session 4: AikiWeb and Martial Arts Planet

Convincing evidence
            To answer this question, I thought back on articles that I had enjoyed or found the most interesting. Hodkinson's qualitative approach to Goth LiveJournal use really sticks out for me. As shown in my post on TIATTY and interviews with participants, I'm really interested in users' personal social computing experiences. Thus, I think personal interviews make pretty good evidence. Along those lines, I also like the use of scales, because it allows researchers to gather information from a larger group than is possible with personal interviews.

AikiWeb and Martial Arts Planet

              I have been studying the Japanese martial art aikido for a number of years, but have never participated in forums on the topic. I decided to explore Martial Arts Planet and AikiWeb. Martial Arts Planet has 63,175 members, almost 86 million posts, and 101,000 threads. Martial Arts Planet's purpose is "to bring people from around the world together to discuss and further our knowledge of the martial arts and associated topics. We pride ourselves on being one of the most welcoming and family forums on the web for the discussion of martial arts issues. Anyone from any walk of life is welcome to sign up to our site and participate in discussions about the martial arts we all know and love."

                AikiWeb has 22,936 members, more than 320,000 posts, and almost 21,000 threads. Unlike Martial Arts Planet, this is devoted solely to aikido. Its "principal purpose is to serve the Internet community as a repository and dissemination point for aikido information."

 Trust/trustworthiness mechanisms

                I really enjoyed reading Cheshire's (2011) article on trust and trustworthiness online. He points out that many online relationships are not trust relationships. Trust is built up over time and a series of interactions, and is dependent on context and situation, while the majority of online relationships are based on trustworthiness, which is a "characteristic or property of an individual."

               Going through the registration process immediately revealed one way in which AikiWeb differs from Martial Arts Planet. AikiWeb insists that people register with their real first and last name, and warns that "you may be at any time required to provide proof of your real name." The followup e-mail said my information was being "manually verified," but verification was completed within the day. (I don't have much experience with forums, so it'd be interesting to find out how many other forums insist on real names.)  The insistence on real names appears to be AikiWeb's primary  organizational trustworthiness mechanism. Making a key characteristic of all participating individuals - their real name - visible in forum interactions promotes trustworthiness.

                One interesting result of this insistence on real names was that within a few minutes of exploring the forums, I had found postings by and profiles for several people I had trained with in both California and Hawaii.  

                MAP's organizational trust mechanism is its "banned user list," which shows banned users, reason, date of banning, when the ban is lifted, and the banning moderator. This appears to operate as a trust mechanism, as it makes visible moderator activity and what kinds of behavior will result in user bans.

                On a side note, I am unsure whether this ban list is effective, as banned users are still able to post (their forum ID shows their banned status). For instance, the post "Forms or No Forms?" by permanently banned user subtlewind kicks off a substantial discussion. I also discovered that not all users appear to understand the ins and outs of banning, as seen on page 8 of this thread.

Trustworthiness
                 Cheshire talks about the importance of "third-party reputation information" in establishing trustworthiness, and both MAP and AikiWeb provide information about past user activity.

                Within the AikiWeb forums, people can see the member's real and user name, location and/or dojo, join date, number, and whether the user is offline or online. Contributing members' IDs are marked with a star and they have the option of uploading a photo.

                Within MAP, it appears that all members have the option of uploading a photo. Badges designate moderators, publishers, supporters, and yearly awards. Forum IDs also include the age, join date, location, posts, and number of times thanked.

               While AikiWeb insists on real names, it does have a subforum that allows people to post anonymously. This forum is intended to allow people to seek help with sensitive issues or situations.

Social capital 

               Social capital means different things to different people -- it can be a cause, effect, or even a process (Gleave, Welser, Lento, Smith, 2009). But at its core it about relationships and the benefits of those connections. Putnam (as cited in Williams, 2006) made a distinction between bridging and bonding social capital, noting that bridging brings together people from diverse backgrounds. Users with bridging social capital benefit  from information exchange, but get little emotional support. Emotional support comes from bonding social capital, which is usually achieved through connecting with similar individuals with whom you already have strong ties. 

              All AikiWeb users have their own profile page, and the option to add people to their buddy list. What intrigues me is that these buddy lists are not viewable by profile visitors.

              In contrast, Martial Arts Planet profiles display friends lists and last visitors to the page. I examined a few profiles of very active users (people who are moderators, have a high number of posts and thanks, etc) and it seems that the friend option is lightly used, if at all. My very quick investigation didn't find anyone who had more than 3 or 4 friends. I wonder whether this has to do with the wide-ranging nature of the forum - there are so many martial arts covered here that it while it may be good for bridging purposes, it may be difficult to bond with others based on the wide variety of martial arts experience.  

                In both forums, social capital is built by posting, either by starting new threads or responding to others. Both AikiWeb and Martial Arts Planet profiles show the number of posts by a member as well as a "posts per day" figure. Links to posts by and threads started by the user are included.
              AikiWeb gives users the option of having an AikiBlog. Users post poetry, updates on personal life and their aikido training,  or personal reflections.  The blog format is extremely bare-bones and nothing to look at, but it no doubt appeals to users because they have a built-in audience of fellow aikido practitioners.
              Martial Arts Planet offers a"thanks" feature. Profile viewers can also see how many "thanks" a user has received and how many posts the user received thanks for. Links to "thanked posts by user x" and "all posts thanked by user x" are included. Within the forums, the number of people who thank someone for a response and their names are shown below the response. 

               I'd like to investigate further how and why people use the thanking mechanism. For instance, in the post "23 and in love with Aikido? Can I really do it?" I noticed that user holyheadjch got 4 thanks for what I would consider a very basic response. 

                Thanking appears to be a way for people to minimally participate in forums and show that they're reading without having to actually write up a response. This may sound like laziness, but it may be effective for users who are new to a martial art and don't feel comfortable sharing their opinions/knowledge, but want to show that they are reading. It may also be a way to draw attention -- perhaps a user who wants to befriend another user could follow that user's posts and make a point of thanking them. It also motivates users, as they get a very rough idea of who read their post and found it useful.

Social roles

                Social roles are patterns of behavior and relationships that are both limiting and enabling - they make clear the structure of a society, while empowering people to behave in certain ways (Gleave, Welser, Lento & Smith, 2009). Gleave et al. note that "cultural elements are a key part of many conceptualizations of social roles" (2009, p. 2). This is an intriguing point when I consider that aikido is a Japanese martial art that in the United States is practiced by students who, by and large, have not directly experienced Japanese culture and have not studied the art in Japan. In aikido, there are clearly defined social roles. Students are split into two major groups - white belts (kyu ranks) and black belts (yudansha). Every dojo I've trained at has emphasized that senior students have a responsibility to help new or less experienced students, which may derive from traditional Japanese culture's sempai-kohai (senior-junior) relationships. Both MAP and AikiWeb do not have a profile field that lists user's rank, although I've seen users post their rank in their signature.

                While examining posts and responses on AikiWeb, I realized that the linear presentation of forums can make it difficult to easily trace whom converses with whom and the manner of their conversation (agreement, disagreement, humorous banter, etc). Having to plumb AikiWeb for social roles gave me a new appreciation for the ego network visualizations in Gleave et al. (2009).   

                To get a feel for the different social roles, I went through two posts and classified responses into several categories. The two posts I examined are "difficult uke or bad technique?" and "depression, has practicing Aikido helped in any way?" I found that social roles included commiserator, sheepdog, and clarifier. Commiserator is the most common role - people in this role have experienced the same problem and share their thoughts, personal experience, or concrete strategies they've used successfully (example: the first reply to the "difficult uke" post from Mary Eastland fits the commiserator role). Clarifiers don't necessarily address the original post, but zero in on respondents' answers and ask followup questions to elicit more detailed information (example: Basia Halliop's response on page 1 of the "difficult uke" post). Sheepdogs guard the flock (or individual members) by expressing support (Janet Rosen draws on her experience as a nurse to advocate that soupdragon1973 does not have to disclose his antidepressant medication use to his sensei) as well as present alternative, usually more positive explanations of a problem (example: Janet Rosen's positing that the "problem student" in a different thread is performing the best he or she can, given a physical disability). 

                In the post "depression, has practicing Aikido helped in any way?" I was reminded of Cheshire's observation that "risk-taking can act as a signal when individuals intentionally give up something of value without any explicit form of assurance." (2011, p. 52).  New user Alex Mitchell takes a risk when he elaborates on the reason for his question by mentioning that he had previously joined a "McDojo" for a significant amount of money and had followed the instructor's questionable advice to stop taking his depression medication. Mitchell appears to be signaling his desire to belong to the AikiWeb community as well as further his aikido studies. It appears that Mitchell doesn't feel his risk paid off - towards the end of the thread, he notes that "I don't feel welcome here" after Joe Curran posts "For the princely sum of £400.00 I will willingly give you advice on any subject you care to mention.i think the place you went to saw you coming. You must have more money than common sense."

               I examined two posts on MAP -- "23 and in love with Aikido? Can I really do it?" and "How do you view atemi?" The latter thread about halfway through morphed into a different discussion (at the original poster's initiative), so I only examined the first half. Roles that I identified included information-gatherers and commiserators. Information-gatherers provide additional resources -- examples in this thread include videos, one user's notes from a recent seminar, and links to a former forum user's posts on the topic). I noticed that MAP in general seems video-heavy, which is perhaps a result of its broader focus. People not familiar with aikido but interested in discussing it or comparing it to other arts will want to see videos, and users may find it more effective to post videos to provide a common starting point for discussion.

Improvements
           One improvement I would suggest for AikiWeb is to make buddy lists visible. Because I think users are already motivated and interested in participating in the site, given its narrow focus, making friends lists visible would help people find others whose views they are interested in.
           A second improvement I would like to see in AikiWeb is a way to acknowledge frequent participants. MAP has yearly awards and something along those lines might help AikiWeb by showing frequent posters that they are valued. It may even be useful to appoint moderators for certain high-volume subforums or groups of subforums.
          One improvement I would like to see in MAP is better moderation of forums. For instance, buried at the end of the "cool Aikido videos" thread is some interesting discussion about aikido as a martial art, etc., that should really be split off into its own thread. While I haven't explored the other subforums in MAP, I get the sense that the aikido forum is minor and thus may not be as closely moderated as the others.

Final project ideas
         I'm really interested in online self-disclosure, people's personal experiences taking risks online, and the outcome of their risk-taking. It seems that many people are taking risks, big or small, online - what drives them to do so, and does the outcome match up with their expectations? Alternatively, are there people who have had very bad outcomes from risk taking, and how has that changed how they use social computing?