Submitted by Rozaidi Rashid on Wed, 02/06/2008 - 15:06.
3
points
Design claim: Developing community rules requires a lot of effort (create the rules, appoint moderators, evaluate complaints, execute judgment, revise rules) and diverts attention and resource from the goal of promoting healthy participation, within the context of a small, closed community.
Design alternative: Develop tools for members to self-regulate, and allow time for such netiquette to evolve into one that is widely accepted and practiced.
Do communities need boundaries to thrive? (Kim, p.202) ... Do communities without rules die and wither? I guess rules *can* help development if internal/self-discipline is lacking, but often I think it is only a moral goal. Yes, moral may not be critical if you are alone, but within a group, it is important. The problem is, once you have rules, you have to enforce it. So why have rules in the first place? I believe rules should come later as the community evolves and grows.
So how should online community members behave? Compared to real communities, online communities lack cues that help determine the appropriate behavior. As such, the online community needs more apparent guidelines to determine the proper netiquette.
As chat rooms or online forums (or other community tools) are practically visually identical, there needs to be a clear boundary or obvious different design to tell visitors that they are on a different site now. A unique web identity may be useful in this case.
Interestingly, Kim then enters the legal realm by talking about TOS and TOU, which (I believe) is not a natural next step in an online community, especially nascent ones. New communities usually start without rules and then when problems occur, the community will need to start to develop some rules or expected behavior. Nevertheless, guidelines should also address privacy concerns and trust building. I guess Kim is suggesting from wisdom. And I think "etiquette" is a boundary object - from real life to online. (see my blog post on netiquette)
With regards to helping others using FAQ... while FAQs are useful, some communities (or website) develop FAQs without getting any questions first! I believe that one should not develop FAQ until you get a lot of those similar questions. But before doing an FAQ, probably you should check if your website content needs editing.
In terms of enforcement, I believe it is easier to be said than done. Online communities are better self-regulated through the provision of tools, but admittedly the open ones need moderators. As I mentioned earlier, once you have the law, you need the police, and then you also need the courts (so that offenders should be gagged, banned (in place or time), remarks deleted), and this is a big effort if you are really serious in doing this.
Finally, evolving the rules requires investment in time and effort, and one can never underestimate or undervalue the power of feedback.
This is an *excellent* summary, bringing up several very interesting points. Thanks for starting us off like this!
This is a minor point perhaps, but I found it very interesting that it took her less than a page to switch from discusing etiquette and standards to her repeated use of the word RULE(S). It may seem like semantics but there is a huge difference between an implicit code of polite behavior in a community (as etiquette is generally defined) and an explicit mention of rules that are to be discussed and enforced within the community. This, I believe, is an underlying design claim in her chapter: when to expect implicit adherence and when to make it explicit. My response to Lessig has a similiar example of web use, but in everyday life it might be the difference between taking your shoes off when going to someone's house out of respect or the host approaching you at the door and asking you to take off your shoes. It's the same end goal, but the way each interaction is "designed" may completely affect your experience in the house. This comes back to my interest in *when* these rules are posted/discussed.
Which is why I'm responding to this first posting. I was really struck with her discussion of democracy, which ties almost directly to the Lessig piece from this week. She notes, "when people have the chance to participate in the process of evolving the rules, they're much more likely to embrace, understand and uphold them" (228). Her main point is that public discussion supports a kind of democracy. I don't think any of us would disagree, so as a basic design claim this is a good start. However, its implementation seems up for debate to me. I appreciate the opportunity to participate, but admittedly I rarely do. Especially on sites that I really like, I continue to go back strictly because I don't have to participate in the logistics. Again, I think this points not so much to the *what* of design as the *when*. Perhaps we can extract a relative timeline of when democracy should be embraced in communities, and when power should slowly be ceded.
Submitted by Rozaidi Rashid on Thu, 02/07/2008 - 11:39.
0
points
Kiesler (the long draft) reading this week discussed the difference between norms (which I read as etiquette) and Rules quite extensively. So, yes, it's odd for Kim to switch from etiquette to rules so swiftly. ... And I vote u back.
I'm in agreement with both you guys - the big difference between this and the other readings this week is the argument for how communities should be regulated - through norms/etiquette, or through regulations/rules.
Kim seems to have the antiquated approach of top-down rules: her focus is on formal documents instituted by the community builders, things like legal documents, help docs, FAQs, and Terms of Service. Seriously though - who actually reads the Terms of Service?! Kim also makes some mentions of social dynamics, and how etiquette can be formed by the community. But she still talks of formal social guidelines and community documents more.
On the other hand, Kisler's focus was on how norms should NOT be top-down, but created bottom-up by the community itself. There is little mention of this possibility by Kim, except to say that "It's likely we'll see more of these types of bottom up systems in the future". I laughed when I read this, because it shows how off the community builders were in the early days of the Internet about what communities wanted and how best to manage them. I think what we have seen is an evolution of how communities want to be managed - while the users have always wanted the Net to be anti-authoritarian, as Kim said, what has changed is how this is made possible.
This can be seen by the methods Kim advises for giving the users power: things like obscenity filters, ignore lists, private chats, or 'complain' features. These are all formal structures, instituted in the architecture of code. But now, things have shifted to be much more informal, using norms to affect social behavior. Instead of designing specific structures, communities today use more implicit designs to encourage social pressure of conforming to norms. Kisler talks about these extensively, though unlike Kim he does not provide specific ideas for how to implement these design solutions. That's the difference, again, between writing for academics vs. writing for practioners. It would be interesting to see a recent article for practioners on this topic.
Do communities without rules die and wither? I guess rules *can* help development if internal/self-discipline is lacking, but often I think it is only a moral goal. Yes, moral may not be critical if you are alone, but within a group, it is important. The problem is, once you have rules, you have to enforce it. So why have rules in the first place? I believe rules should come later as the community evolves and grows.
I agree with your argument that rules will naturally develop in any active community. Kim takes a decidedly top down approach towards community development. Throughout her article I kept feeling like she was planning for a community that she was expecting to be at odds with. Her approach towards community planning seemed overly pessimistic about human behavior. I’m interested if anyone else felt this way too?
I appreciate having documented expectations of behavior, but I think Kim's outline of creating an appropriate TOS (or T&C) is definitely viable for a specific type of online community -- one with a nice crisp starched collar and ironed underpants.
Having a T&C on your site says to me "Hi, we have a few grand we threw to lawyers" -- most of the communities that I'm actually an active member of have a bit more succinct method of regulating behaviors, such as having at the top of a forum:
Submitted by John Blair on Wed, 02/06/2008 - 23:37.
2
points
John Blair
I'm in agreement with oostendo. Everytime I read Kim I keep thinking back to old days, 15 years or so ago, the web was so much more pure and clean - to borrow oostendo's words "the crisp starched collar and ironed underpants" set had yet to enter the waters with their soiled intent.
why is that if someone or more likely a group of someones with similiar interests puts up a site to share these interests with others, that the first thing they need to think about is covering their ass from other's behavior? They don't control these people, they merely provide a portal that allows them to type something. It infuriates me that this has to happen. some sites definitely need this, commericial sites for instance, where purchases are made, that makes sense to me. But a community where all people really do is type back and forth to each other, it's insane........
Soon our designs will become so constrained by the ever increasing layers of code covering our asses that we'll lose the very purpose we started with.
Submitted by Matt Adamo on Thu, 02/07/2008 - 13:27.
2
points
I think Kim assumes her audience is community leaders of large, highly visible, commercial communities, which is why this chapter has such an emphasis on covering yourself legally. But she also mentions that communities do need social guidelines, and I think the link oostendo posted demonstrates that. Even if it's not written in the dense legalese Kim seems to be advocating, a community will still need to spell out what is acceptable behavior.
That said, one thing Kim doesn't explicitly address but implies throughout the chapter is that online activity can have real world consequences. I'm not saying online community owners should be held responsible for what happens offline, but I think Kim's point is that in a litigious society, better to be safe than sorry.
Submitted by LizBlankenship on Thu, 02/07/2008 - 23:58.
0
points
I agree with you and disagree with oostendo's assessment - it's quite true that a site you think will manage itself and won't require your involvement will later have some huge pedophilia scandal or other unforeseen illegal activity, and you need to have something to cover your behind. So even if it's something noone reads having it there means you have somewhere to start if legal action heads your way - hopefully it's as easy as pointing your finger at the criminal and walking away unscathed - it all depends upon how your write your Terms of Use/Service.
I'm with you, I don't think I've ever read a terms of service document as a customer, but we're the "good kids". (I'm willing to give the OP the benefit of the doubt.) For end users who DO violate rules, at least the most frequent offenders, I assure you that policies are being read, typically to determine just how much they can get away with.
In my community of study, we have what I will refer to as "policy lawyers". No, I'm not referring to the people who write your TOS. I'm talking about the users who think they have a better understanding of the rules than those charged with enforcing them. I suspect that these troublemakers regularly occur in environments where the staff is necessarily at odds with the community. This conflict with the staff is very natural in gaming communities, where the sole purpose for the members is to overcome obstacles and frictions implemented by the staff. This relationship is naturally adversarial.
I think the TOS is very valuable in online communities, though it's arbitrary whether you call it the "Terms of Service" or "How not to make an idiot of yourself." if the potential repercussions are the same (e.g. removing functionality, suspension, bannination, etc). The biggest challenge seems to be balancing detail in these documents, particularly in environments where community members have incentive to deviate. With a policy that is loose and catch-all, users will feel that they are not being treated fairly and that staff members are arbitrarily creating and enforcing rules. With a policy that is too narrow and well-defined, users will inevitably find loopholes and then eat up customer service resources. It's a tricky balance to achieve, but if you intend to plan and craft a specific type of community, I think that one of these policies is necessary.
Submitted by Tracy Liu on Thu, 02/07/2008 - 12:35.
1
point
This chapter discusses the development of grounds rules on online communities, how to enforce these rules and how to evolve these rules.
Based on the slack of heterogeneity and social pressure, the regularities on online communities are more difficult to be constructed and maintained. This chapter illustrates the content of document carefully from the perspective of designers, including liability, warranty, censorship, legal activity. However, I am interested in the question of how to represent your document, which way would be the best to push the users to read those documents carefully, remember them and follow them?
In the aspect of enforcing those policies, it mainly focus on those “stick” methods from leader power to software control, such as filtering. However, the effect of “carrots” is not articulated very well here. From my opinion, social norm discussed in Kiesler’s paper is a good supplementary to these techniques for regulating online communities.
This chapter also discusses the dynamic process of evolving these rules. For instance, it is important to build smooth communication channel for members to give feedback, especially for leaders. I think we can refer to Kraut’s collective effort model to consider about this issue, for example, when members think their comments/suggestions are important for their community, it will be a good incentive for them to contribute their ideas, which also can be models as public goods problem from the sphere of economics.
The main design goal of this reading is to maintaining community standards. It involves three continuous steps to develop community standards: develop ground rules, enforce policies, and evolve rules. Also, there are several design alternatives to achieve each of these steps.
Kim provides concrete examples and clear guidelines to explain how to maintain community standards. However, I am curious how effective some points she brought up. For example, it’s good to have documents to articulate rules, but how many people really pay attention to them before they behave? Also, imposing consequences on members may be effective to prevent them from misbehaving. However, if it is easy to enter the community, the restricted person could just sign up with a new ID.
Submitted by LizBlankenship on Fri, 02/08/2008 - 00:04.
1
point
In some communities, simply creating another ID may be easy enough, but as they mentioned in the Kisler reading when talking about the two-faced Wikipedian, it's often easy enough to catch someone by their IP. Many TOS documents do explicitly restrict having multiple accounts, also, so the user would just be even more in violation of the TOS - not that that would necessarily stop them.
Incidentally, our fearless leader in this class wrote about this subject with Eric Friedman in a paper called "The Social Cost of Cheap Pseudonyms." The internet makes it virtually cost-free to change identities. This paper explores how we might overcome this problem, where negative reputations "do not stick" (p. 191). It's a great paper and don't worry too much about the math.
Eric J Friedman*, Paul Resnick (2001)
The Social Cost of Cheap Pseudonyms
Journal of Economics & Management Strategy 10 (2), 173–199.
Here's a link where you can get a PDF of the paper:
Kim explains that while rules and standards of cyberspace may not yet be well defined, all communities need them in order to survive. However, behavioral expectations in online communities may not always be easily observed. Kim's chapter approaches this problem from the perspective of site owners and developers. The first solution is for online communities to explicitly state their expectations in forms of rules. This is interesting because in both the Lessig and Kiesler readings, formal laws and guidelines are distinguished from implicit behavioral norms shared by a community.
Kim then introduces the "Etiquette Cycle", a 3-stage process including establish rules, enforcing them, and evolving or updating them. For the establishment of the concrete rules, Kim stresses the importance of stating your tone, style, and terms of services early and clearly. This makes me wonder if all the online communities that I have participated in also went through such a rule-setting stage. However, for many small forums that basically follow existing forum templates, ground rules may be entirely missing. In place would be a set of implicit norms that the members of the community have developed through their interactions with each other. Kim however, does mention the potential creation of a "more casual" set of community guidelines that outline the similar information as its official counterpart, but in a more member-friendly style. I'm not entirely sure if having both levels of ground rules is necessarily for non-profit, purely entertainment-base communities. For legal and privacy issues for online communities, the author relentlessly lists several sources and organizations that provide such services. Once again, I'm pretty sure this is a critical step for online communities that are service, business, or support-based. Does a hacker forum need these rules when their activity is already questionable, and their members realize that their activities may likely jeopardize their own computers and maybe even lead to further complications.
The second stage or element in Kim's "Etiquette Cycle" is enforcement of ground rules. The elements that Kim discussed are somewhat confusing to me however. For instance, I'm not entirely sure how private message filtering and blocking, and letting people have private gatherings and interactions help enforce ground rules. If anything, these actions should exist simply because in any community, both on and offline, people form sub-groups and relationships, and such actions are expected. On the other hand, obscene filters and vigilante policing are indeed reasonable methods for community developers to create prevention techniques that in a sense, "enforces" ground rules.
The last stage of Kim's "Etiquette Cycle" is evolving and updating of a community ground rules. This step is necessary because as the community grows, new problems arise and new rules are developed. Similarly, old members leave and new members join, so it is crucial for site owners and community developers to re-assess whether the community rules need to be updated.
Kim brings up an interesting design claim: one way to regulate behavior is to allow people to choose what sort of behavior they want to be part of within a community. Whereas the Lessig reading talks about architecture as a way to constrain possible actions, Kim alludes to architecture to enable choice of actions. The community can be designed in a way that users can choose which community members or conversations they want to be a part of, or even have visible to them.
I think this is an insightful design solution. Of course, it comes with the caveat that too much choice might fragment your community. Having top-down or collectively generated norms makes for a much tighter, more cohesive group. Allowing people the freedom to create their own space in a pseudo-collective sphere could isolate to the point that the community is no longer cohesive.
Yes, no one reads those TOS'es, but I still think they're nice to have as some kind of psychological reassurance that the site is professional enough to hire lawyers to write one (or steal one from another site). They're also useful for when you'd like to do something questionable with a site's data and aren't sure whether you would be "allowed." Of course, when you find that you can't do what you planned, you do it anyway!
BTW, I noticed that this wonderful course site doesn't have a TOS! I guess our social norms are enough to regulate student behavior.
Kim kicks off Chapter 6 with guidelines for how to develop ground rules. She suggests creating a strong brand identity, marking boundaries among gathering places, spotlighting members who exhibit desired behavior, and offering member profiles with fields that promote desired values.
The etiquette cycle, which moves from creation (considering desired behaviors) to enforcement (punishing or restricting) to evolution (listening to members) and back to creation again, plays out either implicitly through member interaction or explicitly through authoritative commands.
Documents are the cornerstone for communicating ground rules. They provide an overview of appropriate and acceptable interaction and conduct, as well as protect community owners in the event of litigation. The five core issues to be addressed are "ownership, liability, privacy, civility, and censorship."
Types of Documents & Problems to Address:
Terms of Use: Documents rights and responsibilities, for visitors. Address Liability, Warranty, Censorship, Illegal Activity
Terms of Service: documents rights and responsibilities, for members
Community Guidelines: documents appropriate social conventions. Address Legal problems, Social problems, Support problems. Address whether members should maintain a persistent and unique identity, appropriate conduct and illegal activities, if commercial use is acceptable, and standards for content as well as who owns what.
Privacy Policy: "outlines what data you're collecting, why you're collecting it, and what you'll be doing with that data." (p214) Create different privacy policies for subcommunities that have unique privacy needs.
Help: Documents how to troubleshoot problems, tips and tricks for how to take full advantage of the community, and should offer suggestions for how to find more support.
F.A.Q.: Addresses common questions or misunderstandings. Saves administrators the time it takes to answer these questions, and saves members the time it takes to get the answers they need.
Policy enforcement can be enacted by community members, leaders, or developers with "tools and rules". Ignore filters let members block other members without needing to appeal to higher authority, but these members may miss out on information about them or context. Offering private discussions facilitate the development of close relationships as well as help members avoid unliked members, but may dilute community energy and go against brand. Obscenity filters can block out bad words, but it's easy to use alternate spellings of words. Members can also collectively band together and restrict access and/or influence to community meeting places and features using crowdsourcing tools. Lastly, harassment problems should offer suggested escalation paths.
Authority figures can restrict participation, entry, ban outright, remove content, suspend entry, or even take legal action. But authority figures should be carefully trained to be consistent as well as trusted - draconian moves will cause members to lose faith in the community.
To evolve rules and laws, community leaders should closely listen to members and solicit feedback. Kim warns against giving too much weight to "chronic malcontents" and seeking out the silent majority of average users for good policy design. However, listening to feedback is time-consuming and members will expect that their opinions will be recognized in policy changes. Good feedback systems should clearly state whether members can expect a response, who will review suggestions, and community designers should reciprocate by publishing their reasoning about regulation changes. Members appreciate transparency, which serves to generate loyalty.
I thought this week’s Kim article was very concise and
replete with plenty of relevant examples.
However, though I believe it important to establish ground
rules via a written intro. to a new member, it is unrealistic to think that
anyone even reads those(liability,warranty,member agreement). In litigious America those written rules are
created to protect startups, corporations, holding companies from any after
effects brought on by a nasty lawsuit.
Fair enough.
I believe that norms and rules should be enforced by:
HCI experts must have something to say on how design further
enforces rules, regulations and norms.
There has to be the equivalent of a Panopticon
on websites where community is central to its very existence. You may not fully know it but there may be
someone monitoring your every move.
These social and state apparatuses have been around prior to modernity
and I can’t imagine they don’t abound today in the design of online communities
and websites themselves.
In this chapter Kim talks about how to develop ground rules for a community, how to enforce policies and how to evolve the rules. In terms of rules development, he specifically pointed out that one can not aticipate every situation, but a basic tone is very important to set at the beginning that expresses the community's purpose, goals and values clearly and precisely. As for what type of document, it depends on how the community is running which could either be a terms of use for the entire site or a terms of ervice for the memberonly community areas. He then talked about several ways to actually start creating the documents, which are pretty useful and helpful in real life community developments.
To develop behavior guidelines is another important part of the rules which should cover at least three basic types of issues -- legal, social an support issues. Also, content of the the guidelines will depend on things like the purpose of community, the interactive features and the age and sophistication of the audience etc.
In the second part, he basically talked about the importance of enforcement of the policies since community leader builds trust by keeping sticking to the standard documents which are promises to the members.
A lot of minor points have been argued as well. Personally, what I see in this chapter is more practical than theoretical. What I would like to add is that I feel it would be better to not get the guildlines extremely long and hard to read. To make it simple, but clear and precise and containing all the important messge would be far more effective than simply writing everything down in a less organized way and hard to readers to follow and get all the main ideas.
Submitted by Satyendra on Fri, 02/08/2008 - 01:39.
1
point
I agree with the idea that lengthy terms of service and other agreements are only an annoyance and I like most others repeatedly press on the accept and next buttons. Sometimes i've even wondered what i'm agreeing to, but still never bothered to read them.
So I'm not sure I agree with Kim's ordering there of regulation of behavior as a three step process. I think TOS are more of a firm's way of being on the safe side of the law in case things don't go smoothly for them or they need to sue someone or protect themselves. I don't think they will ever be an effective way to control and shape user behavior online. On the other hand we can use Lessig's framework here and shape the behavior in other ways: Social, Law, Markets or Architecture and I think it's a model which is more likely to let us frame a problem into workable constraints.
I like some of the idea in the Kim paper though:
Design Goal: Empower members to control their environment.
Method: Through self-empowerment of members by allowing them to pool their opinions
Design Claim: Allowing members to pool their opinions can lead to a regulation of the environment.
BUT : This may end up allowing the most disruptive, obnoxious people to control the community
Design Alternativ: Another way could be to populate your community with leaders who are empowered to interpret and enforce community standards.
Kim offers very practical advice on establishing etiquette within an online community. In Kiesler's parlance, Kim offers a number of recommendations to enforce some type of social norm. It's important to note, however, that etiquette – at least Kim's definition of it – seems to extend the bounds of Kiesler's norms and into the realm of rules. There is not a one-to-one mapping between the definitions in the two papers.
Kim and Kiesler do seem to agree that enacting some sort of social norm is good first step for a community. In many cases, other individuals can help establish and pass on the norms. Kim seems to admit that etiquette may not always provide the solutions to issues that arise in communties. Kim seems to equate Kiesler's notion of rules to Terms of Service. I believe TOS invokes strong feelings of legalese and the attempt by lawyers to obfuscate what is and is not acceptable on a site. The "community guidelines" moniker has a much more human appeal. It would be interesting however to explore the incentives for making excessively long and difficult-to-understand terms of service. Maybe Lessig is right: the law is the "man behind the curtain" that acts on the market, norms, and architecture which then act on the "pathetic dot".
The important thing to realize about the Kim book is that it is essentially no different than having a corporate lobby in a physical building where people come hang out and discuss things. All of her language is primarily written with the assumption of an owned, controlled, space.
Kim's suggestions must be read in that light. For example, gathering community feedback and then responding to it appropriately is good advice for any dictator, but does not amount to sharing power.
Kim's rules on rules: Create, Enforce, Evolve
As a political theorist, my question is:
By what authority do you get to create/enforce/evolve the rules?
What are the limits to that authority?
The bottom line is that what you are creating might best be described as "open authoritarianism." Moreover, I don't think the term "community" can be applied to these regimes.
An obvious consequence of this line of thinking would look something like:
The only valid Terms of Service are those stored on a community-editable wiki.
Another:
The only valid leaders are those who can be voted up/down (digg style),
i.e. who have the support of the people that they oversee.
-------------------------------------------------------- PHartzog@umich.edu
--------------------------------------------------------
The Universe is made up of stories, not atoms.
--Muriel Rukeyser
Most of the human communication is non-verbal. We rely on more than the explicit communication signals to understand our world. As Kim points out this auxiliary cues are missing in the online world. Hence a community depends more on the norms and rules to reduce the uncertainty while reading posts. For example, in the notebookreview.com, while posting a buy/sell trade offer users have to meet certain norms like provide an photo of the laptop with the user name in the screen, not making publicly lower offer, etc. These norms makes it easier for a user attempting to trade their laptop online. I think this is a good example where the established norms are useful for the community members.
I'm quite certain no one reads the terms and conditions for the websites and software; the cost outweighs the benefits. But there are a necessity from legal standpoint as Kim points. I support the design alternative of producing simpler documents like FAQ derived form terms and conditions that are easier to read. This will help us achieve the goal of enforcing the norms. While FAQ should never supplant the terms and conditions document, it will help us advertise the norms in the user base.
Submitted by Daniel Zhou on Sun, 02/10/2008 - 18:29.
1
point
Kim Ch6 talks about the etiquette and ground rules for online communities. The chapter focuses on the etiqueete cycle: develop, enforce and evolve.
Here are some points from the chapter:
Design claim: if you want to build a substantial and lasting web community, you'll need to create some basic ground rules that are tailored to your audience, and set up systems that let you evolve these rules to meet the changing needs of your community.
You can't anticipate every situation - but you can set a tone right from the start that experesses your purpose, goals and values.
The three basic policy documents are member agreement, community guidelines, and privacy policy.
Design alternative: Ignore filter.
Nothing can destroy a member's trust faster than a heavy-handed leader who doesn't play fair.
Netizens are inherently anti-authoritarian
Design claim: Developing community rules requires a lot of effort (create the rules, appoint moderators, evaluate complaints, execute judgment, revise rules) and diverts attention and resource from the goal of promoting healthy participation, within the context of a small, closed community.
Design alternative: Develop tools for members to self-regulate, and allow time for such netiquette to evolve into one that is widely accepted and practiced.
Do communities need boundaries to thrive? (Kim, p.202) ... Do communities without rules die and wither? I guess rules *can* help development if internal/self-discipline is lacking, but often I think it is only a moral goal. Yes, moral may not be critical if you are alone, but within a group, it is important. The problem is, once you have rules, you have to enforce it. So why have rules in the first place? I believe rules should come later as the community evolves and grows.
So how should online community members behave? Compared to real communities, online communities lack cues that help determine the appropriate behavior. As such, the online community needs more apparent guidelines to determine the proper netiquette.
As chat rooms or online forums (or other community tools) are practically visually identical, there needs to be a clear boundary or obvious different design to tell visitors that they are on a different site now. A unique web identity may be useful in this case.
Interestingly, Kim then enters the legal realm by talking about TOS and TOU, which (I believe) is not a natural next step in an online community, especially nascent ones. New communities usually start without rules and then when problems occur, the community will need to start to develop some rules or expected behavior. Nevertheless, guidelines should also address privacy concerns and trust building. I guess Kim is suggesting from wisdom. And I think "etiquette" is a boundary object - from real life to online. (see my blog post on netiquette)
With regards to helping others using FAQ... while FAQs are useful, some communities (or website) develop FAQs without getting any questions first! I believe that one should not develop FAQ until you get a lot of those similar questions. But before doing an FAQ, probably you should check if your website content needs editing.
In terms of enforcement, I believe it is easier to be said than done. Online communities are better self-regulated through the provision of tools, but admittedly the open ones need moderators. As I mentioned earlier, once you have the law, you need the police, and then you also need the courts (so that offenders should be gagged, banned (in place or time), remarks deleted), and this is a big effort if you are really serious in doing this.
Finally, evolving the rules requires investment in time and effort, and one can never underestimate or undervalue the power of feedback.
More on democratic communities
This is an *excellent* summary, bringing up several very interesting points. Thanks for starting us off like this!
This is a minor point perhaps, but I found it very interesting that it took her less than a page to switch from discusing etiquette and standards to her repeated use of the word RULE(S). It may seem like semantics but there is a huge difference between an implicit code of polite behavior in a community (as etiquette is generally defined) and an explicit mention of rules that are to be discussed and enforced within the community. This, I believe, is an underlying design claim in her chapter: when to expect implicit adherence and when to make it explicit. My response to Lessig has a similiar example of web use, but in everyday life it might be the difference between taking your shoes off when going to someone's house out of respect or the host approaching you at the door and asking you to take off your shoes. It's the same end goal, but the way each interaction is "designed" may completely affect your experience in the house. This comes back to my interest in *when* these rules are posted/discussed.
Which is why I'm responding to this first posting. I was really struck with her discussion of democracy, which ties almost directly to the Lessig piece from this week. She notes, "when people have the chance to participate in the process of evolving the rules, they're much more likely to embrace, understand and uphold them" (228). Her main point is that public discussion supports a kind of democracy. I don't think any of us would disagree, so as a basic design claim this is a good start. However, its implementation seems up for debate to me. I appreciate the opportunity to participate, but admittedly I rarely do. Especially on sites that I really like, I continue to go back strictly because I don't have to participate in the logistics. Again, I think this points not so much to the *what* of design as the *when*. Perhaps we can extract a relative timeline of when democracy should be embraced in communities, and when power should slowly be ceded.
Semantics
Kiesler (the long draft) reading this week discussed the difference between norms (which I read as etiquette) and Rules quite extensively. So, yes, it's odd for Kim to switch from etiquette to rules so swiftly. ... And I vote u back.
Agreed
I'm in agreement with both you guys - the big difference between this and the other readings this week is the argument for how communities should be regulated - through norms/etiquette, or through regulations/rules.
Kim seems to have the antiquated approach of top-down rules: her focus is on formal documents instituted by the community builders, things like legal documents, help docs, FAQs, and Terms of Service. Seriously though - who actually reads the Terms of Service?! Kim also makes some mentions of social dynamics, and how etiquette can be formed by the community. But she still talks of formal social guidelines and community documents more.
On the other hand, Kisler's focus was on how norms should NOT be top-down, but created bottom-up by the community itself. There is little mention of this possibility by Kim, except to say that "It's likely we'll see more of these types of bottom up systems in the future". I laughed when I read this, because it shows how off the community builders were in the early days of the Internet about what communities wanted and how best to manage them. I think what we have seen is an evolution of how communities want to be managed - while the users have always wanted the Net to be anti-authoritarian, as Kim said, what has changed is how this is made possible.
This can be seen by the methods Kim advises for giving the users power: things like obscenity filters, ignore lists, private chats, or 'complain' features. These are all formal structures, instituted in the architecture of code. But now, things have shifted to be much more informal, using norms to affect social behavior. Instead of designing specific structures, communities today use more implicit designs to encourage social pressure of conforming to norms. Kisler talks about these extensively, though unlike Kim he does not provide specific ideas for how to implement these design solutions. That's the difference, again, between writing for academics vs. writing for practioners. It would be interesting to see a recent article for practioners on this topic.
Norms and Rules
Great summary, thanks.
I just had response to something you said:
Do communities without rules die and wither? I guess rules *can* help development if internal/self-discipline is lacking, but often I think it is only a moral goal. Yes, moral may not be critical if you are alone, but within a group, it is important. The problem is, once you have rules, you have to enforce it. So why have rules in the first place? I believe rules should come later as the community evolves and grows.
I agree with your argument that rules will naturally develop in any active community. Kim takes a decidedly top down approach towards community development. Throughout her article I kept feeling like she was planning for a community that she was expecting to be at odds with. Her approach towards community planning seemed overly pessimistic about human behavior. I’m interested if anyone else felt this way too?
Do you ever read a terms of service?
I appreciate having documented expectations of behavior, but I think Kim's outline of creating an appropriate TOS (or T&C) is definitely viable for a specific type of online community -- one with a nice crisp starched collar and ironed underpants.
Having a T&C on your site says to me "Hi, we have a few grand we threw to lawyers" -- most of the communities that I'm actually an active member of have a bit more succinct method of regulating behaviors, such as having at the top of a forum:
Pinned:: Stop Posting Questions And Newbie Topics
IGNORE THIS AT YOUR OWN RISK (SEPT 2007)
Just my feelings, but the TOS should die unless money's changing hands, rules can be clearly communicated in much clearer ways.
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oostendo@umich.edu
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responsibility for our own actions
John Blair
I'm in agreement with oostendo. Everytime I read Kim I keep thinking back to old days, 15 years or so ago, the web was so much more pure and clean - to borrow oostendo's words "the crisp starched collar and ironed underpants" set had yet to enter the waters with their soiled intent.
why is that if someone or more likely a group of someones with similiar interests puts up a site to share these interests with others, that the first thing they need to think about is covering their ass from other's behavior? They don't control these people, they merely provide a portal that allows them to type something. It infuriates me that this has to happen. some sites definitely need this, commericial sites for instance, where purchases are made, that makes sense to me. But a community where all people really do is type back and forth to each other, it's insane........
Soon our designs will become so constrained by the ever increasing layers of code covering our asses that we'll lose the very purpose we started with.
forum posts don't offend people, people do
I think Kim assumes her audience is community leaders of large, highly visible, commercial communities, which is why this chapter has such an emphasis on covering yourself legally. But she also mentions that communities do need social guidelines, and I think the link oostendo posted demonstrates that. Even if it's not written in the dense legalese Kim seems to be advocating, a community will still need to spell out what is acceptable behavior.
That said, one thing Kim doesn't explicitly address but implies throughout the chapter is that online activity can have real world consequences. I'm not saying online community owners should be held responsible for what happens offline, but I think Kim's point is that in a litigious society, better to be safe than sorry.
Agreed
I agree with you and disagree with oostendo's assessment - it's quite true that a site you think will manage itself and won't require your involvement will later have some huge pedophilia scandal or other unforeseen illegal activity, and you need to have something to cover your behind. So even if it's something noone reads having it there means you have somewhere to start if legal action heads your way - hopefully it's as easy as pointing your finger at the criminal and walking away unscathed - it all depends upon how your write your Terms of Use/Service.
But we're the good kids...
I'm with you, I don't think I've ever read a terms of service document as a customer, but we're the "good kids". (I'm willing to give the OP the benefit of the doubt.) For end users who DO violate rules, at least the most frequent offenders, I assure you that policies are being read, typically to determine just how much they can get away with.
In my community of study, we have what I will refer to as "policy lawyers". No, I'm not referring to the people who write your TOS. I'm talking about the users who think they have a better understanding of the rules than those charged with enforcing them. I suspect that these troublemakers regularly occur in environments where the staff is necessarily at odds with the community. This conflict with the staff is very natural in gaming communities, where the sole purpose for the members is to overcome obstacles and frictions implemented by the staff. This relationship is naturally adversarial.
I think the TOS is very valuable in online communities, though it's arbitrary whether you call it the "Terms of Service" or "How not to make an idiot of yourself." if the potential repercussions are the same (e.g. removing functionality, suspension, bannination, etc). The biggest challenge seems to be balancing detail in these documents, particularly in environments where community members have incentive to deviate. With a policy that is loose and catch-all, users will feel that they are not being treated fairly and that staff members are arbitrarily creating and enforcing rules. With a policy that is too narrow and well-defined, users will inevitably find loopholes and then eat up customer service resources. It's a tricky balance to achieve, but if you intend to plan and craft a specific type of community, I think that one of these policies is necessary.
TOS
Wait, am I the only one here who reads all TOS'es front to back, then front to back again? Am I doing the internet wrong!?
Etiquette in the dynamic process
This chapter discusses the development of grounds rules on online communities, how to enforce these rules and how to evolve these rules.
Based on the slack of heterogeneity and social pressure, the regularities on online communities are more difficult to be constructed and maintained. This chapter illustrates the content of document carefully from the perspective of designers, including liability, warranty, censorship, legal activity. However, I am interested in the question of how to represent your document, which way would be the best to push the users to read those documents carefully, remember them and follow them?
In the aspect of enforcing those policies, it mainly focus on those “stick” methods from leader power to software control, such as filtering. However, the effect of “carrots” is not articulated very well here. From my opinion, social norm discussed in Kiesler’s paper is a good supplementary to these techniques for regulating online communities.
This chapter also discusses the dynamic process of evolving these rules. For instance, it is important to build smooth communication channel for members to give feedback, especially for leaders. I think we can refer to Kraut’s collective effort model to consider about this issue, for example, when members think their comments/suggestions are important for their community, it will be a good incentive for them to contribute their ideas, which also can be models as public goods problem from the sphere of economics.
Etiquettes and the etiquette cycle
The main design goal of this reading is to maintaining community standards. It involves three continuous steps to develop community standards: develop ground rules, enforce policies, and evolve rules. Also, there are several design alternatives to achieve each of these steps.
Kim provides concrete examples and clear guidelines to explain how to maintain community standards. However, I am curious how effective some points she brought up. For example, it’s good to have documents to articulate rules, but how many people really pay attention to them before they behave? Also, imposing consequences on members may be effective to prevent them from misbehaving. However, if it is easy to enter the community, the restricted person could just sign up with a new ID.
in response to creating a new ID
In some communities, simply creating another ID may be easy enough, but as they mentioned in the Kisler reading when talking about the two-faced Wikipedian, it's often easy enough to catch someone by their IP. Many TOS documents do explicitly restrict having multiple accounts, also, so the user would just be even more in violation of the TOS - not that that would necessarily stop them.
Social cost of cheap pseudonyms
Incidentally, our fearless leader in this class wrote about this subject with Eric Friedman in a paper called "The Social Cost of Cheap Pseudonyms." The internet makes it virtually cost-free to change identities. This paper explores how we might overcome this problem, where negative reputations "do not stick" (p. 191). It's a great paper and don't worry too much about the math.
Eric J Friedman*, Paul Resnick (2001)
The Social Cost of Cheap Pseudonyms
Journal of Economics & Management Strategy 10 (2), 173–199.
Here's a link where you can get a PDF of the paper:
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1430-9134.2001.00173....
Some thoughts on Kim reading...
Kim explains that while rules and standards of cyberspace may not yet be well defined, all communities need them in order to survive. However, behavioral expectations in online communities may not always be easily observed. Kim's chapter approaches this problem from the perspective of site owners and developers. The first solution is for online communities to explicitly state their expectations in forms of rules. This is interesting because in both the Lessig and Kiesler readings, formal laws and guidelines are distinguished from implicit behavioral norms shared by a community.
Kim then introduces the "Etiquette Cycle", a 3-stage process including establish rules, enforcing them, and evolving or updating them. For the establishment of the concrete rules, Kim stresses the importance of stating your tone, style, and terms of services early and clearly. This makes me wonder if all the online communities that I have participated in also went through such a rule-setting stage. However, for many small forums that basically follow existing forum templates, ground rules may be entirely missing. In place would be a set of implicit norms that the members of the community have developed through their interactions with each other. Kim however, does mention the potential creation of a "more casual" set of community guidelines that outline the similar information as its official counterpart, but in a more member-friendly style. I'm not entirely sure if having both levels of ground rules is necessarily for non-profit, purely entertainment-base communities. For legal and privacy issues for online communities, the author relentlessly lists several sources and organizations that provide such services. Once again, I'm pretty sure this is a critical step for online communities that are service, business, or support-based. Does a hacker forum need these rules when their activity is already questionable, and their members realize that their activities may likely jeopardize their own computers and maybe even lead to further complications.
The second stage or element in Kim's "Etiquette Cycle" is enforcement of ground rules. The elements that Kim discussed are somewhat confusing to me however. For instance, I'm not entirely sure how private message filtering and blocking, and letting people have private gatherings and interactions help enforce ground rules. If anything, these actions should exist simply because in any community, both on and offline, people form sub-groups and relationships, and such actions are expected. On the other hand, obscene filters and vigilante policing are indeed reasonable methods for community developers to create prevention techniques that in a sense, "enforces" ground rules.
The last stage of Kim's "Etiquette Cycle" is evolving and updating of a community ground rules. This step is necessary because as the community grows, new problems arise and new rules are developed. Similarly, old members leave and new members join, so it is crucial for site owners and community developers to re-assess whether the community rules need to be updated.
Design for Choice
Kim brings up an interesting design claim: one way to regulate behavior is to allow people to choose what sort of behavior they want to be part of within a community. Whereas the Lessig reading talks about architecture as a way to constrain possible actions, Kim alludes to architecture to enable choice of actions. The community can be designed in a way that users can choose which community members or conversations they want to be a part of, or even have visible to them.
I think this is an insightful design solution. Of course, it comes with the caveat that too much choice might fragment your community. Having top-down or collectively generated norms makes for a much tighter, more cohesive group. Allowing people the freedom to create their own space in a pseudo-collective sphere could isolate to the point that the community is no longer cohesive.
Terms of Something
Yes, no one reads those TOS'es, but I still think they're nice to have as some kind of psychological reassurance that the site is professional enough to hire lawyers to write one (or steal one from another site). They're also useful for when you'd like to do something questionable with a site's data and aren't sure whether you would be "allowed." Of course, when you find that you can't do what you planned, you do it anyway!
BTW, I noticed that this wonderful course site doesn't have a TOS! I guess our social norms are enough to regulate student behavior.
Kim Chapter 6 - Takeaways
Kim kicks off Chapter 6 with guidelines for how to develop ground rules. She suggests creating a strong brand identity, marking boundaries among gathering places, spotlighting members who exhibit desired behavior, and offering member profiles with fields that promote desired values.
The etiquette cycle, which moves from creation (considering desired behaviors) to enforcement (punishing or restricting) to evolution (listening to members) and back to creation again, plays out either implicitly through member interaction or explicitly through authoritative commands.
Documents are the cornerstone for communicating ground rules. They provide an overview of appropriate and acceptable interaction and conduct, as well as protect community owners in the event of litigation. The five core issues to be addressed are "ownership, liability, privacy, civility, and censorship."
Types of Documents & Problems to Address:
Terms of Use: Documents rights and responsibilities, for visitors. Address Liability, Warranty, Censorship, Illegal Activity
Terms of Service: documents rights and responsibilities, for members
Community Guidelines: documents appropriate social conventions. Address Legal problems, Social problems, Support problems. Address whether members should maintain a persistent and unique identity, appropriate conduct and illegal activities, if commercial use is acceptable, and standards for content as well as who owns what.
Privacy Policy: "outlines what data you're collecting, why you're collecting it, and what you'll be doing with that data." (p214) Create different privacy policies for subcommunities that have unique privacy needs.
Help: Documents how to troubleshoot problems, tips and tricks for how to take full advantage of the community, and should offer suggestions for how to find more support.
F.A.Q.: Addresses common questions or misunderstandings. Saves administrators the time it takes to answer these questions, and saves members the time it takes to get the answers they need.
Policy enforcement can be enacted by community members, leaders, or developers with "tools and rules". Ignore filters let members block other members without needing to appeal to higher authority, but these members may miss out on information about them or context. Offering private discussions facilitate the development of close relationships as well as help members avoid unliked members, but may dilute community energy and go against brand. Obscenity filters can block out bad words, but it's easy to use alternate spellings of words. Members can also collectively band together and restrict access and/or influence to community meeting places and features using crowdsourcing tools. Lastly, harassment problems should offer suggested escalation paths.
Authority figures can restrict participation, entry, ban outright, remove content, suspend entry, or even take legal action. But authority figures should be carefully trained to be consistent as well as trusted - draconian moves will cause members to lose faith in the community.
To evolve rules and laws, community leaders should closely listen to members and solicit feedback. Kim warns against giving too much weight to "chronic malcontents" and seeking out the silent majority of average users for good policy design. However, listening to feedback is time-consuming and members will expect that their opinions will be recognized in policy changes. Good feedback systems should clearly state whether members can expect a response, who will review suggestions, and community designers should reciprocate by publishing their reasoning about regulation changes. Members appreciate transparency, which serves to generate loyalty.
I thought this week’s Kim
I thought this week’s Kim article was very concise and
replete with plenty of relevant examples.
However, though I believe it important to establish ground
rules via a written intro. to a new member, it is unrealistic to think that
anyone even reads those(liability,warranty,member agreement). In litigious America those written rules are
created to protect startups, corporations, holding companies from any after
effects brought on by a nasty lawsuit.
Fair enough.
I believe that norms and rules should be enforced by:
1) Human,
live moderators (community managers)
2) Design
(ignore filter, private gathering places, obscenity filter)
HCI experts must have something to say on how design further
enforces rules, regulations and norms.
There has to be the equivalent of a Panopticon
on websites where community is central to its very existence. You may not fully know it but there may be
someone monitoring your every move.
These social and state apparatuses have been around prior to modernity
and I can’t imagine they don’t abound today in the design of online communities
and websites themselves.
Regulation is always important
In this chapter Kim talks about how to develop ground rules for a community, how to enforce policies and how to evolve the rules. In terms of rules development, he specifically pointed out that one can not aticipate every situation, but a basic tone is very important to set at the beginning that expresses the community's purpose, goals and values clearly and precisely. As for what type of document, it depends on how the community is running which could either be a terms of use for the entire site or a terms of ervice for the memberonly community areas. He then talked about several ways to actually start creating the documents, which are pretty useful and helpful in real life community developments.
To develop behavior guidelines is another important part of the rules which should cover at least three basic types of issues -- legal, social an support issues. Also, content of the the guidelines will depend on things like the purpose of community, the interactive features and the age and sophistication of the audience etc.
In the second part, he basically talked about the importance of enforcement of the policies since community leader builds trust by keeping sticking to the standard documents which are promises to the members.
A lot of minor points have been argued as well. Personally, what I see in this chapter is more practical than theoretical. What I would like to add is that I feel it would be better to not get the guildlines extremely long and hard to read. To make it simple, but clear and precise and containing all the important messge would be far more effective than simply writing everything down in a less organized way and hard to readers to follow and get all the main ideas.
FAQ's
The most practical suggestion from the sixth chapter of Kim was the mention of RAQ's and the important role they can play in avoiding redundant
questions getting asked repeatedly in a chat area. Its also
serves to welcome visitors to your community, allowing users to
get a quick education on the key points that might come up
in interaction without having to learn through trial and error.
Its a nice way to lay out policies as norms without having to
lay down the law formally.
Lisa McLaughlin
User's Guide or Service Provider's refuge ?
I agree with the idea that lengthy terms of service and other agreements are only an annoyance and I like most others repeatedly press on the accept and next buttons. Sometimes i've even wondered what i'm agreeing to, but still never bothered to read them.
So I'm not sure I agree with Kim's ordering there of regulation of behavior as a three step process. I think TOS are more of a firm's way of being on the safe side of the law in case things don't go smoothly for them or they need to sue someone or protect themselves. I don't think they will ever be an effective way to control and shape user behavior online. On the other hand we can use Lessig's framework here and shape the behavior in other ways: Social, Law, Markets or Architecture and I think it's a model which is more likely to let us frame a problem into workable constraints.
I like some of the idea in the Kim paper though:
Design Goal: Empower members to control their environment.
Method: Through self-empowerment of members by allowing them to pool their opinions
Design Claim: Allowing members to pool their opinions can lead to a regulation of the environment.
BUT : This may end up allowing the most disruptive, obnoxious people to control the community
Design Alternativ: Another way could be to populate your community with leaders who are empowered to interpret and enforce community standards.
Etiquette is the old (new?) social norm
Kim offers very practical advice on establishing etiquette within an online community. In Kiesler's parlance, Kim offers a number of recommendations to enforce some type of social norm. It's important to note, however, that etiquette – at least Kim's definition of it – seems to extend the bounds of Kiesler's norms and into the realm of rules. There is not a one-to-one mapping between the definitions in the two papers.
Kim and Kiesler do seem to agree that enacting some sort of social norm is good first step for a community. In many cases, other individuals can help establish and pass on the norms. Kim seems to admit that etiquette may not always provide the solutions to issues that arise in communties. Kim seems to equate Kiesler's notion of rules to Terms of Service. I believe TOS invokes strong feelings of legalese and the attempt by lawyers to obfuscate what is and is not acceptable on a site. The "community guidelines" moniker has a much more human appeal. It would be interesting however to explore the incentives for making excessively long and difficult-to-understand terms of service. Maybe Lessig is right: the law is the "man behind the curtain" that acts on the market, norms, and architecture which then act on the "pathetic dot".
Authority or Power?
The important thing to realize about the Kim book is that it is essentially no different than having a corporate lobby in a physical building where people come hang out and discuss things. All of her language is primarily written with the assumption of an owned, controlled, space.
Kim's suggestions must be read in that light. For example, gathering community feedback and then responding to it appropriately is good advice for any dictator, but does not amount to sharing power.
Kim's rules on rules: Create, Enforce, Evolve
As a political theorist, my question is:
By what authority do you get to create/enforce/evolve the rules?
What are the limits to that authority?
The bottom line is that what you are creating might best be described as "open authoritarianism." Moreover, I don't think the term "community" can be applied to these regimes.
An obvious consequence of this line of thinking would look something like:
The only valid Terms of Service are those stored on a community-editable wiki.
Another:
The only valid leaders are those who can be voted up/down (digg style),
i.e. who have the support of the people that they oversee.
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PHartzog@umich.edu
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The Universe is made up of stories, not atoms.
--Muriel Rukeyser
Importance of norms
Most of the human communication is non-verbal. We rely on more than the explicit communication signals to understand our world. As Kim points out this auxiliary cues are missing in the online world. Hence a community depends more on the norms and rules to reduce the uncertainty while reading posts. For example, in the notebookreview.com, while posting a buy/sell trade offer users have to meet certain norms like provide an photo of the laptop with the user name in the screen, not making publicly lower offer, etc. These norms makes it easier for a user attempting to trade their laptop online. I think this is a good example where the established norms are useful for the community members.
I'm quite certain no one reads the terms and conditions for the websites and software; the cost outweighs the benefits. But there are a necessity from legal standpoint as Kim points. I support the design alternative of producing simpler documents like FAQ derived form terms and conditions that are easier to read. This will help us achieve the goal of enforcing the norms. While FAQ should never supplant the terms and conditions document, it will help us advertise the norms in the user base.
a brief summary
Kim Ch6 talks about the etiquette and ground rules for online communities. The chapter focuses on the etiqueete cycle: develop, enforce and evolve.
Here are some points from the chapter: