On Fri, Jan 24, 2003 at 11:58:48AM -0800, Jack Park wrote: (01)
> Those are just my own views. Your mileage may vary. In any case, yes, I
> think those are the kinds of questions that should occasionally be raised
> in any forum. And, I simply don't have answers that are necessarily
> sufficient to respond to them. I have just outlined the heuristics I
> apply. I'd like to see others. (02)
Great post, Jack, and some more great questions! I agree with your
statement that the factors are fairly subjective. My response to this
question would be to use that subjectivity as the criteria. It's
similar to the Squirm Test. (Many of you know what I'm talking about
when I say "Squirm Test." For those of you that don't, I'm writing a
short paper on it, so look out for it. If you just can't wait, ask
here, and I won't wait to explain.) (03)
In order to measure the size of the community, you have to know what
constitutes membership in a community. That's the fundamental
question we need to answer. (04)
My solution would be, find everyone who thinks their a member of a
community, and ask if they consider each other to be members of the
community. If you are affirmed by some majority, then you are indeed
a member. (05)
This does not require that everyone knows everybody else. If there's
some shared understanding about what constitutes a member, then you
can identify people as members even if you don't know them. (06)
Examples. You're starting up a company. You have three people. You
ask each person, "Are you a member of the team?" They all say yes.
You ask the others, "Is he/she a member of the team?" They all say
yes. You therefore have a team of three people. Implicit in the
responses is the shared understanding that, as a salaried employee of
the company, they all belong to the same team. (07)
Another example. There's an online forum for discussing football.
There are about 10 active posters, a few people who post occasionally,
and 10 lurkers. Ask the active posters whether they are part of the
community, and they will most likely say yes. Ask them about the
other active posters, and they will probably say yes again. So the
active posters are members. (08)
What about the occasional posters? Some of them might not consider
themselves members, so you can eliminate them. Some of them might.
So you ask the active posters about them. Here's where the
subjectivity comes in. It may just so happen that all of the active
posters have beers with one of the occasional posters every Friday
night. So they definitely consider him part of their community.
That's a complication if you have to consider when analyzing online
communities. You can't measure them simply by the online presence. (09)
What about the lurkers? Same problem, with another twist, which I'll
discuss in my last example. (010)
Final example. Suppose you are crazed Oakland resident who shows up
at the Coliseum every Sunday, dressed as Darth Vader and armed with a
beer in one hand and a D cell battery in another. In other words, you
are a Raiders fan. You also likely consider yourself to be a part of
a community that calls itself the Raider Nation, and if you're showing
up to games dressed like that, others probably agree. (011)
What about the crazed New York residents who shows up to the
Raider-Jets games at the Meadowlands dressed in the same attire?
Would they consider themselves part of the Raider Nation? Probably.
Would the Oakland contingent agree? Probably. (012)
What about the quiet, blue collar fella who can't afford to go to
games, but who watches every game on TV, owns a Charles Woodson
jersey, and has been a fan since he was five years old? Would he
consider himself a member of the Raider Nation? Probably. Would the
others agree? Probably. (013)
In this situation, we have a huge community, where people do not
necessarily know the other members. However, there's a shared
understanding that if you're a hard-core Raiders fan, you're a member
of the Raider Nation. (Remember, "fan" comes from "fanatic.") The
definition of "hard-core fan" is subjective, and not all of the
members are visible, so measuring the size of the community is
difficult, but at least you have a pretty good criteria for
membership. (014)
If you have a community where there's a lot of disagreement over who
is a member and who isn't, that's indicative of a lack of shared
understanding, which is indicative of a low collective IQ. (015)
-Eugene (016)
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