Lesley Anderson

Hosting good conversations: House Rules!

Read the ISPG policy for user behaviour in a MOO at http://ispg.csu.edu.au/subjects/cscw/moo/moo-policy.doc and compare it with the Community Guidelines at http://digg.com/guidelines.
Why do collaborative social software systems with synchronous and asynchronous communications need to develop a set of “rules of engagement“?

An online community is no different to other communities and environments within our society. Each of these mayhave slightly different rules, as their needs may differ, but rules none the less. Rules exist for a reason and online collaborative social software systems also need them, to ensure that contributions and interactions are fair to all users.

Users of collaborative social software systems need to feel safe using the particular site/software. They need to feel trust in the other community users and this will influence their participation within a community. Obviously if a user is abused or harassed by another user in the community, or a piece of writing or submission is plagiarised that trust is broken, conflict occurs and most likely the wronged user will stop contributing to the community.

Consideration must be given to the type of technology being utilised in online conversation within these communities. Synchronous conversation occurring in online chat or instant messaging systems differs from asynchronous conversation occurring perhaps through email or postings on a discussion board. Read the rest of this entry »

Hosting good conversations: House Rules!

Discuss three ways of providing users with more control in an online community.

There is range of methods to provide users with control within online communities, such as 

• Having a sense of value within a community,
  Users should feel that their contributions are valued and their point of view respected. User posts should be answered and/or discussed keeping in mind that contributors have a right to a particular point of view, even if it does differ from others community members.
• Allowing users to make decisions,
  This involves giving users options, like linking to the community using RSS or to other members of the community via “twitter”. Perhaps users may choose to “lurk” in a community and gain information about it or a particular topic by doing so, or may choose to be more active within the community by commenting on posts, beginning or continuing discussions. Read the rest of this entry »

Blog or Wiki Design.

Select ONE blogging or wiki product, such as the one you use in this subject- eg Blogger.
Write a 100-word summary of how it has supportive tools that are similar to the design advice in this topic.
In your summary, consider how it satisfies the nine design requirements and the 3 underlying principles, suggested by Kim (2000a; 2000b)?

I have used Wordpress as my blogging tool for this subject.  Designed specifically for online reflection and responsive interaction, it comes with supportive tools, which may vary across templates, and a huge number of optional “plug-ins” that can add to security, interactivity and usability. Flexibility, ease of installation and variety of tools allows a community blog to be created and customized to suit particular needs at any particular time.  This includes posts and comments being added, replied to, tracked and moderated as the community requires, either by visitors to the blog or those assigned user status through their blog profile.