collaborative potential of virtual communities: case study of „connect“ jasmina božić faculty...

Collaborative Potential of Virtual Communities:

Case Study of „Connect“

Jasmina BožićFaculty of Humanities and Social Sciences University of Zagreb

Ljubica Bakić-TomićFaculty of Teacher Education University of Zagreb

Armano SrbljinovićMinistry of Defence – Institute for Research and Development of Defence Systems

12th International Conference “Information Technology and Journalism”, Dubrovnik, May 21-25, 2007


Collaborative Potential of Virtual Communities: Case Study of “Connect”

Part I : Cooperation problem and virtual communities



• Humans do not cooperate “of themselves”:

The agreement of these creatures [social insects] is natural; that ofmen is by covenant only, which is artificial; and therefore it is nowonder if there be somewhat else required.

Thomas Hobbes: “Leviathan”

Your corn is ripe today; mine will be so tomorrow. 'Tis profitable forus both that I shou'd labour with you today, and that you shou'd aidme tomorrow. I have no kindness for you, and know that you have aslittle for me. I will not, therefore, take any pains on your account; andshould I labour with you on my account, I know I shou'd bedisappointed, and that I shou'd in vain depend upon your gratitude.Here then I leave you to labour alone: you treat me in the samemanner. The seasons change; and both of us lose our harvests forwant of mutual confidence and security.

David Hume: “A Treatise of Human Nature”

Cooperation problem



• Negative incentives / temptations to “free-ride” always exist:– Possibilities of short-term gains if merely

private interests are followed – Everyone must give up a part of his/her

personal freedom/comfort/gain/profit for the prosperity of all / “common good”

• How to overcome negative incentives?– Knowledge and goodwill are often not enough

• What “else” is required?

Cooperation problem



“Technologies of cooperation”

• Social and/or technical arrangements facilitating cooperation

• Lowering “costs of cooperation” to acceptable levels

• Examples enabled by IT:– Wikipedia and other wiki-tools

– electronic voting

– e-reputation systems (eBay, Slashdot karma,…)



IT as a “cooperation amplifier”The most long-lasting social effects of technology always go beyondthe quantitative efficiency of doing old things more quickly or morecheaply. The most profoundly transformative potential of connectinghuman social proclivities to the efficiency of information technologies isthe chance to do new things together, the potential for cooperating onscales and in ways never before possible.

Howard Rheingold: “Smart Mobs”

The online world is home to some of the most participatory citizens weare ever likely to have.

Jon Katz: “The Digital Citizen”, Wired, Dec. 1997



IT as a “cooperation attenuator”

• Also provides many opportunities for reaping benefits/pleasures from the commons without contributing to its maintenance– Intentional destruction in most extreme cases

• Examples from virtual communities:– Spam e-mail messages– Indulgence in ego trips and flame wars– Spreading computer viruses– Spreading patterns of deviant social behaviour:

racism, hate, child pornography, …



IT as a “cooperation attenuator”

The presence of flamers, bullies, bigots,charlatans, know-nothings, and nuts inonline discourses poses a classic tragedy ofthe commons dilemma. If too many peopletake advantage of open access to seekother people’s attention, the excesses of the freeriders drive away the people who make theconversation valuable.

Howard Rheingold: “Smart Mobs”



Transforming “strategic setting” of on-line interactions ?

• Goals:– Make cooperative social outcomes more frequent in human

on-line interactions– Improve positive & suppress negative incentives for cooperation

in virtual communities– Increase collaborative potential of virtual communities

• Goals attainment:– Assessment of collaborative potential?– Set of guidelines?– Applicability in virtual communities?



Ostrom’s principlesElinor Ostrom, 1990, design principles of robust, long enduring, common-pool

resource institutions:

1. Clearly defined boundaries should be in place.

2. Rules in use are well matched to local needs and conditions.

3. Individuals affected by rules can usually participate in modifying the rules.

4. The right of community members to devise their own rules is respected by external authorities.

5. A system for self-monitoring members’ behaviour has been established.

6. A graduated system of sanctions is available.

7. Community members have access to low-cost conflict-resolution mechanisms.

8. Nested enterprises – appropriation, provision, monitoring and sanctioning, conflict resolution, and other governance activities – are organized in a nested structure with multiple layers of activities.



Ostrom’s principles

• Discovered after empirical studies on common-pool resource governance

• In practice embodied in a rich variety of more specific rules

• No single set of specific rules is universally applicable

• Ostrom: Principles are helpful as a possible place to start an investigation, but they are in no way prescriptive.



Part II : “Connect” at a glance



• Envisioned as an informal “meeting place” of Croatian scientific community

• Started in 2004• Structured as an NGO programme consisting

of several related on-line activities (“projects”)– Portal, database, e-news and mailing lists, focus

forums, science initiatives, on-line management of off-line activities

– A metaphor of “virtual city” (programme) consisting of “virtual squares” (projects)



• A central virtual square• A place where most on-line interactions among

community members take place• Discussions organised in thematic threads

– More than 2000 thematic threads by May 15, 2007– Members freely open new threads or post comments to

existing threads– Authorship of postings:

• Public to community members

• Invisible to outsiders (except of the initial posting in a discussion thread)

– Additional private messages service for members



Connect::Database

• Members data– Name, affiliation, area of expertise, interests– Approx. 1150 members by May 15, 2007

Connect::Party

• Web-pages dedicated to off-line gatherings of community members

– Organisation details, photo-galleries,…



E-Connect

• E-newsletters for all Connect members and for visitors

• Special-interest sub-communities with their own web-pages, professional discussion forums, newsletters, mailing lists

– Astro Connect: astrophysics– HR in CH: Croatian young scientists in Switzerland– Kognet: cognitive neuroscience– Geo Connect: geo-science



Connect::WikiFF• WikiFF = Wiki Focus Forum• Web-pages for collaborative work focused on

various topics of interest– Each member may contribute

• 14 topics in total by May 15, 2007

• Started most recently

• Aim: encourage dialogue on science-related issues

• 2006 Video-conference “Setting up a World-Class Science Institute: Difficulties and Possibilities”



“Connect” - main achievements

• Importance for democratisation of Croatian scientific public sphere

– A member’s observation: Connect contributed to bringing many important science-related issues in Croatia from backdoors to public.

• Reinforcing feedback: portal <-> other media– Portal discussions provide topics for media

coverage– Media coverage attracts new “Connect” members



• Collaborative work on document proposals

– 2nd Congress of Croatian Scientists

• Public interviews with prominent scientists and science officials (“guests”)

– Over a certain period of “visit” each member may ask a question on-line, and a guest provides answers on-line

– 6 “guest visits” by May 15, 2007

Successful cooperation examples



• Public nominations of officials in science and research

• Announcement of job opportunities in science and research

– Increased visibility

• Direct collaborative arrangements among members through message exchange

– Less visible to public, nevertheless important

Successful cooperation examples



• Flame wars as the main problem– Not as frequent and intensive as in many

other non-scientific portals– Nevertheless destructive consequences

• Focus on exchange of insults instead on problems• Retreats from discussions• Angry disputes continue through other media

• Other destructive tendencies not present

Cooperation breakdowns



Part III: “Connect” - compliance to Ostrom’s principles



1. Boundaries

• Membership open to scientists, educators, students

• Also to professionals if they hold (at least) a bachelor’s degree

• Members not necessarily Croatian citizens, but have to be related to Croatia (place of education, work, living)



1. Boundaries

• Membership open to practitioners of sciences, social sciences, humanities

– Only a fraction uses the opportunity

• Members from sciences prevail – Bias towards issues primarily relevant to

sciences– Self-selection establishes additional

boundary



2. Rules matched to local needs• Membership assumes acceptance of community’s rules

– Clearly specified – General: registration, personal data reliability and

protection,…– Not overly restrictive

• Projects (Portal, WikiFF,…)– Additional more specific rules– Matched to project-specific needs– E-connect sub-communities: rules matched to their

needs



2. Rules matched to local needs

• Connect::Portal rules:– Technical rules - how to: format text, post,

comment, rate, …– Prohibitions: advertisement, partisanship and

political marketing, defamation, copyright infringements

– Netiquette rules:• Specially emphasised• Links to additional netiquette sources provided• Advisory, but not mandatory status



3. Participation in modifying the rules

• Rules open to discussion and revision

• Connect::Portal rules are subject to comments as any other posting

• Members use this opportunity

• Intensions of changing the rules are publicly announced by the editor



4. Respect of rights and rules by authorities

• External authorities:– No direct influence

• Internal authorities – Editor:– The right to intervene in cases of severe rule-

breaching– Acts mainly as a benevolent, non-intrusive

supervisor:• Generally refrains from modifying or deleting postings• Issues warnings to participants only when discussion

erupts into a flame war



5. Self-monitoring system

• Rating postings in an “e-jury” manner• Members can rate postings of discussions in

which they do not participate• Ratings:

Insightful (+1)

Informative (+1)

Interesting (+1)

Neutral (0)

Funny (0)

Off topic (-1)

Superfluous (-1)

Improper (-1)

Provocative (-1)

• Ratings are anonymous



5. Self-monitoring system

• Total rating of a posting:– Calculated only if at least 3 ratings are cast

• Numerical part (magnitude) of total rating is a sum of all ratings

• Textual part of total rating is textual description of the most frequent rating of the same sign as the calculated sum

• Both total rating and the distribution of all ratings are public to members



6. Sanctions

• Graduation of sanctions in 2 levels

• Level 1: Decentralised sanctions– Ratings cast by community members

• Level 2: Centralised sanctions– Editor’s interventions in more serious cases



6. Sanctions

• Problems with ratings are subject of lengthy discussions among members:

– Sample size:• Usually small number of ratings are cast

– Sample quality:• Asymmetry between publicly signed postings and

anonymous ratings• Ratings may come from author’s “friends”/”enemies” and

not represent “the silent majority”• Publicity of ratings, on the other hand, would discourage

negative ratings and diminish the sanctioning effect



6. Sanctions – Problems (cont’d)

• Observability and measurability of effects:– Ratings really have moderating effects?

• Hard to measure whether the frequency and intensity of flame wars declined since (and due to) the introduction of ratings

– Ratings have excessively restrictive effects on discussions?• Hard to measure whether the total amount of postings declined

since (and due to) the introduction of ratings

• A broader dilemma: Freedom of public expression in postings vs. Freedom of anonymous expression of disagreement in ratings

• Meaningfulness of total rating:– Need not be the most frequent of all ratings– Postings with starkly different rating distributions may end with

identical total rating



7. Low-cost conflict-resolution

• Not implemented

• Remains a challenge for social computing practitioners to develop low-cost e-versions of various conflict-resolution procedures

– Ending flame wars in an

“e-court”?

“e-negotiation”, “e-mediation”, “e-arbitration”,…?



8. Nested governance structure

• Most demanding requirement• Cannot be fulfilled before the

governance structure of considerable complexity exists

• “Connect” community still too small to afford multi-layered self-governance

• “E-connect” sub-community structure testifies that “Connect” is envisioned as a nested self-governing community



Part IV: Conclusions



Compliance to Ostrom’s principles

• Principles 1.-4. implemented• Principles 5.-6. implemented, but the

effectiveness of their implementation is disputable

• Principles 7.-8. not implemented– Reasons:

• Principle 7.: technical prerequisites still do not exist• Principle 8.: community still too small, develops towards

nested self-government

Room for improvement: principles 5.-8. How ?



Further work directions

• Increase virtual communities sample size– Compare several virtual communities as to their

compliance and (non-)cooperative outcomes

• Increase guidelines sample size– Ostrom’s set of principles only one among many– Compare various sets of guidelines



Goals

• Obtain further insights into factors influencing collaborative potential of virtual communities

• Better explain successful/unsuccessful cooperation• Provide advice for social-software designers on

promising directions of their further work• Further improve collaborative potential of virtual

communities

Use IT for further lowering costs of human cooperation



References:• Axelrod, Robert (1984). The Evolution of Cooperation. New York, NY: Basic

Books.• Baase, Sara (2003). A Gift of Fire: Social, legal, and ethical issues for computers

and the Internet. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.• Connect virtual community web pages. http://connect.znanost.org/ • Hess, Charlotte and Elinor Ostrom (2006). An Overview of the Knowledge

Commons. In: Charlotte Hess and Elinor Ostrom (eds.) Understanding Knowledge as a Commons: From Theory to Practice. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

• Katz, Jon (1997). The Digital Citizen. Wired 5.12, Dec. 1997.• Ostrom, Elinor (1990). Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for

Collective Action. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.• Rheingold, Howard (2002). Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution. New York,

NY: Basic Books.• Schellenberg, James A. (1996). Conflict Resolution: Theory, Research and

Practice. New York, NY: State University of New York Press.

collaborative potential of virtual communities: case study of „connect“ jasmina božić faculty...

Documents