The Answerbag.com community has several topics where members post questions and answers (to posted questions). After reviewing about 10 random profiles, members were from various locations inside and outside the U.S., and had different backgrounds, professions, interests, and ages. There were both male and female members. The answerbag.com community is diverse and is not comprised of a specific age group and population.
Questions are categorized by topic, and members can post questions and answers in any topic. Members can give points to any question and answer. These points are an extrinsic reward as mentioned in the Tedjamulia et al. article that allow a member to move up levels as they acquire a certain amount of points. From my initial observations it appeared that members gave points to questions and answers that they found useful.
My strategy for accomplishing two of the goals posted for Session 3, Week 1 included the following:
1 – To create a profile that would create a high level of trust with other members.
2 – To post questions that would generate interest from the largest amount of members as possible.
3 – To post answers that would generate interest from the largest amount of members as possible.
According the Tedjumila et al. article, Proposition 3 mentions that members contribute more frequently if they have high trust in its participants. The Ridings et al. article found that many participants sought friendship in online communities, which indicates that there should be a certain level of trust in a community’s participants in order to attract new members. To generate a level of trust in my profile with other members, I uploaded a neutral image of an older woman holding a cookie for my avatar. I decided to post an image rather than to use one provided by the site because it personalized my profile. I selected the nickname “Oracle13” to generate a high level of attention, yet appear as though the person behind the profile could be trusted. However, as I participated in the Answerbag.com community, I noticed that most people responded to fun and playful questions and answers. This is evident in the large amount of questions and answers in the “Outside the bag” category. I then posted some fun information in the About Me section.
In order to appeal to the largest amount of members, I initially posted questions that I thought would allow members to feel that their contributions were unique. As found in the Ling et al. article, members contributed more when they felt that their contributions were unique and they were least similar to others in the group. I attempted to give members the opportunity to generate unique answers. I also posted answers that I thought would catch attention. These questions (9, 10, 11, and 12) generated very little contribution.
I then decided to post questions that would generate content that would help members to exchange information. The findings in the Ridings et al. article indicated that many members sought an exchange of information. I attempted to post questions (6, 7, 8) that allowed members to post practical information such as information on the economic stimulus bill and Windows 7 compared to Windows XP. These questions generated more contribution than the questions meant to generate unique answers, and seemed to support the findings in the Ridings et al. article. The Windows 7 question generated the second highest number of points.
Because I did not reach the Session 3, Week 1 goal I attempted to appeal to both the friendship and uniqueness aspects of motivating contribution. According to the Ridings et al. article, members also sought friendship as a reason for joining a community. Throughout my participation in Answerbag.com, I noticed that members answered novel questions. Questions that were similar to questions posted previously generated little activity. My question “How many people did you date in high school?” was meant to allow members to post unique answers about their personal high school experience. This question was also meant to allow for friendship opportunities because members could relate to similar experiences in high school and post comments. This question was novel in that there were no other questions similar to it. This question successfully generated over 40 points in two days.
The “How many people did you date in high school?” question generated a little under 40 points after the first day, and there was no activity at the start of the second day. I had to post an answer to get the question into the “Latest Q & A” list to generate enough points to reach the over 40 point goal. Having a question in the “Latest Q & A” list supports the finding that reminding participants of the opportunity to contribute increased participation in the Ling et al. article. It appears that many of the answerbag.com members monitor the “Latest Q & A” section to find questions to answer. However, I feel that the “Latest Q & A” list is meant to bring attention to a member’s question (increasing visibility of that question) rather than to remind members about the opportunity to participate. In this case members are actively looking for opportunities to participate rather than the site manager trying to encourage participation from the members.
For the answers, I decided to start with questions that were meant for sharing information. (Answers 4, 13, 16, 18-20, and 27-36) My goal was to post answers that generated interest from the largest amount of members as possible, and according to the Ridings et al. and Twitter articles a large portion of members join online communities to share information. 6 out of the 16 answers meant for sharing information received 4 or more points. Answer 27 that gave information on using a network attached storage device received the second highest number of points out of all the answers I posted.
I then decided to answer questions meant to generate unique answers, such as questions in the “Out of the bag” category. (Answers 3, 5-12, 14, 15, 17, 22, and 24-26) I tried to keep these answers entertaining and “light hearted,” in order to portray a friendly and outgoing demeanor. I intended to appeal to a large amount of members by posing these unique and entertaining answers. According to the Ridings et al. article many who join online communities sought friendship as well as an exchange of information. Ling et al. found that members contributed more when they felt that their contributions were unique and they were least similar to others in the group. I thought that if I posted answers to questions meant to generate unique answers, a large number of members would view both the question and my answer. 6 out of the 16 answers to questions meant to generate unique answers received 4 or more points. Answer 10 received the highest number of points out of all the answers posted.
Based on my experiences in the Answerbag.com community, I found that many members sought friendship by posting unique information about themselves to gain attention and possibly acquire new friends. This supports the Ridings et al. finding that many members seek friendship in online communities. The question “How many people did you date in high school?” quickly generated over 40 points and over 20 answers. There were a few members that posted comments to each other under the high school dating question.
I also found that many members joined Answerbag.com as a form of entertainment. The largest amount of activity was in the “Out of the bag” category, and my answer from this category generated the largest amount of points. One possible reason that the “Out of the bag” category generates a large amount of activity is that they allow members to make unique contributions, which supports the finding that members contributed more when they felt that their contributions were unique in the Ling et al. article. However, I did not witness any “lively disagreements” during my time in the Answerbag.com community. Therefore, members were probably looking for unique answers as a form of entertainment rather than for lively discussions based on “lively disagreements.”
Link to my profile: http://www.answerbag.com/profile/?id=863135
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ReplyDeleteAhh, so you were the one who asked, "How many people did you date in high school?" :) I decided to ask about college instead, but unfortunately, that question, as of today, still does not have any answers to it, and neither has it accumulated any points. However, now that I think about it, the Ridings article may just be right: people will respond to novel questions more than similar ones; we both proved that point.
ReplyDeleteRegarding your comment on "lively disagreements," I asked two questions that I thought would incite lively discussions/debates. Unfortunately, as it turned out, I lost some points for sounding too arrogant. Even some members who responded to my questions lost points as well because they just helped degrade the quality of my contributions.
So, in my opinion, imitation did not work out to my advantage, but I must admit, it was very hard to think of questions to ask. Thanks to the Similar Questions feature, I found myself quite a few times rewording/rephrasing my questions, hoping that they would be unique enough... or could it be my initial profile picture that I used that did not inspire members to answer my questions (the one I used is the same as the one I use in my blog)? I didn't add any information to my profile either, so you could say that I was merely just there to get in, get what I want, and then get out, so because there was no foundation on which other members of the community can build their trust in me, hardly anyone contributed their answers to my questions.
Very interesting post. You really thought out how to game the system within the rules of the assignment. That makes me wonder how many other people are out there gaming just because. I was wondering this anyway, as I never seem to see any fat, ugly, old avatars. Good question for this site too!. I would never have ever thought of asking this question. I have never even asked it of anyone I dated, yet ask a bunch of complete strangers. I would never reply to it either as it has no relevence to anyone but me. I should go back and look into the sex category, I bet it has better stories then Playboy and probably none of them are true.
ReplyDeleteI am not sure that the uniqueness of the question matters. Look up "how much wood could a wood chuck chuck...etc". I think timing is more of an issue. Askign the same type of question in a short space of time probably had more of an impact.
I happened to stumble on your high school question, and when I saw your profile I noticed your specific references to programming and computer science. Besides creating trust, was it your strategy to portray yourself as a programmer? I requested to be your friend on a hunch that you were in the 691 class but I didn't figure out who you were until the assignment was over. Didn't you also switch your profile image to an anime character before switching back to the old woman?
ReplyDeleteYou bring up a good point about the outside the bag category. I spent a lot of time in the "first thing that comes to mind" and I noticed the answers were not particularly unique or personal. It seemed as if people just said the first thing that came to their mind. It doesn't quite fit into the idea of a unique contribution in the Ling et al article since people often posted similar answers. In a way, I view this category (which is a subcategory of Outside the Bag) as a starting point to a conversation like an icebreaker. There's nothing really controversial or enlightening about it, but it gives us something to compare.
Response to BJ Peter DeLaCruz:
ReplyDeleteI too thought that questions that would invoke “lively discussions” would generate contribution, but my “lively discussion” questions generated very little contribution. Although one of your “lively discussion” questions did generate a lot of contribution even though it lost points.
Regarding similar answers, it seems that the senior Answerbag.com members did not answer these questions, but it was difficult to determine in such a short period of time. I asked similar questions after the high school question (shareware and online shopping sites), and did not generate any contribution.
I’m not sure how readily Answerbag.com members look at profiles, but senior members seem to know who is new to the community. For instance, they immediately recognized and pointed out trolls. I added a picture to my profile hoping to gain the trust of existing Answerbag.com members.
Response to Tom:
The only experience I have with online communities is joining World of Warcraft about 2 years ago. My character was a female troll hunter, and I gave my pets whimsical names. I tried to be nice and polite to the other players since I was new to the game and the server. After two days on the server, another player who I think was a real-life female from Taiwan asked me to join her all female guild. I asked her how she knew that I was a real-life female, and she said that it was from my mannerisms and the names of my pets. Also, there were many other players who were very generous to give me items that would help me in the game, gave me lots of good pointers in leveling up, and often invited me on quests even if I was new to the game.
Basically, I think that I may have established a certain level of trust with the other players in WoW, and I tried to apply this same strategy to the Answerbag.com community.
Response to Mike Claveria:
With all the CS stuff I mentioned in my profile, I was hoping that the other ICS 691 students would recognize me as their classmate. I wanted this to be subtle where not all programmers would recognize me but specifically UH Manoa ICS and LISc students.
I did change my avatar from the Matrix Oracle (image from the online game) to a Japanese character (Washu from Tenchi) for about a day to see if this made a difference to the number of respondents to my questions and answers. I did this change after I reached the 40 point goal with the high school dating question. It was difficult to determine if your avatar makes a difference, but it did appear that more people responded to the Matrix Oracle image.
For me it was surprising that the “Out of the bag” questions and answers generated a lot of activity. The reading did not make any reference to this type of content. The only thing that I could think of is that these questions help to form friendly interactions. As mentioned in the Ridings et al. article many sought friendship as a reason for joining an online community.