Non-public and public online community participation: Needs, attitudes and behavior

Nonpublic participation within an online community, often called lurking, occurs when an individual joins a community, but does not post. This study examines the nature of lurking, why people lurk and the differences in attitudes between lurkers and posters. The results indicate significant differences between people who lurk and those who post in an online community. We conclude that when people lurk they are observing, which in no way is a negative behavior. This introverted or passive behavior affects lurkers' attitudes about the benefits of the community, their expectations, and opinions of themselves and others who lurk. In general lurkers are less optimistic and less positive than those who post. Blair Nonnecke is a usability professional and academic with a particular interest in user-centred design and online communities. Blair is an Associate Professor at the University of Guelph where he studies participation in online communities and the usability of in-vehicle navigation devices. His recent research focuses on three areas: survey methods for hard to reach participants, the role participation plays in online learning environments, and factors leading to participation in communities of practice. Dorine Andrews D.C.D. As a specialist in communications design, Dr. Andrews' research and publications focus on both online communities and the implementation of major technology change in organizations. She has taught at Georgetown University's Communications, Culture and Technology program and at the University of Baltimore's School for Interaction Design and Information Architecture. She is now a principal change consultant for RWD Technologies, Inc. headquartered in Baltimore, MD. She can be reached via e-mail at dandrews@rwd.com Jennifer Preece is Professor and Dean of the College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland, USA. Her research and teaching interests focus on human-computer interaction, online communities and social computing. She has authored many papers and books on these topics. Her two most recent books are: Online Communites: “Designing usability, supporting sociability”, and a coauthroed book with Helen Sharp and Yvonne Rogers entiled “Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction”. Both books are published by John Wiley & Sons.     

Distributed Apprenticeship in Online Communities

Supporting learning in online communities is an important direction for the future of human–computer interaction as people increasingly leverage social technologies to support professional growth and development. However, few have studied how people leverage the socio-technical affordances of online informal workplace communities to develop professional skills in the absence of dedicated expert guidance. We draw from theories of apprenticeship to introduce an emergent theory of distributed apprenticeship, which outlines how community expectations of transparency and mutual support allow for instruction to be directed by a distributed network of nonexperts. We develop distributed apprenticeship through a qualitative study of crowdfunding entrepreneurs, where novices leverage social interactions with community members to develop a wide range of entrepreneurial skills. We then generalize distributed apprenticeship to other workplace contexts and provide design implications for online communities where people develop professional skills with minimal dedicated formal guidance.     

Design for older and disabled people – where do we go from here?

The significant changes in the social, legal, demographic, and economic landscape over the past 10–15 years present enormous opportunities for the human–computer interface design community. These changes will have a significant impact on the design and development of systems for older and disabled people. This paper brings together a number of proposals to improve both specialist and mainstream design methods in the field as a contribution to the debate about design for older and disabled people and the concept of universal usability. Published online: 6 November 2002     

Supporting community-based learning: case study of a geographical community organization designing its website

Community computing supports human - computer interaction among neighbours in geographical or place-based community organizations. Using a case study of such an organization, we investigate the process of designing their website. Our long-term participatory design approach, integrating developmental informal learning, allowed us to understand how this community organization adopts, evaluates, and sustains website technology. Based on our case study analysis, we present three design heuristics for developing community-based technology: align and afford new possibilities for participation, dynamically manage organizational knowledge and learning, and enhance social capital within community organizations and with the broader community.     

基于P2P技术的云计算教育服务平台设计与实现

近年来,云计算已经成为网络服务领域中的研究热点。为了将云计算的理念服务于当前高等教育,提出设计一种基于P2P技术的云计算教育服务平台。首先介绍P2P技术和云计算的概念,然后提出一种云计算教育服务平台的设计框架,最后结合高等学校计算机专业课程的教学实践阐述如何实现一个在线测试的云计算教育服务平台。     

How Do Online Game Communities Retain Gamers? Social Presence and Social Capital Perspectives

While online game communities have been found to be useful for retaining gamers, the mechanism underlying this phenomenon is not fully understood. Knowledge about such mechanism enables managers of online games to effectively retain their customers. This study thus investigates how network convergence and interdependence—2 characteristics of online game social networks—fuel gamers' continuance intention. Social presence and social capital theories were used for developing the study hypotheses, and responses from 1,467 online gamers were used in the analysis. The findings indicate that both network convergence and interdependence are positively related to sense of community and relational switching cost (coefficients ranging from .20 to .50), which further contribute to gamer continuance intention (coefficients ranging from .13 to .72).     

Editorial: Internetware in Motion

The Internet provides a global open infrastructure for exchanging and sharing of various resource all over the world. The rapid development and wide application of the Internet makes it a new mainstream platform to use, develop, deploy and execute software systems and applications. With the vision of "Internet as a computer", many technical initiatives such as pervasive computing, grid computing, service computing and cloud computing emerges on this open and dynamic environment. In order to support the various new application styles and accommodate the fundamental change of the underlying infrastructure, many specific software technologies such as service-oriented architecture are proposed for current practices. While these technologies are useful and widely accepted, they have not formed a systematic solution as matured as the object-oriented technology, as a uniformed software methodology and technology system is yet to be developed.     

The ties that bind: Social network principles in online communities

In a Web 2.0 environment, the online community is fundamental to the business model, and participants in the online community are often motivated and rewarded by abstract concepts of social capital. How networks of relationships in online communities are structured has important implications for how social capital may be generated, which is critical to both attract and govern the necessary user base to sustain the site. We examine a popular website, Slashdot, which uses a system by which users can declare relationships with other users, and also has an embedded reputation system to rank users called ‘Karma’. We test the relationship between user's Karma level and the social network structure, measured by structural holes, to evaluate the brokerage and closure theories of social capital development. We find that Slashdot users develop deep networks at lower levels of participation indicating value from closure and that participation intensity helps increase the returns. We conclude with some comments on mechanism design which would exploit these findings to optimize the social networks and potentially increase the opportunities for monetization.     

A game-theoretic framework to identify overlapping communities in social networks

In this paper, we introduce a game-theoretic framework to address the community detection problem based on the structures of social networks. We formulate the dynamics of community formation as a strategic game called community formation game: Given an underlying social graph, we assume that each node is a selfish agent who selects communities to join or leave based on her own utility measurement. A community structure can be interpreted as an equilibrium of this game. We formulate the agents’ utility by the combination of a gain function and a loss function. We allow each agent to select multiple communities, which naturally captures the concept of “overlapping communities”. We propose a gain function based on the modularity concept introduced by Newman (Proc Natl Acad Sci 103(23):8577–8582, 2006), and a simple loss function that reflects the intrinsic costs incurred when people join the communities. We conduct extensive experiments under this framework, and our results show that our algorithm is effective in identifying overlapping communities, and are often better then other algorithms we evaluated especially when many people belong to multiple communities. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time the community detection problem is addressed by a game-theoretic framework that considers community formation as the result of individual agents’ rational behaviors.     

Human–computer interaction,foundations and new paradigms

This paper explores the roots of human–computer interaction as a discipline, the various trends which have marked its development, and some of the current and future challenges for research. Human–computer interaction, like any vocational discipline, sits upon three broad foundations: theoretical principles, professional practice and a community of people. As an interdisciplinary field the theoretical roots of HCI encompass a number of other disciplines including psychology, computing, ergonomics, and social sciences; however, it also has theoretical and practical challenges of its own. The evolving internal and external context of HCI, computers, have become smaller and less costly; this has led to changes in nature of the users and uses of computers, with corresponding impact on society. The paper explores the current challenges of computers from the cloud to digital fabrication and the need to design for solitude. It suggests that HCI should not just react to the changes around it, but also shape those changes.     

Capitalising Knowledge: Corporate Knowledge Management Investments

Knowledge is increasingly recognized as the key resource of business. Digital networks provide access to vast amounts of data and information but knowledge management tools and systems are required to translate this in a meaningful way. Knowledge management initiatives are unlikely to be successful unless they are integrated with business strategy, and related to the development of the core capabilities of the organisation. Sharing the discovery and synthesis of intellectual activity involves the creation of knowledge communities of practice. There is much evidence of commercially inspired corporate initiatives in this direction across all industrial sectors: leveraging existing intellectual capital; sharing best practice across multiple locations; data mining to build customer relationships; and creating knowledge networks to allow state–of–the–art solutions in professional services.     

Robust scalability analysis and SPM case studies

Scalability has become an attribute of paramount importance for computer systems used in business, scientific and engineering applications. Although scalability has been widely discussed, especially for pure parallel computer systems, it conveniently focuses on improving performance when increasing the number of computing processors. In fact, the term “scalable” is so much abused that it has become a marketing tool for computer vendors independent of the system’s technical qualifications. Since the primary objective of scalability analysis is to determine how well a system can work on larger problems with an increase in its size, we introduce here a generic definition of scalability. For illustrative purposes only, we apply this definition to PC clusters, a rather difficult subject due to their long communication latencies. Since scalability does not solely depend on the system architecture but also on the application programs and their actual management by the run-time environment, for the sake of illustration, we evaluate scalability for programs developed under the super-programming model (SPM) (Jin and Ziavras in IEEE Trans. Parallel Distrib. Syst. 15(9):783–794, 2004; J. Parallel Distrib. Comput. 65(10):1281–1289, 2005; IEICE Trans. Inf. Syst. E87-D(7):1774–1781, 2004).     

Computer security

A strong factor in the early development of computers was security – the computations that motivated their development, such as decrypting intercepted messages, generating gunnery tables, and developing weapons, had military applications. But the computers themselves were so big and so few that they were relatively easy to protect simply by limiting physical access to them to their programmers and operators. Today, computers have shrunk so that a web server can be hidden in a matchbox and have become so common that few people can give an accurate count of the number they have in their homes and automobiles, much less the number they use in the course of a day. Computers constantly communicate with one another; an isolated computer is crippled. The meaning and implications of “computer security” have changed over the years as well. This paper reviews major concepts and principles of computer security as it stands today. It strives not to delve deeply into specific technical areas such as operating system security, access control, network security, intrusion detection, and so on, but to paint the topic with a broad brush. Published online: 27 July 2001     

Flexible Self-Management Using the Model-View-Controller Pattern

A self-management infrastructure requires a self-representation to model system functionality concerns. The model-view-controller design pattern can improve concern separation in a self-representation. Future computing initiatives such as ubiquitous and pervasive computing, large-scale distribution, and on-demand computing will foster unpredictable and complex environments with challenging demands. Next-generation systems will require flexible system infrastructures that can adapt to both dynamic changes in operational requirements and environmental conditions, while providing predictable behavior in areas such as throughput, scalability, dependability, and security. Successful projects, once deployed, will require skilled administration personnel to install, configure, maintain, and provide 24/7 support. Message-oriented middleware is one of the foundations of distributed systems.     

面向高性能计算的在线教育实践平台的研究与实现

我国在高性能计算专业人才培养方面存在短板,传统的课堂教学中理论学习居多,实践环节偏少。为提升我国高性能计算人才的培养水平,提供一个灵活可用的高性能计算教育实践平台成为一个亟待解决的问题。本文设计并实现了一个面向高性能计算的在线教育实践平台系统,包括在线课程模块、题库模块、互动社区模块、虚拟实验室模块。基于该系统,教师可以在线开展高性能计算的理论和实践教学,布置高性能计算相关作业和并行编程任务,也可以创建高性能计算题库。学生可以在线学习相关课程、提交课程作业、交流讨论、进行高性能计算编程练习。本系统的开发可以提升目前高性能计算相关课程实践教学的水平,方便同学们进行课程实践学习。     

User incentive mechanism in blockchain-based online community: An empirical study of steemit

The rise of blockchain technology has brought innovations in various business domains and spawned a new form of organization—the decentralized autonomous organization (DAO). Steemit is recognized as one of the earliest blockchain-based online communities, and a typical example of DAO. By endowing community members with new roles, the decentralization of blockchain-based communities brings changes to the design of user incentive mechanisms. However, few studies have paid attention to the user incentive mechanism when users play the dual roles of social participant and community owner. On the basis of social capital theory and psychological ownership theory, this study explores Steemit's incentive mechanism by evaluating the impact of these dual roles on user active participation behavior. The study adopts a two-way fixed effect negative binomial regression to test the research model. The results show that users’ social capital, share capital, social feedback, and economic feedback positively affect their active participation behavior. At the same time, social feedback and economic feedback play moderating roles on the effects of the dual capitals. Overall, this research provides both theoretical insights and practical implications for understanding, designing, and governing blockchain-based online communities.     

Computer science and the market: Metamorphoses of fundamental ideas

Conclusion The interest in open systems in the West is increasing year after year. CSCW is thus slanted to become the most popular scientific-technical direction of the first years of the next century, especially as a result of the increased activity of American providers and the U.S. government program for the creation of an Internet-based “information highway of the century” [14]. For instance, as part of the program for large-scale acceptance of Internet, the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) allocates funding only to organizations that make their projects available on Internet [15], and the European Community officially subjected all European research to specific networking requirements [16]. Theoretical topics of CSCW, including computer hermeneutics and development of “computer Esperanto” will thus be strongly influenced by information science and information infrastructure, which are changing the industry of information production and information use in “first world” countries. We hope that we have managed to demonstrate that the drama in computer science is an apparent phenomenon, which is attributable in our domestic conditions to the absence of direct and effective links with the “open world”. Our view can be supported by the thought expressed by A. Toffler: “…some scientists paint a picture of the world of science as activated by its own inner logic and evolving according to its own laws in total isolation of the surrounding world. In this connection we cannot but remark that scientific hypotheses, theories, metaphors, and models are formed under the influence of economic, cultural, and political factors acting outside the walls of laboratories” [17]. If the forms of cognitive practice change with changes in methods of production, forms of social organization, engineering and technology, this means that we must elucidate the relationship between cognition and action, between theoretical and applied practice, between consciousness and behavior…. Where scientific research goes into decline, we observe narrow specialization of the scientific language and loss of its connections with the daily language.M. Wartofsky,Models Translated from Kibernetika i Sistemnyi Analiz, No. 2, pp. 112–124, March–April, 1995.     

The social influence of online collaborative community: the moderating effect of achievement

Online collaborative communities become particularly influential in contemporary Internet economy. However, these communities are often characterised by limited liability. Following the perspective of social influence, this study examines the impacts of three social influence modes in online collaborative communities of a famous online game. The moderating role of a player’s game achievement is also explored. Our results show that community identification is the most influential on online game continuance intention, especially for high achievement players. Community value congruence is likely to affect online game continuance intention for low achievement players. The impact of community normative influence on online game continuance intention appears to be curvilinear. This is more obvious for low achievement players. Implications for research and practice are also discussed.     

Yesterday’s tomorrows: notes on ubiquitous computing’s dominant vision

Ubiquitous computing is unusual amongst technological research arenas. Most areas of computer science research, such as programming language implementation, distributed operating system design, or denotational semantics, are defined largely by technical problems, and driven by building upon and elaborating a body of past results. Ubiquitous computing, by contrast, encompasses a wide range of disparate technological areas brought together by a focus upon a common vision. It is driven, then, not so much by the problems of the past but by the possibilities of the future. Ubiquitous computing’s vision, however, is over a decade old at this point, and we now inhabit the future imagined by its pioneers. The future, though, may not have worked out as the field collectively imagined. In this article, we explore the vision that has driven the ubiquitous computing research agenda and the contemporary practice that has emerged. Drawing on cross-cultural investigations of technology adoption, we argue for developing a “ubicomp of the present” which takes the messiness of everyday life as a central theme.