Session 7

I apologize for the late entry and the lack of one last week.  I haven't been feeling so good over the last few weeks, which made writing these a lot more difficult than they should have been.  But anyway, on to the content.

For session 7, I decided to look at a website on which I've been a longtime member, www.cheapassgamer.com.  Although I've been a member for several years, I can't remember ever reading any of the official rules for the website.  My first attempt to find them since I first joined the website did not go so well, as I could not figure out where they were located.  After searching for several minutes to no avail, I finally decided to go through the new user registration process, during which I assumed that they would be prominently featured (seeing as new users would need to accept them in order to continue).  This turned out to be correct, with the website rules located here: http://www.cheapassgamer.com/forums/faq.php.

RULES

Cheap Ass Gamer is a website dedicated toward sharing deals involving video games within the community.  The forum rules consist mostly of the standard variety, with one that I deem fairly unique for the subject of its content, and one that specifically addresses keeping the primary focus of the website intact. In general, the standard rules are as follows: users are expected to keep their language and behavior clean and respectful to other users, information posted on the website must follow standard copyright and confidentiality clauses, and to not post any spam or solicitation messages.  The one rule that I found intriguing was that members must be at least thirteen years old; if a member is found to be or proclaims him or herself to be under the age of thirteen, he or she will be banned from the website.  I found it intriguing because the website's primary focus is about video games, which is a subject that people younger than thirteen can definitely find relevant.  The website explains the reason for this clause is to maintain a mature atmosphere, as well as allowing more freedom in what content can be posted on the website.  Specifically, the rules state that the intended audience of the content is for people eighteen or older, and the absolute cutoff of thirteen is because it does not want to collect personal information from people under thirteen for legal reasons.  Although this shrinks the size of the target audience, I understand and agree with their reasons.  Finally, information posted within the deals forum must actually be a deal -- no posts that advertise products that are not actually deals, no off-topic posts, and no advertising deals on personal websites unless officially approved by the website administrator.  The first two rules are to keep the deal forums as clean as possible so that all of the information contained within the forum pertains to what people browsing it are looking for, as (from personal experience) there are times when the forum moves quickly and posts less than a few hours old fall off of the first page.  The third rule is to maintain the integrity of the website, to ensure that people advertising deals that they provide themselves are not running a scam and that they are considered to be a reliable business.  In short, the rules on this website are established to protect the integrity, maturity, and relevancy of the website content.

 BROKEN RULES

On Cheap Ass Gamer, I know that any blatant rules violations are quickly addressed and removed from public view, so finding specific examples was a bit difficult.  In the end, I had to look for more subtle examples, which mostly fall under the category of trolling and harassment (as users have sufficient practice in attacking each other, but staying just civil enough to continue the discussion with light moderation).

1) Trolling and Harassment

Topic: Game Informer: Multiple sources confirm new HD console at E3 for Nintendo

Link: http://www.cheapassgamer.com/forums/showthread.php?p=8382585

If you've ever frequented a forum for video games (or any forum involving a heated rivalry between competing companies), you'd know that there are people who believe that their chosen brand is markedly better than all of the rest, and vehemently attack anyone who tries to say otherwise.  Cheap Ass Gamer is no exception.  I've been a member of the website for long enough to know that any extreme or blatant trolling and/or harassment is outright deleted rather quickly, so members who make posts that break this rule need to do so in a pseudo-subtle, snide sort of way.  While the discussion in this topic starts out civil, as time passes, more and more dissention is interjected until nearly all of the most recent posts are between users taking shots at each other, twisting facts to suit their own purposes.  Throughout the thread, the most prominently featured theme is the use of the strawman argument.  People scrutinize posts which oppose their views in order to find anything they can use to twist the opposition's message into one that supports their views.  For instance, when one user brings up that historically, Nintendo has the best support for backwards compatibility, another user dissects the first user's post and states all the ways that Nintendo does not support backwards compatibility and is thus, at best, no better than the other two competing companies.  While the reasons he gives for his argument are completely plausible, his reasons are laced with personal opinion presented as if they are the absolute truth ("given their terrible track record, we shouldn't expect compatibility more than one generation").  He conveniently takes the facts that best support his reasoning while excluding anything that does not support it. 

2) Trolling and Harassment

Blog: I've been ghettoized in an official capacity by CAG

Link: http://www.cheapassgamer.com/forums/blog.php?b=19543

This blog is a final response by the blogger to ongoing, constant harassment he received as a result from his blog posts.  While the blogs in question no longer exist (as he states he deleted all of them because he no longer felt welcome),  I can give a short backstory about them.  His blogs featured a hobby of his that some people felt was, to attempt to describe it in one word, "weird."  While there were some who appreciated  his blogs and others who merely tolerated them, there was also a persistent contingent of people (many of them repeat offenders) who made it their mission to harass and make fun of his hobby.  He took most of these hecklers in good faith, either ignoring them or talking to them under a civil tone, regardless of how vile their comments were.  This continued for a prolonged period of time, with him posting new blogs and people continuing to heckle him, up to the point at which this final blog was posted.  He stated the reason he would no longer create new blogs and was deleting all of his previous blogs was because he felt like he was no longer welcome on the website, due to a moderator going through all of his previously written blogs and hiding all of the pictures behind spoiler tags, and stating that all future blogs must have all pictures hidden behind spoiler tags as well.  He stated that he felt as if he was being unfairly discriminated against and did not want to deal with it anymore.  The community response to his blog at the start generally fell into three camps: Those who sympathized with him and felt that he was being discriminated against, those who felt that the events that unfolded were perfectly fine and he was simply overreacting, and those who berated him for singling out the moderator who went through all of his blogs and felt that his response to the situation was unfair to the moderator.  The moderator posted in a fair-minded tone as a response to this blog, after which the blogger posted an angry retort.  This then divided the people responding to the blog into two camps: Those who sided with the blogger, and those who sided with the moderator.  The majority of the people sided with the moderator, feeling that the blogger was overreacting and defended the moderator strongly.  For the few who sided with the blogger, their response was generally more mild, responding to the situation in general rather than the specific events unfolding in real time.  By the end, the blogger seems to no longer visit the website and the blog activity seems to have died out.

3) Piracy and other illegal acts/Trolling and harassment

Topic: Wal-Mart return policy for Xbox 360s?

Link: http://www.cheapassgamer.com/forums/showthread.php?t=148232

In this thread, a user asks about Wal-Mart's return policy, stating that he wants to know if it is possible for him to buy an Xbox 360 and use it while his current 360 is being repaired, then return the recently purchased 360 after he is done using it.  While this request may seem reasonable, to successfully complete this transaction, the user will need to commit return fraud.  User reaction to this idea is split, with some people giving him the answer he asked for, and others calling him out for his dishonesty.  In the end, he does get the answer he asked for, but he never makes a follow-up post responding to it, which makes me wonder if he read the answer to his question, or gave up on receiving a practical answer.

Personal thoughts/Moderation

1) For this situation, I would have likely stepped in earlier in the thread when the conversation started to get out of hand and attempted to quell the dissonance early on.  I would have been able to anticipate problems associating in this thread because of the subject material; whenever a topic singling out one particular video game console for speculation and/or praise appears, the discussion will inevitably drift toward people attacking one another as time progresses.  The moderator in this situation did seem to make note of this fact, as he stepped in shortly after the thread was starting to go downhill.  For administration purposes, these types of situations are inevitable whenever companies with loyal fanbases are competing against one another, so the best policy to curtail situations is to have moderators manage situations quickly and concisely, before they are able to get out of hand.  The best way to control a situation is to not let it escalate in the first place.

One thing that intrigued me was the ideas presented by Cosley et. al. (2009) in how collaboration allows for a collection of a better quality of information.  Often in threads such as the one I described, the original poster (OP) is the only one who can edit the main topic, and thus all information presented must wait for the OP to add it, and trust the OP to be providing accurate information.  If a user wants information to be added to the OP, he or she must inform the OP about the information, then wait for the OP to decide if he or she wants the information to be included, then the information is (or is not) added.  Like the situation with Chad, this can create a bottleneck of information that increases the amount of time necessary for information to be spread.  I can't recall how many times I've visited a thread on this website in which the original post has not been updated for months, and I am forced to manually read through all of the pages in the thread to learn what is going on.  The idea of allowing multiple collaborators to edit and proofread one post through peer collaboration relates to this scenario because it allows information to be shared and spread faster, which gives the people new material to discuss that takes them away from the hateful arguments.  It also helps to clear up mistakes and misunderstandings that may have risen from prior events.  While you cannot get rid of every troll, in my opinion, it would help the rational thinkers to collaborate and have a sensible debate, rather than allowing the trolls to take over and increase the negativity.

2) For this situation, my take on it is a bit unique due to the fact that I know the backstory to his "overreaction."  Without the backstory, I would feel as if he was entirely in the wrong and treat him a bit more heavy-handed than the moderators did in their situation.  From his blog post and following replies alone, I would have severely chastised him for taking his anger out on someone who clearly did not deserve it, but rather was the unfortunate soul who carried out the actions which the blogger deemed as unacceptable.  With the backstory in mind, I would have done more to prevent this situation from happening in the first place.  From his very first blog, there were people who made it their mission to harass and verbally torture him, for which moderators did nothing to remedy the situation.  This makes me think about Dibbell's article (2008), where people ruin other people's personal enjoyment because they find the chaos enjoyable.  While their actions were dealt with quickly, their actions were also more blatantly disruptive.  While the actions taken out on the blogger were on a smaller scale, they were no less disruptive to his personal well-being.  The only point of the disruptive comments seemed to be to see how much they could make the blogger squirm.  While thinking about this idea, it brought to mind the idea about rogue users mentioned by Gazan (2007).  Perhaps these users thought themselves to be the dedicated trolls to this blogger to ensure that he was constantly being made fun of, as well as be recognized for something.  While I could see a user expressing disdain over something they deem undesirable a few times before he or she tired of it, it does seem unusual for a user to continue to express his or her disdain for years, for this is the length of time during which the user posted blogs.  It seems akin to stalking, in a way.  Perhaps these users were acting out the part of a rogue user, in which their focus was concentrated on being the people known to be his anti-fan club, for the blogger in question had accumulated sufficient fame (or notoriety?) from his blogs.  These rogue users essentially shared the blogger's fame/notoriety with a lot less work than what the blogger did, simply by acting out the role of an antagonist.

 If I was able to have remedied the situation from the start, I would have made it a point to enforce upon the harassers that such actions were not permissible and were against the rules of the community, and attempted to keep interactions between the blogger and others civil.  It would most likely have been a monumentous effort to keep everyone in check, which may have been the reason the moderators let the harassment get out of hand, but if I was the administrator, I would lay some ground rules stating that actions such as what this user was experiencing was unacceptable, and violations would result in a temporary suspension from the website; repeated violations would result in a permanent ban.  While this may draw complaints from people who feel that the first amendment protects them and that they should have the right to say whatever they want, I feel that it is not right to allow several people to be happy at the expense of one.  One thing that I would certainly do is allow the initial situation to develop to the point where it would be obvious action needed to be taken, as, this way, I have strong reasons for invoking a major change to the community that people who disagree with my changes can see.  Kollock (1994) makes a good point about this subject, stating that "A large [punishment] imposed on a person facing an unusual problem may produce unwillingness to conform to the rules in the future."  If I act too quickly, this may cause community dissent and make them wary about doing anything that may be remotely questionable for fear of repercussions.  The irrational people may still disagree with my stricter policy, but those who are rational thinkers will be able to better understand why I decided to make a change, and perhaps the community will regard my change in a more favorable light than if I enacted it at the first sign of trouble.

3) This question (and ones like it) is asked all too often on the forums.  As the people who can join the forums are quite young (as young as 13, although I don't doubt that younger children join the website in spite of the 13-year-old age requirement), they don't have a strong notion of integrity and honesty -- they just want to make the most out of life and take what it gives them, and then take whatever else they can get their hands on.  The idea of return fraud doesn't have an explicitly negative connotation.  In essence, all return fraud is in this circumstance is borrowing a product from a store to use temporarily.  As this event would be okay if done with a friend, perhaps the poster sees it as a perfectly acceptable question to ask.  However, as this action is not condoned (moderators have posted in similar threads about how this question is not one that is permissible to be asked, and close the topic), I would answer the question clearly and concisely (state that the topic is not allowed to be discussed and make a point to mention that what the user intends to do will not be allowed, regardless of whether it is true or not in order to get the right message across).

In addition to being illegal, condoning return fraud has an additional effect on the community.  In the example that Kollock (1994) provides about how one person's greed  can hurt the entire community, so can return fraud hurt the video game community.  By committing return fraud, someone loses profits somewhere, which, in turn, may increase prices of the product, cause a product shortage due to less overhead, cause return policies to change and make it harder for people who have a legitimate return to complete it, or another negative ripple.  As none of these things are desired by the community, it is in the community's best interest to keep threads about subjects such as return fraud to a minimum, and to eliminate them as soon as possible.

My Five unwritten rules

1) Users must cite all information they provide with a source if they wish to state something as fact.

2) Public defamation on a personal note is not allowed on any level, regardless of context.

3) Any major action will be decided upon by a council.  The affected parties may be privy to view the key points of the discussion and make suggestions, however, their suggestions are merely that: suggestions.

4) Any major decisions made can be appealed, and the end result is fairly decided upon.

 5) Users who post about common disallowed topics will be given a warning to not do it again.  In addition, these topics will be described in a sticky post for users to see.

Session 5

For this session, the comparison I wished to look at was how social Q & A websites and libraries and schools complement one another in a person's ultimate search for an answer.  While it could be said that these two resources compete with each other to monopolize a person's attention, the fact is that, if one looks at the bigger picture, the information gained from the formal structure of schools and libraries and from the informal nature of Q & A websites can supplement each other's weaknesses in order to form a cohesive suite of information.

One of the biggest differences between the information that schools and libraries provide in contrast to Q & A websites (hereafter referred to as 'these sources') is the context in which information is presented.  Information gleaned from schools and libraries are typically organized by a general overall topic.  For example, if a person wishes to learn about rocks or oceans, he or she could easily find detailed information about them in a book or another printed material.  However, if that person wishes to learn about a specific question that is related but may be slightly out of context, such as, "how do people float in water?," he or she will be hard-pressed to figure out where in your book about oceans you can find this information, if it can even be found in the book at all.  In contrast, going to an online Q & A website, such as Yahoo! Answers, and  typing the exact question in produces several hits:

 

Clicking on any of these hits brings you to a link that answers the asked question.  If the question is nowhere to be found, you can ask it yourself, and, in time, receive an answer to it.  These Q & A websites help a person to find specific information quickly.

However, there is one problem with relying on Q & A websites as a trusted source of information: Sometimes, the information provided isn't correct at all, and with the amount of proposed answers a question can get, it results in information overload as the asker does not know who is right.  Take the same question about floating in water:

Here, the "best answer" is clearly incorrect to an informed reader.  Yet, because people marked it as a "best answer," any reader of this question may be inclined to believe it is correct.  In other cases, such is in the example Leibenluft mentions, the chosen answer may be completely absurd, yet because it was chosen as a "best answer," it may cause some people to believe it to be true.  For these types of situations, information from schools and libraries is an excellent way to analyze the validity of information found on the Q & A website.  Information found in a school or library can generally be considered trustworthy, as the information provided by them is peer reviewed (in most cases).  As the information from the Q & A session provides the asker context in which to research and double-check the answer they received, it narrows down the locations in which the asker needs to search.  Assuming that the Q & A answer was correct, the person can continue to work from there if he or she wished to learn more about the subject.  Schools andlibraries help to provide validity to the information found online.

Another aspect for which these sources varies is on the issue of accountability.  In person, everything you say and do will be associated with you.  As Dr. Gazan found, people may be hesitant to divulge information if divulging it has a possibility of being detrimental to their life.  In his example, an employee who critiques current policy in such a manner that is disliked by a corporate official may soon find him or herself out of a job.  In a similar manner, a person who mistakenly provides wrong information or expresses an unpopular opinion may be subject to ridicule from his or her peers.  This drastically dilutes the diversity of the information provided and the enthusiasm for which the person who is providing it has if he or she is not completely confident in his or her knowledge.  Through means of anonymity, people are free to express their own opinions without the fear of repercussions in everyday life.  Q & A websites can do this through pseudonyms, but schools and libraries are much more restricted in their way of providing anonymity.  While anonymity can be provided through anonymous queries through written work, if a person wishes to ask a question or provide an answer, he or she will immediately be held accountable for what he or she said.

However, one benefit of interacting in a face-to-face situation is the ability to be able to personally relate to the people you are interacting with and receive immediate feedback.  In person, any question asked will be answered almost immediately and is guaranteed to receive an answer (although whether or not the answer is relevant is another story).  Online, a question can sit for days before receiving an answer, if it receives an answer at all.

In addition, when you receive answers from people in person, you can relate to the context in which they present the information, while online, they need to spell it out for you.  In some cases, the backstory takes longer to read and interpret than the information itself does, if the answerer is even willing to write it.

Both Q & A websites and schools and libraries approach situations in different ways, and have different strengths and weaknesses.  Through these strengths and weaknesses, each source can cover for the other's deficiencies and form a more cohesive experience.  

Session 4

The readings this week analyzed trust metrics and social capital, and how they affect how a user is perceived by other users and the user's prestige in relation to other users.   Bourdieu and Wacquant (from Ellison et. al.) define social capital as "the sum of the resources, actual or virtual, that accrue to an individual or a group by virtue of possessing a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition."  In other words, social capital is a resource that a user can accumulate in order to improve his or her standing with other users.  This resource can either be visible (through post count, reputation, or some other quantifiable resource) or hidden (a user's actions grant the user respect or notoriety, depending on the user's actions), depending on the network.  In either case, the amount of social capital a user has is a determining factor on how much trust a person has.  According to Eryilmaz et. al. and Massa, the amount of trust a person has directly influences a user's desire  and willingness to cooperate with another user.  Trust metrics are a way to quantify this trust into a calculable value.

After debating about possible topics for communities, I decided to join the communities www.highdefdigest.com and www.blu-ray.com.  Both of these websites are dedicated toward covering all news, deals, and release dates for blu-rays, as well as hosting an extensive collection of reviews for blu-ray discs.  As far as I know, these are the two largest communities dedicated toward discussing everything about the blu-ray format.

Social Capital

High Def Digest primarily discusses its subject material (blu-rays, and a section for HD-DVD which seems to be mostly dead) and closely related topics, such as HDTVs and home theater systems (which are used in conjunction with blu-rays to view).  There is very little in the way of discussion unrelated to blu-rays, with a few forums dedicated to video games and one designated as the off-topic forum (named "The Water Cooler").  This adheres to Williams (from Ellison et. al.) definition of bridging social capital, where members interact with one another primarily discussing a similar topic.  After browsing the forum community, it is obvious that this forum is dedicated toward discussing blu-ray topics and not much else.  The community seems to be open and welcoming to new users, and users seem to mingle with one another on equal terms, such as in this conversation snippet:

Snippet of post on Highdefdigest

I'm not sure if it's obviously apparent, but users with different seniority and post counts operate on a fairly equal level.

Blu-ray.com, as its name suggests, is also built around a bridging social capital structure (Williams).  However, the forums also include several subforums for a greater variety of other topics, such as music, books, and humor.

Screenshot of General Discussion forum at blu-ray.com

In contrast to Highdefdigest, Blu-ray.com seems to encourage members to interact with one another in a more personal manner, where users can discuss a variety of topics and get to know each other better.  According to the definitions that Ellison et. al. sets based on Williams parameters, this is an example of bridging social capital.

Trust Metrics

There are several trust mechanics which apply to the communities.  Context dependent trust, or users trusting one another regarding shared content, is apparent in both websites (Eryilmaz et. al).  Users trust each other when discussing technical and opinionated information and follow a policy of self-policing, where if someone posts something that is not true or against popular opinion, other users chime in and correct or voice their own counter-opinion.  Allen et. al.'s trust mechanic of mutual cooperation and Massa's trust mechanic of trust metrics and reputation systems is present in Highdefdigest's forum sections where users can buy, sell, and trade various things (based on my observations, blu-ray.com seems to have a trading forum as well.  However, I cannot see it, leading me to believe that the trading forum is hidden to new users to prevent possible scammers).  Trading is done on the honor system, where both users trust one another to honor their part of the deal.  In order to give users some idea of how trustworthy another user is, Highdefdigest uses a feedback system where people post whether their trade was successful or not, and any other information the user deems as pertinent.

An individual's user feedback page

With this system, a user who wishes to trade with another user has an idea of how trustworthy the other user is through the amount of feedback and percentage of positive feedback the user has, and can gleam further details from other user's personal experiences by reading their personalized feedback comments.  Both websites contain a deals forum, in which users share deals they find on blu-rays and related items.  This follows Eryilmaz's truth mechanics of author trust and response time.  In these forums, users who view deals must trust that the thread creator is being truthful and has accurate information for which they can partake in the deal.  In addition, the thread creator must post the deal as soon as possible in order to provide the community with the greatest chance of being able to take advantage of the deal.  I've followed some online deals that expire minutes, sometimes seconds after they become available, in which cases I have waited at my computer for over an hour to successfully take advantage of the deal.  In my case, I am trusting that the thread author's information is accurate as if his information is inaccurate, I may be wasting my time waiting or worse, miss out on the deal.

Suggested Improvements

As I've explored both of these websites, I was satisfied with the majority of the social capital and trust mechanics structure, but did have a few minor suggestions.  Highdefdigest would benefit from having a more comprehensive and organized off-topic section to encourage a greater amount of bridging social capital, and blu-ray.com could have a view only mode of their trading section for new users in order for new users to know that a trading forum exists.  Both websites could also use a forum to archive expired deals, as I noticed that Highdefdigest left expired deals in the forum and just let them fall off of the first forum page and blu-ray.com seems to delete them.  It would be nice to put them in a separate subforum so users could continue the discussion, if such a discussion was ongoing, after the deal had expired.

Final Project Idea(s)

While reading these articles and researching these websites, one potential topic that came to mind was regarding trust metrics and reputation.  In order to build strong trust metrics and reputation in a social community, a user must spend much time and effort in establishing a positive, trustworthy reputation and after the user does so, the user is typically regarded as an outstanding, trustworthy member of the community and gains a lot of prestige.  However, on one website I frequent, there have been a string of several highly-regarded users who abruptly scammed other users through trades, going from completely trustworthy to completely untrustworthy.  Although the users-turned-scammers are relatively few in number compared to the total amount of users on the website, their acts have severely shaken the feeling of mutual trust between traders.  Other veteran traders who were previously considered undoubtedly trustworthy are now being scrutinized as if they could be the next potential scammer.  As such, my question is, what factors drive a person to establish, then discard their reputation?  (The wording is a bit awkward, as I lost my better structured question as I was thinking about how to write the backstory for it.)

Another potential topic would be, what is the role that SNS play in influencing or altering other media?  As this question came up to me in a random brainstorm just now, I haven't thought too much of it.  I intentionally left it broad to be open to change, but potential specifics could be video games, the English language, cross-platform overlap, etc.  (I'm partial to the first one, but I've done enough video game-related research to make me wonder if I should do something else.)

(As an aside, after burning out my eyes for the nth time reading 200-300 pages a week online between my classes, I finally decided to just print out the readings.  It made it a lot easier for me to research and write this assignment, although I feel like I'll be killing a tree every week.)