This reading did a nice job of laying out some of the pros and cons of establishing different types of norms to guide behavior in e-communities, both through examples of different types of norms and explanations of other regulatory mechanisms like rules and laws that differ from norms in some key ways.
Some Highlights:
Definition of Norms in Kisler et al:
"Norms are beliefs shared by members of groups about what constitutes acceptable behavior in the group"
The reading compares and contrasts different types of norms
1. universal norms (applying to a wide range of behaviors beyond the community)
vs.
particular norms (specific to the community)
2. descriptive norms (learned through observation of what most others do)
example given: cutting different size meat chunks for adults and children
vs.
inductive norms (general principal guiding what people should do)
example given: distributing resources equally within a group
The article also provides some suggestions for design ideas that could aid in establishing norms:
1. Create salient norms
Exp: Recognize and Highlight Users whose behavior is appropriate
2 . Encouraging Sociability
Exp: Wikipedia Welcoming Committees
3. Encouraging Community Identity
Exp: Building in features that encourage your users to feel attached to the community, which will lead to higher levels of self-regulation of behavior
Well, you get my vote this week. This was a really helpful summary of a packed reading. This is one of those articles that is so thorough and clear that I'm not sure I have much to add in terms of insight. However, two things did catch my eye that I thought were worth pointing out as they may have implications for design theories in my own sight, and I imagine for several others' as well.
The first was the discussion of "chicken game" under the larger discussion of game theory (12). I thought this was very interesting when viewed through the lens of Web 2.0 sites that foster communities. A site like Amazon cannot exist as a community--nor an innovative or welcoming business--without user-provided content. This chicken game seemed to demonstrate this by showing how users (and other users of owners) mutually benefit from each others' cooperation, but still can benefit moderatly even when one doesn't fully cooperate. It's only when the entire cooperation breaks down that content isn't produced and the overal experience is diminished.
This supplements the overwhelming focus on Wikipedia in the latter pages. The authors were particularly interesting in this section when they were talking about WikiProjects within wikipedia where a group of editors work together to produce a project that may adhere to specific norms that differ from the larger norms of the group. Again, if one member begins not cooperating, the others can still have a pleasurable experience, but when no one participates the subgroup and the project fall through. So norms, although unspoken in instances like these, are inherently the backbone of these operations.
Hey Chris - I think in the chicken game, the total payoffs are highest when only one member contributes. So, one contributor is actually better than two. But, as the author points out the norms will be the same as in prisoner's dilemma.
Great summary. I want to add one clarification about descriptive and injunctive norms. I spent way to much time last summer reading Cialdini's work on this, so I hope I have this right.
A descriptive norm is basically what you said: observable actions that demonstrate what is generally accepted in a given situation.
An injunctive norms, on the other hand, come from a request to conform to a given behavior, not an observation about what people are doing. Your friend telling you that "College freshman shouldn't drink" is an injunctive norm. Going to college and seeing all of your roommates going out and drinking is a descriptive norm.
Submitted by John Blair on Wed, 02/06/2008 - 22:00.
0
points
John Blair
The article does a good job explaining the "unwritten rules" of norms and their affect on online and social communties. I found most of it rings true to me. It's application to all online communties though might be somewhat suspect, especially the passage from Wysocki regarding alt.hacker. Wysocki states that this community fails in community building because it is not social enough " The most obvious way that alt.hackers fails [in community building] is that it is extremely limited in [sociability]".
This is totally the point of the community. This is no different than the engineers from the Wenger et al reading last week wanting to exchange technical information with other technical people. If they wanted to "chit chat", they would go to the break room.
I'd argue that this community is probably one of the most pure of purpose and practice because of their "initiation" requirement of newbies. The people that are a part of this type of community demand that their members have a certain level of expertise, to gain the respect of the existing members, which is something that should be earned anyway, they are just enforcing it.
Submitted by Matt Adamo on Wed, 02/06/2008 - 22:21.
1
point
At the beginning of the reading, Kiesler explains why online community norms are a design challenge. One of these reasons is basically that there is little risk in violating norms because of anonymity and geographic distance (pg. 4). However, in a discussion of design ideas for making norms salient, Kiesler cites research claiming that an occassional norm violator actually makes norms more salient and thus it is best not to ban inappropriate behavior completely. Kiesler also cites research claiming that anonymity and geographic distance increase self-disclosure and help peple like each other (pg. 15), which strengthens the community and makes it less vulnerable to norm violators.
So which is it? Are anonymity/geographic distance a design challenge, or do they ultimately help make norms more salient and therefore provide a design solution? Or, am I just missing something?
Kiesler argued that anonymity and geographic distance (but I think mostly anonymity) encourages violation of norms because users have little fear of repercussions for their actions. He also argues that norm violation sometimes bolsters the norm being violated.
I don't see these statements as being in conflict. Clearly anonymity encourages flaming, illegal behavior, etc as discussed in the paper. Violations of norms can have positive effects when they are (a) rare and (b) violating a norm that is considered to be fair. Without rarity, the violations amount to disruptions rather than lessons from which we can learn. With any real frequency, these violations threaten to overturn the balance established by norms, which won't necessarily yield a positive result. However, given a certaind degree of rarity, and if the norm that was violated is also considered fair, then the violation is likely to highlight the reason that the norm was adopted in the first place. Even members of the community who may not have considered a norm to be particularly valuable may become indignant toward the outsider that is bucking the system. This strengthens the emphasis on norms and the unity of the community, which is a positive result.
* Norms reduce uncertainty in group communication.
* Norms exist in online communities.
* Anonymity and physical distance makes norms for online communities different from a real world community.
* Norms can made salient by identifying activities that conform to the norms.
But I failed to grasp many concepts from the paper.
I did not understand how norms increase perception of fairness and fostering cooperation.
I was not convinced by the Focus theory as well. The authors have given just three examples. I didn't understand how the theory relates to norm in online community. Are community managers supposed to induce a few deviations from the community norms so that everyone else can experience the repercussion for breaking the norm?
I think the point of the focus theory section is that you can give people a feedback signal as to how their behavior fits in with a larger picture, but as the energy use example illustrates, it could be a double edged sword.
People below the average (or median or whatever) may participate more when this signal is available, but it might also give reservation to those who are in the upper quartiles of participation if they don't understand what benefit they are creating for themselves or others. Showing someone that they're above average can either be a positive reinforcement tool, or be interpreted as "hey you're already participating a lot, so take it easy".
The key is to combine this signal of relative participation with information about how their continued participation is helpful and welcome.
Submitted by Tracy Liu on Thu, 02/07/2008 - 12:28.
0
points
This paper discusses the function of social norms and how to create social norms using different techniques on online communities comprehensively.
It first introduces the definition and characteristics of social norms, with the illustration on the problem of constructing social norms on online communities, including easy access, anonymous and weak tie relationship for online users. Furthermore, the authors propose four design goals for online communities with the implication of social norms, which contains that “norms will help members feel comfortable and safe”, “norms will help new members learn appropriate behavior and help old member teach newcomers”, “norms will lead to a perception of fairness” and “norms will foster cooperation within the group and prevent or mitigate internal strife”
It studies the method to foster social norms from different disciplinary. For example, the focus theory and identity theory from the perspective of social psychology, game theory analysis from economics, social network theory, social structure and institutional theory from the sphere of sociology.
Based on these theories, five design solutions are provided which includes “making norms salient”, “Increasing sociability”, “encouraging community identity” , “rule making” and “rewards”.
In the end of this paper, the authors also discuss some issues and tradeoffs briefly covering the size of communities, identity and efficiency.
From my opinion, this is a very comprehensive blueprint to study social norms on online communities. We can investigate the problems of developing, sustaining social norms on online communities discussed above with specific case study(success/failure), and we can build different models from economics to social network analysis to modeling the development of social norms on online communities. Further, we can study how to apply those design principles and alternatives on online communities specifically with certain environment or case.
However, I am confused with two of their arguments in this paper.
First, in the aspect of identity theory, why the depersonalization can help increase group identity as compared with individual bonds (P11), I am trying to get answer from the paper of Postmes etc, but currently this argument seems to contradict with my intuition. Anyone can help me figure out this point? Thanks!
Second, it seems that the authors want to link the social norms and cooperation results using causal relationship in the analysis of Prisoner Dilemma, but from the other hand, cooperation is an equilibrium in repeated Prisoner Dilemma instead of one shot game, in this sense, if members are explicitly told about the property of repeated games, there is no conflict with cooperation and self-interest as cooperation could both achieve self maximize payoff and Pareto Optimal, therefore, social norms could be developed by the action of converging to cooperation equilibrium, which makes their relationship reversal to the above one.
Norms are a form of informal social control in the sense that they are enforced by members of the community themselves through social pressure. (p.3) The main design goal of this reading is to establish norms in online community.
Why do we need norms? One of the reasons I can think of is that norms and laws are complementing each other in some ways, and norms could be more powerful since norms are accepted by most of users.
The differences between norms and laws:
Norms: implicit and don’t have an explicit goal, they are generated “bottom-up,” and have to be accepted by most people.
Rules/Laws: explicit and have an explicit goal, they are imposed “top-down,” and have explicit constituencies.
Compared with Lessig’s, the way that Kiesler et al. to regulate behaviors in online communities is more bottoms-up. Based on theories, Kiesler et al. provides different design alternatives to establish desired norms. I also feel this reading is also a nice model for me to apply theories to solve problems.
I think it's really interesting how, in order to join the hacker group, you must first hack the group. This is a pretty high barrier to entry that makes actual membership seem all the more worthwhile.
As far as the norm talk goes, I think norms are nice to have when the cost of moderating is high or the size of the community is too large to do hand-picked moderation. It's sort of how the Digg system works where users will bury comments that are stupid or off topic and promote the ones that are funny or insightful.
In a way, the Digg commenting system works on the established norms, and perhaps reinforces them as well.
I really enjoyed this article, perhaps because it provided so many rich (and recent!) examples to illustrate its assertions. I also liked how it framed the concept of norms in relation to theories from several fields, including social psychology, economics, and sociology. These references are important, I believe, since they help us understand why people act the way they do. These scientific findings then can inform the guidelines and design solutions that Kisler offers.
One topic I wish Kisler had addressed more in this article is how to decide what norms to use for a new online community. Is it better to start off with no norms, and let them develop from the ground-up by the community, as he seems to state early in the article? Or, is it preferable to import norms from other successful communities? Also, what are some of the most common norms which groups have - are there some universal norms that a community could start with? This is going to be important for us since we will be guiding a new community in this class later in the semester.
I'm not convinced by this article. Or I'm missing the point.
If "norms are unofficial expectations whereas laws and rules are official expectations that are enforced by formal agents" (p2), I don't understand how the supposed difference plays out in practice. Kisler often refers to norms as "discouraged practices". But when norms (to use the above definition) are violated, formal agents are often identified, intervene, and enforce.
Take for example Kisler's page 17 example about Wikipedia and sociability. If non-Wikipedia related discussions or personal information is posted on a user page, administrators will remove the content. Feels like a rule, just not enforced by owners. Also, the community can simply police itself, acting as an enforcing authority. Further, the User Page guidelines at Wikipedia note "Extremely offensive material may be removed on sight by any editor." So is the distinction between enforcing norms (expected behavior) and laws (required behavior) that punishments for norm violations may be appealed to and arbitrated by the owning/operational authority?
So even though administrators aren't always site owners, why must we make this distinction between "expectations" and "rules". Is the main difference the punishing agent - member vs. owner? Seems like Kisler may be just calling the same thing by a different name.
I'm taking 670 (Information in Organizations) this semester and I’m surprised how well these two compliment each other. My reading of Keisler is that norms are an implicit form of knowledge. More precisely they are a form of cultural knowledge, which is a type of implicit knowledge that is shared among group members (Choo 2006). Implicit knowledge is notoriously difficult to capture and in a group setting it is also a moving target as the group’s values shift over time.
This is why deviance in a group can be beneficial; it helps the members make their values explicit to contrast the deviant behavior. No one member knows what the norms for the group is but deviance can act as a boundary object that allows group members to reason publicly about their values. In this sense it helps the group clarify its cultural knowledge and, by externalizing its values, helps makes the implicit knowledge explicit.
Imagine trying to learn how to drive in a foreign country. If no one ever honked at you it would be difficult to determine when you were violating rules. Or you can learn by just watching who is getting honked at too.
Choo, Chun Wei. 2006. The Knowing Organization, 2nd edition. New York: Oxford Press.
I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.
Submitted by LizBlankenship on Fri, 02/08/2008 - 00:23.
1
point
I like the way you put this, even if I'm not necessarily in agreement with your use of "boundary object" if you mean it in the sense of Wenger et al. I think I see that you mean the conforming in-group to be one group (the online community or knowledgable law-abiding drivers), but how does the deviance serve as something useful to people outside that group? By informing them of norms, I suppose? I guess that makes some sense. I just your use of boundary object still doesn't completely jive with my understanding of the meaning, but maybe it's just me.
From the long Kiesler reading, other than supporting the other commenters here, I just want to summarize the difference between norms and rules in very simple terms. Norms are informal social control based on the community's beliefs, implicit and have no goal other than getting conformance. Norms need only be accepted by most members of the community to be "useful"--though whether a norm is good or bad depends on which side of the fence you are on.
Rules are formal, official expectations, enforced by formal agents, explicit and imposed top-down towards achieving a set objective. It must also be applicable to each and all person in the constituency.
I noticed that Kiesler's examples involved paedophile, romance, pornography -- while discussing design challenges? Is there a correlation between lust and anonymity? :-)
I was a little unclear what Kiesler et al. are trying to say on page 3: "Laws and rules also have constituencies – people to whom the law or rule applies, whereas norms do not have explicit constituencies." And then in the very next sentence, they say: "Rules and norms (sic – I believe they meant to say "laws" here) may apply to one person or to many, whereas norms, by definition, have to be accepted by most people in a community." I suppose if less than 50% of the people do accept a "norm" than it really is not a norm, but it seems to me that norms do have explicit constituencies – the entire community – it's just that the norms are not enforced.
As the authors point out, norms often become rules. In fact, it seems that in many cases with online communities, rules are simply codified norms. The codified norms (or rules) explicitly tell members, especially new ones, how to interact within the community – what behaviors are encouraged and which are discouraged. Sometimes, these rules are very specific, like the "3 revert rule" of Wikipedia. Often times, the rules are less concrete: "no flaming/flame wars allowed in the forum". Obviously, someone will have to make a judgement on what constitutes a flame war in this case since it's nearly impossible to make an explicit cut-off of when a lively discussion becomes a flame war (Godwin's law notwithstanding).
This leads me to my final point. It seems to me that community rules which are usually borne out of "non-adherence" of norms, eventually lead to what I will term "meta-norms." Online communities have existed for over 20 years now though the most significant expansion has been in the last ten years. Many of the rules established in these early communities live on as "meta-norms" for other communities, e.g. constant flaming will not be accepted, spam messages are unacceptable, Marcus Watts community guidelines from the Well (p. 7). Obviously, these meta-norms do not apply to all situations and all communities, but it seems clear that much of the core online behavior norms have come about because of explicit rules created to keep early online communities in check.
Title: A real life case of individuals violating online
norms and facing real world consequences.
The following links point to an incident that happened well
over 6-7 years ago at Cornell
University where 4 males
circulated an email throughout the internet.
The email contained some serious mysoginistic overtones. This email was further used in other forums ,online
communities to discuss issues of free speech, decorum, women’s rights. These discussions or metadiscussions
(“discussion about the forum itself -- comments about other postings and their
appropriateness, arguments about conventions, attempts to define the forum”
(author can be found on the Stanford
U. link) brought up
interesting issues on norms, behavior, etc.
For those that want to actually read the email that was
circulated and the battle that ensued, PLEASE BE ADVISED, IT USES COARSE
LANGUAGE AND IS HIGHLY OFFENSIVE(both links).
I don’t think it is necessary to read this email to place my argument
into context as I am sure we can think of similar occurrences that have
occurred on the web over the past few years.
There is a case to be made about identity theory and how
Netizens collectively brought about an injunction on the 4 students from
Cornell. The Netizens collectively made
their voices heard on how this type of writing and thinking was not only negative
but discriminatory towards women and harmful to the Internet community as a
whole. Despite their firm beliefs on
free speech certain individuals banded together to reprimand the 4 Cornell
students (i.e. flaming, informing school officials, authorities,etc).
My questions are the following:
When
members throughout various communities flamed these 4 individuals were
they breaking any norms?
Can
you right something via acting wrongly? (I am not being cheeky when asking
this. I don’t pretend to have the
answer)
Is
flaming corrective behavior?
Is
usurping the usurper a norm in itself for certain communities in extreme
situations?
Is
there a pervasive “collectivist culture” throughout the Web?
PS: All these 4 guys
got was a slap on the wrist from Cornell.
50 hours of community service each.
Easy!
I agree author's explanation of norms in the first part of this paper which is through the coomparison between norms and conventions, and norms and laws and regulations. However, I somewhat don't quite agree when he said norms are unofficial expectations whereas laws and rules are offcial expectations that are enforced by formal agents in that sometimes laws are formulated not because of expectations but just as a strong way to regulate social orders. Anyway, not a big thing in this paper.
Second part talks about design goals, all of which make sense and the first and last actually overlaps with each other to some extent.
Part threes provides a number of theories, i believe all are great theories, but I spend quite some time finishing this part actually and still did not feel very clear about all those theories.
Next part looks like a key part that provides real options for site managers to consider while creating its own community norms. (Personally, feel rewards is really important from incentive of participation perspective)
Most things have tradeoffs and so is norm. So it's definitely crutial to take all these issues into consideration in the decision process.
Kisler et al. explain that norms are implicit behavioral expectations, while laws and rules have explicit goals and typically have top-down characteristics. The authors also claim that norms have to be accepted by most people in a community. This statement is true to the extent that behavioral expectations are developed over time as community members interact. However, in my opinion, when norms become so prevalent in communities that community members “unforgivingly” expect new users to “know” community norms the first day he or she joins, then these norms basically become implicit rules.
Kisler et al. also suggest three characteristics of online communities that actually increase the likelihood that there will be norm-violators. They are 1) Ease of Access, 2) Anonymity, and 3) Weak-ties. Designing norms for online communities is hard because of these characteristics.
In terms of why norms are important, Kisler et al. list 4 functions of community norms, labeling them as four design goals.
1. Help members feel comfortable and safe
2. Help members learn appropriate behavior and help old members teach newcomers
3. Lead to a perception of fairness
4. Foster cooperation within groups and prevent or mitigate internal strife
My question is: Are norms developed, eventually materialized, or just simply existing in the back of people's minds? Either way, I found Kisler et al.’s use of the phrase “design goals”, somewhat confusing. How are gradually developed behavioral expectations supposed to be designed, as though they are laws and rules that are appropriate to be written up in a communities terms of services (like explained in Kim – Chapter 6 reading)
The Kisler is a very useful overview of a variety of literatures, although it visits them perhaps too briefly. In addition it misses a number of literatures, most notably from political science, where behavior between nations is entirely norm-based since there are no laws or world state to enforce them (international law is really just norms).
The last section should be removed. It presupposes that harm is objective and cannot be contested. The author seems to have decided which individuals are simply doing harm and making excuses, which is a terribly shallow way of undertaking the topic.
-------------------------------------------------------- PHartzog@umich.edu
--------------------------------------------------------
The Universe is made up of stories, not atoms.
--Muriel Rukeyser
Submitted by Sean Munson on Sun, 02/10/2008 - 18:21.
0
points
Some expanded margin notes:
Identity theory: balancing community / subgroup identity seems like an interesting challenge. Are people loyal members of a site-wide community or of their subgroups? If they are loyal to a subgroup, it seems like there is a greater risk of that subgroup packing up and leaving if their norms are no longer compatible with site-wide norms. An alternative might be that if there's a cohesive enough subgroup, they can claim a piece of the space and use their own norms and rules in it. (Also: sub-group <--> subgroup conflict?). On the other hand, we've already talked about some of the benefits of having robust sub-groups.
I would have liked to see more of a discussion of what happens when a site's designers / adminstrators make a very substantial change to rules/incentives (more of a change than codifying norms into rules). I'm thinking a bit about the backlash that eBay got from some sellers after they recently changed their fees. My understanding of it was that they were making the fee changes to better incentivize certain behaviors, but this upset people who were behaving in other ways. Is there a way to manage expectations so that people are more okay with changing rules/norms? (Maybe designers just stick a big old "beta" at the top of the page -- though Google has ruined the term?) What would be the negative consequences of having a space with norms and rules that are perceived as less stable?
I really liked the alt.Hackers example. Need some tolerance of off-topic conversation if you want sociability (which, in my definition, is necessary of community.) The Wikipedia example feels a bit more difficult. If they aren't socializing much on user pages, I'd be curious to know much the most frequent contributors (people who might be the core of any community?), or clusters of the most frequent contributors, are using other channels to socialize. (Or even how much adopted users and their adoptors communicate about off topic things... actually, that might be sort of interesting -- do an experiment in which some welcoming messages or adoption messages include personal information and some don't, and see which users stick around to contribute more).
Submitted by Daniel Zhou on Sun, 02/10/2008 - 20:24.
0
points
I really like this draft paper. It lays out the design goals, theories, and design alternatives of norms in online communities. In addition, it also talks about the concepts of norms, the importance to online communities, and the issues and tradeoffs. The paper is almost like one chapter from the Online Community Handbook.
Some points from the paper:
Four design goals:
Norms will help members feel comfortable and safe.
Norms will help new members learn appropriate behavior and help old members teach newcomers.
Norms will lead to a perception of fairness.
Norms will foster cooperation within the gruop and prevent or mitigate internal strife.
Theories:
(psychology) Focus theory: norm had to be salien, that is, provoke attention, to be powerful.
(psychology) Identity theory: when people identify with a group, their own self concept becomes enmeshed with the identity of the group.
(economics) Game theory: norms emerge to enforce cooperation in situations in which individuals or subgroups have conflicting self-interests or incentives.
(sociology) Social network theory: networks are a vehicle for monitoring compliance to norms and for spreading sanctions.
(sociology) Social structure and institutional theories: the costs of information and transactions lead to concerns about reputation, trust, social values, and norms.
Design alternatives:
Making norms salient
Increasing sociability
Encouraging community identity (barriers to entry, subgroups)
Norms, laws, and conventions in E-Communiites
This reading did a nice job of laying out some of the pros and cons of establishing different types of norms to guide behavior in e-communities, both through examples of different types of norms and explanations of other regulatory mechanisms like rules and laws that differ from norms in some key ways.
Some Highlights:
Definition of Norms in Kisler et al:
"Norms are beliefs shared by members of groups about what constitutes acceptable behavior in the group"
The reading compares and contrasts different types of norms
1. universal norms (applying to a wide range of behaviors beyond the community)
vs.
particular norms (specific to the community)
2. descriptive norms (learned through observation of what most others do)
example given: cutting different size meat chunks for adults and children
vs.
inductive norms (general principal guiding what people should do)
example given: distributing resources equally within a group
The article also provides some suggestions for design ideas that could aid in establishing norms:
1. Create salient norms
Exp: Recognize and Highlight Users whose behavior is appropriate
2 . Encouraging Sociability
Exp: Wikipedia Welcoming Committees
3. Encouraging Community Identity
Exp: Building in features that encourage your users to feel attached to the community, which will lead to higher levels of self-regulation of behavior
4. Rule Making
5 . Rewards
Exps: Intrinsic (community citizenship,reciprocity)
Extrinsic (Offering prizes to recognize top contributors)
Lisa McLaughlin
Norms in Web 2.0 and Wikipedia
Well, you get my vote this week. This was a really helpful summary of a packed reading. This is one of those articles that is so thorough and clear that I'm not sure I have much to add in terms of insight. However, two things did catch my eye that I thought were worth pointing out as they may have implications for design theories in my own sight, and I imagine for several others' as well.
The first was the discussion of "chicken game" under the larger discussion of game theory (12). I thought this was very interesting when viewed through the lens of Web 2.0 sites that foster communities. A site like Amazon cannot exist as a community--nor an innovative or welcoming business--without user-provided content. This chicken game seemed to demonstrate this by showing how users (and other users of owners) mutually benefit from each others' cooperation, but still can benefit moderatly even when one doesn't fully cooperate. It's only when the entire cooperation breaks down that content isn't produced and the overal experience is diminished.
This supplements the overwhelming focus on Wikipedia in the latter pages. The authors were particularly interesting in this section when they were talking about WikiProjects within wikipedia where a group of editors work together to produce a project that may adhere to specific norms that differ from the larger norms of the group. Again, if one member begins not cooperating, the others can still have a pleasurable experience, but when no one participates the subgroup and the project fall through. So norms, although unspoken in instances like these, are inherently the backbone of these operations.
Chicken Game
Hey Chris - I think in the chicken game, the total payoffs are highest when only one member contributes. So, one contributor is actually better than two. But, as the author points out the norms will be the same as in prisoner's dilemma.
Clarification: Descriptive and Injunctive Norms
Great summary. I want to add one clarification about descriptive and injunctive norms. I spent way to much time last summer reading Cialdini's work on this, so I hope I have this right.
A descriptive norm is basically what you said: observable actions that demonstrate what is generally accepted in a given situation.
An injunctive norms, on the other hand, come from a request to conform to a given behavior, not an observation about what people are doing. Your friend telling you that "College freshman shouldn't drink" is an injunctive norm. Going to college and seeing all of your roommates going out and drinking is a descriptive norm.
Kiesler et al - Norms
John Blair
The article does a good job explaining the "unwritten rules" of norms and their affect on online and social communties. I found most of it rings true to me. It's application to all online communties though might be somewhat suspect, especially the passage from Wysocki regarding alt.hacker. Wysocki states that this community fails in community building because it is not social enough " The most obvious way that alt.hackers fails [in community building] is that it is extremely limited in [sociability]".
This is totally the point of the community. This is no different than the engineers from the Wenger et al reading last week wanting to exchange technical information with other technical people. If they wanted to "chit chat", they would go to the break room.
I'd argue that this community is probably one of the most pure of purpose and practice because of their "initiation" requirement of newbies. The people that are a part of this type of community demand that their members have a certain level of expertise, to gain the respect of the existing members, which is something that should be earned anyway, they are just enforcing it.
Question about some of Kiesler's claims
At the beginning of the reading, Kiesler explains why online community norms are a design challenge. One of these reasons is basically that there is little risk in violating norms because of anonymity and geographic distance (pg. 4). However, in a discussion of design ideas for making norms salient, Kiesler cites research claiming that an occassional norm violator actually makes norms more salient and thus it is best not to ban inappropriate behavior completely. Kiesler also cites research claiming that anonymity and geographic distance increase self-disclosure and help peple like each other (pg. 15), which strengthens the community and makes it less vulnerable to norm violators.
So which is it? Are anonymity/geographic distance a design challenge, or do they ultimately help make norms more salient and therefore provide a design solution? Or, am I just missing something?
When norm violations are positive
Kiesler argued that anonymity and geographic distance (but I think mostly anonymity) encourages violation of norms because users have little fear of repercussions for their actions. He also argues that norm violation sometimes bolsters the norm being violated.
I don't see these statements as being in conflict. Clearly anonymity encourages flaming, illegal behavior, etc as discussed in the paper. Violations of norms can have positive effects when they are (a) rare and (b) violating a norm that is considered to be fair. Without rarity, the violations amount to disruptions rather than lessons from which we can learn. With any real frequency, these violations threaten to overturn the balance established by norms, which won't necessarily yield a positive result. However, given a certaind degree of rarity, and if the norm that was violated is also considered fair, then the violation is likely to highlight the reason that the norm was adopted in the first place. Even members of the community who may not have considered a norm to be particularly valuable may become indignant toward the outsider that is bucking the system. This strengthens the emphasis on norms and the unity of the community, which is a positive result.
Too many examples is not the norm
* Norms reduce uncertainty in group communication.
* Norms exist in online communities.
* Anonymity and physical distance makes norms for online communities different from a real world community.
* Norms can made salient by identifying activities that conform to the norms.
But I failed to grasp many concepts from the paper.
I did not understand how norms increase perception of fairness and fostering cooperation.
I was not convinced by the Focus theory as well. The authors have given just three examples. I didn't understand how the theory relates to norm in online community. Are community managers supposed to induce a few deviations from the community norms so that everyone else can experience the repercussion for breaking the norm?
focus theory and norms
I think the point of the focus theory section is that you can give people a feedback signal as to how their behavior fits in with a larger picture, but as the energy use example illustrates, it could be a double edged sword.
People below the average (or median or whatever) may participate more when this signal is available, but it might also give reservation to those who are in the upper quartiles of participation if they don't understand what benefit they are creating for themselves or others. Showing someone that they're above average can either be a positive reinforcement tool, or be interpreted as "hey you're already participating a lot, so take it easy".
The key is to combine this signal of relative participation with information about how their continued participation is helpful and welcome.
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oostendo@umich.edu
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Norms in Online Communities
This paper discusses the function of social norms and how to create social norms using different techniques on online communities comprehensively.
It first introduces the definition and characteristics of social norms, with the illustration on the problem of constructing social norms on online communities, including easy access, anonymous and weak tie relationship for online users. Furthermore, the authors propose four design goals for online communities with the implication of social norms, which contains that “norms will help members feel comfortable and safe”, “norms will help new members learn appropriate behavior and help old member teach newcomers”, “norms will lead to a perception of fairness” and “norms will foster cooperation within the group and prevent or mitigate internal strife”
It studies the method to foster social norms from different disciplinary. For example, the focus theory and identity theory from the perspective of social psychology, game theory analysis from economics, social network theory, social structure and institutional theory from the sphere of sociology.
Based on these theories, five design solutions are provided which includes “making norms salient”, “Increasing sociability”, “encouraging community identity” , “rule making” and “rewards”.
In the end of this paper, the authors also discuss some issues and tradeoffs briefly covering the size of communities, identity and efficiency.
From my opinion, this is a very comprehensive blueprint to study social norms on online communities. We can investigate the problems of developing, sustaining social norms on online communities discussed above with specific case study(success/failure), and we can build different models from economics to social network analysis to modeling the development of social norms on online communities. Further, we can study how to apply those design principles and alternatives on online communities specifically with certain environment or case.
However, I am confused with two of their arguments in this paper.
First, in the aspect of identity theory, why the depersonalization can help increase group identity as compared with individual bonds (P11), I am trying to get answer from the paper of Postmes etc, but currently this argument seems to contradict with my intuition. Anyone can help me figure out this point? Thanks!
Second, it seems that the authors want to link the social norms and cooperation results using causal relationship in the analysis of Prisoner Dilemma, but from the other hand, cooperation is an equilibrium in repeated Prisoner Dilemma instead of one shot game, in this sense, if members are explicitly told about the property of repeated games, there is no conflict with cooperation and self-interest as cooperation could both achieve self maximize payoff and Pareto Optimal, therefore, social norms could be developed by the action of converging to cooperation equilibrium, which makes their relationship reversal to the above one.
Norms vs. Laws
Norms are a form of informal social control in the sense that they are enforced by members of the community themselves through social pressure. (p.3) The main design goal of this reading is to establish norms in online community.
Why do we need norms? One of the reasons I can think of is that norms and laws are complementing each other in some ways, and norms could be more powerful since norms are accepted by most of users.
The differences between norms and laws:
Norms: implicit and don’t have an explicit goal, they are generated “bottom-up,” and have to be accepted by most people.
Rules/Laws: explicit and have an explicit goal, they are imposed “top-down,” and have explicit constituencies.
Compared with Lessig’s, the way that Kiesler et al. to regulate behaviors in online communities is more bottoms-up. Based on theories, Kiesler et al. provides different design alternatives to establish desired norms. I also feel this reading is also a nice model for me to apply theories to solve problems.
Barriers to entry
I think it's really interesting how, in order to join the hacker group, you must first hack the group. This is a pretty high barrier to entry that makes actual membership seem all the more worthwhile.
As far as the norm talk goes, I think norms are nice to have when the cost of moderating is high or the size of the community is too large to do hand-picked moderation. It's sort of how the Digg system works where users will bury comments that are stupid or off topic and promote the ones that are funny or insightful.
In a way, the Digg commenting system works on the established norms, and perhaps reinforces them as well.
If you disagree, digg me down!
A great article
I really enjoyed this article, perhaps because it provided so many rich (and recent!) examples to illustrate its assertions. I also liked how it framed the concept of norms in relation to theories from several fields, including social psychology, economics, and sociology. These references are important, I believe, since they help us understand why people act the way they do. These scientific findings then can inform the guidelines and design solutions that Kisler offers.
One topic I wish Kisler had addressed more in this article is how to decide what norms to use for a new online community. Is it better to start off with no norms, and let them develop from the ground-up by the community, as he seems to state early in the article? Or, is it preferable to import norms from other successful communities? Also, what are some of the most common norms which groups have - are there some universal norms that a community could start with? This is going to be important for us since we will be guiding a new community in this class later in the semester.
confused
I'm not convinced by this article. Or I'm missing the point.
If "norms are unofficial expectations whereas laws and rules are official expectations that are enforced by formal agents" (p2), I don't understand how the supposed difference plays out in practice. Kisler often refers to norms as "discouraged practices". But when norms (to use the above definition) are violated, formal agents are often identified, intervene, and enforce.
Take for example Kisler's page 17 example about Wikipedia and sociability. If non-Wikipedia related discussions or personal information is posted on a user page, administrators will remove the content. Feels like a rule, just not enforced by owners. Also, the community can simply police itself, acting as an enforcing authority. Further, the User Page guidelines at Wikipedia note "Extremely offensive material may be removed on sight by any editor." So is the distinction between enforcing norms (expected behavior) and laws (required behavior) that punishments for norm violations may be appealed to and arbitrated by the owning/operational authority?
So even though administrators aren't always site owners, why must we make this distinction between "expectations" and "rules". Is the main difference the punishing agent - member vs. owner? Seems like Kisler may be just calling the same thing by a different name.
Cultural knowledge and norms
I'm taking 670 (Information in Organizations) this semester and I’m surprised how well these two compliment each other. My reading of Keisler is that norms are an implicit form of knowledge. More precisely they are a form of cultural knowledge, which is a type of implicit knowledge that is shared among group members (Choo 2006). Implicit knowledge is notoriously difficult to capture and in a group setting it is also a moving target as the group’s values shift over time.
This is why deviance in a group can be beneficial; it helps the members make their values explicit to contrast the deviant behavior. No one member knows what the norms for the group is but deviance can act as a boundary object that allows group members to reason publicly about their values. In this sense it helps the group clarify its cultural knowledge and, by externalizing its values, helps makes the implicit knowledge explicit.
Imagine trying to learn how to drive in a foreign country. If no one ever honked at you it would be difficult to determine when you were violating rules. Or you can learn by just watching who is getting honked at too.
Choo, Chun Wei. 2006. The Knowing Organization, 2nd edition. New York: Oxford Press.
I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.
-Jorge Luis Borges
deviance as boundary object?
I like the way you put this, even if I'm not necessarily in agreement with your use of "boundary object" if you mean it in the sense of Wenger et al. I think I see that you mean the conforming in-group to be one group (the online community or knowledgable law-abiding drivers), but how does the deviance serve as something useful to people outside that group? By informing them of norms, I suppose? I guess that makes some sense. I just your use of boundary object still doesn't completely jive with my understanding of the meaning, but maybe it's just me.
perhaps just a reification?
Perhaps the deviant behavior that gets singled out and discussed is just a reification of deviance, but not a boundary object bewteen groups?
Anonimously notty, etc
From the long Kiesler reading, other than supporting the other commenters here, I just want to summarize the difference between norms and rules in very simple terms. Norms are informal social control based on the community's beliefs, implicit and have no goal other than getting conformance. Norms need only be accepted by most members of the community to be "useful"--though whether a norm is good or bad depends on which side of the fence you are on.
Rules are formal, official expectations, enforced by formal agents, explicit and imposed top-down towards achieving a set objective. It must also be applicable to each and all person in the constituency.
I noticed that Kiesler's examples involved paedophile, romance, pornography -- while discussing design challenges? Is there a correlation between lust and anonymity? :-)
Meta-Norms, or Norms -> Rules -> Norms again
I was a little unclear what Kiesler et al. are trying to say on page 3: "Laws and rules also have constituencies – people to whom the law or rule applies, whereas norms do not have explicit constituencies." And then in the very next sentence, they say: "Rules and norms (sic – I believe they meant to say "laws" here) may apply to one person or to many, whereas norms, by definition, have to be accepted by most people in a community." I suppose if less than 50% of the people do accept a "norm" than it really is not a norm, but it seems to me that norms do have explicit constituencies – the entire community – it's just that the norms are not enforced.
As the authors point out, norms often become rules. In fact, it seems that in many cases with online communities, rules are simply codified norms. The codified norms (or rules) explicitly tell members, especially new ones, how to interact within the community – what behaviors are encouraged and which are discouraged. Sometimes, these rules are very specific, like the "3 revert rule" of Wikipedia. Often times, the rules are less concrete: "no flaming/flame wars allowed in the forum". Obviously, someone will have to make a judgement on what constitutes a flame war in this case since it's nearly impossible to make an explicit cut-off of when a lively discussion becomes a flame war (Godwin's law notwithstanding).
This leads me to my final point. It seems to me that community rules which are usually borne out of "non-adherence" of norms, eventually lead to what I will term "meta-norms." Online communities have existed for over 20 years now though the most significant expansion has been in the last ten years. Many of the rules established in these early communities live on as "meta-norms" for other communities, e.g. constant flaming will not be accepted, spam messages are unacceptable, Marcus Watts community guidelines from the Well (p. 7). Obviously, these meta-norms do not apply to all situations and all communities, but it seems clear that much of the core online behavior norms have come about because of explicit rules created to keep early online communities in check.
universal norms or meta-norms?
I think you just mean that some of these norms have become nearly universal across lots of on-line communities.
A meta-norm would be a norm about norms.
Title: A real life case of
Title: A real life case of individuals violating online
norms and facing real world consequences.
The following links point to an incident that happened well
over 6-7 years ago at Cornell
University where 4 males
circulated an email throughout the internet.
The email contained some serious mysoginistic overtones. This email was further used in other forums ,online
communities to discuss issues of free speech, decorum, women’s rights. These discussions or metadiscussions
(“discussion about the forum itself -- comments about other postings and their
appropriateness, arguments about conventions, attempts to define the forum”
(author can be found on the Stanford
U. link) brought up
interesting issues on norms, behavior, etc.
For those that want to actually read the email that was
circulated and the battle that ensued, PLEASE BE ADVISED, IT USES COARSE
LANGUAGE AND IS HIGHLY OFFENSIVE(both links).
I don’t think it is necessary to read this email to place my argument
into context as I am sure we can think of similar occurrences that have
occurred on the web over the past few years.
http://www.stanford.edu/~holeton/wired-frosh/wired-07.html
http://www.mit.edu/activities/safe/cases/cornell-mail-list/outrage-reaction
There is a case to be made about identity theory and how
Netizens collectively brought about an injunction on the 4 students from
Cornell. The Netizens collectively made
their voices heard on how this type of writing and thinking was not only negative
but discriminatory towards women and harmful to the Internet community as a
whole. Despite their firm beliefs on
free speech certain individuals banded together to reprimand the 4 Cornell
students (i.e. flaming, informing school officials, authorities,etc).
My questions are the following:
members throughout various communities flamed these 4 individuals were
they breaking any norms?
you right something via acting wrongly? (I am not being cheeky when asking
this. I don’t pretend to have the
answer)
flaming corrective behavior?
usurping the usurper a norm in itself for certain communities in extreme
situations?
there a pervasive “collectivist culture” throughout the Web?
PS: All these 4 guys
got was a slap on the wrist from Cornell.
50 hours of community service each.
Easy!
Norms in addition to laws
I agree author's explanation of norms in the first part of this paper which is through the coomparison between norms and conventions, and norms and laws and regulations. However, I somewhat don't quite agree when he said norms are unofficial expectations whereas laws and rules are offcial expectations that are enforced by formal agents in that sometimes laws are formulated not because of expectations but just as a strong way to regulate social orders. Anyway, not a big thing in this paper.
Second part talks about design goals, all of which make sense and the first and last actually overlaps with each other to some extent.
Part threes provides a number of theories, i believe all are great theories, but I spend quite some time finishing this part actually and still did not feel very clear about all those theories.
Next part looks like a key part that provides real options for site managers to consider while creating its own community norms. (Personally, feel rewards is really important from incentive of participation perspective)
Most things have tradeoffs and so is norm. So it's definitely crutial to take all these issues into consideration in the decision process.
Some thoughts on Kisler et al. reading
Kisler et al. explain that norms are implicit behavioral expectations, while laws and rules have explicit goals and typically have top-down characteristics. The authors also claim that norms have to be accepted by most people in a community. This statement is true to the extent that behavioral expectations are developed over time as community members interact. However, in my opinion, when norms become so prevalent in communities that community members “unforgivingly” expect new users to “know” community norms the first day he or she joins, then these norms basically become implicit rules.
Kisler et al. also suggest three characteristics of online communities that actually increase the likelihood that there will be norm-violators. They are 1) Ease of Access, 2) Anonymity, and 3) Weak-ties. Designing norms for online communities is hard because of these characteristics.
In terms of why norms are important, Kisler et al. list 4 functions of community norms, labeling them as four design goals.
1. Help members feel comfortable and safe
2. Help members learn appropriate behavior and help old members teach newcomers
3. Lead to a perception of fairness
4. Foster cooperation within groups and prevent or mitigate internal strife
My question is: Are norms developed, eventually materialized, or just simply existing in the back of people's minds? Either way, I found Kisler et al.’s use of the phrase “design goals”, somewhat confusing. How are gradually developed behavioral expectations supposed to be designed, as though they are laws and rules that are appropriate to be written up in a communities terms of services (like explained in Kim – Chapter 6 reading)
More substance, less judgments
The Kisler is a very useful overview of a variety of literatures, although it visits them perhaps too briefly. In addition it misses a number of literatures, most notably from political science, where behavior between nations is entirely norm-based since there are no laws or world state to enforce them (international law is really just norms).
The last section should be removed. It presupposes that harm is objective and cannot be contested. The author seems to have decided which individuals are simply doing harm and making excuses, which is a terribly shallow way of undertaking the topic.
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PHartzog@umich.edu
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The Universe is made up of stories, not atoms.
--Muriel Rukeyser
a few thoughts
Some expanded margin notes:
a brief summary
I really like this draft paper. It lays out the design goals, theories, and design alternatives of norms in online communities. In addition, it also talks about the concepts of norms, the importance to online communities, and the issues and tradeoffs. The paper is almost like one chapter from the Online Community Handbook.
Some points from the paper: