Driving Digital Collaboration

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http://www.thoughtcrumbs.com/publications/paper0778-burke.pdf

Using server log data from Facebook, author is able to predict long-term sharing based on experiences newcomers have in first two weeks.  Tested in this research are: social learning, singling out, feedback and distribution.

The research supports social learning: newcomers who see their friends contributing go on to share more content themselves.  Also, for newcomers inclined to share - receiving feedback and having a wide audience are also predictors of increased sharing.

Theories about participation:

social learning: what a user sees other users doing

feedback: effect that other users have on newcomers

distribution: general structure of content and exposure achieved through participation

The most consistent result found was for learning from friends.   An increase in visible friend photo activity was always predictive of increased newcomer contribution.  This suggests showing new users information about the content contributions of their friends make them more comfortable with contributing themselves.  As newcomers see contributions their friends make, they become more aware of a particular feature on the site and may come to understand how that feature is used, both in terms of technically what is possible as well as what is socially acceptable.

Applications:

1. For newcomers who are active, highlight opportunities for others to leave them feedback and allowing the newcomers to increase the size of their audience may be particularly effective.

2. For newcomers who are relatively inactive, designers may want to encourage their friends to pay more attention to them - whether through singling them out in a public fashion or sending more directed private communication.

[digicollab-blog]

https://bitlab.cas.msu.edu/papers/wikiprojects.pdf

What does it take for an online community to get off the ground and grow large enough to sustain activity and achieve their goals?  And exactly what is needed - people, content, activity, participation? 

This is important to know because if critical mass is a function of content, a community may only need to find a small number of people with motivation to contribute at a high rate.  If critical mass is a function of people, does it matter which people?

It's not clear that Critical Mass Theory applies to online communities, because it's not clear if there is a group level outcome.  People contribute to Wikipedia without the need or desire to belong to the "Wikipedia Community".  On Facebook, there isn't a common group output everyone is working toward. 

Findings:

1. The way a community grows long term is related to how it grows in early stages.  Getting a lot of contributions early on is not by itself predictive of future growth - esp if those contributions came from a few power users.  WikiProjects that get early contributions from a lot of people, particularly a heterogenous group with diverse interest, are likely to experience accelerating growth in contribution.

2. The more a project's power user participates in early stages, the less it will ultimately grow, whereas small amounts of participation by many other people will lead to better long-term growth

**research q - does that mean effort from "power users/community leaders" should be focused on encouraging contribution rather than actually contributing new stuff**

3. Supports conclusion that communities grow more sustainably when they grow by adding new people, and particularly people with diverse interests & resources.  Therefore power users who hope to see a community grow may see their efforts best rewarded through recruiting others versus contributing new content to the community.

4. Rejection of new participants is a cause for decline in production, since authors show it is new contributors who make small contributions that are actually more important for sustainability.

Applications for those hoping to start new communities:

1. Adding content or taking measures to make a site or community appear more active may not work in long run 

2. Rather technologies and policies should be crafted to encourage new community members and encourage smaller levels of participation from more different people.

Building membership has a greater impact on community production and activity in later periods than accumulating contributions early on.

Participation from power users is not as valuable to sustainability as collective contributions of those who only make small contributions. 

Argument: critical mass is established by developing diverse set of community members with heterogenous interests and resources, and not purely by accumulating content

[digicollab-blog]

Other research (Forte et al. 2012) shows how WikiProjects help Wikipedians coordinate their work on the encyclopedia efficiently, and that the opportunity to communicate and socialize with others was one motivating factor for participating in a WikiProject.

Another research article to read up on

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Choi, Alexander, Kraut, and Levine (2010) have studied socialization of new community members in WikiProjects, examining various tactics used to socialize newcomers and evaluating their effectiveness.

Research to look into

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Critical mass theory proposes that one factor influencing the shape of a production function for a group is the hetero- geneity of that group in terms of access to resources or in- formation. It argues that groups with heterogeneous access to resources or information are more likely to have acceler- ating production functions. For example, a group in which one person has sandwiches, another has salad, another has a frisbee, and someone else has drinks is more likely to pro- duce a picnic than a group where four people have frisbees. Diversity allows for contributions to complement each other and increase the value of the collective good, as opposed to contributions replacing each other and generating no new value for the group as a whole.

Good definition of heterogeneity of group.  From here: https://bitlab.cas.msu.edu/papers/wikiprojects.pdf

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Burke, Marlow and Rento (2009) found that when newcomers to a social media site receive a response from the community to their initial post, they are more likely to remain on the site and make future contributions.

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Critical mass vs network effects • Dalton Caldwell

  Interesting: Author discusses getting invited to Orkut (first Google foray into social networking) in its early days and getting turned off when he started getting all these invites in Portuguese that were not relevant to him. 

Theoretically, it is explained as such: anti-network effects occur when a community which has already achieved critical mass begins to lose value with each additional signup. The reason is that the core community that created the value to begin with starts to get marginalized and leaves

For example: In author's opinion, Quora is more “valuable” than Yahoo Answers. But I would argue that Quora could easily become Yahoo answers if, in the pursuit of “network effects”, they begin to dilute the quality of the community, and which would have the side effect of causing the most interesting and value-adding users to vacate. The Quora team is clearly aware of this risk, and are apparently steering the ship in such a way as to avoid this possible outcome.

Also of interest: the whole debate: go after the "mavens" or go after everybody?

The power of the asymmetric model + global feed

Twitter’s growth model is a nice blueprint for getting a critical mass and then growing to global scale. Specifically, if you launch with a small, dedicated group of interesting people that can asymmetrically follow each other, along with a global feed of all content posted, you can feel like you are the member of an interesting and vibrant community.

As the site starts to scale, the early userbase will depend less and less on the global feed, and use their own feed/following list to crank up or down the amount of information they are presented with.

The asymmetric follow model also takes care of some of the strange things that happen on Orkut, Facebook, Google+ etc. Strangers can choose to follow you, and @-reply to you, but it doesn’t feel like they are “putting” their troubling messages on your content.

It should also come as no surprise that Pinterest and Instagram followed the Twitter blueprint of asymmetric follows + global feed to scale from a small critical mass of interesting people into a massive, global community. Those sites were fun and useful to early adopters on a small userbase, and have managed to keep their community mostly solid throughout massive growth.

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Most interestingly, found number of users did not predict survivability.  It was more about variable production function (not constant and not accelerating), heterogeneity of group (not the same posters as who started group) and group message activity.

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1. Sharing - Working for the advancement of greater shared knowledge

2. Helping - Educates others by sharing valuable, intellectual value is profoundly human and draws people in.  Leaders of open source projects often display patience, helpfulness - fixing bugs at eleventh hour, tirelessly responding to questions, always with goal of helping other people

3. Customer Focus - Community interaction helps developers gain a clearer awareness of needs of people using their code

4. A Sense of Community - Open source projects often have a vibrant community.  As humans, we enjoy the sense of belonging to a group of like-minded people.

5. Sharpen Your Skills - They eventually become masters of their trade

6. Become a Community Figure - A talented open source contributor will become known and recognized in the community, get recruited.

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Why Do People Contribute to Open Source Projects?

1. Charity - sharing your resources/skills with those in need

2. Passion - especially for people who are into free and open source software for its ideological underpinnings - it’s about contributing to the cause

3. Career Advancement - If you’re stuck at a dead-end job, can pick up knowledge and experience to help them move on to bigger and better things at current companies or somewhere else

4. Recognition - a little ego boost that you are on right track and have something meaningful to contribute to world

5. Community - rewarding and fun to be surrounded by bunch of people who share your interest and speak your language