 Geocaching and Community-Maintained Resources

Community Maintained Resources  Participants are responsible for generating content and administering the site  Can be games, information resources, repositories  Examples:  Geocaching  Wikipedia  Open Source code repositories

Case Study: Geocaching  GPS-oriented game and treasure hunt   Users control every aspect of the activity

The gist of it “I use multi-billion dollar military satellites to find Tupperware hidden in the woods.” Neustaedter, Carman, Anthony Tang, and Judge K. Tejinder. “The Role of Community and Groupware in Geocache Creation and Maintenance.” In Proceedings of the 28th International Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1757–1766.

How Geocaching Works  A “cache” is a box of varying size. It usually contains a log, a pencil, and sometimes little trinkets to trade.

How Geocaching Works  The owner of the cache hides it...

How Geocaching Works  The owner of the cache hides it...

How Geocaching Works  The owner of the cache hides it...

How Geocaching Works  The owner of the cache hides it...

How Geocaching Works ...and posts the GPS coordinates on the geocaching website.  “Geocachers” search for it and, when they find it, they sign the log book... ...and log their finds (or did- not-finds) on the Geocaching website or through the Geocaching app.

Clever Caches Neustaedter, Carman, Anthony Tang, and Judge K. Tejinder. “The Role of Community and Groupware in Geocache Creation and Maintenance.” In Proceedings of the 28th International Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1757–1766.

Clever Caches ibid.

Finding a Cache

Logging a Cache

How many?  There are over 2 million geocaches, including one on the International Space Station

Who maintains this?  The geocaching website is owned by a company. They maintain the servers and software.  The caches are created and maintained by participants.  Maintenance issues  Caches can get wet or damaged  Sometimes they are cleared away as trash  “Muggles” (people who don’t cache) sometimes destroy them

Administration  Volunteers administer the activity  People approve caches and check that they follow the rules  After enough reports of a cache problem, admin volunteers may remove it to allow new caches to be hidden

Maintenance  How does a person maintain dozens or even hundreds of caches?  They rely on other people to tell them if the caches are ok or if they need maintenance.  This comes from cachers logging their finds (and “did not find”s)

Cache Owner Tasks Maintain Needs Maintenance DNFs Do nothing Found

Info for Cachers Search or Not LogsDescriptionRatingsAttributesLocation

More Community Maintained Resources  Community controls content and administration  Wikis  Forums  Repositories  rule (Preece 2006)  Lurkers, Casual contributors, Heavy contributors

Wikipedia Editors (85,000 active contributors) Administrators (~1,500) Bureaucrats (~34)

Motivations  Collective Effort Model  People contribute if they believe their effort will lead to outcomes they value  Discuss: What are things people will value? Consider a specific website if that helps.

Wikipedia Motivations  Values - wanting to help others  Social - allowing people to engage with others and receive reputational credit for participating in a good activity  Understanding - learning new things through volunteering  Career - learning skills that may help with finding, keeping, or advancing in a job  Protective - reducing guilt about one's privilege by sharing with others  Enhancement - serving the community (similar to the Protective motivation, but without the guilt component)  Fun - the activity is enjoyable  Ideology - the belief that information should be freely available  (Nov, 2007)

Conclusions  Community maintained resources involve participants at all levels of creation and maintenance of the resource  People are motivated to participate for different reasons  Effective resources have cycles that make it easy for people to continue participating

Exercise  Have you worked on in a community-maintained resource (online or offline)?  What was your motivation to participate?  How does your motivation match up with the motivations for wikipedia listed on the previous slide?