Cult and Community

Michu's comments in class on cults brought to mind this excellent and sad feature piece I read yesterday on Lyndon LaRouche, the recent suicide of his longtime printer and confidant, and the subsequent collapse of LaRouche's strange media empire. The point is raised repeatedly in the article that while LaRouche was an early-adopter of computer technologies (he owned the first computer-run printing press in New York), he was suspicious of the Internet - and that ultimately his unwillingness to move online (despite his longtime proto-bloggy rantings) led to the fracturing and dissolution of his movement and businesses. An excellent view of a bizarre little community of American politics.

Club or community?

After a good bit of discussion on the formation of online communities, it seems like we've agreed that the formation of some (if not many) of these communities are interest based. In some cases, like the ACL forums, deviation from the explicit topic may be hard to come by (excluding the occasional spam message). In others, like OrangePolitics some deviation is allowed, but while it is somewhat based on the political interests of the community, they are just that; one facet. Even when some deviation is allowed (or comes naturally... the origin really doesn't matter) there is an overwhelming gravitational pull of some special interest or topic that most groups seem to champion.
The idea of many of these so called communities leads me to think of their physical counterparts. I would be hard pressed to call the members of Jenny Craig or the African drum circle a community, yet in cyberspace, special interest groupings get that label. Are there different standards upon which we judge something to be a community? Or is the discourse simply different (e.g. there probably is more discussion in an african drum circle chatroom than an actual drum circle). What are the prerequisites for 'community' - and could they be applied uniformly to internet and physical groups? are these communities just online clubs?

Designing Online Communities

First, I must begin with a brief introduction. I develop web applications, including e-commerce and content management applications. My opinions may perhaps be influenced by my own contextual vantage point in relation to this reading.

I believe Preece has a valid point when she says, "[the] commercialization of the Internet is sweeping online communities along in its wake, thereby diluting the potency of the concept" (14). Many of Preece's observations stem from discussions on UseNet, ICQ, bulletin boards, and mailing lists. These old forms of communication originated from early uses of the Internet. For example, ARPANET began as a method to communicate with and share computer resources among mainly scientific users at connected institutions; the Internet was a medium for document and information exchange. However, users quickly realized there was a killing to be made (i.e., money money money). Current trends encourage developers to find ways to draw visitors to their websites — to increase participation and, therefore, to increase potential profit through direct sales or through advertisement click-through (Google Adsense). This entire evolution can be seen in the development of Facebook. Facebook began as a portal for information exchange and maintaining relationships. Recently, Facebook has exposed an API for third party applications. Facebook has also been including inline advertising in News Feeds, and Facebook has sold a stake in the company to Microsoft to sell banner ad space. This trend of monetization has enveloped many many more web sites in the social sphere. Where there is a community there is potential money to be made.

Of course, I blame Google (others too, but Google is a great example). There will be individuals with truly novel ideas (i.e., YouTube, StumbleUpon, Jaiku, Writely). These communities and tools successfully enable users to share information and ideas. However, I feel that many newer communities are no longer built for the noble or novel intention of community-building. Instead, many communities (but not all, of course) are built hoping to be bought by Google (or others) for millions upon millions of dollars.

This want for profit leads to several worthy concerns, the primary concern being usability. Usability encourages and facilitates easier participation, and therefore a higher probability that the user will purchase a product or encourage others to participate in the community. Preece cites many examples and characteristics of usability, participation, and design: how users communicate (159), how types of users influence communication (125), the "Magic Number Seven, Plus Or Minus Two" by George Miller, and more. But I feel that communities nowadays focus more on money than on "community".

E-commerce and monetization also leads to the restriction of "community" and communication. For example, Preece describes the specialization of conversation on e-commerce sites on page 68. E-commerce sites must create a sense of privacy and trust amongst its users. Preece cites Amazon.com and REI.com as examples of restricted (or focused) communication to aid user participation and increase potential sales. Both web sites implement forms of communication that help users find information; however, both forms of communication ultimately help further the "bottom line" — profit.

Do others see this trend? Is this trend only a branch of the larger "online community" tree? Or does this represent a more global shift in the philosophy of the online community?

Privacy on Facebook

I feel compelled to clarify a couple things I said in class today, for fear of having come across as a paranoid reactionary when discussion turned to privacy on Facebook. I reacted to Paul's assertion that the Facebook community had retained much of its openness and relative lack of privacy as compared to MySpace, in spite of its launch beyond just college-age users, by saying maybe that wasn't such a great value to uphold. What I meant by that was simply that young people, and sadly young women in particular, may be putting themselves at risk by revealing too much information about themselves; that perhaps the sense of assumed protection from the outside world that existed before the site went "post-college" continues to be taken for granted by many young people who use Facebook.

I'm certainly not one of these alarmist critics of the Internet or social networking; far from it in fact. But I do think it's foolish to ignore the potential downside of the open flow of information in this specific context. And no, I'm not interested in "projecting my fears onto my children," as Paul half-jokingly suggested. Rather, I only hope to instill a modicum of common sense in them (my daughter AND my son) so that by the time they start dabbling online and joining their own social networking sites (who knows what they may be in 5-7 years?), they exercise good judgment and a fair degree of restraint.

I also hope, like Lori opined in her previous post, that my kids continue to thrive in their offline lives and grow to appreciate the wonders of the physical world as much as they learn to delight in the riches of the digital one.

Detached Children

I think the article Michu linked to from del.icio.us was really interesting. I'm referring to the one about how Children detach from natural world as they explore the virtual one. Oddly, I was just thinking about that last night as I used World of Warcraft to settle down after a long and busy day. As I led my gnome mage through the snowfields of Dun Morogh, I could see my footprints in the snow and had the volume loud enough to hear the wintery winds blowing through the woods. It reminded me of the part of my childhood that I spent in Manitoba, where it was not unusual in the winter to wake up and find that our front door was completely covered by a snow drift, and where 40 degrees below zero was common as well. (And haha, I can honestly one day tell my grandkids that I walked to school on those days.)

At that moment two things happened - I remembered the sound of the wind blowing across the snowy prairie land in the middle of Winter. I also had a profound sense of disconnect as the rational thought suddenly hit me -- children who play this game who have never experienced a winter like that, or for that matter, have never really spent any time in nature at all, will never have that gut-level physical reaction to a memory; that feeling of almost shivery "thank god I'm inside a warm house right now" sense of recognition of the potential harshness of nature.

I really have to wonder how increasing virtual "worlds" will impact children growing up, who may never have the actual physical experience with which to relate to the online depiction.

Online Communities

I had forgotten that this afternoon I had my once-per-semester parent-teacher meeting with my fifth grader's teacher. The good news - no surprises and she's doing fine, in spite of her noticeable aversion to mathematics. The bad news - I had to miss class.

So I am going to add a few notes about the reading from today's assignment on Online Communities: Designing Usability, Supporting Sociability.

Overall, it is interesting, although certainly during the first two chapters it really seemed that much of what was said could have been said in (at least) half the space. I realized, however, that some of that perception may have come from already having read many of the authors that Preece cites in this book. In addition, given that Preece's book was published in 2000, it is only fair to note that much of this material would have seemed much more novel to me then.

Overall, I couldn't find any points of disagreement with Preece's exposition, although there were a couple of places that it seemed she made some flat-out assertions that were more in the realm of opinion than proven fact, and that she would have done well to justify them. For example, on p. 63 she says, "Should all classes be held online? Absolutely not, students need face-to-face interaction, too." Now, I actually agree with her on this, but the trends in distance education do seem to be toward increasingly web-oriented coursework. Unfortunately, Preece offers no real rationale for her preference for face-to-face interaction or for this assertion.

I thought Chapter 3 would make a good template of topics to begin looking at the online communities we will be reviewing in our term projects. She provides a good structure for analyzing a particular community, or even for thinking about necessary community elements when considering the possibility of starting up such a community. One thing I would have liked to see a bit more emphasis on was the tendency (or lack thereof) for communities to expand beyond what was originally intended by its developers, but perhaps that will come in a later chapter. For instance, do certain software structures, by-laws, or moderating techniques tend to support or reduce organic growth and change? Preece does mention this briefly, but more discussion of empirical examples would've been cool.

Chapter 4 also provided an interesting list of attributes one could use to analyze a community, and I was especially interested in Preece's mention on p. 126 of the desirability of creating "broad, shallow menus rather than narrow, deep ones." I was also interested in her comment that the gap between the use of the Internet by the rich and poor, the well-educated and less education is increasing . (pp. 130-131) I was wondering, since this book was published 7 years ago, whether that is still a trend we are seeing. Does anyone know this?

Finally, Preece notes that MUDS have their instances of "killers." What's that?

Interesting Article on Social Capital

From Ted Mouw of UNC-Chapel Hill's Sociology Department:

Estimating the Causal Effect of Social Capital: A Review of Recent Research