Studying Community Dynamics CS 294h – 9 FEB 2010
USENET [Smith, Fiore]
Usenet Visualization (Viégas & Smith) Show correspondence patterns in text forums Initiate vs. reply; size and duration of discussion
Newsgroup crowds / Authorlines
History Flow Wikipedia History Flow [Viégas et al]
Group Lens GroupLens / MovieLens [Univ. Minnesota]
GWAP Games with a Purpose [von Ahn et al]
Many-Eyes / sense.us Many Eyes [IBM]
Mankoff Green FB StepGreen [Mankoff et al]
RESEARCH
existing system augment environment create new environment observe environment new system
self- experimentation observation participant-observation observer participant
new system observer existing system participant navel gazing eat your own dog food armchair philosophe r field of dreams meddling researchers
observer existing system participant new system
Research Approaches Studying characteristics of online communities Collect usage data; Observe, interview users Intervene in existing systems e.g., Facebook apps Controlled experimentation Introduce + study new systems Requires massive investment (?) Mining social media Recommendation and matching algorithms, …
Research Questions How and why do people join communities? How is collective action organized? Why do people contribute? (Incentives) Issues of quality control, privacy, trust, … What are the interactions between social structure and system design? How do these findings generalize and inform the design of new socio-technical systems?
EXAMPLE: WORLD OF WARCRAFT
World of Warcraft World of Warcraft [Yee, Ducheneaut et al]
EXAMPLE: COORDINATION IN WIKIPEDIA
History Flow Wikipedia History Flow [Viégas et al]
“Emergent” Order and Coordination
“Talk” Pages on Wikipedia Viégas et al. 2007
Coordination on Wikipedia “… [we] note that administrative and coordinating elements seem to be growing at a faster pace than the bulk of articles in the encyclopedia [Wikipedia]” Viégas et al. 2007
Wiki Dashboard Wiki Dashboard [Suh et al]
EXAMPLE: COLLABORATIVE TAGGING
Collaborative Tagging & Rating
Forms of Tagging (Golder ‘05) Identifying what (or who) it is about. (topics) Identifying what it is. (“blog”, “book”, “video”) Identifying who owns it. Refining categories. Identifying qualities or characteristics. (“funny”) Self reference. (“mystuff”) Task organizing. (“toread”)
Personal Tag Usage
Inferences from Tag Order?
Stability of Tag Use
[Chi & Mytkowicz]
[Budiu, Pirolli, & Hong]
EXAMPLE: SOCIAL NETWORK ANALYSIS
DEMO
Who is my best friend?
The Strength of Weak Ties “Interpersonal Ties” – Strong, Weak, or Absent Tie strength modeled as a combination of time, emotional intensity, intimacy, and services. Weak ties shown to: Provide the majority of the network structure Transmit novel information among groups [Granovetter 73, 83]
Eliciting Tie Strength [Gilbert ‘09]
Model Prediction
How might you apply these results?