the evolution of online communities
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Bjorn Townsend COM 538 Final Presentation December 2, 2003. The Evolution of Online Communities. What is a community?. Webster's Online: A unified body of individuals An interacting population of various kinds of individuals A group of people with a common characteristic or interest - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
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The Evolution of Online Communities
Bjorn TownsendCOM 538 Final Presentation
December 2, 2003
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What is a community?
Webster's Online:
● A unified body of individuals● An interacting population of various kinds of
individuals● A group of people with a common
characteristic or interest● Joint ownership or participation
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To be covered:
● Introduction: The Idea of Online Community
● Part I: The Good Ol’ Days of Text
● Interim: The Endless September
● Part II: Online Communities and the Web
● Part III: The Future
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Then what is an “online” community?
● A group of people who communicate via an electronic network
● Similar to Webster's definitions, though free of ties to a particular locale
● Most often gathering over common interests, shared resources or joint projects
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What does an online community need to function?
Kollack and Smith in “Communities in Cyberspace” (2001) state the following:
● There must be a means of establishing identity● There must be a social order● There must be a means of enforcing that order – social control● There must be a community structure
Also important:● The ability to communicate either asynchronously or in “real time” -- the
technology behind the community – this is a given● The balance between freedom and control
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Part I: The Good Ol' Days
● UNIX, the earliest online community● Email listservs ● USENET, or: aaaaaaaaanarchy● Internet Relay Chat ● MUDs, MOOs, MUSHes, et cetera
We will look at how each of these systems approached the necessities of community laid out in the previous slide.
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UNIX: Systems Designed To Create Community
● Dennis Ritchie, early UNIX OS developer: “UNIX was designed as a system around which a fellowship would form”.
● Designed to be used by more than one person at once
● Multiuser nature required that system resources be shared by the user community
● Tools were created to manage both those resources and the community around them
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Fig. 1: Who's out there?
eriktown@freya:~$ w 00:52:08 up 1 day, 11:02, 5 users, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00USER TTY FROM LOGIN@ IDLE JCPU PCPU WHATarie pts/1 192.168.33.202 Mon13 14:43m 1:30 1:30 irssifreya pts/2 asgro6:S.1 Mon13 44:02 1.17s 1.08s pine -ifreya pts/3 asgro6:S.2 Mon13 2:29m 0.19s 0.19s /bin/bashfnord pts/4 iao.kallisti.com Mon13 14:37m 0.09s 0.09s /bin/basheriktown pts/6 12-228-148-33.cl 00:52 0.00s 0.07s 0.01s w
eriktown@freya:~$ finger eriktownLogin: eriktown Name:Directory: /home/eriktown Shell: /bin/bashOn since Tue Dec 2 01:57 (EST) on pts/0 from 12-228-148-33.client.attbi.comNo mail.Plan:
Finish my COM 538 presentation!
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Other tools
● “talk” command allows users on the same system to have conversations
● Email permits asynchronous conversation
● “write” command and the “Message of the Day” allow messages to be sent to the whole community
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So how does UNIX deal with community?
● Identity is fixed – user accounts are given out by the system administrator
● Social control is centralized to the system administrator, users “run to teacher” with complaints
● Whoever owns the hardware has absolute power – this holds true in any online community
● Caveat I: Mass action can sway superuser decisions
● Caveat II: Decentralized systems avoid this issue – hence peer-to-peer networks
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Email listservs
● Asynchronous communication
● Can have open or closed membership
● Communities intended for discussion and notification
● Not centered around common resources, though they can be used to discuss those resources or notify of changes – more dedicated toward interests
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Email listservs cont'd
● Identity is determined by email address; easily spoofed/faked, but few people bothered
● Social control is centralized: the moderator or moderators determine policy and have full administrative control
● Community structure is usually a round-table discussion, with people jumping in and out of “conversation” at will
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USENET
● Originally a network unto itself
● Evolved into a set of Internet-based discussion groups on every subject imaginable, from comp.os.linux to alt.sex.swedish.chef.bork.bork.bork
● Virtually anyone can create a newsgroup
● Moderation optional; many communities lack moderation
● Anarchic, self-policing, some vigilante groups
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USENET continued
● Identity: Fluid, often dependant on writing style, opinions and “hacks”
● Social control: virtually nil except in moderated communities
● Individual users had the option to ignore or “killfile” posts from people or on topics they objected to
● Very social; introduced the concept of the “meetup”
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IRC and MU*
● IRC was almost purely social
● Though sometimes used as a real-time communication tool for continuing discussions originating in email or USENET
● Organized into ‘channels’, what we think of as chat rooms
● Administered on a network basis, a server basis and on a per-channel basis
● Complex system of warnings and social controls, but often overused
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MU*
● A text-based ‘virtual world’
● Used for social interaction and games
● Could be very complex
● Precursor to today’s massively multiplayer online RPGs
● Had a superuser with absolute power, but additional rights and powers could be granted to individuals deemed worthy
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Interim: The Endless September
● Origins of the term unknown; immortalized by stopspam.org, later incorporated into the Jargon File by Eric S. Raymond
● AOL opened its portal to the Internet in September 1993, unleashing a flood of new members into the greater Internet community
● Previously, online communities had the luxury of slowly indoctrinating new users into the community culture, explaining to newcomers that they needed to read the FAQ and lurk to get a feel for things before posting
● The ‘old guard’ was badly outnumbered by the newcomers, who were often ill-behaved
● Communities were forced to evolve and develop new tools as a result
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Communities and the World Wide Web
● How did the rise of the Web affect online communities?
● Examples of several different types of web-based community
● How did these sites use the Web to fulfill the community’s needs?
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The Web’s benefits and drawbacks for online communities
● User-friendly!
● Multimedia!
● Searchable!
● Enhanced ability to collaborate!
● Can be simultaneously synchronous and asynchronous!
● Wider range of tools available to determine (or create) identity, perform social control, led to more complex community relationships
● Problems: slow, clunky, unreliable, user-friendly (offensive to old-guard Net users)
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Example: Interests In Common
Slashdot.org
● Aggregates science and technology news stories, particularly IT-related
● Very active user community centered around discussion of each story
● Strong community biases – pro-Open Source, pro-downloading, anti-Microsoft
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Slashdot continued
● Anyone can submit a news story, but stories are accepted or rejected only by the site owners
● Identity is less important
● Anonymous discussion permitted but slightly frowned upon: “Anonymous Coward”
● Self-moderated; each post can be rated by registered users of the site on a -1 to +5 scale
● Site owners and designated higher-level moderators are the only persons able to remove discussion posts
● There is no manifesto; the community’s values grew out of the stated opinions of its early readership; eldership is always prized
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A collaborative community
Everything2.com
● A “self-editing global knowledge database” – the point of E2 is to fill it with literally all human knowledge
● Anyone can contribute, but only designated individuals can edit the work of others
● Very complex: Strong social groups, cliques, infighting, political arguments surrounding what kind of content belongs/does not belong, user rights, metadiscussion, meetups, in-jokes
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Everything2 continued
● Identity: Anyone can view, but must create a unique user identity to add content.
● Reputation is tied to identity and is vitally important; an experienced user with high reputation can get away with creating poorer or less relevant content
● Reputation is tied to the number of positive votes your content has received; every three positive votes on your content gives you one “experience point”
● Particularly high-quality work can be flagged for greater attention● Social contact: Real-time messaging as well as asynchronous; web chat
and IRC● Social control: Users can be put in time-out periods in the chat rooms.
Designated editors can alter or delete content; this is not done without notifying the contributor. Editors are individuals with extremely high reputation ratings who have sought the position and been approved by the board of existing editors.
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Social Communities
● LiveJournal.com – a blogging site where users can create community blogs
● Friendster.com – Networking
These often most closely resemble physical communities and are often made up of people who have relationships in meatspace
They tend to be more ad-hoc than any of the other online communities
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The future… and beyond!
● Technology
● Identity
● Control
● Community Structure
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The future… and beyond!
● Wikis, Everythings and other Web-based collaborations will become more common
● There is a general trend toward making it harder to conceal your online identity
● National ID cards backed by Larry Ellison of Oracle – will we need to show ID to get online? Will this conclusively tie our online identities to our meatspace identity?
● (Inter)nationalization of the Net – Will it (and the digital communities it hosts) fall under tighter government control?
● The rise of streaming video and voice-over-IP – will people expect to see your face when you sign in?
● Virtual reality and virtual worlds – the next step?
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Thank you for coming!