Studying Community Dynamics
CS294h – 9 FEB 2010
USENET [Smith, Fiore]
Usenet Visualization (Viégas & Smith)Show correspondence patterns in text
forumsInitiate 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
obse
rver
part
icip
ant
new system
obse
rver
existing systempart
icip
ant
navelgazing
eat your owndog food
armchairphilosopher
field ofdreams
meddling researchers
obse
rver
existing systempart
icip
ant
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
DEMODEMO
Who is mybest friend?
The Strength of Weak Ties“Interpersonal Ties” – Strong, Weak, or AbsentTie 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?
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