Sunday, February 27, 2011

Gold Stars and Flag Paths: Trust Mechanisms and Social Roles in Online Communities

As a member of various different online communities, I’ve never given much thought to the importance of trust and how it plays out between users. Like most of us I have given feedback on eBay and participating in many other systems of trust building, such as rating fellow users or even just adding them to my list of friends, but this week’s readings made me realize for the first time how important trust really is to the health of any online community. Social roles on the other hands are a concept that seems more obvious at first, bringing to mind both visibly recognized function such as moderators and administrators, as well as loosely defined roles such as newbies, BNFs (big name fans), or lurkers. Yet by the end of this assignment I feel more confident in my understanding of the former, while the somewhat nebulous and unspecific definition of the latter has left me more uncertain about what social roles really are all about, something that was only intensified by my experience in two different online communities.

The communities I chose are Postcrossing, specifically the forum portion of the site, and the Expat Blog. Postcrossing is a community enabling users from all over the world to exchange postcards, and the forum is an extension allowing members to initiate “unofficial” contacts such as private swap or round robins, form communities based on different languages, and more. The Expat Blog is a site offering information, help, and networking to expatriates, people who have left their home country to live in another, and those who are interesting in doing so. I joined both communities, attempted to contribute by leaving comments on the posts of others as well as adding my own content, and tried to observe and compare some of the social roles and trust mechanisms at work there.

"my" two blogs




One of the most noticeable differences between the two communities struck me right after signing up: the level of activity. Despite the wealth of information and features the Expat Blog offered, its forums were almost completely dead, with very little interactivity or user contribution going on. The Postcrossing blog on the other hand seemed a very lively place, featuring many current threads and lots of member activity. With a similar community set-up and comparable audiences (both postcard collecting and expatriate experiences are probably very appealing to a certain group of people while being of minor interest to the general internet population) this start contrast definitely raised some questions, and my next step was to use the concepts of social roles and trust to try and find some answers.

Both sites require a similar sign-up process and offer the usual profile features such as an avatar and a “bio” field to display personal information and interests. Some of these details, along with the number of posts, are visible every time the user participates in the community, and this gives other members a better idea who they are interacting with. Added visual clues such as national flags revealing the member’s country of origin can also lead to a feeling of connection between users, especially in a place like the Expat Blog where the focus is on life in different countries. Their feature of displaying the “path” of their members through a sequence of little flags certainly gave me a sense of interest in and even trust of users whose path mirrored my own. The site offers many such additional features, including the ability to add detailed information and create photo albums for each country in one’s “path”, to have one’s own blog listed, and to be part of a network of expatriates in one’s current location.
Yet despite all these mechanisms to encourage trust and connections, there was very little activity in both the country or city specific forums and the general “Expat Café” open discussion, and looking at some threads and user profiles it seemed that many members either just lurk or lose interest soon after joining (as hinted at by the very low number of comments of almost all members encountered). The only exception to this rule were official moderators, who acted not only as discussion initiators but at times explicitly rewarded contributions by members by posting “thank you” comments, and a handful of regular users fulfilling the same function of opening discussion and sometimes even keeping it active by contributing their own replies. Still many forums looked pretty sad and dead… like the community for expatriates to Hawaii which was filled with moderator’s encouragements to share and discuss and posts by 1-post-users, some of whom never even bothered to acknowledge the rare reply to their own question. The balance of social roles definitely failed on this site, and mechanisms used to encourage trust between members did little to stimulate participation.

Screenshot of the Hawaii forum... compare the high number of page views to the almost non-existent participation.

The Postcrossing forum presented me with a completely different picture from the very start. Despite offering no special features beyond the regular forum characteristics, active threads and groups are common, and even as a newbie without much social capital I not only felt connected to like-minded people as I had on the Expat blog, but I was able to participate as a part of that group right away. The social roles of the two communities seemed similar, with “official” moderator and administrators sometimes action as discussion starters, and some particularly active regular members doing the same, but instead of just starting random threads much of the activity was organized around certain ongoing threads that received continuing input, such as an “Introduce yourself” thread for new members, and a very current “Question & Answer” thread. Identifying these roles beyond visible labels was made easier by a system of gold stars displayed under the user’s avatar, indicating “member status”. From my observation the most active regular members, who often acted as unofficial “answer people” or “greeting people”, always had a high number of stars. One possible scenario is that by accumulated a large number of comments/posts and therefore stars regular members may eventually “earn” official moderator/administrator status.

example of the Q&A thread... "answer people" and their gold stars


This system of ranking users encourages trust, especially since in this setting threads that help or encourage fellow members seem to be the ones that accumulate a large number of comments, thereby giving users wishing for a special role in the forum a chance to “collect” more stars. Trust becomes especially important in a setting where exchanging personal offline information, in this case mailing addresses, cannot be avoided. This is not quite as risky as Massa’s Couchsurfing.com example, but requires a similar trust statement to make a possibly unsafe practice more secure. (Massa) One mechanism that encourages trust, and makes it possible for forum newcomers such as myself to display social capital, is the practice of many users to link back to their profile on the main Postcrossing site, allowing other members to see the number of cards they have sent and received through the “official” system. The larger the amount of postcards, the more likely it will be for community members to trust a person new to their group (the two are not directly connected, have separate sign-up processes and profiles, and only a fraction of the main site users seem to join the forum).
I encountered this trust mechanism myself when, as a complete newbie with 1 post (in the introductory thread) to my name, I started receiving responses to a trading offer within minutes of my post, and 24 hours later have a private message inbox filled with 30+ replies from users who willingly share their personal information with someone who, apart from a link to their main site profile, is a complete unknown quantity to them. Another measure of trust connected to this is the practice of posting public feedback for trades in the original threads (“got the cards, thanks” etc.), despite all initial interactions, including the exchange of addresses, taking place through private messages (knows as u2u in the forum).

My PM inbox 24 hours after posting a card trade offer as a total newbie.


In general I had the impression that the Postcrossing forum made the best use of the pretty basic tools available to create a balance between very active social roles on one side and the more reactive majority of the member-base on the other, and to encourage trust through simple mechanisms such as providing private messaging and the gold star system with users creating their own additional tools such as linking back to the main site. The Expat Blog on the other hand could not achieve this balance despite its many features and active moderators, maybe because creators or administrators put too much emphasis on those features rather than making sure enough members would actually have a stake in the site and start using them. It seems to me that there was little to encourage newcomers to stay part of the community after their initial information need was fulfilled (or not). Both sites are examples of “bridging social capital”, with users from different backgrounds come together to exchange resources of information (Williams), yet providing clear yet simply trust mechanisms and visible indicators of social roles that allowed users to influence their own status made the Postcrossing forum the more active and successful community.

The idea behind the Expat blog is a good one, and could be an example of Ellison et al.’s bridging social capital as a force that offers new opportunities to members of the community, such as networking and gaining knowledge about a country from someone who has made the experience of moving and adjusting to life there. But unlike Facebook this site doesn’t make use of the immense potential and proved too few opportunities for members to not only initially connect but maintain that connection. Of course unlike the original Facebook there is no location-based link between users from all over the world, but the fact that I did feel somewhat connected to other German expatriates in the US shows that country of origin could be used to create stronger ties. One of the goals would definitely be higher user participation in the forums, which could then lead to members identifying with the site and connecting to each other, building trust and really forming a community. But it doesn’t seem that a simple tool such as gold stars would work in this case, and having “official” moderators fulfill the social role of discussion starter doesn’t work if there are no user who are contributing… this is a good example of Gleave’s role ecology, which in this case is out of balance and therefore does not work.

comparing visible user information:
the Expat blog vs. the Postcrossing forum... the latter gives far more clues about possible status/social role and could inspire trust (you can also see the main profile link I mentioned before)




So a suggestion for the Expat Blog might be to introduce some kind of ranking system of users who contributed, maybe linking it to country or expatriation “path” since those seem to be strong links between users, and focus less on the personal connection and networking features that already exist but are rarely used. The Postcrossing forum, with a strong system of trust mechanisms already in place, may benefit from attempts at deepening connections between users and expand into bonding social capital such as social support. (Williams) I have already seen some examples of this in threads such as “Random Acts of Smileness” which includes sending post cards to people, including non-members, who are ill or in other difficult situations, as well as surprise or birthday cards, in general giving support without expecting anything in return. Adding features such as birthday reminders, as suggested by Ellison et al., or maybe virtual gifts that users can display on their profile or with their avatar (something some Livejournal users are even willing to pay for), could encourage such bonds.

Finally some ideas for my project. My main interest is in how personality (such as introverted/extraverted characteristics) or even gender affect user behavior or choice of communities to participate in, but I haven’t been able to come up with a specific question yet. I personally really enjoy exploring and observing new online communities, so to be able to make that part of the project would be nice, but I would also like to explore more readings on various viewpoints and research that has been done in this area. I’d be grateful for any suggestions to help me to narrow my focus or any general comment/ideas. Thanks!

9 comments:

  1. Postcrossing is a typical of online discussion forum and Expat Blog is a blog. Both these OCs have valuable information for their users. I can understand why the Forum discussion "almost dying" on the Expat Blog. Audiences or participants in this blog are more likely to looking for information. When they need information, I guess they will tend to email or call the target informant rather than using the discussion forum that will have a delay on time to get responses. On the other hand Postcrossing is a community for people who have the same interest and the participants will not in hurry on getting responds to their post. Valuable elements on Expat Blog in my opinion is it has network to more than 214 destinations, while I have not test all these links. Besides that it has pictures and important advertising that will become important information for expatriate.

    Julia,your idea about relation between personality with participation is really interesting. However, I also found that it is still too general. Specify on Gender will be excellent, you may consider on looking at forums or bulletin board that discuss about topic specific to gender, like gender relate with health, or even looking particularly on different politic/leadership opportunity.

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  2. It is great to see such a contrast between similarly themed OCs/blogs. I am excited to explore these new sites. Unlike Hansome Avatar, I am not familiar with either. Just from my preliminary view of Expat Blog I couldn't help but notice all the advertising. There are ads all over the place. It also has a lot space reserved for businesses. HSBC Bank has the banner ad, but there were several links below competing for expat business, as well. I wonder if this is a reason why the sense of community hasn't quite taken hold here??
    I also agree with you that Expat Blog would benefit from the ability to sort by country. Encouraging small communities might allow users to establish a sense of connection in an obviously well-sponsored site.

    Also, I agree with Hansome Avatar that perhaps focusing on gender would be the way to go. I think it would be cool to focus on gender in health OCs. I just heard a story on NPR about how so many people are sharing their diagnoses online and receiving helpful tips and needed support. Many you could find two health problems (one that tends to afflict men and the other that afflict women) and compare the duration of relationships, quantity, and quality of exchanges (for example, do the exchanges include other non-health related topics, such as work or families). Good Luck!

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  3. @HansomeAvatar: I see your point, but I also think that the ExpatBlog isn't just a regular blog, it is set up in many ways to encourage user interaction. Otherwise why would there be a reason for moderators to continually attempt to encourage discussion, and for the existence of extended profiles and interactive features. While I do agree that the site has a lot of valuable information, many of the sections that depend on user input (including the networking) are lacking simply because too few users contribute.
    And thanks for your ideas about my project, hearing other people's opinions really helps narrowing it down.

    @ Palabra: Thanks for letting me know about those ads, I have AdBlock installed so I didn't notice any of them while browsing the site! It's definitely a reason to consider... most users probably don't feel comfortable being bombarded by so much advertisements.
    And thank you for your input on my project too. I've been having a really hard time narrowing it down from a general concept I'm interested in to a manageable project topic, so this really helps.

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  4. My response to your post and your idea for your final project are the same: Are the most effective SNSs organically grown or is it better to begin with a well defined game plan and hope the users connect and play along?

    I'm not sure where I stand on this question because I have not thought about it before I read your post. I began to wonder if Expat is failing because there are too many rules involved. To put this another way, maybe the structure is too strong and this is a turn off for many people. It seems like every website has web 2.0 integrated into it in some way. If there are too many rules involved people are probably turned off.

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  5. Very interesting post! I see how the two online communities differ in making more user contributions and your suggestion for the Expat Blog to have a rating system of users who have contributed, like the Postcrossing forum. From the screenshots of the online communities, I can see that the Expat Blog doesn’t provide much information about users while the Postcrossing forum provides information about when the user joined the forum and whether the user is online or not. I feel more information I get about people, the more motivation I have to connect with them. For the final project idea, I think focusing on gender sounds more interesting than other people’s suggestions.

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  6. > My main interest is in how personality (such as introverted/extraverted characteristics) or even gender affect user behavior or choice of communities to participate in.

    These are interesting topics in social informatics, especially if we have proper data and analysis tools. One concern that I had regarding this topic was that usually we don't get to have this kind of data for online communities. Usually the owner of the severs hosting online communities would not easily give away their user data. These online communities understand that these data are precious resources they have and might not be easy the convince them to give them away.

    On the other hand, the study might be able to take an approach that doesn't require a large amount of user data. Such approach could consist surveys, interviews, content sampling. If the study doesn't relay on statistic results, then it could focus more on a microscopic potion of particular online communities.

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  7. I imagine the expat blog was created to ease the loneliness and homesickness expats might feel, and to provide some connection, so seeing how sparsely populated the site is must be extra de-motivational for the few people who do post there. Nice contrast between the two sites, and I wonder if the physical object of a postcard helps create an extra dimension of trust and sustain participation in the Postcrossing site.

    For your final project you've hit on a topic that I wrote a book chapter on a while back--I was interested in how online community members demonstrate aspects of clinical psychological conditions such as narcissism, and I analyzed their contributions using some of the relevant scales in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). If you scope your investigation to introversion and extroversion I'm sure you'll find lots of literature and data to move this forward.

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  8. @ Philip: Thanks for bringing that up, I hadn't even thought about it, but it is a really interesting question. I also wondered about why a community would have so many features, yet no one to use them. Yours and Palabra's comments also made me remember instances when the owner of a social community would take it in a certain direction that was motivated by financial reasons, yet that was opposed by the majority of the user-base, and that could lead to similar problems of members leaving or no longer contributing. I'm not sure how much of a factor that would be in the case of Expat Blog, but seeing the large number of ads on the site might be a hint that this is one of those cases where the motivation of owners and contributors collide, and this could be yet another reason for the community's problems.

    @ Song: Thanks for your comment, and I agree, despite being overall much simpler and having less features, the Postcrossing forum just makes you feel like you know more about the other users, which can be especially important as a newcomer who wants to feel more connected and get some idea what his fellow members are all about. A lot of people, especially long-time users, also seem to put additional information in their signature, which automatically appears with every post or comment, so that's yet another way for a newbie to make some kind of connection.

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  9. @ Susu: Thank you for your suggestions about my final project! It's easy to find something that's interesting, but harder to figure out just how to go about researching it. I really have no experience with collecting data or statistic, but at the same time I was hoping to use something like a survey or questionnaire to explore even just a small sample of users, simply it seems like something that could offer some really interesting (if not exactly statistically valuable) results.

    @ Prof. Gazan: That's exactly how I felt after my initial happy surprise at finding a site like that. All those interesting features really made me feel excited about the site, and lead me to being pretty detailed when filling out the profile information... so to find out after the whole sign-up process that the community was so inactive really was a disappointment. I can imagine that most new users, even those who sign up with the intention of participating, give up after a couple of posts or comments with no response at all.
    And thank you for the suggestions for my final project, the introversion/extroversion idea is definitely what interests me the most, so it's good to know that I should be able to find some data on it. Hopefully the process of reading more about it will help me to focus my ideas more.

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