Ecology of Online Communities/Community rules study

Overview

Why and how do online communities adopt specific (and often very similar) rules, norms, or code(s) of conduct? In particular, why do communities with different goals, members, and leaders often have such similar or even identical rules? Communities with overlapping membership seem to specialize and differentiate themselves in terms of topical focus. Similarly, in platform environments with many communities, individual participants might choose to join a particular group based on some aspect of the rules or norms that distinguishes it from the others. At the same time, communities may face pressures to imitate successful, well-known peers or adopt widespread, familiar standards in order to lend themselves credibility and legitimacy. Whatever the case, the specific reasons, mechanisms, or processes by which communities select and adopt rules remains outside the scope of prior online communities and social computing research.

In this project, our research team will try to understand the processes and purposes of rule adoption through a comparative study of multiple online communities in multiple settings, including subreddits, Fandom wikis, Fediverse servers, and free and open technology projects. Within each setting, we will identify communities with similar rules and conduct interviews with community leaders, administrators, and moderators to learn how and why they adopted their rules.

Spring 2022 research practicum

During Spring quarter, 2022, this project will take the form of a research practicum coordinated jointly by project team members at Northwestern University and the University of Washington. We will try to use this page to coordinate and document some of that group's work, though we'll likely do most of the day-to-day stuff via chat, email, and other tools.

Team / research site assignments

• Fandom/Wikia: Nate, Paz, Davida
• Fediverse: Carl, Eric, Grace
• Free/Open source software: Molly, Amy, Marlene
• Reddit: Charlie, Sohyeon, Emily, Carolyn, Noah

Assignment ahead of next (April 8) meeting

Upon receiving your team/site assignment, please complete the following things:

1. Spend time (at least an hour or so?) exploring example communities and/or their rules from for your research site (and note that you may need to coordinate with your team/site leader(s) to identify example communities and/or rules). What strikse you as interesting or surprising about the rules in this site? Are there any rules you might expect to find that are missing?
2. Read over the IRB protocol. What do you find confusing or surprising about the IRB protocol?
3. Read over the general interview protocol. Which interview questions strike you as most interesting? Why?
4. Is there anything in particular about interviewing you feel especially confident about? Anything you feel nervous about?
5. What are some biases you think you might bring into your interviews? (See the section on "Constructivist Grounded Theory" in the Charmaz.)

Please write your responses to these questions and submit them to your team leader(s) (either in an email or as an attachment) ahead of Friday's meeting.

Meeting agendas and notes

Meeting notes etherpad