Wenger, Etienne, & McDermott, Richard, & Snyder, William M. (2002). Seven Principles for Cultivating Communities of Practice. In Cultivating Communities of Practice (chap 3). Boston: Harvard Business School Press.
How to maintain a community's liveness? This question evoked me to think about the metaphor of "living system," which can reflect all the main ideas of this chapter. Evolution: the way a living system is living, there should be a dynamic ever changing
Exchanging with outside: I really suspect that a system would die if it is totally isolated; the necessary dialogue (would be better to say interaction/communication), is the connection between the inside and outside of the community. This dynamic makes the living system evolve.
Diversity: in terms of the level of participation, the spaces/types of interactions, which makes the system be able to form diverse and different levels of sub-systems. These sub-systems on a variety of scales further interact each other, leading to the liveness of the community.
A parameter: beat of the living system, indicating the life-cycling characteristic of the system;
Goal of the system to live: the value for us to keep the community. I think there is a goal for each living system to live, also a goal for each community to continue.
Wenger offers community organizers seven useful design guidelines to alleviate any phobia of powerlessness they have after reading the first chapter. His design guidelines remind me of the iterative development process that is currently popular in service and manufacturing industry. In both there is accommodation for perennial changes in requirements and constant touch between participants.
Back to the reading, the first rule emphasizes that communities have no achievable goal, rather a need to be alive. Collect many members as possible, introduce community elements as need arises. There is no point in starting a wiki, forum, and email list blindly; members may not use it, or may be overwhelmed.
Boundary of a community may be blurry, however it is possible to identify the insiders and the outsiders of the community. Insiders know the current strength and requirements of the community. Outsiders know the potential opportunities for the community. A dialog between the two is useful in evolving the community
This is the age of long tails and weak ties in networks. They should not be disregarded as non community members. Passive listeners are like terrorist sleeper cells, you never know when they will jump into action and explode. Forcing users to register to view the forum posts will be an act against this rule.
Private communications fosters strong bonds between users. When these members interact publicly they have a lively discussion which fosters community development, as other members join such lively conversations.
The sixth principle listed in this reading, combining familiarity and excitement, seemed to be a core idea represented in several of the other principles. Every successful community must provide some value (excitement), or it will fail to attract members. However, communities with great value still have the potential for failure if they impose requirements upon members that those members are not willing to bear. These concessions may come in a variety of forms such as privacy, active participation, or safety.
Different community members have varying definitions of comfort and excitement, a concern addressed by the third principle: inviting different levels of participation. Allowing members to dictate the extent of their participation allows them to participate only to the extent to which they are comfortable. This principle seems to help increase a group's size by inviting more loosely connected members, but this is at a cost of a less tightly knit community. The fourth principle also follows this theme, by providing public and private community spaces, which supports the allowance of varying levels of participation.
As an example of comfort and excitement/value being played off of one another, consider the course web site. Comments and blog posts are compulsory, a clear violation of the third principle. Tsk tsk. On the other hand, public and private spaces have been designated, allowing members to communicate without public observance. This has likely impacted the behavior of some members of the class, who might otherwise more carefully guard their words. For those of us who did not drop the class in the first week, the course requirements achieved a sufficient combination of familiarity/comfort and excitement/value.
I also thought it was interesting to just look at our course project. I was thinking like how much my comment becomes worse when I am forced to comment on each of the reading:-) There might be the experiment opportunity to compare these two situations. Or maybe for the next time of this course, the course site can be set as an experimental site with different assigned mechanisms and students are divided into different treatments for a particular stage.
I have thought about this as well. I wonder how much time we really spend reading other people's posts and thinking about them (lurker, periphery participation) because we are wondering about what we ourselves will write. Also, once you've written a post, there isn't much external incentive to read future posts, except to see if you get any points - clever, but still ego-centric.
The incentive system in this case seems to really suppor the high level user activity and not the low level activity. Not that I have any better ideas to throw in the ring...
Submitted by Daniel Zhou on Tue, 01/22/2008 - 12:53.
1
point
The key to cultivate a community of practice is to "invite aliveness". In order to do that, the authors offers seven design principles, which are the main topic of this chapter. They are:
Design for evolution.
Open a dialogue between inside and outside perspectives.
Invite different levels of participation.
Develop both public and private community spaces.
Focus on value.
Combine familarity and excitement.
Create a rhythm for the community.
Those principles are quite new to me, and they changed my perspective on how to design a community of practice. I learned a lot from it.
Daniel and Jiang have done a nice job summarizing the piece and starting the discussion on the major themes of the reading. In addition I'd like to note how much the authors focus on interaction in this chapter to not only build communities but to allow them to grow and become more useful. The authors note early, "communities, unlike teams and other structures, need to invite the interaction that makes them alive” (50). The focus on liveliness informs all seven of the principles they lay out in this chapter, and specifically give context to their discussion of public and private spaces.
The metaphor that stuck with me the most is the idea of the community acting like a park, where members can use literal (and metaphorical) benches to still be a part of the larger community while being slightly away from the center, and thus able to enjoy one-on-one interactions at their leisure. This supports the author's concluding note "that the idea is to create liveliness, not manufacture a predetermined outcome" (64). In other words, the best communities are parks that have a lot of open space and private alcoves, but don't post rules at every entrance. The take-away for me is that the best communities allow users to explore the space set out for them without a strict set of rules and expectations of how to use the space.
Submitted by LizBlankenship on Tue, 01/22/2008 - 23:42.
1
point
As I read this chapter, I could easily relate many of the concepts to ones that would also be desirable in online communities, regardless of whether or not they are communities of practices. I saw a lot of parallels in the Kim chapters, also.
"Design for Evolution" - or rather, redesign when the community changes and calls for it. Digg, for example, outgrew its initial user base by far and now has categories, but it's still in need of more design attention.
"Open a Dialog between inside and outside perspectives" - A fresh look will help you recognize if your online community is growing stagnant
"Invite different levels of participation" - This one is perhaps more debatable, as there are surely some communities in which you much be there frequently in order to gain any status and likely won't enjoy yourself as much otherwise. But I think that with all online communities, the more you take into account a large variety of users with different needs (and different amounts of time/interest available) the more sustainable your community will be. So this is still a good design goal.
"Develop both public and private community spaces" - Allowing users to connect behind the scenes may be a very smart move for communities. It builds relationships and relationships sustain community.
"Focus on Value" - It's great in any community to have people think about why they like it so much. If it's something unexpected or unintended, you want to think about how your design led to that.
"Combine familiarity with excitement" - give the user something they understand, something comfortable and expected, but also give them new content and contests and other thing encouraging participation
And lastly - "Creating a rhythm" also went very nicely with the Kim reading that emphasized the importants of scheduled events.
I thought about how this could be applied to online communities quite a bit too when I read the article. The point of Wenger’s chapter that I felt was most interesting for online communities was inviting different levels of participation. The metaphor of drawing people in with the heat of a fire was particularly appealing to me. In online communities there is really no sense of presence of the other members. This has some benefits and some detriments. In a given community you usually need to interact with the community members to benefit from the resources of the community.
In online communities it is often not the case that user interact with contributors. You are free to use Wikipedia without ever being involved with the online community that contributes to the site. But, it would be ludicrous to try and get an education without interacting with your professors or classmates.
I guess it’s good that the Internet affords different levels of participation--I know I wouldn’t want to contribute to every site that I frequent. But, it is a little disappointing that it can allow so much social loafing. Maybe if people had to engage the community they would realize how much they had to contribute.
I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.
Submitted by LizBlankenship on Sat, 01/26/2008 - 02:09.
1
point
You (Jared) said, "In online communities there is really no sense of presence of the other members."
I agree and disagree.
In some online communities, you will know every time a user logs in and out. You may also be able to tell what they're doing. There is definitely something close to a physical sense of presence in MUDs - unless you're invisible (by wearing the One Ring ;-) or other such fictional object). Even moreso in Second Life. So I guess, in response to your statement, it depends on the type of community. I do agree that there are many which allow simply browsing or social loafing. So in those types, where it is webpage based with no display of logging in or out, I'd tend to agree. And even in the case where there's a forum that says "Users now in this forum: user1, user2, anonymousguest1..." I would say that that doesn't constitute much of an awareness of each other.
Submitted by Paul Resnick on Mon, 01/28/2008 - 11:39.
0
points
If a fresh looking will help you asses stagnation and keep the community growing, then I think we get the following design claim:
The feature "welcome visitors and make elicit their opinions about the community" will help achieve the goal "Open a dialogue between inside and outside perspectives."
This reading explains reasons why we need to have events, rituals, and conversations in a community, since these activities keep a community alive. Previous messages have summarized the reading pretty well. I would like to point out some parts of the reading that interest me.
The purpose of a design is not to impose a structure but to help the community develop. It seems that a community is like a new born baby. As a father/mother, you may do your best to nurture the child, but cannot decide his/her future for him/her. However, while the community is constantly evolving over time, I am wondering if any change is acceptable.
Different levels of participations and outside perspectives are welcomed. In addition to core people, it’s important for a community to adopt different levels of participations and even outsiders, since these people may bring new ideas and help the community to evolve. Wenger et al stated that a large portion of community members are peripheral and rarely participate. If most of peripheral people don’t contribute, I wonder if it implies that it’s nature for a community to have a free-rider problem.
Develop both public and private community spaces. Private discussions strengthen the relationship between members. Also, as authors talked earlier, semiprivate interactions or one-on-one conversations help the peripheral members connected.
1) Design for Evolution - just as physical structures guide the development of a place, social structures guide the development of a community of practice
2) Open a Dialogue Between Inside and Outside Perspectives - in order to better understand the potential for a developing community of practice, other communities of practice should be considered for their best and worst practices.
3) Invite Different Levels of Participation - to encourage an environment where members can increase or decrease their involvement, they must feel like full members at all levels of involvement. This can be achieved by incentivizing participation.
4) Develop Both Public and Private Community Spaces - individual relationships are the backbone for the development of public community events and outreach
5) Focus on Value - to make a value proposition apparent, benefits from involvement and their total impacts should be made clear through incentives.
6) Combine Familarity and Excitement - routines give members comfortable rituals, while new experiences statisfy a need for exploration.
7 ) Create a Rhythm for the Community - active communities can be recognized by their routine events, but people will resist too much involvement if it hinders their commitment to other responsibilities
In complex systems, we refer to this as design for adaptation, or design for generality. Interestingly enough, evolution itself reaches a balance between being overly tightly coupled and rigid vs. being too loosely coupled and having no robustness to change. A community of practice or internet community needs the same balance between "no constraints" and "too many constraints."
2. Open a dialogue between inside and outside perspectives.
Regardless of how you determine insiders and outsiders, the crucial aspect is that each have strengths and weaknesses. Moreover, because of this, they act as complements. Insiders have deep local knowledge but can suffer from myopia/blindness, whereas outsiders may be able to know things hidden from insiders but may not have enough local skills to communicate their knowledge (cf. Granovetter "The Strength of Weak Ties").
3. Invite different levels of participation.
While one can argue over how many levels there are, the key is that users participate on some continuum of activity. This changes in time and space. Robust communities are those that have enough members participating at various levels all of the time.
4. Develop both public and private community spaces.
Often, private community activities create/strengthen relationships and provide confidence which then makes public outreach more successful.
5. Focus on value.
Though Wenger is vague, the notion is clear. Value changes and communities can change their values. Like "evolution" above, a balance is needed between "no values" and "rigid values."
6. Combine familarity and excitement.
Familiarity keeps us coming back for comfort and connections. New events keep us coming back for stimulation and growth.
7. Create a rhythm for the community.
Personally, I think this one is the most difficult. Participants will have different rhythms in their own lives and unless the community is a highly significant life-focus for them, they will adapt their participation to match their own rhythms and not the rhythms of the community.
In conclusion, I think the word "design" is just grossly innapropriate. Generations of third-world developers tried "planning and design" and failed. It fosters a way of thinking that coincides with words like "deployment" and "maintenance." Philosophical shifts in third-world development arrived at the word "facilitator" which I think is a healthier and more humane stance. In regards to our topic, one should be a facilitator for a community, and not a designer. (I just saw this used in the Kim as well).
-------------------------------------------------------- PHartzog@umich.edu
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The Universe is made up of stories, not atoms.
--Muriel Rukeyser
Submitted by Sean Munson on Wed, 01/23/2008 - 23:05.
2
points
I appreciate your point about the use of "design" but I don't entirely agree. I think that if someone thinks they are designing the community, that shows a bit of hubris. If they're designing for community or "design for aliveness" (as the authors of this chapter use the term), I think that's not that different than facilitating community.
There's some other work on design for unintended use that I think also seeks to appropriately balance goals with humility.
Paul, wondering if you would clarify the last bit - the "in conclusion" part. I think that I know what you mean, but I don't want to assume. "Planning and design" - you are no longer just talking about communities, or are you? And, urban planning, software development?
I also agree about facilitate vs. design and that was bothering me in the first readings and was the reason that I kept mentioning how dated they seemed.
The suggestions that I take from Wengers comments on communities
of practice for designing communities are not only similar to neighborhoods but
actually the way most medieval European cities developed.
They were founded because a geographical location added value to the settlers
that decided to stay for a while and eventually settled there for good. The
suitable geographic location - like a frequently traveled trade route or the
presence of resources - equals the discussed value of communities and why people
join them.
Most medieval cities were not planned and designed predicting the growth like London
or Paris. Looking at maps and the way cities have grown is very organic and
based on the citizens needs. Development adapted to the habits and rhythm of life of its
citizens. But at the same time decisions were made to support the growth of
cities like adding transportation systems or re-routing rivers.
This comment reminded me of Steven Johnson's book Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Cities, and Software. It traces some of the interesting patterns in organic development of cities, exploring how predictable some of the organic constructs that develop in cities become, ie, there is always a dump somewhere, and a graveyard....
The author explores the degrees to which this form of urban planning could be sub-conscious, comparing the behavior to the swarm intelligence of ants. What it reminded me of in the reading is a quote which other commenters have touched upon several times:
"Because communities are built on existing networks and evolve beyond any particular design, the purpose of the design is not to impose a structure but to help the community develop (Wenger et al, p. 53)."
These lines really get at the heart of all seven of the principals outlined in the chapter. They articulate the tension between trying to balance incentives for participation with a desire to avoid create a rigid structure that feels more "compliance" oriented.
I also enjoyed the posts on the course web site forced posting policy. To be honest, I like it. Its incentive-based to me and helps me force myself to do the readings. Buzzy Nielsen sent out an interesting link to Stickk.com to the si.all list serve this week. Its a site that "let's you put a contract out on yourself," attempting to set up incentive-based approaches to achieving common touch-to-sustain goals like dieting or excercise. The idea is the brain-child of a Yale Economist. Basically, you sign a legally binding document that says "stick to your goal" or donate X amount to a pre-selected cause-based non-profit. It will be interesting to watch what happens with this site!
Submitted by Matt Adamo on Wed, 01/23/2008 - 17:20.
1
point
Design called design is not design. This was a deep chapter, with practical ideas and examples wrapped up in dualistic principles. Inside/outside perspectives. Core/periphery. Public/private. Design/evolution. An important metaphor to take away from this chapter is that communities of practice are living things; they can be encouraged to grow a certain way with proper planning, but ultimately need room to grow on their own. Boundaries without boundaries. Very Zen.
In this reading, Wenger et al. discuss seven core concepts behind successful design and development of communities of practice. Once again, Wenger et al. makes is extremely clear that these are not set in stone. Of the seven principles I found points number 1 (design for evolution), 3 (different levels of participation), and 4 (private and public spaces) to be most compelling. On the other hand, I found points 5 (creating value), 6 (familiarity and excitement), and 7 (creating rhythm) to be less useful. The main similarity across these concepts is that all of them, to some extent, are determined by the site owner, developers, or leaders in the community. The distinguishing factor asks the question, "to what extent?"
In a sense, designers of online communities can design communities with a general picture in mind, setting the basic infrastructure, listing the basic guidelines, and formulating the overall atmosphere. Based on these factors, certain users are drawn to these communities. However, once users are present, one might argue that the "control" or "evolution" of the community is largely handed over to the community as a whole. As Wenger et al. pointed out, community activity often spikes at special occasions, community focus changes over time, and users’ discover new needs and new value is created as result. I feel that points 5-7 are nothing more than the logical paths communities follow. The idea is that a community that has a critical mass of users, who continue to entertain each other, will stay alive.
Submitted by John Blair on Mon, 01/28/2008 - 14:23.
0
points
John Blair
I agree mostly with the reading and Geoff's assessment on how communities stay alive. In several other posts however, I've noted that many people are concerned about the date of the article. I can see where this is a concern in terms of online communities, but online communities at their heart are also human communtiies and rely completely on "traditional" human communities, they are just a different means of accomplishing the same task (communication).
I think it's important to note that while good design perhaps can't guarantee success, a bad design can almost guarantee failure. That said, a good design can contribute and enhance community devlopment, but can not ensure it's success. Something else is needed to be successful and that is the intangible element called people.
Submitted by Sean Munson on Wed, 01/23/2008 - 22:58.
0
points
I really like the seven points introduced in this chapter, and they seem to be good advice regardless of the specific community or organizational metaphor that a community builder is using but at a level that goes beyond common-sense advice. I appreciate the authors' use of the term "aliveness," which gives a certain sense of conviviality and activity; it's a good term.
Design for evolution: implies that a certain amount of humility is required, and that things take time. Many of the best product designers I know take this approach too - theur customers may take things in a different direction than the designer envisioned, and designing in a way to support to can be to your benefit.
Open a Dialogue Between Inside and Outside Perspectives: Another bit of advice that applies to so many situations. (The ::how:: of this is often so much harder, though.)
Invite Different Levels of Participation: One mistake that used to be common among designers of online spaces I knew was the sense that they had to transform all of their lurkers into active commenters. That's not a practical approach. I think Preece's work on lurkers has been helpful for challenging some of these conceptions, and designers have also gotten smarter about how to show the presence of lurkers, turning them into an audience that encourages the users who contribute more. As we saw in the conversations readings, though, there are still substantial challenges with help new and experienced, novice and expert users all feel comfortable.
Develop Both Public and Private Spaces: While not really the same, this reminds me a bit of the "on-state" and "off-stage" ideas to which dramatalurgists refer.
Focus on Value: okay, maybe this point seems sort of common sense. He's talking about comunities of practice, so his writing makes great sense for that situation. I think some community designers get too focused on the idea of helping users and miss that sometimes being together is the users' primary goal. For an oustanding post-mortem on a project that made this mistake, check out Stokes Jone's paper at the 2006 EPIC conference (sorry, not finding a link tonight, but I can send you a PDF if you ask - the paper also does a beautiful job of linking anthropology theory and practice in a way that I rarely see, particularly in technical writing).
Combine Familiarity and Excitement: Oh so true. I've also heard advice on giving talks or writing papers that has a similar sound: affirm something that the audience might already believe, then build on that with something new. Familiar and exciting.
Create a Rhythm: this one sounds good, but it is perhaps the one for which it is hardest for me to figure out how I would measure success, or to achieve.
Some personal feelings about this reading. Community design is still a new area for me as I do not have such experience before. Among the seven principles author mentioned, most make sense to me while a few impressed me more. The first principle he mentioned is design for evolution. This is pretty straightforward and easy to pick in today's world. I believe this is the basic principle that could be applied in various design areas as the world is dynamic and everything is alive, so is the design. Next, open a dialogue between inside and outside perspectives. I totally agree that effective cmmunity design is built on the collective experience of community members and involvement of outside experts could be potentially helpful to the structure and the entire community. I was impressed by the next principle he pointed out, which is to invite different levels of participation, which has been experienced in real life. The concentric graph really helps illustrate the explanation. Another one that I can not agree more is to focus on value, which is sometimes not easy to assess for a community. However, since participation is usually voluntary, value has always been a key issue to community life. The last one is interesting which is to create a rhythm for the community. It is true that the rhythm of the community is a strong indicator of its aliveness and finding the right rhythm at each stage could be essential to a ommunity's development.
Submitted by Tracy Liu on Thu, 01/24/2008 - 20:31.
1
point
This chapter articulates seven design principals for developing communities of practice. Although the author explained a lot on “what are these seven principals” and “why do we need them”, there is few thing about “how do we implement them in the communities of practice”, which I expect to read more in following chapters.
One specific question about the first principal is that how do we detect/ judge the key transition in a dynamic community of practice. Changes always happen, but what is an important one?
For the third principal about encouraging different levels of participation, it is a good topic to incorporating the public goods theory from the perspective of economics, which I would like to explore in the future design report.
I think the most important principle for me is 3: invite different levels of participation.
You shouldn't expect everyone to participate. Some people function to read the posts of others. In reality, if everyone posted questions without reading a FAQ or looking at previous posts first, discussions could get out of control. The fact that some people are happy just finding what they need and going on with their lives is good.
In the case of the degrees of participation, Coordinators are most likely moderators and super-answerers. The active members are those who ask questions and maybe occasionally answer them. The periphery are lurkers.
Of course, a good community allows for upward mobility (lurkers sometimes step out of the shadows and become active, which is good because they already know the rituals of the community, etc).
I, too, was intrigued by the importance of Wenger's third principle (inviting different levels of participation). The characterization with four levels seems to be in line with my anecdotal experience of communities – both online and off. It also seems to help describe some of the community discovered in Hansen, et al's paper on communities, particularly css-d.
There is certainly mobility between different tiers of participation, and this is an important element of successful communities. People should be free to become more involved, just as they should be allowed to leave. I also think having an active periphery is key to communities – the more lurkers the better. In the case of the css-d community, the lurkers benefit from the conversation occurring between other group members. Some gained expertise might be used later on as the person transitions from lurker to active participant.
Ultimately, I was a little dissatisfied with Wenger's characterization of the various degrees. While I agree with a number of his tenets, his final conclusion left me flat – the whole part about a strong fire in the center draws everyone to the heat. I'm not sure I necessarily agree with this, especially for larger communities where there may not be a central "fire". Rather, there may be a number of fires around which different types of participants are drawn.
In the transition from pure "communities of practice" to online communities I think there is a bit of a shifting role for the coordinator role. In some sense, this might be the designer of the virtual space, who creates the space specifically to allow affordances for desired behaviors, but this also might be a particularly active member who simply leads others by starting new threads and posting relevant news.
When I think of the online communities of practice that I've used I think some of the most helpful (and yet sometimes most frustrating) are ones which are a bit of a free-for-all. Where there is maybe a "clockwork" coordinator who sets the rules and points of reference but isn't necessarily in the core of the fray as per Wenger's diagram. Often these type of communities are "raw bins" of unstructured information, but doubtless anyone who has dealt with complicated software or techinical work has had to delve in to these type of communities.
I liked the reading - no big objections. I did find it hard to keep focused on what applied specifically to communities of practice and what could be generalized to most (many) e-communities. Well.. it can all be generalized, but the advice might not be good or apply.
I thought most about the first point - design for evolution. I just did a book report for my information architecture class on Stewart Brand's book, How Building's Learn, which explains why and how to design for change/evolution. While the book is about buildings/architecture, information architects have adopted the book's ideas to apply to all the layer, systems, and infrastructure involved in developing web sites. Another concept of Brand's (pace layering) developed in a later book is a popular framework for helping info architects, systems designers think about designing for evolution.
Brand's concepts are very similar to Wegner's discussion of the design for evolution piece, and my first thought was that they probably could also apply to communities of practice. Plus, I saw Wegner also making the architecture comparisons. But, I don't necessarily see the value of designing communities of practice to last a very long time. Why is this better than having some end and new ones start? Without the ability to break away from (not slowly evolve from) an old community, it seems to me that fresh thinking and new ways of framing challenges could be hindered.
Living System
How to maintain a community's liveness? This question evoked me to think about the metaphor of "living system," which can reflect all the main ideas of this chapter.
Evolution: the way a living system is living, there should be a dynamic ever changing
Exchanging with outside: I really suspect that a system would die if it is totally isolated; the necessary dialogue (would be better to say interaction/communication), is the connection between the inside and outside of the community. This dynamic makes the living system evolve.
Diversity: in terms of the level of participation, the spaces/types of interactions, which makes the system be able to form diverse and different levels of sub-systems. These sub-systems on a variety of scales further interact each other, leading to the liveness of the community.
A parameter: beat of the living system, indicating the life-cycling characteristic of the system;
Goal of the system to live: the value for us to keep the community. I think there is a goal for each living system to live, also a goal for each community to continue.
First four of the Seven commandments
Wenger offers community organizers seven useful design guidelines to alleviate any phobia of powerlessness they have after reading the first chapter. His design guidelines remind me of the iterative development process that is currently popular in service and manufacturing industry. In both there is accommodation for perennial changes in requirements and constant touch between participants.
Balancing Comfort and Excitement
The sixth principle listed in this reading, combining familiarity and excitement, seemed to be a core idea represented in several of the other principles. Every successful community must provide some value (excitement), or it will fail to attract members. However, communities with great value still have the potential for failure if they impose requirements upon members that those members are not willing to bear. These concessions may come in a variety of forms such as privacy, active participation, or safety.
Different community members have varying definitions of comfort and excitement, a concern addressed by the third principle: inviting different levels of participation. Allowing members to dictate the extent of their participation allows them to participate only to the extent to which they are comfortable. This principle seems to help increase a group's size by inviting more loosely connected members, but this is at a cost of a less tightly knit community. The fourth principle also follows this theme, by providing public and private community spaces, which supports the allowance of varying levels of participation.
As an example of comfort and excitement/value being played off of one another, consider the course web site. Comments and blog posts are compulsory, a clear violation of the third principle. Tsk tsk. On the other hand, public and private spaces have been designated, allowing members to communicate without public observance. This has likely impacted the behavior of some members of the class, who might otherwise more carefully guard their words. For those of us who did not drop the class in the first week, the course requirements achieved a sufficient combination of familiarity/comfort and excitement/value.
Our Course Site
I also thought it was interesting to just look at our course project. I was thinking like how much my comment becomes worse when I am forced to comment on each of the reading:-) There might be the experiment opportunity to compare these two situations. Or maybe for the next time of this course, the course site can be set as an experimental site with different assigned mechanisms and students are divided into different treatments for a particular stage.
Ditto
I have thought about this as well. I wonder how much time we really spend reading other people's posts and thinking about them (lurker, periphery participation) because we are wondering about what we ourselves will write. Also, once you've written a post, there isn't much external incentive to read future posts, except to see if you get any points - clever, but still ego-centric.
The incentive system in this case seems to really suppor the high level user activity and not the low level activity. Not that I have any better ideas to throw in the ring...
A brief summary
The key to cultivate a community of practice is to "invite aliveness". In order to do that, the authors offers seven design principles, which are the main topic of this chapter. They are:
Those principles are quite new to me, and they changed my perspective on how to design a community of practice. I learned a lot from it.
Infrastructure not Structure
Daniel and Jiang have done a nice job summarizing the piece and starting the discussion on the major themes of the reading. In addition I'd like to note how much the authors focus on interaction in this chapter to not only build communities but to allow them to grow and become more useful. The authors note early, "communities, unlike teams and other structures, need to invite the interaction that makes them alive” (50). The focus on liveliness informs all seven of the principles they lay out in this chapter, and specifically give context to their discussion of public and private spaces.
The metaphor that stuck with me the most is the idea of the community acting like a park, where members can use literal (and metaphorical) benches to still be a part of the larger community while being slightly away from the center, and thus able to enjoy one-on-one interactions at their leisure. This supports the author's concluding note "that the idea is to create liveliness, not manufacture a predetermined outcome" (64). In other words, the best communities are parks that have a lot of open space and private alcoves, but don't post rules at every entrance. The take-away for me is that the best communities allow users to explore the space set out for them without a strict set of rules and expectations of how to use the space.
relating the reading to online communities
As I read this chapter, I could easily relate many of the concepts to ones that would also be desirable in online communities, regardless of whether or not they are communities of practices. I saw a lot of parallels in the Kim chapters, also.
"Design for Evolution" - or rather, redesign when the community changes and calls for it. Digg, for example, outgrew its initial user base by far and now has categories, but it's still in need of more design attention.
"Open a Dialog between inside and outside perspectives" - A fresh look will help you recognize if your online community is growing stagnant
"Invite different levels of participation" - This one is perhaps more debatable, as there are surely some communities in which you much be there frequently in order to gain any status and likely won't enjoy yourself as much otherwise. But I think that with all online communities, the more you take into account a large variety of users with different needs (and different amounts of time/interest available) the more sustainable your community will be. So this is still a good design goal.
"Develop both public and private community spaces" - Allowing users to connect behind the scenes may be a very smart move for communities. It builds relationships and relationships sustain community.
"Focus on Value" - It's great in any community to have people think about why they like it so much. If it's something unexpected or unintended, you want to think about how your design led to that.
"Combine familiarity with excitement" - give the user something they understand, something comfortable and expected, but also give them new content and contests and other thing encouraging participation
And lastly - "Creating a rhythm" also went very nicely with the Kim reading that emphasized the importants of scheduled events.
Lighting Fires Online
I thought about how this could be applied to online communities quite a bit too when I read the article. The point of Wenger’s chapter that I felt was most interesting for online communities was inviting different levels of participation. The metaphor of drawing people in with the heat of a fire was particularly appealing to me. In online communities there is really no sense of presence of the other members. This has some benefits and some detriments. In a given community you usually need to interact with the community members to benefit from the resources of the community.
In online communities it is often not the case that user interact with contributors. You are free to use Wikipedia without ever being involved with the online community that contributes to the site. But, it would be ludicrous to try and get an education without interacting with your professors or classmates.
I guess it’s good that the Internet affords different levels of participation--I know I wouldn’t want to contribute to every site that I frequent. But, it is a little disappointing that it can allow so much social loafing. Maybe if people had to engage the community they would realize how much they had to contribute.
I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.
-Jorge Luis Borges
You (Jared) said, "In online
You (Jared) said, "In online communities there is really no sense of presence of the other members."
I agree and disagree.
In some online communities, you will know every time a user logs in and out. You may also be able to tell what they're doing. There is definitely something close to a physical sense of presence in MUDs - unless you're invisible (by wearing the One Ring ;-) or other such fictional object). Even moreso in Second Life. So I guess, in response to your statement, it depends on the type of community. I do agree that there are many which allow simply browsing or social loafing. So in those types, where it is webpage based with no display of logging in or out, I'd tend to agree. And even in the case where there's a forum that says "Users now in this forum: user1, user2, anonymousguest1..." I would say that that doesn't constitute much of an awareness of each other.
a fresh look...so make sure visitors are welcome and heard
If a fresh looking will help you asses stagnation and keep the community growing, then I think we get the following design claim:
The feature "welcome visitors and make elicit their opinions about the community" will help achieve the goal "Open a dialogue between inside and outside perspectives."
Some Thoughts
This reading explains reasons why we need to have events, rituals, and conversations in a community, since these activities keep a community alive. Previous messages have summarized the reading pretty well. I would like to point out some parts of the reading that interest me.
Wenger et al Ch 3 insights
To summarize:
1) Design for Evolution - just as physical structures guide the development of a place, social structures guide the development of a community of practice
2) Open a Dialogue Between Inside and Outside Perspectives - in order to better understand the potential for a developing community of practice, other communities of practice should be considered for their best and worst practices.
3) Invite Different Levels of Participation - to encourage an environment where members can increase or decrease their involvement, they must feel like full members at all levels of involvement. This can be achieved by incentivizing participation.
4) Develop Both Public and Private Community Spaces - individual relationships are the backbone for the development of public community events and outreach
5) Focus on Value - to make a value proposition apparent, benefits from involvement and their total impacts should be made clear through incentives.
6) Combine Familarity and Excitement - routines give members comfortable rituals, while new experiences statisfy a need for exploration.
7 ) Create a Rhythm for the Community - active communities can be recognized by their routine events, but people will resist too much involvement if it hinders their commitment to other responsibilities
Seven Responses
Here's my response to Wenger's seven principles:
1. Design for evolution.
In complex systems, we refer to this as design for adaptation, or design for generality. Interestingly enough, evolution itself reaches a balance between being overly tightly coupled and rigid vs. being too loosely coupled and having no robustness to change. A community of practice or internet community needs the same balance between "no constraints" and "too many constraints."
2. Open a dialogue between inside and outside perspectives.
Regardless of how you determine insiders and outsiders, the crucial aspect is that each have strengths and weaknesses. Moreover, because of this, they act as complements. Insiders have deep local knowledge but can suffer from myopia/blindness, whereas outsiders may be able to know things hidden from insiders but may not have enough local skills to communicate their knowledge (cf. Granovetter "The Strength of Weak Ties").
3. Invite different levels of participation.
While one can argue over how many levels there are, the key is that users participate on some continuum of activity. This changes in time and space. Robust communities are those that have enough members participating at various levels all of the time.
4. Develop both public and private community spaces.
Often, private community activities create/strengthen relationships and provide confidence which then makes public outreach more successful.
5. Focus on value.
Though Wenger is vague, the notion is clear. Value changes and communities can change their values. Like "evolution" above, a balance is needed between "no values" and "rigid values."
6. Combine familarity and excitement.
Familiarity keeps us coming back for comfort and connections. New events keep us coming back for stimulation and growth.
7. Create a rhythm for the community.
Personally, I think this one is the most difficult. Participants will have different rhythms in their own lives and unless the community is a highly significant life-focus for them, they will adapt their participation to match their own rhythms and not the rhythms of the community.
In conclusion, I think the word "design" is just grossly innapropriate. Generations of third-world developers tried "planning and design" and failed. It fosters a way of thinking that coincides with words like "deployment" and "maintenance." Philosophical shifts in third-world development arrived at the word "facilitator" which I think is a healthier and more humane stance. In regards to our topic, one should be a facilitator for a community, and not a designer. (I just saw this used in the Kim as well).
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PHartzog@umich.edu
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The Universe is made up of stories, not atoms.
--Muriel Rukeyser
a non-trivial difference between "design for" and "design"
I appreciate your point about the use of "design" but I don't entirely agree. I think that if someone thinks they are designing the community, that shows a bit of hubris. If they're designing for community or "design for aliveness" (as the authors of this chapter use the term), I think that's not that different than facilitating community.
There's some other work on design for unintended use that I think also seeks to appropriately balance goals with humility.
Clarification?
Paul, wondering if you would clarify the last bit - the "in conclusion" part. I think that I know what you mean, but I don't want to assume. "Planning and design" - you are no longer just talking about communities, or are you? And, urban planning, software development?
I also agree about facilitate vs. design and that was bothering me in the first readings and was the reason that I kept mentioning how dated they seemed.
Organic growth
The suggestions that I take from Wengers comments on communities
of practice for designing communities are not only similar to neighborhoods but
actually the way most medieval European cities developed.
They were founded because a geographical location added value to the settlers
that decided to stay for a while and eventually settled there for good. The
suitable geographic location - like a frequently traveled trade route or the
presence of resources - equals the discussed value of communities and why people
join them.
Most medieval cities were not planned and designed predicting the growth like London
or Paris. Looking at maps and the way cities have grown is very organic and
based on the citizens needs. Development adapted to the habits and rhythm of life of its
citizens. But at the same time decisions were made to support the growth of
cities like adding transportation systems or re-routing rivers.
Emergence in Communities of Practice
This comment reminded me of Steven Johnson's book Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Cities, and Software. It traces some of the interesting patterns in organic development of cities, exploring how predictable some of the organic constructs that develop in cities become, ie, there is always a dump somewhere, and a graveyard....
The author explores the degrees to which this form of urban planning could be sub-conscious, comparing the behavior to the swarm intelligence of ants. What it reminded me of in the reading is a quote which other commenters have touched upon several times:
"Because communities are built on existing networks and evolve beyond any particular design, the purpose of the design is not to impose a structure but to help the community develop (Wenger et al, p. 53)."
These lines really get at the heart of all seven of the principals outlined in the chapter. They articulate the tension between trying to balance incentives for participation with a desire to avoid create a rigid structure that feels more "compliance" oriented.
I also enjoyed the posts on the course web site forced posting policy. To be honest, I like it. Its incentive-based to me and helps me force myself to do the readings. Buzzy Nielsen sent out an interesting link to Stickk.com to the si.all list serve this week. Its a site that "let's you put a contract out on yourself," attempting to set up incentive-based approaches to achieving common touch-to-sustain goals like dieting or excercise. The idea is the brain-child of a Yale Economist. Basically, you sign a legally binding document that says "stick to your goal" or donate X amount to a pre-selected cause-based non-profit. It will be interesting to watch what happens with this site!
Lisa McLaughlin
Design Zen
Design called design is not design. This was a deep chapter, with practical ideas and examples wrapped up in dualistic principles. Inside/outside perspectives. Core/periphery. Public/private. Design/evolution. An important metaphor to take away from this chapter is that communities of practice are living things; they can be encouraged to grow a certain way with proper planning, but ultimately need room to grow on their own. Boundaries without boundaries. Very Zen.
How communities stay alive
In this reading, Wenger et al. discuss seven core concepts behind successful design and development of communities of practice. Once again, Wenger et al. makes is extremely clear that these are not set in stone. Of the seven principles I found points number 1 (design for evolution), 3 (different levels of participation), and 4 (private and public spaces) to be most compelling. On the other hand, I found points 5 (creating value), 6 (familiarity and excitement), and 7 (creating rhythm) to be less useful. The main similarity across these concepts is that all of them, to some extent, are determined by the site owner, developers, or leaders in the community. The distinguishing factor asks the question, "to what extent?"
In a sense, designers of online communities can design communities with a general picture in mind, setting the basic infrastructure, listing the basic guidelines, and formulating the overall atmosphere. Based on these factors, certain users are drawn to these communities. However, once users are present, one might argue that the "control" or "evolution" of the community is largely handed over to the community as a whole. As Wenger et al. pointed out, community activity often spikes at special occasions, community focus changes over time, and users’ discover new needs and new value is created as result. I feel that points 5-7 are nothing more than the logical paths communities follow. The idea is that a community that has a critical mass of users, who continue to entertain each other, will stay alive.
communities survival
John Blair
I agree mostly with the reading and Geoff's assessment on how communities stay alive. In several other posts however, I've noted that many people are concerned about the date of the article. I can see where this is a concern in terms of online communities, but online communities at their heart are also human communtiies and rely completely on "traditional" human communities, they are just a different means of accomplishing the same task (communication).
I think it's important to note that while good design perhaps can't guarantee success, a bad design can almost guarantee failure. That said, a good design can contribute and enhance community devlopment, but can not ensure it's success. Something else is needed to be successful and that is the intangible element called people.
a solid seven points
I really like the seven points introduced in this chapter, and they seem to be good advice regardless of the specific community or organizational metaphor that a community builder is using but at a level that goes beyond common-sense advice. I appreciate the authors' use of the term "aliveness," which gives a certain sense of conviviality and activity; it's a good term.
To design a successful community
Some personal feelings about this reading. Community design is still a new area for me as I do not have such experience before. Among the seven principles author mentioned, most make sense to me while a few impressed me more. The first principle he mentioned is design for evolution. This is pretty straightforward and easy to pick in today's world. I believe this is the basic principle that could be applied in various design areas as the world is dynamic and everything is alive, so is the design. Next, open a dialogue between inside and outside perspectives. I totally agree that effective cmmunity design is built on the collective experience of community members and involvement of outside experts could be potentially helpful to the structure and the entire community. I was impressed by the next principle he pointed out, which is to invite different levels of participation, which has been experienced in real life. The concentric graph really helps illustrate the explanation. Another one that I can not agree more is to focus on value, which is sometimes not easy to assess for a community. However, since participation is usually voluntary, value has always been a key issue to community life. The last one is interesting which is to create a rhythm for the community. It is true that the rhythm of the community is a strong indicator of its aliveness and finding the right rhythm at each stage could be essential to a ommunity's development.
transition threshold and public goods contribution
This chapter articulates seven design principals for developing communities of practice. Although the author explained a lot on “what are these seven principals” and “why do we need them”, there is few thing about “how do we implement them in the communities of practice”, which I expect to read more in following chapters.
One specific question about the first principal is that how do we detect/ judge the key transition in a dynamic community of practice. Changes always happen, but what is an important one?
For the third principal about encouraging different levels of participation, it is a good topic to incorporating the public goods theory from the perspective of economics, which I would like to explore in the future design report.
Lurkers are people, too!
I think the most important principle for me is 3: invite different levels of participation.
You shouldn't expect everyone to participate. Some people function to read the posts of others. In reality, if everyone posted questions without reading a FAQ or looking at previous posts first, discussions could get out of control. The fact that some people are happy just finding what they need and going on with their lives is good.
In the case of the degrees of participation, Coordinators are most likely moderators and super-answerers. The active members are those who ask questions and maybe occasionally answer them. The periphery are lurkers.
Of course, a good community allows for upward mobility (lurkers sometimes step out of the shadows and become active, which is good because they already know the rituals of the community, etc).
Principle Three: Intriguing but unsatisfying
I, too, was intrigued by the importance of Wenger's third principle (inviting different levels of participation). The characterization with four levels seems to be in line with my anecdotal experience of communities – both online and off. It also seems to help describe some of the community discovered in Hansen, et al's paper on communities, particularly css-d.
There is certainly mobility between different tiers of participation, and this is an important element of successful communities. People should be free to become more involved, just as they should be allowed to leave. I also think having an active periphery is key to communities – the more lurkers the better. In the case of the css-d community, the lurkers benefit from the conversation occurring between other group members. Some gained expertise might be used later on as the person transitions from lurker to active participant.
Ultimately, I was a little dissatisfied with Wenger's characterization of the various degrees. While I agree with a number of his tenets, his final conclusion left me flat – the whole part about a strong fire in the center draws everyone to the heat. I'm not sure I necessarily agree with this, especially for larger communities where there may not be a central "fire". Rather, there may be a number of fires around which different types of participants are drawn.
Wenger's Mystical Coordinator
In the transition from pure "communities of practice" to online communities I think there is a bit of a shifting role for the coordinator role. In some sense, this might be the designer of the virtual space, who creates the space specifically to allow affordances for desired behaviors, but this also might be a particularly active member who simply leads others by starting new threads and posting relevant news.
When I think of the online communities of practice that I've used I think some of the most helpful (and yet sometimes most frustrating) are ones which are a bit of a free-for-all. Where there is maybe a "clockwork" coordinator who sets the rules and points of reference but isn't necessarily in the core of the fray as per Wenger's diagram. Often these type of communities are "raw bins" of unstructured information, but doubtless anyone who has dealt with complicated software or techinical work has had to delve in to these type of communities.
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oostendo@umich.edu
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How much evolution?
I liked the reading - no big objections. I did find it hard to keep focused on what applied specifically to communities of practice and what could be generalized to most (many) e-communities. Well.. it can all be generalized, but the advice might not be good or apply.
I thought most about the first point - design for evolution. I just did a book report for my information architecture class on Stewart Brand's book, How Building's Learn, which explains why and how to design for change/evolution. While the book is about buildings/architecture, information architects have adopted the book's ideas to apply to all the layer, systems, and infrastructure involved in developing web sites. Another concept of Brand's (pace layering) developed in a later book is a popular framework for helping info architects, systems designers think about designing for evolution.
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1350/536205255_a71bbe7f08_m.jpg
Brand's concepts are very similar to Wegner's discussion of the design for evolution piece, and my first thought was that they probably could also apply to communities of practice. Plus, I saw Wegner also making the architecture comparisons. But, I don't necessarily see the value of designing communities of practice to last a very long time. Why is this better than having some end and new ones start? Without the ability to break away from (not slowly evolve from) an old community, it seems to me that fresh thinking and new ways of framing challenges could be hindered.