The Evolution of Online Communities

Bjorn TownsendCOM 538 Final Presentation

December 2, 2003

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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”

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

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

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

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?

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)

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

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

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

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.

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

The future… and beyond!

● Technology

● Identity

● Control

● Community Structure

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!