SIeCommunities : Ackerman1996

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Most recent edit on 2005-05-30 10:52:39 by pcp05305053pcs.wanarb01.mi.comcast.net

Additions:
JudeYew: I do have some (tenuous?) connections to make between this reading and the idea of identity as raised by the Hogg2001 reading. It would seem to me that the above does make an accurate observation that how one identifies with the Zephyr system is tied up with the roles that one plays in the system, the social affordances & shared understanding that arise as a result of using such a system. If we were to take Hogg2001's perspective, the Zephyr system works because users tend to categorize themselves with the prototypical behaviors/attitudes/values that is held by the group. Individuals who exhibit these prototypical behaviors are much admired and perhaps promoted to being answerers. Whereas individuals who deviate from the prototypical behvaiors expected from the use of the system, i.e. not exhausting other information sources before asking a question, would result in public sanctioning.

Deletions:
JudeYew: I do have some (tenuous?) connections to make between this reading and the idea of identity as raised by the Hogg2001 reading. It would seem to me that EverettWiggins does make an accurate observation that how one identifies with the Zephyr system is tied up with the roles that one plays in the system, the social affordances & shared understanding that arise as a result of using such a system. If we were to take Hogg2001's perspective, the Zephyr system works because users tend to categorize themselves with the prototypical behaviors/attitudes/values that is held by the group. Individuals who exhibit these prototypical behaviors are much admired and perhaps promoted to being answerers. Whereas individuals who deviate from the prototypical behvaiors expected from the use of the system, i.e. not exhausting other information sources before asking a question, would result in public sanctioning.


Edited on 2005-05-30 10:46:58 by pcp05305053pcs.wanarb01.mi.comcast.net

Additions:
In generalizing from this specific example, the authors do not try to establish their claims as fact. Instead, they are trying to explain in a common-sense way how such a system can be effective (given that it is, obviously, effective)—they are exploring what goes into making it work, looking for concepts that would be applicable to other situations. What does this have to do with identity? Well, each factor contributes to a user's sense of identity: do I have a question appropriate for this list? can I contribute an answer? am I meeting group expectations with my question type? Users of the forum are establishing public identities through their interactions; while these identities are not the authors' focus, the very features that allow Zephyr to remain active also shape the identities which users can form.
PaulResnick: Thanks for the effort to connect to this week's topic. I think it works. In any case, the connection is indeed tenuous. But Derek and I thought it would be useful at this point in the semester to provide an example of what the 684 final papers might look like. In this case, the paper draws on the ideas of roles and norms as ways to describe what's going on in the system, as well as describing the mechanisms by which newcomers are socialized into those norms.
RebeccaTremaglio: JudeYew's thoughts here got me to wondering what would happen to answerers who began to act outside of the group norms. Questioners whom others think should have done more background research before posting a common question are more or less gently chided by answerers before they are helped. What would the knowledgeable answerers do to one of their own who gave false or misleading answers? The paper seems to indicate that this would not likely happen, due to the cultural value of 'cluefulness' at MIT, but perhaps an answerer would post in such a way to show off to other answerers that they knew the answer but were confounding questioners for whatever reason. It does go against the grain of the system, but this might perhaps be the point: to gain notoriety in a unique way. Would the other answerers take it upon themselves to chastise that person?

Deletions:
EverettWiggins : In generalizing from this specific example, the authors do not try to establish their claims as fact. Instead, they are trying to explain in a common-sense way how such a system can be effective (given that it is, obviously, effective)—they are exploring what goes into making it work, looking for concepts that would be applicable to other situations. What does this have to do with identity? Well, each factor contributes to a user's sense of identity: do I have a question appropriate for this list? can I contribute an answer? am I meeting group expectations with my question type? Users of the forum are establishing public identities through their interactions; while these identities are not the authors' focus, the very features that allow Zephyr to remain active also shape the identities which users can form.
PaulResnick: Thanks for the effort, Everett, to connect to this week's topic. I think it works. In any case, the connection is indeed tenuous. But Derek and I thought it would be useful at this point in the semester to provide an example of what the 684 final papers might look like. In this case, the paper draws on the ideas of roles and norms as ways to describe what's going on in the system, as well as describing the mechanisms by which newcomers are socialized into those norms.
RebeccaTremaglio: EverettWiggins' & JudeYew's thoughts here got me to wondering what would happen to answerers who began to act outside of the group norms. Questioners whom others think should have done more background research before posting a common question are more or less gently chided by answerers before they are helped. What would the knowledgeable answerers do to one of their own who gave false or misleading answers? The paper seems to indicate that this would not likely happen, due to the cultural value of 'cluefulness' at MIT, but perhaps an answerer would post in such a way to show off to other answerers that they knew the answer but were confounding questioners for whatever reason. It does go against the grain of the system, but this might perhaps be the point: to gain notoriety in a unique way. Would the other answerers take it upon themselves to chastise that person?


Edited on 2005-03-16 00:21:29 by DerekHansen

Additions:
XiaomuZhou: I think this is a good paper to show us how to conduct a qualitative research through log data. [DerekHansen: I very much agree and that is one of the primary reasons it is included] Mark A. is one of those in our SI who are very good at qualitative research: getting things from interviews, observations, content analysis, etc. In terms of qualitative research, the question that has always been puzzling to me is how to do the data analysis. For instance, did the authors of this paper really read all of those 30,052 messages (and the content of 19 interviews) and then came up with those main points of this paper; or actually the authors have those main points in mind before hand and then found some conversations on Help Instance that happen to support those main points. [DerekHansen: Mark explained the process he went through in a class I took from him a few years back. He said that he printed out the 30,052 messages and literally read the entire thing. He didn't have any specific idea of what he would find, but if I remember right he said that he did know he was looking for examples of social and technical affordances. The specific findings came after immersing himself in the content and seeing patterns show up.] I personally only had one experience with qualitative research (i.e. Evaluating Archival Instruction at the Bentley Historical Library, my one-year project research as a doctoral student, of which the paper has been submitted to American Archivists). I had no idea how to deal with those data from the interviews (with students, professors and reference archivists), observation and documents the professor provided to me until I created a model to describe them and get the main points out of those data. Compare to quantitative methodology, which focuses more on structured design, qualitative research requires more skills to do data analysis. We have read a lot of research papers that are based on quantitative methods this semester for our eCommunities class, this paper clearly provides us a good view of how to make a good content analysis from on-line communities.

Deletions:
XiaomuZhou: I think this is a good paper to show us how to conduct a qualitative research through log data. Mark A. is one of those in our SI who are very good at qualitative research: getting things from interviews, observations, content analysis, etc. In terms of qualitative research, the question that has always been puzzling to me is how to do the data analysis. For instance, did the authors of this paper really read all of those 30,052 messages (and the content of 19 interviews) and then came up with those main points of this paper; or actually the authors have those main points in mind before hand and then found some conversations on Help Instance that happen to support those main points. I personally only had one experience with qualitative research (i.e. Evaluating Archival Instruction at the Bentley Historical Library, my one-year project research as a doctoral student, of which the paper has been submitted to American Archivists). I had no idea how to deal with those data from the interviews (with students, professors and reference archivists), observation and documents the professor provided to me until I created a model to describe them and get the main points out of those data. Compare to quantitative methodology, which focuses more on structured design, qualitative research requires more skills to do data analysis. We have read a lot of research papers that are based on quantitative methods this semester for our eCommunities class, this paper clearly provides us a good view of how to make a good content analysis from on-line communities.


Edited on 2005-03-16 00:13:19 by FrankLester [add comment]

Additions:
LaurieBuis: I see the connection that JudeYew is trying to make between the Hogg and Ackerman readings, but how would Hogg account for the transition of a person from the social group of question asker to the social group of question answerer?
FrankLester: Taking off from RebeccaTremaglio's comment about actors who operate outside of group norms, one of the most intriguing things to me about this paper were the examples of exchanges between question-askers and answerers on Zephyr. For instance, Ackerman and Palen observe that "[s]harp or acerbic answers often bring a response from other answerers. After one answerer was curt with a naive questioner, he was taken to task not to be sharp." The time frame of these exchanges got me to thinking about similar communities in today's environment and how these sorts of interactions go nowadays. In my experience (while there are exceptions to every rule), both in online information/current events group blogs and communities such as Wikipedia and Metafilter, and in Zephyr-like communities such as computer software support forums, the negotiated order of community seems to depend on a qualitatively different sort of interaction than would have been acceptable or permissible in 1993. Acerbic questions and sharp answers now seem to be the norm, rather than a violation of the norm. Naive questioners and newbies are excoriated for their cluelessness and expected to get with the program and grow thicker skin. Inexperienced users have to negotiate their own way through the right tone to take in phrasing their own questions and/or responses in order to avoid censure or ridicule for violating a set of norms whose shape and significance may not be as clear-cut as it once was (at a time when politeness, not sarcasm, was more normative). The social cost of asking a question or even stating an opinion seems to have become higher in some way, but that higher cost seems also be an expected and accepted risk of interacting online.
It may be that I am being anachronistic and attributing values to the past that did not exist in the way that I am suggesting. But it seems to me that online community member roles may be different in ways that have not been (yet) fully considered; perhaps now, as in the culture at large, being a smart-aleck, a loudmouth, or a disrupter is a value in a way that it was not at another point in time in the online universe.

Deletions:
LaurieBuis: I see the connection that JudeYew is trying to make between the Hogg and Ackerman readings, but how would Hogg account for the transition of a person from the social group of question asker to the social group of question answerer?


Edited on 2005-03-15 20:00:12 by LaurieBuis

Additions:
RebeccaTremaglio: EverettWiggins' & JudeYew's thoughts here got me to wondering what would happen to answerers who began to act outside of the group norms. Questioners whom others think should have done more background research before posting a common question are more or less gently chided by answerers before they are helped. What would the knowledgeable answerers do to one of their own who gave false or misleading answers? The paper seems to indicate that this would not likely happen, due to the cultural value of 'cluefulness' at MIT, but perhaps an answerer would post in such a way to show off to other answerers that they knew the answer but were confounding questioners for whatever reason. It does go against the grain of the system, but this might perhaps be the point: to gain notoriety in a unique way. Would the other answerers take it upon themselves to chastise that person?
LaurieBuis: I see the connection that JudeYew is trying to make between the Hogg and Ackerman readings, but how would Hogg account for the transition of a person from the social group of question asker to the social group of question answerer?

Deletions:
RebeccaTremaglio: EverettWiggins' & JudeYew's thoughts here got me to wondering what would happen to answerers who began to act outside of the group norms. Questioners whom others think should have done more background research before posting a common question are more or less gently chided by answerers before they are helped. What would the knowledgeable answerers do to one of their own who gave false or misleading answers? The paper seems to indicate that this would not likely happen, due to the cultural value of 'cluefulness' at MIT, but perhaps an answerer would post in such a way to show off to other answerers that they knew the answer but were confounding questioners for whatever reason. It does go against the grain of the system, but this might perhaps be the point: to gain notoriety in a unique way. Would the other answerers take it upon themselves to chastise that person?


Edited on 2005-03-15 13:44:02 by RebeccaTremaglio

Additions:
RebeccaTremaglio: EverettWiggins' & JudeYew's thoughts here got me to wondering what would happen to answerers who began to act outside of the group norms. Questioners whom others think should have done more background research before posting a common question are more or less gently chided by answerers before they are helped. What would the knowledgeable answerers do to one of their own who gave false or misleading answers? The paper seems to indicate that this would not likely happen, due to the cultural value of 'cluefulness' at MIT, but perhaps an answerer would post in such a way to show off to other answerers that they knew the answer but were confounding questioners for whatever reason. It does go against the grain of the system, but this might perhaps be the point: to gain notoriety in a unique way. Would the other answerers take it upon themselves to chastise that person?

Deletions:



Edited on 2005-03-14 19:09:33 by sin-dhcp-4-150.si.umich.edu

Additions:
JudeYew: I do have some (tenuous?) connections to make between this reading and the idea of identity as raised by the Hogg2001 reading. It would seem to me that EverettWiggins does make an accurate observation that how one identifies with the Zephyr system is tied up with the roles that one plays in the system, the social affordances & shared understanding that arise as a result of using such a system. If we were to take Hogg2001's perspective, the Zephyr system works because users tend to categorize themselves with the prototypical behaviors/attitudes/values that is held by the group. Individuals who exhibit these prototypical behaviors are much admired and perhaps promoted to being answerers. Whereas individuals who deviate from the prototypical behvaiors expected from the use of the system, i.e. not exhausting other information sources before asking a question, would result in public sanctioning.
The connections between Hogg2001 and this paper seem pretty obvious to me. Does anyone else think so?

Deletions:
JudeYew: I do have some (tenuous?) connections to make between this reading and the idea of identity as raised by the Hogg2001 reading.


Edited on 2005-03-14 18:59:12 by sin-dhcp-4-150.si.umich.edu

Additions:
SooyeonHwang: That's very nice to know. What about leaving a comment about this on the course schedule page as a reminder for later semesters (perhaps)?
JudeYew: I do have some (tenuous?) connections to make between this reading and the idea of identity as raised by the Hogg2001 reading.

Deletions:
SooyeonHwang: That's very nice to know. What about leaving a comment about this on the course schedule page as a reminder for later semesters (perhaps)?


Edited on 2005-03-14 16:02:13 by SooyeonHwang

Additions:
PaulResnick: Thanks for the effort, Everett, to connect to this week's topic. I think it works. In any case, the connection is indeed tenuous. But Derek and I thought it would be useful at this point in the semester to provide an example of what the 684 final papers might look like. In this case, the paper draws on the ideas of roles and norms as ways to describe what's going on in the system, as well as describing the mechanisms by which newcomers are socialized into those norms.
SooyeonHwang: That's very nice to know. What about leaving a comment about this on the course schedule page as a reminder for later semesters (perhaps)?

Deletions:
PaulResnick: Thanks for the effort, Everett, to connect to this week's topic. I think it works. In any case, the connection is indeed tenuous. But Derek and I thought it would be useful at this point in the semester to provide an example of what the 684 final papers might look like. In this case, the paper draws on the ideas of roles and norms as ways to describe what's going on in the system, as well as describing the mechanisms by which newcomers are socialized into those norms.


Edited on 2005-03-14 15:56:34 by PaulResnick

Additions:
LaurieBuis: I agree with YongKim that it would have been interesting to see some type of qualitative (I presume you mean quantitative?) data in this paper. I was interested to know just how many questions went unanswered. I also agree with his assessment that there were a lot of interesting question that were not answered in terms of the evolution of self governance. One thing that I would be particularly interested in would be a follow up study to see if any of the norms, roles, and behaviors have changed over the last nine years. While I find many of the readings for class that have been written in the late 90's to be valuable, I think that as a culture of technology users, use of these CMCs has changed. When I think about my own use of these systems over the last ten years, I can quite easily identify how my usage patterns have changed. I would be interested to see if these same findings would still be applicable today.
PaulResnick: Thanks for the effort, Everett, to connect to this week's topic. I think it works. In any case, the connection is indeed tenuous. But Derek and I thought it would be useful at this point in the semester to provide an example of what the 684 final papers might look like. In this case, the paper draws on the ideas of roles and norms as ways to describe what's going on in the system, as well as describing the mechanisms by which newcomers are socialized into those norms.

Deletions:
LaurieBuis: I agree with YongKim that it would have been interesting to see some type of qualitative data in this paper. I was interested to know just how many questions went unanswered. I also agree with his assessment that there were a lot of interesting question that were not answered in terms of the evolution of self governance. One thing that I would be particularly interested in would be a follow up study to see if any of the norms, roles, and behaviors have changed over the last nine years. While I find many of the readings for class that have been written in the late 90's to be valuable, I think that as a culture of technology users, use of these CMCs has changed. When I think about my own use of these systems over the last ten years, I can quite easily identify how my usage patterns have changed. I would be interested to see if these same findings would still be applicable today.


Edited on 2005-03-14 15:08:25 by EverettWiggins

Additions:
XiaomuZhou: I think this is a good paper to show us how to conduct a qualitative research through log data. Mark A. is one of those in our SI who are very good at qualitative research: getting things from interviews, observations, content analysis, etc. In terms of qualitative research, the question that has always been puzzling to me is how to do the data analysis. For instance, did the authors of this paper really read all of those 30,052 messages (and the content of 19 interviews) and then came up with those main points of this paper; or actually the authors have those main points in mind before hand and then found some conversations on Help Instance that happen to support those main points. I personally only had one experience with qualitative research (i.e. Evaluating Archival Instruction at the Bentley Historical Library, my one-year project research as a doctoral student, of which the paper has been submitted to American Archivists). I had no idea how to deal with those data from the interviews (with students, professors and reference archivists), observation and documents the professor provided to me until I created a model to describe them and get the main points out of those data. Compare to quantitative methodology, which focuses more on structured design, qualitative research requires more skills to do data analysis. We have read a lot of research papers that are based on quantitative methods this semester for our eCommunities class, this paper clearly provides us a good view of how to make a good content analysis from on-line communities.
EverettWiggins : In generalizing from this specific example, the authors do not try to establish their claims as fact. Instead, they are trying to explain in a common-sense way how such a system can be effective (given that it is, obviously, effective)—they are exploring what goes into making it work, looking for concepts that would be applicable to other situations. What does this have to do with identity? Well, each factor contributes to a user's sense of identity: do I have a question appropriate for this list? can I contribute an answer? am I meeting group expectations with my question type? Users of the forum are establishing public identities through their interactions; while these identities are not the authors' focus, the very features that allow Zephyr to remain active also shape the identities which users can form.

Deletions:
XiaomuZhou: I think this is a good paper to show us how to conduct a qualitative research through log data. Mark A. is one of those in our SI who are very good at qualitative research: getting things from interviews, observations, content analysis, etc. In terms of qualitative research, the question that has always been puzzling to me is how to do the data analysis. For instance, did the authors of this paper really read all of those 30,052 messages (and the content of 19 interviews) and then came up with those main points of this paper; or actually the authors have those main points in mind before hand and then found some conversations on Help Instance that happen to support those main points. I personally only had one experience with qualitative research (i.e. Evaluating Archival Instruction at the Bentley Historical Library, my one-year project research as a doctoral student, of which the paper has been submitted to American Archivists). I had no idea how to deal with those data from the interviews (with students, professors and reference archivists), observation and documents the professor provided to me until I created a model to describe them and get the main points out of those data. Compare to quantitative methodology, which focuses more on structured design, qualitative research requires more skills to do data analysis. We have read a lot of research papers that are based on quantitative methods this semester for our eCommunities class, this paper clearly provides us a good view of how to make a good content analysis from on-line communities.


Edited on 2005-03-14 00:03:00 by phd13-xp.si.umich.edu

No differences.

Edited on 2005-03-14 00:02:43 by phd13-xp.si.umich.edu

Additions:
LaurieBuis: I agree with YongKim that it would have been interesting to see some type of qualitative data in this paper. I was interested to know just how many questions went unanswered. I also agree with his assessment that there were a lot of interesting question that were not answered in terms of the evolution of self governance. One thing that I would be particularly interested in would be a follow up study to see if any of the norms, roles, and behaviors have changed over the last nine years. While I find many of the readings for class that have been written in the late 90's to be valuable, I think that as a culture of technology users, use of these CMCs has changed. When I think about my own use of these systems over the last ten years, I can quite easily identify how my usage patterns have changed. I would be interested to see if these same findings would still be applicable today.
XiaomuZhou: I think this is a good paper to show us how to conduct a qualitative research through log data. Mark A. is one of those in our SI who are very good at qualitative research: getting things from interviews, observations, content analysis, etc. In terms of qualitative research, the question that has always been puzzling to me is how to do the data analysis. For instance, did the authors of this paper really read all of those 30,052 messages (and the content of 19 interviews) and then came up with those main points of this paper; or actually the authors have those main points in mind before hand and then found some conversations on Help Instance that happen to support those main points. I personally only had one experience with qualitative research (i.e. Evaluating Archival Instruction at the Bentley Historical Library, my one-year project research as a doctoral student, of which the paper has been submitted to American Archivists). I had no idea how to deal with those data from the interviews (with students, professors and reference archivists), observation and documents the professor provided to me until I created a model to describe them and get the main points out of those data. Compare to quantitative methodology, which focuses more on structured design, qualitative research requires more skills to do data analysis. We have read a lot of research papers that are based on quantitative methods this semester for our eCommunities class, this paper clearly provides us a good view of how to make a good content analysis from on-line communities.

Deletions:
LaurieBuis: I agree with YongKim that it would have been interesting to see some type of qualitative data in this paper. I was interested to know just how many questions went unanswered. I also agree with his assessment that there were a lot of interesting question that were not answered in terms of the evolution of self governance. One thing that I would be particularly interested in would be a follow up study to see if any of the norms, roles, and behaviors have changed over the last nine years. While I find many of the readings for class that have been written in the late 90's to be valuable, I think that as a culture of technology users, use of these CMCs has changed. When I think about my own use of these systems over the last ten years, I can quite easily identify how my usage patterns have changed. I would be interested to see if these same findings would still be applicable today.


Edited on 2005-03-13 23:54:29 by bgp996494bgs.nanarb01.mi.comcast.net

Additions:
It was interesting to see Ackerman, who is well known for his gloomy (?) “social-technical gap” perspective, explained what made the technically “rudimentary” system socially acceptable and, in fact, successful. In his “social-technical gap” point of view, we lack technical mechanisms that fully accommodate the subtlety of human activities that are highly nuanced, flexible, and contextualized. Nevertheless, the study suggests that the adoption and continued use of a CSCW system are more importantly determined by social affordances than by the incomplete technical capability of the system to some extent.

Deletions:
It was interesting to see Ackerman, who is well known for his gloomy (?) “social-technical gap” perspective, explain what made the technically “rudimentary” system socially acceptable and, in fact, successful. In his “social-technical gap” point of view, we lack technical mechanisms that fully accommodate the subtlety of human activities that are highly nuanced, flexible, and contextualized. Nevertheless, the study suggests that the adoption and continued use of a CSCW system are more importantly determined by social affordances than by the incomplete technical capability of the system to some extent.


Edited on 2005-03-13 22:40:19 by LaurieBuis

Additions:
LaurieBuis: I agree with YongKim that it would have been interesting to see some type of qualitative data in this paper. I was interested to know just how many questions went unanswered. I also agree with his assessment that there were a lot of interesting question that were not answered in terms of the evolution of self governance. One thing that I would be particularly interested in would be a follow up study to see if any of the norms, roles, and behaviors have changed over the last nine years. While I find many of the readings for class that have been written in the late 90's to be valuable, I think that as a culture of technology users, use of these CMCs has changed. When I think about my own use of these systems over the last ten years, I can quite easily identify how my usage patterns have changed. I would be interested to see if these same findings would still be applicable today.

Deletions:



Edited on 2005-03-13 01:52:39 by bgp996494bgs.nanarb01.mi.comcast.net

Additions:
It was interesting to see Ackerman, who is well known for his gloomy (?) “social-technical gap” perspective, explain what made the technically “rudimentary” system socially acceptable and, in fact, successful. In his “social-technical gap” point of view, we lack technical mechanisms that fully accommodate the subtlety of human activities that are highly nuanced, flexible, and contextualized. Nevertheless, the study suggests that the adoption and continued use of a CSCW system are more importantly determined by social affordances than by the incomplete technical capability of the system to some extent.

Deletions:
It was interesting to see how Ackerman, who is well known for his gloomy (?) “social-technical gap” perspective, studied what made the technically “rudimentary” system socially acceptable and, in fact, successful. In his “social-technical gap” point of view, we lack technical mechanisms that fully accommodate the subtlety of human activities that are highly nuanced, flexible, and contextualized. Nevertheless, the study suggests that the adoption and continued use of a CSCW system are more importantly determined by social affordances than by the incomplete technical capability of the system to some extent.


Edited on 2005-03-13 01:48:15 by bgp996494bgs.nanarb01.mi.comcast.net

Additions:
- Regularity: Inquiry and response occur in the same place (Help Instance) and such activities are reinforced by the regularity
-Social policing: users self-monitor the proper use of channel and content with a “common-enough” understanding of the space’s purpose
- The two roles are intertwined with the level of “cluefulness” associated with technical understanding and public respect for such expertise
- The two roles reinforce each other because of the role fluidity and organizational culture at MIT (the value of “cluefulness”)
- Developed norms: askers should minimize the burden on answerers by consulting available information sources first or by phrasing a question appropriately; answerers should also learn how to answer appropriately.
- The public visibility of answerer’s expertise socially reinforces self-control over the reliability of answers given MIT culture in which technical proficiency equals reputation.
- The collaborative problem-solving atmosphere generates the involvement of new participants
- The system allows lightweight attending; users involve in current conversational activity voluntarily
- Users have no psychological burden for neither answering questions nor getting answers


Edited on 2005-03-13 01:44:55 by bgp996494bgs.nanarb01.mi.comcast.net

Additions:
-Regularity: Inquiry and response occur in the same place (Help Instance) and such activities are reinforced by the regularity
-Social policing: users self-monitor the proper use of channel and content with a “common-enough” understanding of the space’s purpose
- The two roles are intertwined with the level of “cluefulness” associated with technical understanding and public respect for such expertise
It was interesting to see how Ackerman, who is well known for his gloomy (?) “social-technical gap” perspective, studied what made the technically “rudimentary” system socially acceptable and, in fact, successful. In his “social-technical gap” point of view, we lack technical mechanisms that fully accommodate the subtlety of human activities that are highly nuanced, flexible, and contextualized. Nevertheless, the study suggests that the adoption and continued use of a CSCW system are more importantly determined by social affordances than by the incomplete technical capability of the system to some extent.
Although the authors provided insightful explanation on what social factors contribute to the longitudinal use of the system, they failed in explaining how those mechanisms (norms and behaviors) had been developed over time after the inception of the system. How had the participants negotiated the meaning and purpose of the help system and developed the norms without any authority? A longitudinal analysis of communication activities, as we learned from Schoberth et al. and Butler’s studies, may provide a better answer for the question.
One last comment: it would have made the interpretation of their findings more compelling if relevant data were provided quantitatively (i.e., answered question ratio, deviant topic ratio, etc) or more mention of the interviews were made.
Olson and Olson (2000) identify four socio-technical conditions that contribute to the success of group collaboration over distances. The success of Zephyr system can be explained from the conditions as follows: The Zephyr users have a shared understanding of the purpose (common ground) and are motivated to help each other (the reward for contribution is the public acceptance of personal technical expertise) (collaboration readiness.) They selectively involve in interactions and the interactions, in general, are less complicated with below 10 message lines long (loosely coupled work.) Finally, MIT community is famous for its distinct technology excellence (technology readiness.)

Deletions:
-Regularity: Inquiry and response occur in the same place (Help Instance) and such activities are reinforced by the regularity
-Social policing: users self-monitor the proper use of channel and content with a “common-enough” understanding of the space’s purpose
-The two roles are intertwined with the level of “cluefulness” associated with technical understanding and public respect for such expertise


Edited on 2005-03-13 01:42:04 by bgp996494bgs.nanarb01.mi.comcast.net

Additions:
Ackerman, M.S., and Palen, L. (1996) The zephyr help instance: Promoting ongoing activity in a cscw system. CHI 96 Conference Proceedings, 268-275.
What technical and social affordances are required to facilitate the ongoing use of a CSCW system?
This paper studies the Zephyr Help Instance, a synchronous text-based chat system through which distributed users at MIT help each other solving problems.
Previous studies reveal that the continued use of CSCW system can be achieved by coercion, user satisfaction, or fit with social situation (organizational culture/process, individual motivation and goals, and system affordances.) Ackerman and Palen qualitatively examine both technical and social factors contributing to the ongoing activity of Zephyr Help Instance by conducting message log analysis, observation, participation, and interview.
System affordances
Social affordances
-Regularity: Inquiry and response occur in the same place (Help Instance) and such activities are reinforced by the regularity
-Social policing: users self-monitor the proper use of channel and content with a “common-enough” understanding of the space’s purpose
-The two roles are intertwined with the level of “cluefulness” associated with technical understanding and public respect for such expertise
- The two roles reinforce each other because of the role fluidity and organizational culture at MIT (the value of “cluefulness”)
- Developed norms: askers should minimize the burden on answerers by consulting available information sources first or by phrasing a question appropriately; answerers should also learn how to answer appropriately.
- The public visibility of answerer’s expertise socially reinforces self-control over the reliability of answers given MIT culture in which technical proficiency equals reputation.
- The collaborative problem-solving atmosphere generates the involvement of new participants
- The system allows lightweight attending; users involve in current conversational activity voluntarily
- Users have no psychological burden for neither answering questions nor getting answers
Conclusion
“System affordances do not necessarily enable the social mechanisms. Instead … the users have made creative use of system affordances … for their own social purposes. (And it allowed) the users to create and maintain a socially useful and usable system over time.” (p. 275)


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