potential downfalls of gratitude: a presumption of thanks misleads us into paternalism, gratitude can support favoritism, and that gratitude sometimes masks injustices. I really liked the example Matias gave of tipping in a restaurant to show injustice masked by gratitude as it is something that many of us do without even thinking about. We tip waiters/waitresses as a way to say thank you for the great service they provided, but this system is really just masking the fact that these people need to preform to our liking to make enough tips to meet minimum wage. I also really liked that Matias included a relevant meme about thanks that highlighted poor agricultural labor practices, another thing that I believe most of us overlook and don't think about. Sabbatessa (talk) 14:45, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

QIC 9

For today's class, I would like to discuss my opinion in regards to how I perceive gratitude. Up to today, I thought of gratitude as the sincere action of thanking someone for helping, caring, etc. Although, after reading Gratitude and its Dangers in Social Technologies, it made me question the main idea of why we show gratitude towards others. In the article, McAdams explains that thanks signals an understanding "that the two have now completed a (usually pleasing) reciprocal exchange, and the door is opened to the possibility of new and mutually pleasing exchanges in the future." Once we send a virtual thank you to others, therefore we acknowledge and appreciate the work they have done for others. The expression of gratitude in online communities is essential becomes it helps to develop online relations and companionship.

Although, I believe that the expression of gratitude has changed in online communities. I would like to compare it to the way Instagram likes work. We like others' posts, in order to express our feeling of liking, respecting, being interested in others posts. By liking others photos, we acknowledge their post and the work they have done (the context of the photo as well as uploading the photo). But I have realized that we subconsciously expect those other people to show their acknowledgment of our photos by liking or making a comment. Therefore, it has become a dishonest action that became a norm in online communities. I think it is a good explanation and comparison to the way gratitude has become. Once we express the cyber thank you, we subconsciously expect to receive the cyber thank you in return. It makes me think of the question: how do we differentiate between genuine and dishonest gratitude in online communities? Etozzi (talk) 15:31, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

Etozzi, interesting question... What if we made the gratitude anonymous? -Reagle (talk) 17:10, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

QIC #6

While reading “Indebtedness and Reciprocity in Local Online Exchange,” I was most interested to find out that the conclusion of the study was to embrace indebtedness. Since indebtedness and the norm of reciprocity are linked and part of the same social process, embracing this debt can actually be a valuable tool. The authors claim that “feelings of indebtedness motivate individuals to give something back to the community.” I am reminded of going out to dinner with my family. Usually when the check comes, my dad and uncles will argue over who gets to pay. To them, it feels better to pick up the bill and be able to treat everyone else than to feel indebted. However, whoever doesn’t get to pay is also motivated to go out again or participate. They say, “Well, we’ll go out next week, and I’ll pay.” This same principle is at play in a number of online communities. On one website, The Hunt, users can post pictures of things they’ve seen online in hopes that someone will post the link to buy it. A post might read, “Looking for this exact dress or one similar.” I always wondered what motivated users to search for the links, but now I realize that perhaps they’ve received help on the website before and feel indebted to the community. Angeladav (talk)

QIC 10

When we were asked to show Wikilove to people not in our class, I Immediately thought of the people who edited my Wiki page after me. I thought back to when we read about the study where Wiki users were given different types of feedback and how that altered their user behavior. After the slideshow about "Indebtedness and Reciprocity in Local Online Exchange", the major take away I had was that people want to seem like they are needed by the community and have something to offer. This then triggered the "be nice to newcomers" idea because if you want engagement in an online community, you have to be welcoming to new members so that they will stay and be active. According to the WikiLove experiment “having others compliment you on your edits/articles” is the most likely to cause people to say they will edit more frequently (78% agreement). However, there was a conflict between the slideshow and the reading about "Gratitude and its Dangers in in Social Technologies". The slideshow about indebtedness made it seem that people will only participate in an exchange if they have something of value to give back, but the Gratitude reading said that reciprocity will not always be guaranteed. Gratitude is not a magic ingredient for getting favors. Now, in terms of Wikipedia, does that mean that and admin's gratitude toward a new member's contribution would not guarantee that they will continue contributing? Wikipedia seems like an easy community to take without ever giving, so what makes a user indebted to it?

Acosta94 (talk)

Acosta94, maybe most Wikipedians don't understand/appreciate that people did actual work that they can read and benefit from? It'd be interested to know what kind of people and in what circumstances do feel grateful, for Wikipedia or otherwise. -Reagle (talk) 17:10, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

QIC 5

I've always been interested in the idea of gratitude. When I was younger I used to say thank you just to be polite, never thought much of it really, it was almost a reflex. But then I attended a lecture back home that talked about gratitude and its benefits. Being thankful makes us better humans, it means we aren't taking things for granted. It's important for members of a community to be thankful, because it signals that they don't feel entitled for the things they get. but rather appreciate them, regardless of what the thing is. Giving thanks reflects on who we are as a person. But then the article talks about the dark side of thanks, how it can lead to favoritism, which is true, we see it happening all the time, in Wikipedia, there is almost a monopoly of thanks among long-term users, but do they express the same kind of gratitude towards new members? Maybe if they did, new comers would feel more integrated and wanted in such a large community where they can feel as ghosts. 2601:182:D040:9560:C429:876B:B892:6EE0 (talk) 16:25, 21 March 2017 (UTC)MariselaLW

QIC #7

Gratitude by dictionary definition is the quality of being thankful and ready to show appreciation and asking for the return of kindness back to you, but to me, it's how you express to someone that you genuinely appreciate what they have done without asking for anything in return at all. Personally speaking from experience when I lean on to someone for support (any kind of support be it physically leaning, or emotional support, or even materialistic support where they pay for my lunch because I forgot my wallet) I feel a huge sense of indebtedness hanging over being because I don't want to have that on me that "hey you still owe me for that time I listened to you cry for 4 hours about being dumped" or "hey you still owe me for lunch, buy me alcohol" like no. Be humble if you want to help me out, and if we're friends I will repay you when the time is right, not because I HAVE to owe you something. Gratitude is also tricky and can be taken advantage of, when the receiver interprets it the wrong way. If I'm helping you out it's because I want to as I don't want you to feel that no one is listening to you or that you're stuck any sort of way. But if they misuse it by telling people that this is what i'm known for, helping people during tough times, but they can easily drop me as a friend, then that's not fair, in my eyes at least. Overall, gratitude can be tricky, but it's also a nice feeling when you receive it, but even greater feeling when you give it. Anchalvasandani (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 12:36, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

Mar 24 Fri - RTFM

QIC #10 To answer the question, I do think newbies are supposed to have at least a bit of an understanding of the community they are trying to join before they start exploring around, however, there are many people who do learn better by exploring the platform than reading a manual – so when do we know if we’re giving a fair chance to newbies while also keeping the platform undisruptive? Personally, when it comes to Wikipedia, I had no idea of how it worked before I took this class and those more experienced users made sure to note that when I tried to publish my article. For example, this is a message from an “expert” Wikipedia user “I've seen your class page. Aren't you -- or your TAs -- exercising any quality control? One of your student's pages has already been deleted as spam (Ferris Rafauli) and another misshaped draft (Draft:Analytical Thinking) wound up in article space for a day before you moved it back. With only a couple of exceptions, the articles are commercial listings, lightly dusted with self-references and passing mentions.” This person in a way is obviously telling me or Prof.Reagle to RTFM, which in a way is a bit funny but kind of rude. That being said, I do think a platform like Wikipedia should be open and accessible to people who wants to help but I can also see how that could be a problem if a person that doesn’t understand the platform goes and makes a mess of everything.

Haivanessa (talk)

QIC #10 While reading "The Obligation to Know: From FAQ to Feminism 101", I started to think about the times in my life when I felt like a newbie and my experience was tainted by those who expected me to know certain things. I thought of an art class I was originally registered for at the start of this semester. It was called Typography, and it basically studies the art of type or font. Although I had taken the pre-requisite for this course, I had zero prior knowledge or experience with Typography or the applications used to study it. And while some may disagree, I think you could argue that certain art majors at this school kind of align with the geek culture--where "geek knowing is the practices associated with how geeks accumulate, assess, create and promulgate knowledge about their intense mutual interests" (Reagle, p. 2). I think one of the reasons why these majors seem to cultivate geek culture over others is because as we learned, "knowledge itself is a type of cultural capital acquired from the time spent learning" (Reagle, p. 5). Students in these majors spend a lot of time working on and perfecting their work, and they share their work with others by way of formal and informal critiques. Being a Communications major, I already felt anxious that I wouldn't be able to keep up. And I was so right. My first day in class (which was three hours long) was a complete whirlwind. My professor hardly gave us instruction on how to complete tasks and everyone around me seemed to know what they were doing, even though it was all of our first days. I felt like a complete newbie, and that I would never get assimilated. My fears were realized when I asked my professor a question about the task at hand. He looked at me as if I was in the wrong class. His condescending response made me feel like I had "derailed" or disrupted the Typography ecosystem. I was later told that this particular professor was not fond of newcomers, newbies, beginners, etc., and he was notoriously rude to those in his class. This completely validated my experience and proved that I wasn't cut out for this class. While I think it's true that in some cases, it is imperative to RTFM or engage with the FAQ's, my experience with this group was incredibly negative and was enough to push me out. I think this begs the need for us to consider the implications with enforcing RTFM and the "obligation to know culture" and the effects they have on newcomers. Marinamano (talk) 20:09, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

QIC #12 This week we read about "RTFM" or "Read The F**king Mannual" for newbies in online communities. As the Reagle reading pointed out, "among geeks, the availability of information creates a social expectation of knowing it" but the average user is not necessarily a geek. I realize that newbies can be frustrating to deal with when it comes to the normal operations of the platform but there will always be a learning curve. There are also the type of people, like myself, who don't RTFC, we just jump into things. From building an Ikea bookshelf without reading the instructions to downloading a iPhone game and skipping through the "learning intro." If this is *such* a big deal, how about making reading the manual mandatory? Newbies can't join the site until it's proven they know how to operate within in. ChloeGendron (talk) 22:03, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

QIC #11

Joining an online community can be intimidating. Wikipedia has the policy “Don’t Bite the Newcomers,” which encourages experienced members to be patient and helpful towards newcomers, or newbies, who may make mistakes while they figure out the website. While this is an attempt to create a friendlier community, which increases the likelihood that newbies stay in the community, it can also be time consuming and frustrating for users to spend time explaining basic instructions. As you pointed out in The Obligation to Know: From FAQ to Feminism 101, “the question is how much effort must be expended on newcomers relative to the likely benefits they will bring?” (Reagle, 2015). In many online communities, users create an FAQ and/or a manual that explains the most basic aspects of the community. Often the purpose of the community, social expectations, and necessary technical aspects are explained in the manual or FAQ. Once these have been set up, newbies are expected to read and understand the manual or FAQ before they begin contributing to the community. If they have a very basic question, it will likely be answered in the FAQ and none of the older community members will have to spend time teaching the newbie. If the newbie goes straight to asking questions that are answered in the FAQ or perform actions that go against ideas outlined in the FAQ, the newbie may be told to RTFM. I think that this expectation and instruction of RTFM can be beneficial to the community. While the new member may not be aware of the existence of a manual or FAQ, it is beneficial for most community’s goals if newbies teach themselves via the FAQ and are then able to more quickly contribute towards the goal. While it may initially alienate the newbie, the basic knowledge they gain from the store of information in the FAQ or manual will likely mean that they will more quickly become a standard member of the community than if they took the time to have every basic question answered. -Soperm (talk) 04:56, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

QIC #10

Having to “RTFM" or engaging in what Coleman (2010, 2013) refers to as “ethical enculturation” often demotivates newcomers to join a new platform. When made obligatory, it can be a barrier to entry for many as they are having to invest their time and energy into learning about the operations of a platform before using it. In my opinion, having an FAQ page is more useful, since newcomers will be more adept to looking up problems as they face them. Often newcomers don’t even pay attention to the introductory video, they just skip it, leading them to ask questions about the workings of the platform anyway. As Kraut and Resnick mentioned in their text, newcomers may ask obvious questions, which may instigate irritation in more experienced users, however, experienced users should keep in mind that they were once in their shoes, and it is difficult to grasp technical details through one introductory video, especially when one is new and unfamiliar with a platform. The advantage of the introductory regime is that users who manage to complete the video are likely to be highly interested in the platform and may make valuable future contributions.

Vanishadans (talk) 05:30, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

QIC #8

After witnessing how badly bashed I was about my article on the artificial intelligence workout partner that I wanted to do initially, I definitely need to "RTFM" before completing any other wikipedia tasks. Coleman said it in the article that, "ethical enculturation" gives newcomers something to learn about that they need to effective interact with other project members and gain acceptance. In this class, I have learned so far that if you are not in the same space with people in regards to joining an online platform/community together, people who are old timers and who have been there for a while will HATE on you for joining and not knowing what to do. Speaking from personal experience I was so discouraged to even post another paragraph because people were saying things like "no this is not true, if you don't know what artificial intelligence is then don't bother sharing information" and even things like "can you not be on wikipedia." Extremely shocked when I saw it, and still shocked when I think about it, but when people who are part of large online communities like reddit or wikipedia, they like to have things a certain way and can't adapt to "drastic" change very well. Just like professor had it in his article, at the start of the RTFM section, "among geeks, the availability of information creates a social expectation of knowing it." In other words, don't close an eye when it comes to understanding the online community, always "RTFM."

Anchalvasandani (talk)

QIC#7

Online communities are constantly evolving in order to offer new and dynamic ways of interacting and learning. With each site contains different rules written and unwritten (norms) that are expected to be followed by all community members. Sometimes this social expectation is lost on newcomers who wish to casually participate in said communities which can cause backlash from more devoted members when the norm or rule is violated. This can cause social discourse about how devoted a member needs to be in order to effectively participate even as a casual member. Although these conflicts can be uncomfortable for all members I think that it is important for any community to enforce a certain amount of expected knowledge when participating. This way those communities that rely on more committed members are not held back by "newbies" who don't understand the common goals of the community as a whole.

“RTFM is a comedic, though stern, form of social discipline. It pushes other hackers to learn and code for themselves as well as affirms that effort has been put into documentation—an accessible form of information that benefits the group—but in a way that still requires independent learning” (Coleman, 2013: 110–111). This excerpt explains well why it is important for communities that focus on learning advanced material as a group are may be less accepting of "newbies" because these new members have not put in the time to be able to contribute as effectively as others thus holding back the group as a whole.

All in all, with the vast amount of online communities available I think it is important for any newcomer to a community to explore and observe on their own first before contributing to see if a community offers the experience one is looking for. If it does not, chances are there is another community that does and in the unlikely event that there are not than it is up to the newcomer to observe the norms, do some research, and maybe even "read the fucking manual" in order discover the primary information needed to participate effectively.

NUrb93

QIC #6

I found this week’s reading about RTFM very interesting. To be honest I would never know the acronym RTFM means, “read the fucking manual” if I didn’t read these articles. I only know the basic acronym such as, “lol”, which means laugh out loud, and “brb”, which means be right back and I believe everyone at my age knows them. It is also interesting to know that the origin or RTFM was from the military lingo during World War 2 and it also became a “staple expression among American soldiers in response to basic questions asked by new enlistees” (Brad, 2014). People usually get more creative after a brilliant idea is out there, and same as RTFM, which people started to have derivatives such as, WTFV, GIYF, STFW, etc. Reagle argues that “Among geeks, the availability of information creates a social expectation of knowing it”, which is also connected to other course readings like social expectation in small groups.

Ginachu1993

The internet is known to be a place full of toxic behavior for a lot of people. This can be especially rough for people who are new to a certain community. They are often met with hostility and and the expectation of knowing information simply because it is made available. However, it is important to note that every online community has a learning curve of varying degrees. For a newcomer to learn how to use instagram would not take as long as a newcomer learning to use Reddit, with its more complicated UI and features. As newcomers experience this curve, they become exposed to a certain kind of elitism as more experienced members use memes like “RTFM” when a newcomer makes a mistake. Drishinb (talk) 15:19, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

QIC #10

I am currently taking two separate Women and Gender Studies classes, one of which concerns itself with pop culture and new media. In particular, we discussed the online trolling that female creators and feminist geeks often receive from interacting with an online community, focusing strongly on YouTube as an example. While reading about the obligation to know, FAQs, RTFM, and other techniques for teaching newcomers, I was reminded of this unit from my other class. According to Professor Reagle's The Obligation to Know: From FAQ to Feminism 101 geek feminists are often trolled and harassed online for their opinions and the content they produce. In my other class, we covered this extensively, and discussed Anita Sarkeesian's online harassment and trolling, where trolls even went so far as to employ doxing tactics that made her generally afraid for her life. Anita had entered a relatively male realm--that of video games--to critique the tropes employed in their development. An avid video game fan and a feminist geek, Sarkeesian was then horrifically harassed and trolled online for expressing her opinion.

While the content in Professor Reagle's chapter certainly did not go as far as this level of harassment, it did discuss the concept of derailing, which is another way to undermine a marginalized group that perhaps does not employ the same level of intrusion or violence as other tactics for harassment and trolling toward women on the internet. Instead, individuals, often men, will try to derail a conversation by asking for basic feminist knowledge, or feminism 101, insisting that if the feminist in question genuinely cared about getting them to change their minds then they would explain this basic knowledge. This is often combated by something like FF101 blogs, which can be used as a source of information to point to in order to evade this derailing technique. I found it refreshing to see a strategy that can try and combat online trolling toward women, even if it only concerns derailing a conversation, as it often seems like there isn't much that can be done, at least from an outside perspective, to combat this type of negativity. In addition, while I am not especially active in online communities, I have been mansplained to both in real life and on the internet, and I can personally attest to its ability to get discouraging and tedious, especially when the individual in question does not understand how their actions could be taken in a negative light. EH9890 (talk)EH —Preceding undated comment added 15:41, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

QIC #7

I do think asking that community members “RTFM” or the FAQs of an online community is more than fair, and that it shouldn’t be a deterrent for would-be community members. I closely follow an Instagram of a small business whose products often sell out quickly, as such she has many rules about how sales and flash sales are conducted. The owner of this shop talks about followers who complain that she treats her customers poorly, but in reality they just don’t understand the community and haven’t taken the time to try. Virtually all of her posts have comments from confused community members that could have been solved/answered if they read her FAQs. Even if a newcomer doesn’t necessarily take the time to deliberately read the manual or FAQ section for a particular community (they should, it often takes <5 minutes), they can often glean the major rules by spending any amount of time observing the community. I think this connects to our study of normative behavior. If you’re new to a community, but you take a couple minutes to read the comments/posts before you contribute, you start to get an idea of how it works. I think that blatant ignorance should be met with pushback. If anything, telling newcomers to “RTFM,” might weed out would-be members who have little respect for the community. This isn’t to say that newcomers shouldn’t be afforded some understanding or leeway as they’re acclimating, especially in online communities with complex or comprehensive rules and guidelines. I think our class Wikipedia project is a good example of this. We spent time completing tutorials and reading about the rules, but inevitably there are things we still don’t know or understand. When we published our articles, we received pushback, but we are trying our best to correct ourselves and acclimate to Wikipedia’s standards. A willingness to learn and understand a community’s standards is an appropriate display of good faith, and it is not too much for established community members to ask this of newcomers. Angeladav (talk)

QIC 10

The majority of programs, software applications, and the rest of technology have manuals that are presented to people before the actual use of such programs, etc. It is important to educate newcomers, in order for them to have an understanding and basics of the online community that they will join. Such manuals include a variety of information, which answers any possible questions that newcomers might have. In addition, manuals include information on regulations/ policies. Of course, if every newcomer read such manuals from the beginning to the end then the older users would be less irritated with the newcomers. If this was the case then RTFM would be used less and would not have a negative effect on people.

Although, that is not the case. Not everyone is a geek. As Joseph Reagle stated: "A geek has a passionate enthusiasm for an interest that may eclipse other life activities: “To be geek is to be engaged, to be enthralled in a topic, and then to act on that engagement.” Every individual has different interests and therefore makes a decision if the presented information is essential or unnecessary to know. For example, when I download a new program to my laptop or an application to my iPhone, I always skip manuals and introductory videos. Although I am a newcomer and I should be responsible for familiarizing myself with additional information, I find it to be a waste of my time. I get irritated with the length and small font of today's manuals. I find it more effective to start using the program, and Google any questions I have throughout the use of such programs. Googling questions helps me to educate and remember the information that I was not aware off before. I strongly believe that if reading of manuals will become an obligation before joining online communities then there will be a drastic decrease of newcomers. Therefore, such communities will face losses and will be at the dead end of continuing the progression.

My question to the creators of such programs/online communities is Are they willing to condense manuals/ FAQs, in order to make them more easy, enjoyable, and less time consuming to read for the newcomers? It would be a win-win for both sides. Etozzi (talk) 16:17, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

Etozzi, One of the difficult things is that writing good documentation is often a lower status job in geek communities. -Reagle (talk) 16:52, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

QIC #8 was accidentally not saved as discussed with instructor Rheab16 (talk) 16:30, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

QIC #9 This week’s reading, RTFM, was a very relatable read for me as I feel like it directly described my experience on Wikipedia for this class. I was most definitely a “newbie” to that online community and often felt as if I had no idea if I was doing anything right, even after watching all of the Wiki tutorials. I still feel like a “newbie” on the site, and don’t know if I will ever get out of that category as Wikipedia has so much more to it than I originally thought. As other classmates have mentioned, I also had no clue what RTFM meant before this reading, and was really surprised to find out it has actually been around since WWII and even referred to as a “staple expression.”

I also felt I connected with the second reading from Professor Reagle in my Wikipedia experience. As someone who usually dives into things without reading all (if any) of the instructions, I was a bit disheartened to find out I still had no idea what I was doing on Wikipedia even after taking the time to watch the tutorials. I came to find out it was a platform that you learn by doing the actual tasks rather than having someone explain it to you. I agree with a lot of the discussion in this article and think that although some communities may be the exception, overall it is more beneficial to “read the instructions” and understand fully what you are joining. Sabbatessa (talk) 01:44, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

Mar 28 Tue - Bootstrapping a niche and Winner-Take-All

QIC #10

This week’s reading from Frank and Cook discussed the winner take all society, and although it was a longer read I found it really interesting. It discussed those who are born with different talents and abilities and how it ultimately affects the lives they live and how they fit into society. They talk about how society is based on a winner-take-all reward structure, and how this has fueled a high stakes society with little measurable difference between success and failure. They also explain how this had led to a new class of "unknown celebrities” that they define as, “Those pivotal players who spell the difference between corporate success and failure” (pg. 3).

I connected with this category and think it can be argued that we, as well-educated students about to graduate with degrees and enter the workforce, can be compared to these “unknown celebrities.” We are not famous or well known in society, but are crucial to its continued success. Corporations are looking for new, well-educated millennials like us to bring fresh insights to their companies. As Frank and Cook argue, “Because their performance is crucial, and because modern information technology has helped build consequences about who they are, rival organizations must compete furiously to hire and retain them” (pg. 3). This also relates to companies, especially new startups, who offer fun office perks (such as beer taps flowing freely) to make new potential hires interested in working for them while also working to keep current employees at their company. It is not just the famous and super talented few that make companies successful, they know that they also need the “unknown celebrities” to maintain success. Sabbatessa (talk) 21:02, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

QIC 10 Professor Joseph Reagle proposed the question, "what connections can you draw between online communities and the winner-take-all society?" In fact, there are a lot of parallels you can draw between the two. In their book, “The winner-take-all society” scholars Robert H. Frank and Philip J. Cook call these specific markets “winner take all markets” because, “the value of what gets produced in them often depends on the efforts of only a small number of top performers, who are paid accordingly” (pg 2). The specific example that better helped me understand this concept was when they compared it to the making of a major motion picture. The scholars explain this by stating "although thousands of people are involved in making a major motion picture, the difference between commercial success and failure usually hinges on the performances of only a handful - the director, screenwriter, leadings actors, etc." (pg 2). In other words, those near the top will be making the most money and be attributed “celebrity status” because they are towards the top. Winner takes all market has many implications. The authors of this book conclude that this has resulted in income inequality, overcrowding in some areas and increased cultural conformity, and suggest policies for reversing this trend.

One of their central claims is that, “although the competition for top slots in winner-take-all markets does indeed attract the most talented and productive workers, it also generates two forms of waste: first, by attracting too many contestants, and second by giving rise to unproductive patterns of consumption and investment as contestants vie with one another for top positions” (pg 9). Breaking these two issues down, Winner take all markets may attract too many contestants in part because of a “common human frailty with respect to gambling – our tendency to overestimate our chances of winner” (pg. 9). Moreover, this leads to an overcrowding for the people trying to fight to the top, as well as a tendency for contributors to produce social waste in the attempt to get to the top.

Relating these ideas to online communities, I saw this relevant to the overcrowding of places such as Reddit – hence, one of the main reasons I am never on the website. When I visit Reddit I feel overwhelmed with all of the noise that is going on on the website. Simply, people are fighting for the most up-votes, even if the content they are sharing may not be interesting to everyone. Which thousands of Reddit users each day are plugging away at creating different threads, only those that receive up votes will “take all” and receive celebrity status opposed to many other articles that may be (in some people’s eyes) of the same or higher value. Additionally, because people want to be seen on reddit, there is an issue with overcrowding as well as social waste to get to the top. To get to the top, many people may even try to get around moderators and post waste such as scams, advertisements, etc. just to get their name seen. Once they reach the top, due to notability and recognition, they could stay on top while others fall behind in the dark hole of social waste due to the loud noise in online communities. Sperry21 (talk) 21:08, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

Sperry21, the idea that Reddit might be a winner take society is an interesting one. I expect posting frequency and karma distribution is Zipfian. But does it have the necessary conditions to be a winner-take-all? The website Reddit Insight might be able to answer the question. -Reagle (talk) 16:41, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

QIC #11 In the context of Robert H. Frank and Philip J. Cook's discussion on "winner-take-all markets", Facebook is a great example in the online communities sector. As described by these scholars, winner-take-all markets are "those where the value of what gets produced in them often depends on the efforts of only a small number of top performers, who are paid accordingly". In other words, there are only a few online communities that completely dominate this market, and its because of each platform's unique qualities, which can be attributed to those who create them. A winner-take-all society can have negative implications as discussed by Frank and Cook because for one, it increases the disparity between those that succeed and those that don't. In this case, it's rare when a new online community makes its way to the top because it has to compete with other platforms that dominate the online space. Kraut and Resnick validate these claims in chapter 6 of their book. On page 243 they state, "if a company introduces enterprise social networking software, it needs to be cognizant of the other social networking sites because it will be competing with those other sites for time and attention" (Kraut, p. 243).

To help answer the question, "what connections can you draw between online communities and the winner-take-all society?", I turn to my memory of switching from Myspace to Facebook about 10 years ago before I started high school. Although it was years ago, I remember when Facebook first came on the scene. It was referred to as "the Myspace for high school kids". Kraut and Resnick discuss the concept of "switching costs" on page 244 of chapter 6. In this context, switching costs can be how new users have to learn to operate the new community's software, learn their way around, and find the areas of the community that have high match value for them. It's imperative that a new community must be able to offer enough benefits that can compensate for the switching cost. While it's true that it took some time to assimilate to Facebook and its platform differences, the idea that this community was more sophisticated, new, the trendy thing to do was why I switched from Myspace. It helped that Facebook was very similar to Myspace in that it served the same purpose: to communicate with friends. This shared purpose definitely helped minimize my switching cost. In addition, many of my friends made the switch at the same time, which confirms what Kraut says about "bootstrapping" - members can directly attract other members to a community. I think it takes a combination of minimizing switching costs and successful bootstrapping to get anyone to switch communities. Marinamano (talk) 22:34, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

QIC #7

For this week’s reading, it is about how Robert argued, “most of these talented people face diminished opportunities in modern societies” (Frank, 1995). In this article, Robert talked about our society is structured by Winner-take-all system. There are both good and bad sides of winner-take-all markets. Once someone successes, it takes very easy for them to spread their fame, keep them being successful, which consumers clearly gain. But there are negative consequences for winner-take-all market as well. “Winner-take-all markets have increased the disparity between rich and poor” (Frank, 1995).

After reading this article, I also have some thought about this topic. I believe in the society nowadays, winners get it all. Winners can get paid higher pay, have the fame, and stay rich and famous and we tend to ignore those who are “second” or “third”.

129.10.40.122 (talk) 01:33, 28 March 2017 (UTC)Ginachu1993

QIC #9:

This week's reading was very interesting because it was something different. Frank and Cook focused on the winner take all society and how popular of a concept it actually is and to summarize they discussed that there are so many people on this earth that have different talents and how they use that to their ultimate power to fit into whichever society they have to follow the norms of. When you're part of a competitive society the model that was mentioned in the reading usually takes place and that's the winner-take-all structure where it shows that failure only occurs to the less favored option and so forth. On page 5 he talks about how "late bloomers" have difficulties making it because everything has been taken to work with, and that the "winner-take-all markets have molded our culture and discourse in ways many of us find deeply troubling" (pg. 5).

Immediately I thought of a video by Simon Sinek on millennials and how "millennials always talk about making connections, but how many connections are you going to make if you don't even use them wisely." I think that really got to me in terms of winner-takes-all model because we constantly get bored quickly with any work we are doing and we are never content with the number of connections we have, we think that the bigger our circle is the more opportunities we can get, when we don't realize that if we are getting a good job with a smaller circle that in itself is already something that we have achieved because not many people like their jobs. Frank and Cook say it on page 3 as well, "because performance is crucial and because modern information technology has helped build consequences about who they are, rival organizations must compete furiously to hire and retain them" (pg. 3). This just all ties in that we are part of a cycle where we push ourselves to win, and our "prize" is gaining a good position at a well known company, and we don't succeed we consider ourselves as failures. I have a question though for Professor Reagle, would you prefer to have a good job and a small network circle or hate your job but have a well connected circle?

Anchalvasandani (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 06:31, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

Anchalvasandani, I much prefer a good job and a small network circle

-Reagle (talk) 16:41, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

In this week’s reading, we take a look at Robert Frank and Philip Cook’s discussion of The Winner-takes-all Society. In this reading, Frank and Cook discuss the idea that our society has become structured by a Winner-takes-all system. I largely agree with one of the negatives highlighted by Frank and Cook about the winner-takes-all system. Specifically, I agree that winner-takes-all markets have increased disparity between rich (the “winners”) and poor (the “losers”). It is much easier for a winner to keep winning, getting higher pay, spreading fame and be more successful, than it is for losers to flip the table and win against the rich. Drishinb (talk) 12:59, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

QIC #8

I agree with the claims that we are both living in a "winner-takes-all-society" and that this system effects the various online communities and their development. In the technological age the latest and greatest developments are the ones that seize the attention and the money of its target audience. Online communities have displayed evidence of trying to keep up with this societal system. Social media sites for example, often will adopt features from other applications in order to compete with said applications. One example of this is when Instagram adopted the 24 hour "story" that were one of the more popular features of their direct competitor Snapchat. The development towards this "winner-takes-all" society that we live in has been a slow progression but was heavily influenced by the digital age. As a capitalist society we demand the things that we want immediately and modern technology has allowed us to satisfy these needs. Online communities are trying to adapt to this new level of demand along with just about every major business and trend in our society. NUrb93

When doing the reading, I found myself constantly agreeing with Cook, we do live in a "winner-takes it all society". For this QIC i decided to focus on "Concentration of rewards “in the hands of a few top performers, with small differences in talent or effort often giving rise to enormous differences in incomes,”I come from a family obsessed with soccer. My dad lives and breathes for the Spanish league and whenever we travel to Europe we go to soccer matches. And I'm always amazed when someone tells me how much a single soccer player can make. Iker Casillas for example, earns up to a million euros per season. Im sorry but that in my opinion is absurd, I do not deny the guy has a lot of talent, he's one of the best goal keepers the world has seen, but playing soccer hardly justifies that salary. We have placed a premium on celebrities and forgotten about the true academics, about the people that work hard day and night to change the world. We can see a similar effect going on in Online communities, out of all the apps out there, there are a handful that actually are successful and popular, social media has become an almost monopoly where Facebook is undoubtedly the leader of the pack. 2601:182:D040:9560:514D:769D:EE22:43AE (talk) 15:33, 28 March 2017 (UTC)MariselaLW

QIC #8

In Kraut and Resnick chapter 6, Design Claim 16 states “conveying a succinct unique selling proposition attracts members.” The chapter goes on to explain that if two communities are competing for the exact same niche, most likely one will win out over the other. Higher membership and a favorable reputation contribute to this as members flock to whichever service appears to be more popular. This is connected to the idea of “winner-take-all,” which reminds me of the Favor app’s abrupt departure from Boston. Without knowing much about the business decision, I assume it was a “winner-takes-all” situation. Favor faced stiff competition in Boston, namely from Postmates. Both apps performed essentially the same function: delivering from virtually any restaurant in the city on demand. They were practically identical. However, for whatever reason, Favor probably didn’t attract the same following. One could argue that the branding for Postmates was smarter, and pricing was slightly cheaper, especially with promotions. However, perhaps a more compelling reason to choose Postmates was its seniority and larger presence on the east coast. These things didn’t necessarily effect the experience of using the service. If enough costumers shared the line of thinking that Postmates was the more popular service, then they may have gravitated to it consciously or unconsciously, forcing Favor out of the picture. The same idea can be compared to the current situation between Uber and Lyft. Most people have chosen to be loyal to just one of the services. Eventually, if one app wins out over the other, the loser could start to pull out of certain cities. Angeladav (talk)

QIC #10

It does not surprise me that online communities greatly benefit from using a winner-take-all society mindset. In reviewing the design claims in Chapter 6 of Kraut & Resnick I found a multitude of evidence that might explain why online communities might prosper, and sometimes suffer from this mindset. I first want to touch on the idea of a relative rank. Online communities are consistently being compared to one another and are in constant competition when they first start. Therefore, it is no surprise that design claims 16 and 17 exist.

Design claim 16 says that conveying a succinct unique selling proposition attracts members. When there are so many platforms online that all provide similar opportunities for consumers, it makes sense that evaluators give each platform limited attention. Therefore, I think it is smart of online communities to really focus on one or two key elements of their identity when reaching out for new members.

Design claim 17 says that the use of advertising and celebrity endorsement can help create awareness of a community and to make it a focal point. Again, this does not surprise me. People are greatly influenced by what their peers are doing; it is easy to see how a person would choose one community over another if they are both very similar, but one is also used by their favorite celebrity.

Although the tactics discussed by Kraut & Resnick do make sense to me, I still have concerns. As Frank and Cook discuss, there are negative sides to a winner-take-all society. In the case of online communities, I believe these negative outcomes could include the misallocation of talent and resources, and boxing-in consumers.

Most importantly, though, I believe this mindset could lead to newcomers feeling unwelcome. It can be overwhelming joining something new, especially if it is already overcrowded. It feels as if winner-take-all societies are just turning small differences in performance into larger differences. I know personally I would hate to feel less than someone simply based on a small performance difference. Instead, I would want to feel encouraged. I think that is what online communities will have to struggle with – making sure newcomers and members still feel encouraged to participate when their differences are spread so publicly from the top-contributors. Halserena (talk) 16:00, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

QIC #9

I think I was aware that online communities benefit from using a winner-take-all attitude. I connected the ‘Winner Take-All Society’ reading with our Kraut & Resnick chapter 6 reading as well, more specifically design claims 16 and 17. Despite the knowledge of this mindset, I do think it makes it harder for newbies to feel welcome and get involved. This should be one of the negative outcomes of the Frank and Cook reading. Certain facts in the Frank and Cook reading surprised me. Not so much as I did not know about it, but more so that it made it so real that it was in an academic paper. The fact that ‘the wealthiest 1 percent of American families holds roughly 37 percent of the nation’s total wealth” (p.43) made me think about the country’s wealth and economics beyond this class’ syllabus.

Rheab16 (talk) 17:13, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

QIC 11

After reading "The Winner-Take-All Society", I realized that I was mostly thinking of two things; 1. In Talladega Nights: The Ballard of Ricky Bobby when his father says "If you're not first, you're last" and 2. The Giver where there is a utopian society that places community members at jobs they are best fit form. This reading concentrated heavily about the disproportionate success of people in the same field, and the major gap between first place and second place. "Those near the top get disproportionate share markets". This is not just within entertainment such as sports, but also with income inequality, because when someone is believe to be the best at something, people are willing to pay extra for their service/entertainment. There is a story about two applicants for Harvard with practically the same academic abilities, but one was from Standford and the other from a Florida college.

This made me think of what makes a successful community. Essentially, Myspace and Facebook are fairly similar and comparable since they are both online communities where you can have a profile and connect with friends. However, Facebook was much more popular and it kicked Myspace out. Even though Myspace probably wasn't much less successful than Facebook, it seems that way because more people in that niche chose Facebook. The two are so similar and in the same niche, that it doesn't make sense to use both. This reminded me of Design claim 13: Differentiated user interface in the competitor community create startup costs and thus favor the incumbent community in any competition over members.

Going off of Haivanessa , I agree that it can be funny when two businesses that provide the same or similar services criticize each other. These Sprint commercials point out that they're within 1% of Verizon (a perceived top company), but then why is Verizon doing so much better? If a niche already exists and there are established top dogs, is it worth entering it and trying to compete? Or is it like The Winner Take All Society where this is no room for large success for late bloomers?

Acosta94 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 15:55, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

Mar 31 Fri - Bootstrapping and critical mass

QIC #11 I don’t think Uber will win the day. Normally I would say differently because I tend to think that those who “originally” started an idea seems to be more successful at it than those who followed right after. However, Uber had all the possibilities to dominate the market, but they made a lot of mistakes along the way which gave a chance for alternative services to surpass Uber’s success. For example, the rewards you get for driving for Lyft are way better than Uber, Lyft tend to be more on time, and they also seem to care more about social issues. Uber tried to turn the platform into a “bus business” where many times ends up leaving its users frustrated which also leads to unhappy drivers. Considering that most drivers are immigrants, social issues should be a main concern for the creators of Uber, however, they don’t seem to care about it as much as other alternative services do.

I think it’s funny when companies that provides the same service try to compete with each other by criticizing each other’s service. For example, Uber’s campaign “shave the stache” is quite clever, however, Gett (a similar app based in New York) uses a better, more obvious, method to their campaign, the advertisements around New York vary from “The competition, who we shall not name, is Uber ripping you off” to “you didn’t know what surging meant until you knew what Uber meant”. That being said, all the holes found with Uber’s services was the perfect incentive for alternative services to exist and thrive.

Haivanessa (talk)

QIC #13 For now I'm on the fence about if Uber will win the game or not. I think it's possible someone could come along and do the job better. If they utilized Kraut's Design Claim 16 that states, "conveying a succinct unique selling proposition will attract members" I feel like this could be easily done - Lyft kind of did it in a similar sense when selling themselves to drivers -- When Lyft changed the model from fixed rates for drivers, that was a game changer. It incentivized drivers to work harder which lead to better service and everyone wants better service. Since the article came out in 2014 Uber has been the center of many controversies from the #DeleteUber movement that went around when their CEO Travis Kalanick was found to be on Donald Trump's advisory board to the way women engineers are treated in their work environment. Even the article shows some controversial behavior like the way they marking themselves against competitors and sabotaging competitors. It's one thing after another and I hope that eventually this doesn't take a tole on them. Employees and customers alike are jumping ship and moving on to something else. ChloeGendron (talk) 22:55, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

QIC #11

This week's readings focused on bootstrapping, at tactic used by organizations to increase the amount of members in a community. According to Kraut and Resnick (2011), this is accomplished as early members' actions produce the result of other people joining the community (p. 249). One design claim suggested by Kraut and Resnick to increase this effect is by providing incentives for early members to generate content (p.250). The success of this type of approach was highlighted in the article, "Uber-competitive: The ride-sharing platform war gets aggressive," which outlined the various ways in which Lyft and Uber recruit drivers, use this tactic to recruit other drivers through bootstrapping, and then reach a critical mass. Specifically, Lyft offered an incentive of a flat rate for their drivers in order to increase the amount of drivers that were recruited to the platform; once a critical mass is reached, Lyft does away with this incentive and produces a fare-based pay program. While Lyft experienced a drop in drivers, they increased the quality of the drivers that they had in the field.

Uber used similar methods to bootstrap its driver base. Uber used incentives that Lyft did not offer, such as paying for gas, to increase the amount of drivers that they have in the field. While the article does not outline how long Uber can sustain these programs, it comes to reason according to Kraut and Resnick that most likely Uber will reach a critical mass, after which they will need to decrease their incentives to stay afloat. In this way, both Lyft and Uber are using bootstrapping techniques: they are providing incentives to drivers to produce content (rides), and will eventually do away with the incentives once a critical mass is reached (Kraut & Resnick, 2011, p. 250)

I did have a question about this week's readings; the part of Kraut and Resnick on page 253-254 had a math equation outlining the effects of joining a community early or later was slightly confusing. I would really love further elaboration on how this modeling technique can be used, possibly with an example? -EH9890 (talk) 14:58, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

EH9890, I'd be happy to walk you through the derivation, but don't be too concerned about it; the important point is the implications: increase stage 1 value of community, reduce startup costs, provide early adopter benefits, and set expectations for success. -Reagle (talk) 16:52, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

QIC #10

I found both readings to be very relevant to one another. I do not think Uber will or should win the day; there is a way to run a business, there are ethics, norms and rules to follow before a business can be considered good and legit. People will have little respect for a company that does the kinds of antics Uber does and it matters; over time they will lose more and more customers. Lyft is just slightly less used and that is the one big advantage Uber has: existing customers. With that advantage, they still could not gain respect as a good business with all the sexual harassment claims and unfair business tactics. The article we read was more centric to this country. Uber was released in India and almost immediately had competition with local business services with the same business model. I think it is illegal in India to campaign directly against the competition, that makes it slightly easier for locals to thrive. I read way too many news articles about Uber drivers in India who have raped and murdered customers.

One design claim by Kraut and Resnick was to increase the bootstrapping effect is by providing early incentives to generate content (p.250). This was shown clearly in the article with the way the platform Uber used tactics to recruit drivers.

My personal experiences have made me dislike Uber even more and I actively avoid using it. I once sat in an Uber with a friend soon to realize I was in a car with a drunk driver; it was terrifying. I had not ordered the Uber myself because I had heard the stories about Uber and I just did not download it as a protest. I was a campus ambassador for Lyft for a short period of time and that position actually required me to do a lot of research and I had to go through an application, a test online followed by an interview. That alone made me respect the kind of background research they do on you before you can even interview to work for them. I'm on Lyft's side! - Rheab16 (talk) 03:40, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

Rheab16, you can put lines between your paragraphs. -Reagle (talk) 13:11, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

QIC #12 I personally don't think that Uber will win the day for a variety of reasons, but especially with its hefty investment in self-driving cars, which is an issue to tackle another day. "Uber-Competitive: The Ride-Sharing Platform War Gets Aggressive" outlines some of the fairly ruthless methods that Uber attracts drivers and passengers, but I think that Lyft actually utilizes some ethical and successful bootstrapping techniques. For example, it offers riders an incentive to attract new users such as free rides or cheaper fares. This is an example of Kraut and Resnick's design claim 24, which states "pay-for-referral methods and revenue sharing from referrals increase bootstrapping" (Kraut & Resnick, 2011, p. 252). And another one that Lyft employs as discussed in the article is design claim 29, which states "starting with a limited scope and expanding later allows focusing on staff resources toward getting to critical mass in the limited scope" (Kraut & Resnick, 2011, p. 260). When starting out in a new city, Lyft will offer guaranteed fares for drivers for up to a year or until the community grows large enough to surpass demand. I think that a lot of Lyft's success can be attributed to these bootstrapping techniques.

And in terms of Uber, I think that it's a difficult issue to contend with. I personally hate Uber for a variety of reasons including: although it's a cheaper alternative, Uber Pool is always a disaster, you end up waiting way longer for a driver than is anticipated, and then there's the issue of unqualified drivers. I had a similar experience as Rheab16 with Uber one time when I felt unsafe with my driver. I didn't even know about all of the nasty things Uber does to steal drivers and riders prior to reading this article. And I agree with my fellow classmates that this is no way to run a business. I think that for the most part, Uber gets away with it for the same reason why I still use the app. I am dependent on Uber because it's usually my main form of transportation, especially when the T shuts down at around 12:30AM. I use Uber at least once a day, and the amount of time I spend using it has increased with growing cheaper fares. It's often the same price to use Uber as using the T! That being said, I'm interested to see what happens with Uber in the coming years. It's clear that the company will run into all kinds of issues, and it makes me wonder what the alternatives will be for consumers. Marinamano (talk) 16:57, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

QIC #12

After reading the article, "Uber-Competitive: The Ride-Sharing Platform War Gets Aggressive," I personally agree with the other responses above that uber will not win the day.This mix of monetary and plain-dirty tactics that Uber uses made me think differently about the company's success as well as my loyalty to the brand name. Uber focuses on the drivers rather than the customers. They take a large recruiting strategy in which can be somewhat ruthless. These strategies include the following: First, they offer incentives which drives Lyft employees to Uber such as pay, bonuses, and gas. Next, their marketing strategies such as "Shave the Stache" are strategic campaigns to target Lyft users to migrate to Uber. Next, the article mentions sabotage where users act as trolls and manipulators by calling in and canceling hundreds of pickup-requests in order to distract driver.

On the other side, Lyft pushes for connections between drivers, riders, and the platform itself. The most noticeable, and one I have noticed from personal experience is the fist bump greetings among strangers. This develops more personal contact between the driver and rider in which facilitates a friendly, casual, conversation. As the article notes, "for Lyft drivers, self expression is the name of the game. Being unique is encouraged. This serves to attract friendlier and more interesting drivers, which then attracts like-minded riders. Lyft hopes to generate positive cross-side network effects in this regard." Another perk Lyft has is fixed fairs. Relating back to Kraut and Resnick, they mentioned that one way to increase the bootstrapping effect is by providing early incentives to generate content (p.250). This incentive is definitely a plus because it is a promised fair! When comparing these tactics with Uber's, and noting the fixed fairs that Lyft incorporates, Lyft seems to play much friendlier.

Also important to note is the safety and emotional comfort that lyft harnesses. Uber has had many claims of sexual harassment in the workplace, as well as assault with rides. (I even heard there is a new Boston based ride sharing app coming out called Safe(her) for women to promote safe rides.) With many of these claims made, it appears in my personal opinion that Uber pushes them under the rug and does not incorporate much strategy to avoid this crisis communication act. Rather, Lyft focuses more on the riders assuring (or at least trying to) assure safety, reliability, and emotional care.

Beyond these malicious acts illustrated in the article, both companies have attracted enough people to attain critical mass before other ride options/features are even available (Kraut Design Claim 25, Chapter 6, P. 258). They are both leaders and are levergaing their exisiting riders. In my opinion, I feel like Lyft will take the win if they are able to convey their rider care and enable riders to look past the Uber brand name. If they bootstrap their already available resources and riders to help marketing efforts they will for sure have my vote as a top ride sharing company. Sperry21 (talk) 17:27, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

EH9890, Design Claim 88 (for Uber): don't be an ass.

-Reagle (talk) 16:52, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

QIC# 10

For this weeks QIC I would like to discuss three design claims that relate to the tactics used by Uber and Lyft.

The first is design claim 18. This design claim is about providing incentives for early members which is the case of Uber and Lyft are the drivers as the article discussed their importance. Without divers the app is useless therefor you could argue that proving incentives for the drivers is more important than providing it for the users. These incentives are the fixed fares that Lyft provides for their drivers when starting in a new town, or the cash for gas and such that Uber uses to attract drives.

Although both Lyft and Uber did provided codes for discount for their users. Allowing users to invite new users and give them a referral code that gives both sides a discount. This relates for to design claim 24 which discuss pay for referral methods.

The design claim that I thought was interesting when reading the chapter and the Uber article is design claim 22. This particular one is not discussed in the article and that might be due to the fact that the article was written in 2014 and this tactic is fairly recent with Uber. Uber now allows you to connect the app to your snapchat which allows you to share ETAs and ride information via filters on the snapchat app and share them with your friends which is a way of attracting new customers and new users as this particular design claim is part of the “getting to critical mass” section. Salmanbinsultan (talk) 00:30, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

Salmanbinsultan, good connection. -Reagle (talk) 16:52, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

QIC #12

Uber is a staple in cities throughout America, but it does not seem to follow the tried and true designs for successfully building a community as outlined by Kraut and Resnick in Building Successful Online Communities. Rather than advertising the success of current drivers, as suggested in Design Claims 39-42, Uber uses advertisements to undermine its competitor, Lyft. It seems that, for the most part, Uber did not utilize effective strategies for recruiting drivers. Lyft, in contrast of Uber, emphasizes forming connections and self-expression, which are aspects that encourage “identity-based commitment” to a community.

The question is whether Uber’s “dirty tactics” for recruiting drivers will sustain the community. Based on Kraut and Resnick’s criteria for bootstrapping a community, it would seem that the Uber community cannot last. Rather than going after Lyft drivers, Uber should have focused on increasing membership in their own right. They could have utilized Design Claim 23, which suggests that communities have a service that allows members to invite their friends to join, and Design Claim 24, which would compensate drivers for invites and referrals. Using these strategies, rather than attacking Lyft, Uber would have been able to build a stronger community of drivers.

However, as mentioned, Uber is a staple in major American cities. The company has managed to create a community of drivers in multiple cities and sustain a presence over the years. With such unorthodox and “dirty” methods of bootstrapping, how is it that Uber managed to reach critical mass?

-Soperm (talk) 03:34, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

QiC #11

I read the article, “UBER-COMPETITIVE: THE RIDE-SHARING PLATFORM WAR GETS AGGRESSIVE,” with a biased point of view, since I am a loyal supporter and user of Lyft. However, reading this article increased my resentment towards Uber. Uber definitely has an upper hand, being one of the first of its kind to join the ride sharing industry, it certainly has developed a brand name for itself - even when I am calling an Lyft, I tend to mistakenly state that I’ve “called an Uber.” When I initially started using the Uber app, I was “paid for referrals” using Uber credits - explained by design claim 24 (p.253). Although this is not a direct form of cash, it can buy you a ride and acts as though it is. Along with getting a taste for the app, I lured in my network to join the app, resulting in bootstrapping - explained by design claim 23 (p.252). Although the free rides did initially invoke me to use the app, when the credits finished, I was demotivated to continue using the app. Nevertheless, when the app became more popular in my city, and my friends started using it, I was lured back into using the app. It could be inferred that my experience explains bootstrapping as a cyclic phenomenon. Once you get stuck in the cycle, in this case, of using Uber or another form of the service, you tend to continue using it because of the vast number of users. The increase in users definitely increases the value of the app - as explained by Kraut and Resnick. Uber and Lyft’s major benefit over the typical taxi service is that they have a “split share” option which allows you to split the fare with your friends who are sharing the ride with you. The tendency of one to use the app in the future again increases if their friend is calling an Uber/Lyft and they are expected to split the fare of the ride.

Vanishadans (talk) 05:46, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

Being a frequent user of Uber, the article “UBER-COMPETITIVE: THE RIDE-SHARING PLATFORM WAR GETS AGGRESSIVE” is a piece I read with some conflict. As someone who depends on the app as a permanent fixture in place of taxis or public transportation, like millions of other users, I’m inclined to defend the company. However, despite my bias towards the company, it is clear that this article follows the recent emergence of a trend in the coverage of uber as a company, which is increasingly painting it in a more negative light as allegations of all sorts, from sexual harassment to pushing the legal boundaries with its drivers, are seemingly coming out of the woodwork. What fascinates me is that despite all the negativity the company has almost been confirmed to be responsible for, millions of people, me included, are guilty of continuing to use the app relatively unfazed by these allegations. Uber has been able to evoke a remarkable amount of loyalty from its community members, as many people continue to lean on Uber as a legitimate form of public transportation itself and continue to use terms like “calling an Uber” as the primary terminology for all ride-sharing, even apps like Lyft. Drishinb (talk) 12:59, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

QIC #10

I think that concept that anyone can become a driver really really bothers me and scares me a lot. Background checks are a must because they just give you a sense of safety that you will be okay in this random persons car. My personal experiences with uber so far have been great up until a Tuesday afternoon when we had a snow day where I had to take it from the grocery store to back home. My driver openly said that he was high and that she shouldn’t be driving a car when I got in the car. During my car ride I tried to make minimal conversation but the driver literally said that he didn’t get any customers today so he wanted to “steal this one before it got away.” Since then I have been using lyft or trying to use lyft as much as I can, because I found that so unprofessional and uber never responded to my e-mail about the driver being high.

I do not want Uber will win the day and if they do I wouldn’t even be the least bit happy for them. There are certain rules when it comes to running a business especially one that crosses that boundary to letting a person know that they can enter a strangers car. As an international student I might think that this is the most convenient thing ever because it saves me the walk from/to the T, but also as an international student again that’s living extra far from home this is also such a dangerous concept. With the experience I had I am not that loyal as I used to be to Uber, because I feel something as simple as that should’ve been taken care of. Over time I think they will lose more customers if they keep following their mantra that “anyone can become a driver.” The article that Professor Reagle made us read was catered more to the U.S. because I know for a fact when Uber started in Jakarta it battled a lot with gaining customer satisfaction because I knew such a “simple” business tactic would not work in Jakarta due to the heavy traffic that’s constantly there. In Kraut and Resnick’s chapter, design claim 16 that states, "conveying a succinct unique selling proposition will attract members,” which is so true. I feel that Uber created this great idea initially that you want an on demand ride you will get an on demand ride, and then it slowly went downhill because they thought they were hiring great drivers but some turned out to be rapists and drug addicts that are behind the wheel. I think they need to take background check seriously, and then it would be a great company model. Anchalvasandani (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 14:33, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

QIC 11

In my opinion, it is possible for Uber to be the winner at the end of this day. Uber is the first online platform for providing a reasonably priced transportation service to people. In addition, Uber successfully emerged in numerous big cities across United States as well as overseas. Uber is the first and only app/service that broadens its horizons across numerous markets. Uber had and continues to have many competitors (such as Lyft). Although, it is important to note that Lyft (in addition with other transportation services) were not able to provide their services in as many locations as Uber. From my personal experience, I have had a much better experience with Uber drivers and cars. Drivers are more polite and can hold interesting conversations. In addition, in order to improve their ratings, Uber drivers make their cars entertaining (such as having iPads, phone chargers, headphones, party decorations/lights). Uber attracts drivers, who are of the higher qualifications. Uber and Lyft are the top online platforms for providing transportation services in United States, and they will continue to compete with their fares, drivers' qualifications, and car qualities. But I truly believe that Uber is one step ahead, and will continue to develop and incorporate new functions that will satisfy people's needs. In contrast, it makes me question when will Lyft (and alike companies) finally give-up to compete with Uber? Etozzi (talk) 14:37, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

QIC 6

I thought that this article was very relevent considering all of the negative publicity Uber has gotten in the past months. It is kind of hard to understand how Uber is still reigning champ in the ride sharing industry. I guess that being first-to-market provides a competitive advantage in the market that the company is in. Although this is not the case for every scenario, I believe that the competitors have to do something dramatically different, while also still providing the best user experience, to take over the market. I believe that right now is an essential time for Uber to make some dramatic changes. With the uncertainty of a law change that may benefit the State or taxi companies and the rise in interests of self driving cars, Uber needs to find a way to stay relevent during this time. With the direction that the transportation industry is going in, Uber must create a self driving car. This will completly change the P2P model that has provided much success for Uber. This is also probably the best time for Lyft to shake up the market. If Lyft is able to effectively use self driving cars, it can hop ahead of Uber. It will be interesting to see how this unfolds in the next 5 or 10 years. Jared Fong (talk) 15:26, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

QIC 4:

I completely agree with User:Haivanessa's take on Uber's future. I think they will lose their hold over the marketplace overtime rather than stay the front runner. This is because they have simply made too many mistakes and have frustrated their customers and drivers to many times. I personally have had multiple Uber drivers complain to me about how shitty Uber is to work for and how little money they make. The fact that they would reveal this to a passenger and someone who is paying for Uber's services shows that there is little connection or loyalty between drivers and the company. I have also seen my friends start to turn away from Uber over the past year. While the majority of my friends only use Uber, many have started to price compare between Uber and Lyft due to so many surges from Uber. I had a close friend get banned from Uber after a driver stole her credit card information which seems completely backwards to me. I think that as time goes on, we will continue to use "Uber" as the term for a taxi service as in, "call an Uber" even when we are no longer using the company/app. Just like Kleenex, Band-Aid, and Post-It are all company names which have taken over as the noun for their item. But just because we call it a Kleenex, doesn't mean it is actually a facial tissue from the Kleenex brand. Similarly, I think we will continue to call all app based taxi services Ubers even when we switch to other companies. I also think there may be an opportunity for a company/app to emerge that searches all of the taxi apps and shows you best prices for your location, number of passengers, etc. It would be like the Kayak for immediate travel and would perhaps make a more equal marketplace. M.vesey (talk) 15:53, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

QIC 11

Based on the design claims discussed in Kraut & Resnick I believe Uber is focusing on expectations while Lyft is focusing on their real future potential. First, Uber’s tactic to compete with Lyft was all about external publicity to attract users and raise their expectations of Uber being better than Lyft. Also, Uber was very focused on using an early adopter strategy. However, this strategy is only helpful when trying to attract riders, not necessarily to keep them coming back. Furthermore, Uber was very focused on creating a sleek design concept for their website, app, and reviews. These tactics all focused on creating expectation of future success from the very beginning, but they did not take into consideration whether or not their expectations would be halted by other factors.

Lyft, on the other hand, has done a very good job of looking at the broader picture and their long term goals. Lyft did not set up unrealistic expectations for themselves and instead started with a limited scope before expanding. This allowed them to focus on staff resources, in their case the drivers, and to make sure their credibility did not fall with expansion. Also, as a response to Uber, Lyft advertised themselves as cool but undiscovered and really played up their ‘underdog’ status. Lyft truly focused on growth when it came to the relationships between the drivers and riders, along with the company’s profits overall. The way Lyft implemented a competitive model for their drivers is truly genius and gets rid of bad drivers without them having to really lift a finger. Halserena (talk) 15:57, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

QIC #9

The article, “Uber-Competitive: The Ride-Sharing Platform War Gets Aggressive” details tactics ride sharing service Uber has used to tear down competitor Lyft. Uber leveraged marketing campaigns like “Shave the Stache” and “Don’t Pay a Premium for a Fist-Bump” to blatantly attack Lyft. I am reminded of more recent interactions between the two companies. In light of recent Uber scandals (the CEO's connections to Trump and refusal to participate in the JFK airport strike in response to Trump's ban on Muslim travelers), Lyft vowed to donate $1 million to the ACLU. This sent a clear message as to where Lyft stood in response to Uber and the current administration. Lyft President John Zimmer described the company as “woke.” Now as a feature, after each ride, Lyft users are able to donate additional fare to a charity. Both platforms have used bootstrapping to develop competitive advertising tactics, but perhaps Lyft has been able to do it more subtly and successfully. The case for Lyft has become more compelling, as social media users vow to #deleteuber permanently.

I still use Uber, however, because of initial disastrous experiences with Lyft. Years ago when I first downloaded the app, I would experience extremely long wait times, have trouble connecting to a driver, and encounter subpar customer service. I became frustrated as drivers frequently cancelled on me, turning a 20 minute trip into an hour. When I tried Uber, these were all things that were easily assuaged. The drivers seemed more plentiful, the wait times were shorter, and there was less confusion at pickup. This is my personal, anecdotal evidence, and it actually contradicts many other stories I’ve heard. Still, I have never been able to give Lyft another chance. As damning evidence amounts against Uber, I consider it, but as a consumer I prioritize convenience. The article touches on the importance of first impressions. Since I tried Lyft in its early stages, when it seemed they did not have enough Boston drivers, it’s been hard for me to shake my negative memories. Between Uber and Lyft, I’m not entirely sure who will win the day, but I know that I’m personally brand loyal to Uber and not ready to make the switch. Angeladav (talk)

Angeladav, in terms of availability, my experiences of in Boston have been similar; it's worthwhile trying Lyft again if you are interested IMHO. -Reagle (talk) 16:52, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

Apr 04 Tue - Reddit's challenges

QIC #11

I found the Gilbert reading, the Wiki article and Reddiquette page to be fascinating when read one after the other. It was fascinating for many reasons, the thing that I found awkward was the fact that Reddit users have declined or ignored so many etiquettes as seen in the Wikipedia list. Which is why I thought The Atlantic reading was more interesting and slightly bias.

I think it is a little unfair to judge which online community is stronger or weaker based solely on the one experiment conducted by students. The Atlantic claims that Reddit would be the so-called winner because it is a stronger community that values legitimate information. At first I thought this experiment was funny, creative, interesting and would lead to new findings about online psychology but I realize that everyone (including me) turns to the Internet for just about anything and I would not want fake or false (or “alternative facts”) information/news to be part of my research. I understand why “many others were livid” when the hoax was announced. I think, as I’ve mentioned in a QIC (#3) before, that ego plays a big part in what does or not anger people. I hypothesize that half the people were upset because they were fooled so easily. I say easily, but I do recognize the experiment was elaborate and effort-full.

Rheab16 (talk) 23:16, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

QIC #11

To first answer Professor Reagle’s question about Reddit, I think one of the main reasons it works so well is the ease of conversation and discussion it facilitates among users. This facilitation of open dialogue acts as both a benefit and a drawback to the online community. As seen in the “Reddiquette” and “Controversial Reddit Communities” articles, this openness also leads to a lot of inappropriate and negative discussion on Reddit, but I think that overall it is a main contributor to its success.

I found this week’s article from Wikipedia, Controversial Reddit communities, to be one of the most interesting. As mentioned on previous QICs, before this class I had very little experience with Reddit, so I was unaware of exactly how many inappropriate subreddits existed and that they were not all immediately banned or taken down. I was shocked that the jailbait subreddit, which featured inappropriate provocative shots of teenagers, lasted so long on Reddit and was even named the "subreddit of the year" in the "Best of reddit" user poll along with “jailbait” at one point being the second most common search term for the cite. Even though the subreddit was ultimately closed down in October 2011, I can't believe it lasted that long without it being moderated. Although it is rightfully defended as free speech, this lack of moderation is a huge negative function of the online community. The line drawn on Redditt between free speech and the distasteful posting of explicit content is much too fuzzy.

Another aspect of Reddit I believe acts as both a benefit and drawback to the cite is the up and down voting power given to users. As highlighted by Gilbert in his article, Widespread Underprovision on Reddit, although successful in getting users engaged in the online community, this voting power also leads to underprovision, “when too many people rely on others to contribute without doing so themselves” (p. 1). According to Gilbert’s research findings, this underprovision is cause by a combination of social norms, repeated interaction and reputation mechanisms between users, but could also be simply due to post time or poaching of posts among other reasons. This voting power also acts to exacerbate the previously mentioned issue of explicit content on Reddit, as users can up vote and further the popularity of inappropriate content in the community. Sabbatessa (talk) 21:22, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

QIC #13 Prior to this week's readings, I really didn't know much about Reddit at all. After reading, I think it's clear that one of the main reasons why this community is so successful is because it fosters free speech and dialogue for people. It encourages users to engage with each other in discussion and allows them to share content openly. I think that freedom of speech is also destructive for the site because of what we read about on a Wikipedia page: Controversial Reddit Communities. This page discusses many of the controversial subreddits that have existed and been taken down due to negative exposure. As the General Manager, Erik Martin, defended, controversial pages are a result of free speech on the site. For example, jailbait, which featured provocative shots of teenagers, was one of the first challenges to Reddit's "voluntary doctrine of absolute free speech". I think the issue of free speech is an interesting one to contend with when it can lead to exploitation and sexual harassment of women and young people. I think one way to combat this issue is stated on Reddit's "Reddiquette" page under the "Don't" section. A few rules here apply which are "don't post someone's personal information" and "don't hurt innocent people", as well as "don't troll" and "don't be rude". While I think it's important that these norms are listed for users, I can't help but wonder how successful they are in persuading people to act appropriately. In the same way that not all users act in good faith on Wikipedia, it's clear that Redditors are also guilty of breaking the rules.

Another challenge that Reddit faces is the threatened continuous loop of good quality content. As we learned about in Eric Gilbert's study, Reddit is vulnerable to widespread underprovision, where too many people rely on others to contribute without doing so themselves. As discussed in the study, this underprovision means that a lot of content is ignored and that when too many people free ride off of everybody else, the quality of the site will eventually degrade. One way that this is done is that people might choose to simply visit the popular content without voting on the new links. Eric Gilbert postulates from his research that this may be because voting isn't conversational, which is something that Redditors value. The value placed on the exchange of information is also discussed in "How the Professor Who Fooled Wikipedia Got Caught by Reddit", which discusses T. Mills Kelly's story about internet hoaxes. Kelly's students' hoaxes were broken on Reddit due to the centralized exchange of information between users, a positive characteristic of the community. In summary, I think the combination of free speech and open dialogue between users is what makes Reddit so successful, but it's clear that the site faces challenges and will continue to do so because of the complications associated with such freedoms. Marinamano (talk) 21:19, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

QIC #13

According to Controversial Reddit communities Reddit has occasionally been the topic of controversy due to, "the presence of communities on the site (known as subreddits) devoted to explicit material." Even site's former CEO, Yishan Wong, has stated that "We stand for free speech. This means we are not going to ban distasteful subreddits." Is it this freedom of speech in and of itself what causes issues for the news site, or can we flip it around and look at the autonomy granted to Reddit's users that keep the site growing and relevant?

According to "Widespread Underprovision on Reddit", scholar Eric Gilbert notes on the inner workings of Reddit and whether it can be portrayed as successful or unsuccessful. According to Gilbert, what makes Reddit work is the fact that, like many other online communities, they have their members do work for the good of everyone who is participating on the website. Moreover, he states, " On social voting sites like Reddit, this means that users judge a stream of incoming links by voting them up or down. The links with the most up-votes bubble up to the main page, pointing everyone toward the best content." However, going back to freedom of speech - is it causing an issue or creating a name for Reddit. When looking at controversial subject's Controversial Reddit communities states that Reddit's staff was opposed to obscene material on the site. They eventually became more lenient when, "prolific moderators, such as a user named "violentacrez" proved capable of identifying and removing illegal content at a time when they were not sufficiently staffed to take on the task. Communities devoted to explicit material saw rising popularity, with the "jailbait" subreddit (featuring provocative shots of teenagers) being chosen "subreddit of the year" in the "Best of reddit" user poll in 2008 and at one point making "jailbait" the second most common search term for the site." Moreover, even the general manager or reddit, "defended the jailbait subreddit by saying that such controversial pages were a consequence of allowing free speech on the site." Reddit thus works because people accept it. In my eyes, why troll a site in the sense of posting obscene language and pictures if it is already allowed? Reddit gains popularity for this type of content, thus when controversy stirs, the website also gains traction. People want to see exactly what is happening and engage in this free speech you might not see elsewhere on the web - I guess thats why I can say some of the many raunchy, yet hilarious meme's I have found have come from Reddit.

Through reddiequette points out the correct etiquette to follow, it is fair to say that like many other trollers and manipulators on the internet, they will migrate to Reddit to disrupt the code of conduct. When scanning between the articles we were assigned for this QIC, I took a look at the reddiquette rules, one in particular that says, "Don't up vote or down vote comments and posts just because the poster's username is familiar to you. Make your vote based on the content." The up votes and down votes (aside from the free of speech) irk me because I always go back and fourth to see if the site moderator (such as an editor on Buzzfeed) can control what I see, vs allowing other to tlel me what to see. As Gilbert questions do "Redditors vote on the underlying link or on how well someone sells the title?" Relating this outsied of the community, I am likely to read an article by my favorite news source or favorite writer because I know their name. Much like wikipedia, Reddit may have a large community following in which there are well-known contributors. Much like someone would choose CNN over FOX TV network, would this happen for Reddit? Also, is it fair because while there is freedom of speech, someones work may be down voted compared to those "wheatie box athletes" and bootstrappers on these sites? In other words, and piggybacking off of Gilbert, many links that have potential to reach popularity may never get noticed. Counter-arguing with reddiquete's rules, if you aren't supposed to promote your article, how can you get around this? Sperry21 (talk) 22:51, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

QIC # 13

In “Widespread Underprovision on Reddit,” Eric Gilbert studied that many potentially popular posts are looked over. One of the problems, Gilbert asserts, is the lack of social conversation on Reddit. Users upvote or downvote a post, then move on. Gilbert suggests a mechanism of rewarding users for voting on new posts, not just the most popular posts. This will increase other users’ experience by increasing the match value and collection size of Reddit’s main page. In Yoni Appelbaum’s article, “How the Professor Who Fooled Wikipedia Got Caught By Reddit,” students fabricated stories and posted them to Wikipedia, then another group of students posted a fake story to Reddit. Appelbaum concludes that the reason Reddit uncovered the lie and Wikipedia did not was because of the level of trust on communities. But it would seem to be more likely that more people were able to see the post on Reddit because of the upvotes, while only the few individuals reviewing new articles would see the Wikipedia article. The upvote-culture is both a gift and a curse for the content on Reddit.

Yoni Appelbaum commends Reddit for the strength of its community and its focus on content. However, with such a large, anonymous community, there are inevitable groups of low lives who share offensive and/or unsavory content. Reddit’s “Reddiquette” page encourages kindness and proper categorization of posts, including NSFW posts containing nudity and horror. Reddit encourages free speech, which gives a lot of freedom to its users, but it also means that there is room for illegal content to go unchecked. Reddit has to move carefully to weed out the illegal threads without alienating its user-base with too many new rules.

-Soperm (talk) 02:01, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

QIC #12

Gilbert’s study on the “Widespread underprovision on Reddit” brings to attention a major problem with the voting system in which a majority of people may wish to merely surf the popular page on the site and ignore the new entries. This causes a bias, and leaves out potential for growth within the community, this is especially if the same users tend to dig for new info and participate in voting, those articles of the same kind popular. The shocking number of popular versus new page views is an eye opener. The voting system on reddit is much like the “top charts” in the music industry, where a lot of listeners choose to go straight to the hits charts and forego listening to unique music that appeals to an acquired taste. A question I would like to raise is that are we limiting our taste to certain music because of the “voting system?”

The article about the professor who designed a course to fool Wikipedia says a lot about the lack of provision of active users on Wikipedia can really harm the reliability of the content on the site. This raises the question of authenticity of the information on the site, however, as a class we have experienced a high level of supervision on our articles, since they were judged, deleted, or given feedback on rather quickly. The users on Reddit had the capacity to dissect the hoax and unveil the pieces of information within 26 minutes, saying a lot about the community and the ability of the users to spot anomalies. The high level of trust that Wikipedians have in the community may harm the content posted, threatening the reputation of the community. Vanishadans (talk) 03:51, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

QIC #11

I think this is necessary information to throw out there that I actually would not know what Reddit is if it wasn't for this class. After the Gilbert reading, I think I have a better sense of understanding on what it is. One of the main reasons why the online community works and why multiple users have multiple accounts and are interested in multiple social media platforms is because people can alter their personality and speak out what they want on it. People can definitely communicate to each other a lot easier online because they can mold whatever they want to say in text better than they can in person. This was also proven and tested in my social breach experiment, that people that are actively on social media do not see a problem with communicating through different platforms. But I think there is a line and there is a certain extent to where you need to make sure that you can trust the internet and trust the online world with certain things. In the reading about Controversial Reddit Communities, there was a section that talked about creepy screen shots, and one of the things that really struck out to me was "a subreddit called "Creepshots" drew controversy in the press for hosting sexualized images of women without their knowledge." Immediately I thought of Vanessa Hudgens the star of High School Musical that took nude pictures of herself on her phone that were somehow leaked on to social media. This links to the don't section of Reddiquette that we also had to read such as "don't hurt innocent people" or "don't put someone's personal information" which I think are really applicable to the creepy screenshots as in if you're a professional hacker that knows how to actually do this, don't do it, because that's not fair on the people that are trusting their devices. Nowadays the hype is actually on snapchat where people think the photo disappears and they can send whatever - don't send whatever because you never know who would be sick minded enough to screenshot it.

Reddit is actually not my favorite website because as Gilbert mentioned in his study, people rely on others on Reddit, so how do you know the information you're allowing yourself to rely on is "real."

This question is actually open to anyone, but I'm just curious as to if you have been hurt online in any social media platform, or have hurt someone?

AnchalVasandani (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 04:02, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

In Eric Gilbert’s article “Widespread Underprovision on Reddit”, he takes a the the upvote and downvote system on Reddit. Gilbert discusses the idea that there is an underprovision of voting up or down, which means that people rely on other users to vote on posts and comments without doing so themselves. According to the findings in his article, Gilbert suggests that this underprovision of votes has become a widespread occurrence on Reddit, which he notes as one of the largest social voting communities on the Internet. The findings in Gilbert’s article states that over half of the most popular links were overlooked the first time they were submitted, suggesting the possibility of many potentially popular links getting ignored. This discussion of an underprovision of voting is an important area to explore when discussing Reddit because, as I mentioned in my social breaching experiment on the website, it is an online community that heavily relies on self-moderation. Each of the numerous subreddits on the community rely on users to vote up on content that is considered suitable or good quality posts, whilst also downvoting content that is innappropriate, off-topic or in breach of the rules of the subreddit. From my experiences with reddit, the voting system on the site is an integral part of how content is filtered.

As I have mentioned in class and in previous QICs, I am also a frequent user of Reddit. In my experiences, this underprovision of votes, as discussed by Gilbert, may have varying effects depending on how popular the subreddit is. In smaller subreddits, this may affect the content that most people may view on the page and have the negative effect Gilbert noted. However, from my experiences with Reddit, bigger subreddits correct this problem for the most part. While not everyone will be voting on posts, in bigger subreddits, there are still enough people voting regularly so that popular links or the content that they refer to will have its say on the relevant subreddits, one way or another. Drishinb (talk) 14:34, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

QIC #12

This week's readings were focused on Reddit, specifically the way in which it functions. "Widespread Underprovision on Reddit" by Eric Gilbert focused on how some links on Reddit need to be submitted multiple times in order to reach the front page, exhibiting how some users choose to observe the material on Reddit, but do not actively seek out content on the new submissions page. The reasons for this were not definitively identified in the paper; however, some were proposed. I particularly think the suggestion that perhaps users do not upvote a link the first time they see it due to a lack of social consensus interesting. My boyfriend is an avid redditor, and often uses this tactic when deciding what to upvote. Something appears more newsworthy or interesting the more often it is shared; thus, it makes sense that individuals may wait to see something a few times before upvoting it. In addition, I think the concept that some users sell the content better, i.e., by creating a better title, is also a viable explanation. In marketing, email subject lines are a big focus as they increase the amount of opens the email receives; I would guess that this similar logic can be extended to Reddit, which reminds me a bit of an email's inbox. I will open the emails, or links, I find interesting, and ignore the ones I do not. I also think that the article, "How the Professor Who Fooled Wikipedia Got Caught By Reddit," creates a nice snapshot of the community. I listen to a podcast called, "My Favorite Murder," and they often discuss Reddit's murder mystery communities, and how intensive Reddit murder investigations go; in fact, the show often uses Reddit as a source of theories concerning unsolved murders. Reddit, unlike Wikipedia, does not rely on good faith collaborations, and I think that is part of the reason the community is quicker to discover deceit; in addition, it allows users to submit theories that are based slightly less on fact, allowing for more free flowing discussion. -EH9890 (talk) 14:53, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

QIC 12

The Atlantic's article How the Professor Who Fooled Wikipedia Got Caught by Reddit includes some interesting ideas about how people surf the Internet and perceive information. The article explains the experiment that student participate in, in order to observe how people search for information and what kind of information people believe/do not believe in. The article compares two large online communities, such as Wikipedia and Reddit. In my opinion, it is hard to compare the two communities, because they provide sources of different types of information. In my opinion, Wikipedia serves as an academic source (facts that you might perceive as a basic knowledge about a particular topic). In contrast, Reddit is a source for both academic and news information. Therefore, it really depends on the person and how he/she perceives the information. In addition, it depends how loyal the user is to the particular online community.

I think it is hard to predict if the Internet information is inaccurate/wrong. In my personal experience, I believe in mostly all information that I find on Internet. When I search for additional information on a specific topic, it means that I do not have enough knowledge on the subject. Therefore, I would have no idea if I am being fooled with the written information on the article, blog, etc. The Atlantic discussed that online communities rely on people's trust and persuasion. Once we turn to a particular source of information, it means that we trust and believe in accuracy of the incorporated information. Therefore, I am curious about how should we check if the writers (of such source channels) are honest and accurate about their facts? When is there a boundary of what we can and cannot trust in? Etozzi (talk) 15:36, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

QIC #10

I found reading the Wikipedia article “Controversial Reddit Communities” particularly interesting because I have held the longtime view that much of Reddit is anti-women or anti-feminist and have often steered clear of it for such reasons. So, I appreciated reading about controversial subreddits that have been banned and efforts made by moderators to remove clearly illegal content. It reminded me of an Atlantic article called “Why Is Reddit So Anti-Women?” that sort of echoes my feelings. To whatever extent it is true or not, there is a portion of women that feel Reddit is not only unwelcoming, but hostile. Obviously I recognize that Reddit is a humongous online community that represents a large spectrum of individuals. However, (and whether users are acting as trolls or not) a lot of interactions that I’ve personally viewed on Reddit have left a bad taste in my mouth. I accept that any community that allows for anonymity is particularly at risk of being trolled, and I understand the free speech rationale. As a proponent of free speech myself I wouldn’t recommend more restrictions on Reddit’s content. The page on Reddiquette is thoughtful, and it makes me wonder how often users actually troll or opt not to “remember the human.” I don’t know if Reddit’s community members are particularly concerned with attracting more women as community members, but I imagine it’s a struggle if they are. It seems very likely that some women who try to join the community have felt discouraged encountering aggressive MRA or subreddits like the Rape Report Spam. In the end, it’s easy to draw the conclusion that the negativity fostered by this environment makes becoming an active/contributing member not worth it. This is almost certainly a case of a few “bad apples” spoiling the bunch, but a negative connotation has been created. People who are not on Reddit begin to stereotype Redditors. In my opinion it’s a little unfortunate that this reputation exists because I acknowledge that a lot of cool content comes from the site. I have conducted many a Google search that lead to Reddit as the first result, read about cool AMAs, etc. Angeladav (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 16:25, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

QIC #10

Though I was familiar with Reddit before, I found this weeks readings to be incredibly insightful and opened my eyes up to a few challenges the sight faces that I was previously un aware of. As a long time"lurker" on Reddit I am quite familiar with the community and it's operations and yet I never felt like it was necessary to contribute posts, comments or even votes. After this weeks readings I believe users like me are one of the bigger threats to reddits wellbeing. So many people visit this website and use it as a source of information and yet those same people tend to forget that the content that we like so much is not created by paid authors or sight monitors, it is created and shared by us, the users. Reddit has recently undergone a change to its front page layout which I think will ultimately help in this respect. Reddit's front page used to be occupied exclusively by the posts that had the most up votes on the site. This was tough because there wasn't as much diversity and certain subreddits would get considerably more attention than others. Now the front page consists of posts that span across even the less popular subreddits which may encourage users to participate more.

User:NUrb93:NUrb93 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.10.9.30 (talk) 16:50, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

Apr 07 Fri - Debrief: Wikipedia

QIC #12 - I enjoyed learning about Wikipedia. There's a whole world that exists behind the pretty pages we see when we're searching for a certain content. I found it quite fascinating that some users really put in time into making Wikipedia a good platform without any compensation. I also found funny the rewards that these users receive when they participate a lot in the community, barn stars specifically called my attention; they are funny looking, but somehow, they represent hard work. Similar to when we were young and used to receive “gold stars” for spelling a word correctly.

The conversation we had in class today was also interesting as everyone had a different views on the benefits and disadvantages of Wikipedia. As I mentioned on my reflection and in class, I think that maybe providing compensation to users would be a great way to influence newcomers to take part in the community, not only that, hiring true moderators could potentially stop hazing from happening, which as we spoke in class, it happened to many of us. Also, providing more tutorials and an easier way to access answers to our question could help newcomers have a better experience. Overall, I think Wikipedia is a very solid community to that has a lot of potential to become better.

Nonetheless, I think having this assignment as one of our three assignments in class is really unique, because unlike many of the other assignments, by participating in Wikipedia I felt like I was a part of something bigger.

Haivanessa (talk)

Apr 11 Tue - 4chan & community content analysis

QIC #12

I think the ‘Kek, Cucks, and God Emperor Trump: A Measurement Study of 4chan’s Politically Incorrect Forum and Its Effects on the Web’ was an interesting read. I think they do a good job of showing the hate online and analyzing it. I have never been on 4chan, but based on what I have read about it now, it sound like it would be similar to Tumblr in terms of some of the content being posted. Being online is hard, especially if one is a public figure. Hate tends to emerge whatever you post, whenever you post, more so if it gets a lot of views.

The data analyzed in the paper was not very surprising. I was not surprised by the top ten countries in terms of “direct replies received per post for each board in our dataset.” What did surprise me was that India was in only one of the lists, for some reason I had assumed that because the population is so huge, that they would be on there. The most posted external links were unsurprisingly directed to YouTube. I think this was because of the visual and motion aspect of it; I know that this platform has a ‘dark side.’ Rheab16 (talk) 02:11, 9 April 2017 (UTC)

QIC #12

Before reading the Wikipedia article and "Kek, Cucks, and God Emperor Trump: A Measurement Study of 4chan’s Politically Incorrect Forum and Its Effects on the Web" I had no idea what 4chan was and had never even heard of it. I found the Wikipedia article to be really helpful as it gave a lot of background information that you need to have before reading the study done on 4chan. From what I learned from reading the articles, I think of 4chan as a mix between Reddit, Pinterest, and Tumblr. Since it has a discussion aspect that can be compared to Reddit, it is no surprise how much negative content surrounding hate and racism there is on the cite. I also believe that the anonymity aspect of users plays a big part in fueling the spreading of hate messages/images present on the forum.

I found it to be an interesting choice that the study on 4chan was specific to the "politically Incorrect" board. It is quite obvious that politics are a huge topic of discussion, and although it makes sense for this reason to study this board, I also think that it could have made for a predictable study. Political elections, and the 2016 election in particular, have a lot of hate messages surrounding them so I think that it is somewhat obvious that the 4chan board on politics would have a lot of racist and hateful messages. I think it would be interesting to see a study done on 4chan that looked at hateful and racist messages present on other popular boards to get an idea of how prevalent they are.

Apr 14 Fri - Infocide

QIC #13 I never knew how seriously people took Wikipedia until now. Considering that most of its users are people like you and me who are not getting paid for their edits, I can’t quite understand why they would make it their “jobs” to go and edits people work. I understand wanting to be a part of something bigger, however, if you’re ever that obsessed to the point you need a “wikiholiday” I think it’s time to really take a look at your life and question why you have to much free time to waste.

I never even knew that infocide was a thing, but now that I’ve read more about it on professor's Joseph Reagle article, I think I probably have committed a couple of “infocides” when I was young. According to Prof.Reagle, infocide is the “disengaging from the Internet via the deletion of all your publicly available information.” When I was younger and felt that FB was somehow “taking over my life” or I felt like my presence didn’t matter I would delete my profile and all my information online, hoping that people would notice, but the more I did it, the more I felt like I was taking the platform too seriously. I see that happening to celebrities as well, at times they feel too overwhelmed with their online presence that they try to escape (exit) online communities by deleting their accounts, however, unlike me, their information will always be there for others to find because after all, they are celebrities and fame is something that comes along with it.

Haivanessa (talk)

QIC #13

I do not think I have ever thought of Infocide or the fact that “cyber language” is any different than normal. Of course, I would place that blame on the generation I grew up as a part of. I found the “internet suicide” concept to be vaguely similar to “social suicide” (as seen in Mean Girls and other angst teen movies). Social suicide occurs when people do activities or say things that the ‘popular’ kids deem “uncool.” Maybe now this concept is synonymous to “internet suicide” in this day and age. I found the “suicide” and “pulling the plug” metaphors to be easily offensive to some people, but I think using such words online is normal and contemporary.

The community responses to Infocide (gratitude, sleuthing, gratitude and preservation) seem quite likely. I think sleuthing is something people do online in general, it happens organically and infocide may be a push towards it. People stalk celebrities and crushes constantly, it seems as though it is part of our culture now. Every time people talk about someone they like, I or someone else in the room immediately look them up to see what they’re like. 02:12, 9 April 2017 (UTC)

Apr 18 Tue - DEBRIEF: Newcomer campaign

^ "Coolhunting". wikipedia. wikipedia. 2017. Retrieved February 2, 2017.

[1] "Coolhunting". wikipedia. wikipedia. 2017. Retrieved February 2, 2017.

[1]