Response to Design to Thrive (Ch. 4-7)

The RIBS heuristic is a great referent for community-building; each chapter's concept seemed fully grounded in detailed experience, much of which I was able to relate to from my own dealings with online communities. While reading, I found myself wondering about the administrators of some of the various communities I've enjoyed and the extent to which they have notions of these practices-- there seem to be certain common features utilized by the more successful administrators, and as a user I seldom considered the extreme amount of planning and maintaining that must have been going on behind the scenes. I think it is not uncommon for individual members of a community to focus on the effect of their contributions; they and their peers see themselves as fueling an organic process of creative exchange and fellowship, when it is really a carefully-calibrated machine they are fueling.

The creation of a sense of beneficence in an online community emphasizes the "sharing economy," a system relying on very intangible structures. My first introduction to the power of renumeration involved a forum on which the number of posts associated with your account was a strong measure of your status within the community; the desire to be a valued member of the group fueled the desire to contribute as often as possible in order to achieve that recognition. This is probably the most simplistic system to establish within a community and has since been replaced by a stronger emphasis on quality over quantity because, on the internet, anyone can spend enough time to make massive contributions to the point of it actually becoming less desirable to have a high post count-- what matters these days is ranking, whether by stars, "likes", or percentages. This somewhat evens the playing-field, encouraging new members that they will be judged by their quality and character and further emphasizing the value of their contributions. This also helps to generate further "original content" (or "internet gold") rather than useless repeat posts.

The notion of establishing a "space" for a community to "play" in deals in part with renumeration and part with influence. It is important for the space to be well-moderated and safe, creating a sense of comfort for the users, and having done so a leader can begin to focus on the more specific needs of the different types of users. It seems clear from the reading that the three classification systems offered for characterizing community members examine three different dimensions of the same issue: that different users have different influence needs at different times. The temporal model offered by Amy Jo Kim reveals the stages a user goes through as a participant in a community, and the social technographies ladder from Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff grants insight into how best to meet the specific needs of a user at whatever stage they are at. Finally, the trajectories model by Etienne Wenger emphasizes the different degrees of expectation possessed by the user. By combining all three a community designer is able to apply them to developing an online system to accommodate a complete spectrum of users.

The belonging chapter deals with users on a more personal level, and because of this I felt many resonances with my own experiences in the examples offered. All of the WoW examples are spot-on; I remember how the inclusion of a guild initiation ritual seemed to me such a great way to integrate myself with the existing social structure. Even the nuances of level-up rituals are well-described-- they can be effective and detrimental at the same time, fostering fellowship while creating jealousy and dissent. For the designer, then, drawing the line becomes essential. Belonging cannot be programmed; it takes an understanding of sociology and psychology for imagining how users will develop a connection to the community.

My notion of a community's significance has always played an extremely important role in my interactions with them, and the paradox of exclusivity helped greatly to explain why I have often had such difficulty in settling on a particular guild or other online network. I find myself struggling to reconcile my desire for a group that is active, yet not swarmed-- populated with quality individuals, yet welcoming and sociable. The text offers some great strategies for achieving this delicate balance which I have also seen implemented effectively, such as using invitations to target high-quality individuals who will in turn provide links to many other people whose decisions they may have direct influence over.

I have begun thinking of online communities in terms of their overall ecology thanks to RIBS-- they should be considered as living entities requiring careful maintenance and ideal conditions in order to thrive. The guy who ran the Star Wars fan community I was a part of often remarked that keeping his forum alive and happy was a full-time job, and now I can believe it-- as a community manager, applying these concepts to a large group of users would indeed require a significant amount of management. But General Gungan was just a hobbyist, while I am beginning to see how I can utilize the wealth of digital resources available to me with an expertise in internet ecology to do things on a much larger, professional scale.