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:
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.)
This is a very well written description of these SNSs. The one question I have is about the trading aspect. By trade do you mean lend/exchange? Or do you mean sell?
ReplyDeleteI ask this question because back when I lived in Seattle I use to ride my bike past a large boat storage facility. I use to see these boats just sitting there never being used. I began to wonder if there was some way to encourage community ownership through a city SNS in some way. I guess what I'm saying is that I just wanted to go out on the lake but I didn't know anyone who had a boat. If I was able to gain trust through an SNS with someone who owned a boat maybe I would have been able to go out on that boat ride.
WOW... I got way off topic and I am not even sure I made any valid point. I guess I just like the idea of having a willingness to trade with other users.
As for your final project ideas your first suggestion reminded me of ebay sellers and how people are more wiling to buy from those with higher rantings. However, sometimes people with many high reviews will still have a couple of bad reviews. I wonder if people are more willing to through all of their status away on sites that have a relatively low cost.
I always pretty amazing with so many OCs with various type of services. Blogs always become the good way to start on looking at some particular OCs to join. That's why I always keep the update of some interesting blogs in my field. This class blog is also adding to the number of the blog which can help me on improving my knowledge about OCs. Thanks for sharing information about these two DVD's online site/discussion forum. It seem so many features i have to spend some time to play with these two OCs. I must admit that, I just take a look at briefly to these two sites and have not play much with the features. However, it seems a pretty good resources to start looking at DVD/Blue ray to purchased. Probably also to looking at some "limited edition cinema arts in the past."
ReplyDeleteI agree with you about reading. I also have to say sorry to all folks in this class by adding such a long blog post for you folks to read. Your final project is so great. I also wanna spent some other time to doing some small project on this. But, for this semester, I have to give up on doing a little tiny project. Hopefully can have your paper as a model for my next project.
You write about how, in both websites, users may get conflicting answers when a question is asked. I was wondering if you noticed what factors would lead a user to follow one person's advice over another one's. It would seem that social capital would have a big impact on this, but I was wondering if you saw any real world examples of this. I would assume that things like post counts and multiple users giving the same answer would lead someone to follow one person's advice versus another's.
ReplyDeleteoh I always enjoy following a deals thread, especially now with more deal aggregrators popping up (I follow mostly Gizmodo's deal of the day entry, aside from Groupon and local deal sites though these are not OCs).
ReplyDeleteYour second screenshot is interesting because I did not know before that such a niche topic to begin with can have quite a lively off-topic interaction as indicated by the thread and post numbers. It would be good if you can have a screenshot for the level of off topic interaction for the first OC. You did discuss it in your paragraph.
Great topic you have for the project. Personally, I have done many online transactions and so far 99% are positive experience. The one percent came early in my e-commerce learning curve. I always look at several factors before deciding to execute a transaction, definitely referring to the trust mechanism established by the host site, i.e. ebay or amazon, etc. So far, its been working for me. It would be interesting to figure out the reasoning behind trustworthy traders turn rogue/scammers.
> 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?
ReplyDeleteThis phenomenon has never happened to me in my online community experience, but I always wonder if things like this could be happening elsewhere on the Internet, after all we are building our trust entirely on a virtual base. As for a study though, the empirical data collection might be difficult, since this social phenomenon probably happen pretty rarely, and the subject might not be so cooperative as far as the study concerns.
I noticed that the HiDefDigest site does show users' number of posts and their feedback percentage, but one of your observations seemed to be that based on the posts you looked at, the community seems to interact without much regard to those numbers. I know most of us want to find patterns in interaction, especially when the assignment focuses on trust and social capital, but supporting the null hypothesis with observations like this is every bit as important.
ReplyDeleteWhile your final project topic ideas about discarding hard-earned social capital and reputation are particularly interesting to me (I'm presenting a paper in May at the ACM CHI conference about the mass migration of longstanding members away from an online community), one of the problems you might run into is a lack of data to help understand motivations. You can make a workable project out of this by finding examples of once-trusted individuals who "went rogue," and perhaps see if their behavior fit the patterns of scammers or other modes on online interaction from the literature, but you'll likely have to conclude with grounded speculation about why people abandoned their reputations. I look forward to seeing what you come up with.
I can see how looking at the traders rating can be a deciding factor in whether they are trustworthy or not.. similar to Ebay in which, I refuse to do any buying with a seller whose ratings are lower than 97%
ReplyDeleteWith Ebay there is a customer service to complain to and comment options available that buyers/users can share an experience with a seller.. did these sites have that option to?
@Phillip
ReplyDeleteTrading in these forums is through exchange and/or sell. About user trust on less popular online communities, that is a possibility. People rarely give out their name, address, or any other personally identifiable information to others. As such, if they decide that they no longer want to be part of that community, they can cut ties without consequence.
@Handsome
I'm glad that my post was helpful.
@Anthony
The biggest influence for whom the user believes is majority opinion. In cases where there is no clear majority, it seems to vary on a case-by-case basis. Some people follow the most technical-sounding and well written advice, or the person who sounds most confident. In other cases, they respond most favorably to the person who can relate to their issue and was in a similar situation.
Thinking it over, the number of posts a user has does not directly affect the user's social capital. It can influence a person's initial willingness to follow the advice if the post count is extremely low (say, <10) and cause them to ask for a second opinion, but the quality of the post is what is most important.
@Erenst
I enjoy deal sites as well, perhaps too much. I always feel like I "save" money by spending it. A screenshot would have been a good idea, I overlooked it at the time.
@susu
One observation I've made about the community is that it has become less friendly over the past few years. Users are quicker to make fun of others who deviate from the accepted norm, heckle users for posting deals that aren't good enough (or have been posted before, even if the previous post is months old), and just more rude in general. There are some places where it feels like the old community, and the deals forum is still up and running (the original reason I joined). I can only speculate that the scammers decided it was time to cut ties with the website and profit as much as they could, perhaps because they no longer liked the community, or because they adopted the same attitude that everyone else apparently has, and took it further.
@Professor Gazan
I think that post count as a metric was a bit of a stretch, seeing as the number of posts a user had did not directly scale with the amount of social capital a user had. What I was trying to say that there seems to be an arbitrary amount of posts a user needs to have to graduate from a new user to a member of the community (and thus be on equal terms with everyone else), unless the user joins the website with pre-established social capital (for example, an industry representative). There isn't anything concrete where users acknowledge this transition, but it seems as if users with a low post count don't get as much discussion and interaction as other users. This may be a byproduct of the fact that a person who posts a lot has interacted with and befriended more people than a user with a lower post count (which makes more sense).
That was the main issue I felt might hinder me in attempting to research the topic. I need to take a look and see if I can find enough data, or change my question to one that has more data (hopefully related to the original question). I'll try to email you early enough tomorrow about my final question.
@Caloha
I have a similar filtering scale for Ebay. Anyone below an arbitrary percentage threshold (90-95, depending on how I feel that day) is excluded, while I review all of the neutral and negative feedback to learn when and why it was given (I use www.toolhaus.org to screen out all of the positive feedback). As far as customer service, the website does have a formal structure of moderators and administrators that handle issues and there is a feedback system, but the moderators have a hands-off policy until a problem arises, and for most of these users, it was their first offense as far as bad trades go.