Slides from a presentation I gave at the ASIST annual conference based on the paper titled "Virtual Community Maintenance with a Collaborative Repository" (see http://www.si.umich.edu/~presnick/papers/asist07/hansen.pdf for a preprint).

1. Virtual Community Maintenance
with a Collaborative Repository
Derek L. Hansen, Mark S. Ackerman, Paul J. Resnick, & Sean Munson
6/23/08 ASIST 2007, Social Computing and Information Science

2. Outline
 Social challenges of virtual community
conversation
 Site, data collection, & methods
 Wiki repository meets threaded conversation
 Conclusions
Derek L. Hansen, UMD 6/23/08

3. Backstory
Empirical study of technical support community
addressing question: How is activity organized to
leverage threaded conversation and a wiki repository?
How does the introduction of a wiki repository
influence community maintenance?
Derek L. Hansen, UMD 6/23/08

4. Social Challenges of Virtual Community
Conversations
Derek L. Hansen, UMD 6/23/08

5. Environmental Conditions
 Anonymity (or semi-anonymity)
 Loose boundaries
 Text-only
 Numerous participants
 Voluntary paticipation
Derek L. Hansen, UMD 6/23/08

6. Social Challenges
 Meeting needs of newcomers & oldtimers
 Keeping discussion on-topic
 Motivating participation
 Encouraging “respectful” behavior (e.g.,
trimming quotes; checking archives for FAQs)
 Flaming, trolling & other hostile behaviors
Dery 1993; Kollock & Smith 1996; McLaughlin et al. 1995; Burnett & Buerkle 2004
Derek L. Hansen, UMD 6/23/08

7. Partial Solutions
 Administrators & welcomers
 Netiquette & community policies
 Social norms
 Reputation systems
 FAQ documents
Butler et al. 2002; Preece 2000; Preece 2004; L-Soft, Inc. 2003; Kim 1999;
Powazek 2002; Maloney-Krichmar & Preece 2005
Derek L. Hansen, UMD 6/23/08

8. A Different Perspective
How does a change in a community’s
information environment affect the social
processes related to community maintenance?
Derek L. Hansen, UMD 6/23/08

9. Symbiotic Relationship
Hansen’s Dissertation 2007
Derek L. Hansen, UMD 6/23/08

10. Technical Feature Comparison
Threaded Wiki
Conversation Repository
 Threads  Hyperlinked
 Permanent  Editable
 Single author  Many authors
 Short, basic text  Structured, formatted
text

11. Site, Data Collection, & Methods
Derek L. Hansen, UMD 6/23/08

12. CSS Code
/* css-discuss Wiki Stylesheet */
body {
background-color: #fff;
color: #000;
font-size: small;
font-family: georgia, serif;
}
a:link {
color: blue;
background: transparent;
}
a:visited {
color: navy;
background: transparent;
}
…

13. CSS-D Email List
 Started Jan 2002 (1,000 → 7,000+ members)
 Focuses on practical use of CSS
 Over 50 messages a day
 Public, searchable list archive
Derek L. Hansen, UMD 6/23/08

15. CSS-D Wiki
 Started 8 Months after email list
 Described as a “shared repository,” “user-defined
FAQ,” the “collective wisdom of this list,” and a
“dumping ground for [CSS] tricks.”
 Steady increase in popularity (15,000 unique hits in
2004 to 70,000 in 2007)
 Over 550 pages
 Has had consistent, slow growth
Derek L. Hansen, UMD 6/23/08

17. Administration
 Formally recognized administrators
 In-depth community policies
 Friendly & professional tone
 Core members help enforce rules
 Emphatic about welcoming newcomers
“css-d is meant for beginning and experienced authors
both, but I’m actually more interested in helping out the
beginners” - admin
Derek L. Hansen, UMD 6/23/08

18. Data
 Email list messages (over 90,000 messages)
 Posts that reference the community wiki and
list archives
 Posts that include “ADMIN” in subject line
 Interviews - 14 phone, 7 email
 Wiki page history
 Wiki server log reports
Derek L. Hansen, UMD 6/23/08

19. Methods
 Content Analysis
 Grounded Theory approach
 Genre analysis
 Coded all wiki (1,511) & archive (302) messages
 Interviews conducted throughout process to
inform preliminary findings
 Quantitative analysis of participation
 Feedback from community on findings
Glaser & Strauss 1967; Giddens 1986; Eisenhardt 1989; Orlikowski 2000
Derek L. Hansen, UMD 6/23/08

20. Community Repository Meets
Threaded Conversation
Derek L. Hansen, UMD 6/23/08

21. Repository Contributions
 Social maintenance
 “holy wars”
 off-topic discussion
 Attracting & retaining members
 Saving face
 Saving time
Derek L. Hansen, UMD 6/23/08

22. Shutting down a “holy war”
Email 1 of 17 in Thread
Subject: Comments Requested on website.com
I have recently launched the *beta* version of my new blog at website.com. There
are no graphics yet, Threadlayout 23 in place. I'd like to get some public feedback
Email 16 of 17 in but the (sent is hours later)
on the display. Do you notice any browser-specific quirks? Is the text too small?
Special things you might list will look at:
If there is one thing this want to never, ever make possible, it’s a final resolution
to the Font Sizing Holy War. This is why we established a Wiki page that gives
1) Contactgood jumping off point for code, which has been modified to work with
people a page uses my CSS Forms reading up on various perspectives:
Mac IE 5. A BIG THANKS to Jason Park…
http://css-discuss.incutio.com/?page=FontSize
The next time the war breaks out, let’s just refer each other to that page and move
on to discussions of a less religious nature. If there are non font sizing comments
to make about website.com, let’s get back to making those—otherwise, I think
it’s time to move on. Thank you.
--
John Jones [personal URL], List Administrator

24. Preventing a “holy war”
Since I *know* this could turn into an opinion bashing
spam hate-war argument flame arena...
... Please do NOT respond to the list. Instead, please
respond to me directly and, as I said, I will be happy
to include my findings in the Wiki.
Derek L. Hansen, UMD 6/23/08

25. Dealing with Off-Topic Discussions
Unfortunately, I'm going to have to call this thread to a close for being off-
topic. Yes, it's true that choosing a standards-friendly CMS has bearing on
CSS authoring... but so does writing standards-friendly PHP code,
JavaScript, .Net code, etc. etc. If we walk down that road, traffic could quite
easily double. We can't cover everything standards-related here; there simply
isn't room.
A great place to ask your question would be Webdesign-L. There's also
evolt's thelist, and I'm sure there must be other venues where
CMS discussions are on topic. For a short list of forums, see [URL for
OffTopic wiki page]. On the topic of CMS software, see the page others in the
thread have brought up: [URL for CssFriendlyCms wiki page].
Thanks, and sorry to have to end the thread.
[admin signature]
Derek L. Hansen, UMD 6/23/08

26. Social Maintenance Facilitators
 Advanced page structure
 NPOV social norm
 Editability by everyone
 Use of wiki for off-topic (but related) content
permissible
 Wiki also helps focus discussion (e.g. IE7)
74 cases where wiki was used to help offload discussion because it was a
“holy war” or off-topic vs. 3 cases where archives were used
Derek L. Hansen, UMD 6/23/08

27. Attracting New Members
 10 times more visitors to wiki than community
members
 Over half of visits are from search engines
(44%) or other websites (18%), sources likely
to bring in new members
 Visitors typically taken to wiki sub-page
 Persistent URLs with changeable content
Derek L. Hansen, UMD 6/23/08

28. Educating Newcomers
The penny dropped about why CSS was a good idea
only last Friday, but since then, thanks to running
across css-discuss Wiki site early on, I am learning
quickly. I am bowled over by this excellent site -
valuable information, clear presentation, helpful
people and I love the idea of Wiki... Thank you all for
the time you have already taken to share your hard
won knowledge with me.
Derek L. Hansen, UMD 6/23/08

29. Saving Face
So I don’t want to sound like I don’t know
what I’m talking about or I’m a stupid
newbie or something like that. So, yah, I try
to find the answer myself first, if I can, then
at least I try to be fairly knowledgeable on
how to ask the question without looking too
stupid.
The wiki was referenced 4 times as often to help ask a question than the archives
Derek L. Hansen, UMD 6/23/08

30. Retaining Old-timers
 Perception of reduction in FAQs
 Ease of answering questions
 Facilitates peripheral participation
The wiki was useful in “encouraging long-term
members like me to stick around, since we can
move FAQs to the wiki and don’t have to be bored
or frustrated by those threads as often.”
The wiki was referenced 6 times as often to help answer questions than the
archives
Derek L. Hansen, UMD 6/23/08

31. Facilitating Factors
 Close association with the wiki and email list
(e.g., referencing behavior)
 Persistent URLs with editable content
Derek L. Hansen, UMD 6/23/08

32. Conclusions
Derek L. Hansen, UMD 6/23/08

33. Summary
“The art of community maintenance is, in part,
a problem of designing information collections
and information flows.”
A wiki repository can be helpful in dealing with
 “Holy wars”
 Off-topic content
 Attracting and welcoming newcomers
 Retaining oldtimers
Derek L. Hansen, UMD 6/23/08

34. The Current State of the Art
Derek L. Hansen, UMD 6/23/08

35. Thanks to…
 Mark Ackerman, Paul Resnick, & Sean
Munson
 National Science Foundation
Derek L. Hansen, UMD 6/23/08