session 5: tagging vs traditional cataloging

              I chose to look at social tagging vs. professional cataloging and classification. To help me explore the topic, I decided to examine the use of tagging at Seattle Public Library. 

       

Social tagging

           Tagging would be considered a  lightweight peer production process, as contributors work independently on very simple tasks with little involvement or interaction with other contributors  (Haythornthwaite, 2009).

            Leibenluft (2007), in talking about the success of Yahoo! Answers, noted that "The questions—"Why does the stomach make funny noises when it's hungry?" and "How do stoplights sense a car?" for instance—are difficult to answer with a traditional Web search." The same could be said of user tags. While LCSH subject headings cover objective aspects of items, such as setting and characters, tags can give users a peek into readers' subjective experiences with a text.

            Tagging shares some similarities with social annotation. Gazan (2008) notes that social annotators  are anonymous, but have "perceived authority" due to the fact that annotating indicates firsthand experience and an interest in taking the time to add annotations. Annotations allow searchers access to multiple perspectives on items, and encourage further annotation (Gazan, 2008).      
           A key word that jumped out at me was "uncontrolled" as an essential characteristic of social annotations. Having tags that are not edited or removed is key to creating a system that is user-focused vs. expert-focused. Uncontrolled tagging also presents users in a positive light - each user is perceived as having valid and relevant ideas to contribute.  

Tagging for 5 books 

              I started with a novel called "Imaginary Girls"  by Nova Ren Suma (2011). This is a YA novel, so I thought it might be more likely to have tags, as many YA readers are teens and likely more interested in tagging books. 

              These are the subject headings for "Imaginary Girls":

            Subject headings do a good job of representing factual elements of the item being cataloged. These elements include setting (Hudson River Valley, reservoir),  characters (sisters), and key plot elements (dead, supernatural). These are deliberately broad terms that can be used to group items. 

            These are the tags for "Imaginary Girls":

            Tags, on the other hand, tend to be opinion-based and often more specific.  Interestingly, some of the tags represent sophisticated literary elements such as tone - "moody" and "dark" give readers a feel for how other readers reacted emotionally to the text. Tags such as "codependency" and "dysfunctional family" add detail to the subject heading "sisters."   

            To better understand the interactions between subject headings and tags, I created a popplet. Categories created by me are in green, subject headings are in black, and user tags are blue.

            see it bigger here

             I decided to expand my search from YA fiction, and next looked up Haruki Murakami's "1Q84" (2011). This book has a measly two tags --  "literature - japan" and "new york times notable books 2011." Using the categories I created for "Imaginary Girls," the tags indicate genre and recognition/awards/lists.  The lack of tags is not due to low circulation or interest - at the time of this writing, the library system's 39 copies were checked out, with 21 holds. The book  had 9 comments. This shows that readers of this book are willing to log on and comment on the book, but choose not to leave tags.

            I also looked up an all-time favorite of mine -- "All the Names" by Jose Saramago (2000) -- that would fall into the same broad genre as "1Q84" (literary fiction). The library has 4 copies, with 3 available and 1 hold. This book has no tags.  Duguid (2006), when talking about peer production systems Wikipedia and Gracenote, observed that "the far reaches of the long tail truly suffer from neglect." This novel appears to be a good example of that.

            For contrast, I decided to look at a book that has been in the news recently -- "Fifty Shades of Gray" (2012). This would qualify as a "hot topic" that Duguid (2006) said users need to be aware of when using peer-produced resources. The library has 135 copies, with 355 holds. This is more than 4 times the number of 1Q84 copies. This made me wonder whether books need to reach a "tipping point" to gather tags. If a book attracts enough eyeballs, is tag generation almost guaranteed?

           These are the subject headings for "Fifty Shades":

 These are the tags for "Fifty Shades":

 see it bigger here

            
            "Fifty Shades" has 193 comments. From skimming the comments, a number of commenters found the book poorly written, but this is not reflected in the tags. Other commenter gripes not reflected in the tags is that the book is offensive because it portrays violence toward women, perverted/pornographic and inappropriate for library shelves, and overhyped.

            This made me wonder whether people choose to tag about the positive aspects of a book, or at least ones that they think will be of use to others. For instance, it may be helpful on an individual-item level to tag something as "poorly written," but it is unlikely that people will run searches for poorly written items.

            To round things out, I decided to examine the tags on a popular children's book, "Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!" (2003). The library has 27 copies, with 4 available and 2 holds.
            These are the subject tags for "Pigeon":

              These are the tags for "Pigeon": 

           see it bigger here

 

            This book shows some of the possible problems with tagging - repetition and misspellings or grammatical errors. Duplicate or very similar tags include "children's" and "children's", "pigeons" and "pigeon", and "hilarious" and "hilarous" (sic). Such duplication and errors were not seen in the other books, which made me wonder whether children were creating the tags. It's exciting to think about young library users being content creators within the catalog, but I wonder whether it would be useful to add spell-check or "Did you mean..." into the tag creation system.  Alternatively, the system could point out that a tag already exists and offer the option to "like" the tag as a form of participation.

How subject headings and tags can inform each other

            Subject headings are carefully controlled, and tagging systems could benefit from some quality control, as shown by the duplicates, misspellings, and grammatical errors seen in the "Pigeon" tags. One tradeoff: it it may be demotivating for taggers to see their duplicate tags removed from an item. One possible way to deal with this is to have a "like" system for tags, to measure how many people agree with a tag. This may encourage people to scan the tag list before adding a duplicate tag and may boost participation - instead of having to craft a tag, users can like tags that they agree with.

           One way in which the practice of social tagging could inform the use of subject headings is by adding reader-level opinions and viewpoints. Subject headings are useful, but definitely aimed toward information professionals. I don't propose necesssarily mixing reader opinions in with subject headings, but it might help catalog users to see how tags align with or elaborate on subject headings. Libraries might consider encouraging users to "tag around" a subject heading. It seems that this behavior already occurs (unconsciously) to some extent, as "Imaginary Girls" showed that users added tags (codependency, dysfunctional family) that provided some context for the "sisters" subject heading. In the case of "Pigeon," tags highlight a key aspect of the book -- humor -- that is not reflected in the subject headings. Visualizations that bring together subject headings and user tags could be the best of both worlds.

Conclusion           

           My examination of tags for items at Seattle Public Library found that:

• it appears that some users choose not to tag, but are willing to leave comments. This points to the importance of having a variety of ways for users to generate content
• tags tend to reflect positive/useful aspects of the book. Comments are a better place to look for critical discussion.
• many tags can be linked to subject headings, and it may be fruitful for catalog users to be able to see connections between the two.
• High-circulating or popular items draw a sufficient number of tags, but other items suffer from tag neglect. I was reminded of Ling et al.'s (2005) examination of MovieLens users, and how highlighting users' uniqueness motivated participation. Perhaps libraries could e-mail users who have read books that have not been tagged, encouraging them to add a few tags to the item. To protect users' privacy, users would have to "opt in" to receive such e-mails.

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?

session 3: nature vs. nurture and weeds

Readings: nature vs. nurture?

            Are Internet users' actions and frequency of contribution  predetermined by fairly stable personality traits, or can systems/community managers/peers motivate users to take action?

            Ling et al. (2005) found that alerting users about unique information they could add to the system motivated users to contribute more to a movie rating site. One mind-boggling point was that a small percentage of users contributes a disproportionate amount of content. I wondered, who are these "super-users," and what do they have in common? What traits, skills or knowledge do they have that influence this behavior? By understanding this, perhaps we can find ways to develop these traits in other users to ensure stronger virtual communities. Tedjamulia, Olsen, Dean and Albrecht (2005) explored the traits of consistent contributors, looking at factors such as self-efficacy, high need to achieve, intrinsic motivation, and trust, as well as environmental factors and goal setting/commitment.

            This statement also intrigued me: "Surprisingly, subjects in the uniqueness condition also perceived themselves as having views more similar to others in the group than did those in the non-unique group." (Ling et al., 2005).  I wondered whether  subjects who felt valued for their uniqueness then perceived the group as similar to strengthen their already positive feelings.

            Ling et al. also pointed out that users need feedback on how their contributions improve the community. For instance, the system might generate a congratulatory e-mail if a user rates a "rarely rated" movie, or even quantify a user's impact, by saying that the system's  recommendation ability has improved x% due to the user's actions. Alternatively, reviews could have a "like" button, or, like yelp, have a useful/funny/cool button so users can see how others respond to their contributions. This connects well with Tedjamulia, Olsen, Dean and Albrecht's assertion that "Extrinsic awards can be either controlling or informative." (2005, p. 6) This distinction jumped out at me based on my work experience. Having worked as a classroom teacher for 2 years, the issue of how to motivate students without taking away from the intrinsic satisfaction of completing a task was something I thought about daily. Rewards that remind contributors of their importance to the community and acknowledge their efforts can boost intrinsic motivation.

            Another fascinating finding was that users who were reminded that rating movies helps them or helps others reduced their ratings! I interpreted this as saying people have  a holistic, pro-social view of their virtual communities - they think about the benefit to themselves and to others, and appealing to one or the other isn't effective because it doesn't jibe with users' views.

            One question I asked myself after reading Ling et al. was: how do communities support user contribution over time? While these e-mails led to bumps in ratings the week after the e-mail was sent out, what fosters long-term participation?

            In contrast, Ridings and Gefen (2004) did not attempt to manipulate or influence user contributions, but understand why people join virtual communities. They found that friendship and information sharing were predominant reasons for membership, but that people also sought social support and recreation online. This is interesting to look at in light of Ling et al. (2005), as they focused primarily on motivating users to share more information (rate movies) but did not consider in depth the effects of friendship, social support and recreation and how these factors might influence information sharing. I also made a connection to Cheshire and Antin (2010), who argue that some of the current research presents the user as a "tabula rasa - lacking distinctive attitudes and predispositions but inclined to respond to various incentives and motivational feedback." It was no doubt beyond the scope of the Ling et al.'s work, but it would have been interesting to have the e-mail recipients provide some feedback on how they perceived the reminder e-mails.

            Ridings and Gefen pointed out that not every group on the Internet is a community. They used phrases such as  "lasting relationships," "persistently interacting members," and "ongoing exchanges" to highlight how a virtual community comprises a group of people who interact online over time. Despite that, the authors reminded us that "The Internet context is unique in that it provides a way for an individual to observe and learn from a group without the group even knowing that the individual is present."

            They also noted that user motivations for joining depended on whether groups catered to a "freely chosen" interest (like a hobby) or an aspect of their life that may not be voluntary (such as work or health issue).

Experiences: confirmations and extensions 

             My experience is in line with Ling et al.'s point about uniqueness being a motivating factor. For instance, when reading blog posts, I am more motivated to post a comment if I notice, after scanning others' comments, that the aspect of the post I wanted to address has not been discussed. However, if the post has dozens of comments and multiple commenters have made the same point, I usually don't leave a comment.
            One issue I was interested in was not addressed in the readings. While Ridings and Gefen looked at what motivated people to start participating in a virtual community, and Ling et al. and Tedjamulia, Dean, Olsen and Albrecht focused on participation, I wondered about linkages between the two. Because participants are seeking different things, they no doubt use virtual community features in different ways. It would have been interesting to see what features (messaging, search functions, ability to rate messages for usefulness, ability to add friends) users with different motivations used the most and which they ranked as most important. Every community draws people with different motivations, and understanding which features support the largest base of user needs may be key to maintaining a vigorous community.

Online community: Amazon.com's Young Adult Forum           

            The online community I investigated is the one of the forums (called "Customer Discussions") at Amazon.com.  One thing that got me interested me in exploring this community is that it doesn't really seem to be promoted by Amazon. For instance, the forums are not visible from the homepage. Even clicking on "shop by department" and choosing books doesn't lead you easily to the forums. You need to scroll all the way to the bottom before you get a list of the latest posts -- but only for the book forum. I clicked on the "What Are Customer Discussions?" link at the top right and found out that there appears to be no central gateway to see all forums. Instead, discussions must be accessed from product pages.

            I decided to type in a few of my favorite authors and see what kinds of forums popped up, since there was no central page to access a master list. By typing in YA author Markus Zusak, I found that there was a forum dedicated to his novel "The Book Thief," as well as a Textbook Buyback Forum and Young Adult Forum.

            Next  I looked up Haruki Murakami. His author page included his author forum, but clicking on an individual book, such as his latest novel "1Q84," or "Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World,"  showed no discussions had been created for the  book. This was surprising, particularly as 1Q84 has 537 customer reviews. Looking at the author forum showed that 1 of the 3 discussions had to do with 1Q84 and generated 19 responses.

            I investigated the literary fiction forum, which was suggested as a related forum from the 1Q84 page. I ran a search for "Haruki Murakami" and retrieved 26 results in that forum. Searching with the "search only this forum" limiter clicked off gave me 573 results from all Customer Discussions.

            For this post, I decided to examine the Young Adult Forum.

Modes of participation

•        "add your own message to the discussion" - includes "insert a product link" option (surprise, surprise!) and option to receive an e-mail when a new post is added

•  reply
•   permalink 
•    report abuse
•     x of x people think this post adds to the discussion. Do you? yes/no. 
•     track this discussion - shows how many others are tracking
•      RSS feed
•      search customer discussions with option to search discussion currently viewing

            Clicking on a forum participant's name will lead you to his or her profile page.  Users can display a photo, location, and link to their web site, but there is no built-in messaging option. Profiles can include badges such as "real name" or "top reviewer." Profiles also display the percentage of reviews deemed useful, reviews, interests, and frequently used tags.

Encouraging participation

            One way that participation is encouraged is through the "adds to the discussion" rating. This can be seen as encouraging users by providing some feedback on how others perceive their message, which can motivate posters to do more if their comments are well-received.  As Cheshire (2007, as cited in Cheshire and Antin, 2010) notes, "online interactions do not always have a defined audience, making it difficult to assess how many individuals might benefit from one's contribution." This feature could also be seen as conveying and upholding community expectations by transmitting approval and disapproval. This feature could be effective in theory, but in scanning the posts in the Young Adult Forum it seems that many readers do not take the time to rate others' participation, which limits feedback to users. Perhaps groups could set up a code of conduct that encourages others to rate responses on topics they view or comment on, or the system itself could provide a read/rate ratio and encourage users to rate a certain amount of  what they read. A simple message such as, "You clicked on x posts in the Young Adult Forum in the last week, and you rated x responses," could be helpful. Drawing on Ling et al.'s (2005) finding that talking about both self-benefit and group benefit led to a rise in movie ratings, this message could include a reminder about how rating responses is a quick and easy way to participate and stay active in the forums, while it helps build community and drive meaningful discussion.

            A second way that participation is encouraged is through badges, which Amazon says are used to identify "our best content contributors." (Badges are not visible within Customer Discussions, but can be viewed by clicking on a participant's profile). There are 10,000 people listed as Top Reviewers. This is effective in ensuring quality reviews, in that one component of the Top Reviewer ranking draws on how many people deem a review helpful. However, given that millions of people access Amazon daily, this badge system seems to encourage too small of a group. Thinking about books, it would be useful to have specialized badges such as "cookbook junkie" to highlight participants who focus on certain genres. It could also be useful to allow users to  rate reviews not just on helpfulness, but factors such as organization, accuracy (if the reader has used the same product) and detail. Or -- and I don't even know if the software/program exists for this -- readers could highlight parts of a review that they particularly liked and the program would display these or even analyze them and assign descriptors. What I'm envisioning would be something like a tag cloud, but more sophisticated. Lastly, badges are currently focused on user activity on product pages, but it would be helpful to create badges for forum participation.

            A third feature that encourages participation is users who respond positively to others' comments and extend the conversation (see example below).  I think this is one of the most powerful ways to build virtual community participation. One way that positive connections between forum users could be fostered is through the addition of basic SNS features such as private messaging or adding people as "friends."  

          
           A fourth feature -- if we consider lurkers as participants, as  Tedjamulia, Olsen, Dean and Albrecht (2005) and Ridings and Gefen (2004) do -- is the search function. I think this is fairly effective, as it allows users to limit their search to one forum or search all customer discussions. One improvement I would like to see is an incorporation of these search results with individual book and author pages. For instance, searching all customer discussions for Haruki Murakami brought up 573 results. It would be great to display the 10 most recent or 10 most popular customer discussions from all forums on his author page or on the page for each of his books.

Exploring the Young Adult Forum

            The Young Adult Forum covers 41 pages. I pulled 50 posts from throughout its history, and sought a diversity of posts in terms of content and amount of response. These are the five categories that emerged as most common:

• Request for recommendations (example: "YA futuristic short stories, kind of like Kara Dalkey's 'Hives'"):  18
• Seeking opinion ("should sex be encouraged in YA novels?"):  7
• Stumpers, or posts by people seeking to identify a book when they don't know the title or author ("Need HelpLooking for a YA werewolf book"):  7
•  Self-promotion of books, blogs, giveaways, etc ("Free book download - 'T'Aragam'"):  5
•   Two cents, or general questions that will appeal to a wide range of readers, as they are not specific to genre or authors ("What are you currently reading? (no self promos)"):  3

     

Category	Number (out of 50)	Mean participants	Mean total posts
Request for recommendations	18	26.94	42.88
Seeking opinions	7	14	26.7
Stumpers	7	2.28	3
Self-promotion	5	1.2	4.2
Two cents	3	97.3	1,276

            Three of the five post categories -- request for recommendations, seeking opinions, and stumpers -- indicate that the forum is well-used by participants with information needs. These posts altogether account for 32 of the 50 posts, or 64%.  
           Requests for recommendations were, as expected, the most common posts in the forum. They vary greatly in content, with some people specifying desired literary elements and age of reader
 ("Can you help me find books outside the fantasy genre that have wit or rich characters and stories, without weighty depression/relationship dysfunction themes, or vacuous beach girl mentality? I have a smart, poetic, 14 1/2 year-old who wants to read something interesting and well written. Thanks for your suggestions.") or mentioning a few titles that were liked or disliked ("Looking to buy my daughter some books for Christmas, she is 15 loved hunger games and uglies, hated twilight. I've ordered some of my favorites but not really up on current books, Any ideas?"). Some were very vague, such as "I am looking for some good recommendations for YA fiction for a 13 year old who is an advanced reader. I am looking for clean fic so no sex or swearing please... "

           In my initial classification, 3 of the 7 seeking opinion posts were classified "opinion/values," as they addressed the issue of objectionable content (namely, sex) in young adult books.  Several of these posts were written by parents seeking guidance in determining whether content was appropriate for their child. Other, less volatile, topics in this category included Kindle use and what readers liked and didn't like to see in sequels.

        I was not surprised to see that stumpers, while equally as common as opinion posts, generated low mean participants and mean responses.  These questions fare better on librarian listservs, where the average participant is a skilled searcher and usually has been exposed to many more books than the average reader.    
         Another unsurprising low performer in terms of participation and response were the self promotion posts. However,  I do wonder how effective these promotion posts are. It's impossible to know how many forum users downloaded a free e-book or entered a giveaway after viewing the post. Amazon forum information does not include views of posts, so there's no way to track how many people click on these types of posts.
          While 64% of the posts qualified as information-sharing, it also appears that friendship is a powerful motivator in the Young Adult Forum. While two cents posts accounted for the least amount -- only 3, or 6%  -- of the 50 posts I examined, the number of mean participants and mean responses is amazing when compared to the other 4 descriptive categories. Avid readers want to get to know other avid readers, and posts like these generate a lot of interest and response. It seems that two cents posts may be a good way to draw new members into the forums and build relationships among existing users.    

           

Discussion and evaluation

            Amazon's Young Adult Forum reminds me of a patch of weeds flourishing in the crack of a sidewalk. I'm not saying that the forum is a pest, but choose that term to highlight the resilience and persistence of folks who want to use the forums to connect with others despite the sometimes challenging environment. These challenges include lack of basic social networking site features such as private messaging and friending features and lack of a central access point. As Ridings and Gefen (2004) said, "patrons of virtual communities are motivated primarily not only for information but also because of the friendship and social support these virtual communities can entail."

            Ridings and Gefen offered a few suggestions on how virtual community managers could tailor their communities to better suit users' needs. For instance, communities with an emphasis on information sharing can ensure that bulletin boards are clearly labeled and named and offer strong search features. Because Amazon lacks a central access point for all forums, establishing this in itself would make the forums easier to locate and use. This could also facilitate the creation of subforums; for instance, from scanning the Young Adult Forum, it seems there may be enough interest to support subforums based on YA romance and dystopian fiction. Searching could be improved by adding a breakdown of results by forum of the "all Customer Discussions" search so users could easily determine which forums have the most discussion on their topic.
            Tedjamulia, Dean, Olsen and Albrecht (2005) discussed usability (an environmental factor) as having an influence on the personality factors that encourage contribution. Another environmental factor that Amazon could positively influence is personal responsibility. The "real name" badge is a good first step, but more could be done. Right now, the forums only show the commenter's hyperlinked name. A more information-rich ID that includes how many comments the participant has made, when they joined, and any forum badges earned could encourage more participation. This would be in line with Ridings and Gefen's suggestion that communities focused on friendship and social support make it easy for users to see who's responding to a post and member profiles.
          From what I've seen, it's clear that the forums are somewhat of an afterthought for Amazon. They appear to exist only because they may help someone decide to purchase a product. While I can understand that adding SNS features such as friending abilities may not be desirable for a retail site, I do think simple things like a central forums page and a way to see the forums (maybe latest posts or most active forums in the past hour) from the homepage would support the many users who are already using Amazon to pursue personal interests and build online communities.