Making and Breaking Boundaries in Online Communities

1. Making and Breaking Boundaries in Online Communities Brian S. Butler bbutler@katz.pitt.edu Katz Graduate School of Business University of Pittsburgh

2. Technology as a Boundary Eliminator • Geographic boundaries • Temporal boundaries • Political boundaries • Organizational boundaries

3. But…Boundaries Remain

4. Boundaries in Online Communities • “As space must have some sort of outer border – there must be some way to tell where the space comes to an end.” (Fisher, 2003) • Online communities consists of two sets: people and content. • Boundaries define who/what is in the space and who/what not

5. Formal vs. Realized Boundaries • Formal Boundaries • What developers think should be in the community • Often embedded in technology • Can be “enforced” – but often this is costly • Realized Boundaries • Set of content and people that emerge from the choices (individual and collective) of the community • Affected, but rarely determined, by formal boundaries

6. Conceptual Model of Content Boundaries Formal Content Boundary • Person 1 (P1): No interest overlap • Person 2 (P2): Full interest overlap • Person 3 (P3): Partial interest overlap P1 P2 P3 Topic Space:

7. Two Approaches • Boundary Making • Interaction of boundaries and infrastructure • Method: Calibrated simulation model • Boundary Breaking • Visibility, Focus, and Community Dynamics • Method: Empirical study of USENET data

8. Community Model Features • Single community • Initial population of 100 • Individuals: • Range of interest and expertise • Initial expectations of net benefit • Community: • Boundary breadth relative to interests of population • Cost of passive involvement • Participation structure • Overall likelihood of contribution • Distribution in population

9. Individual Interests and Content Boundaries P1 P2 P3 Topic Space: Vs. P1 P3 P2 Topic Space: Key Issue: Potential for “Noise” (Valueless, costly communication)

10. Model Process Overview

11. Formation of Realized Boundaries

12. Community Size, Boundary Focus, and Involvement Cost Fit Between Formal Boundaries & Interests of Average Member of the Target Population Relative Message Processing Cost

13. What’s it mean? • Overall the model suggests that online community developers face a hierarchically structured design space: • Lowering relative involvement cost to make the community feasible • Defining the content boundary • Managing contribution levels

14. Boundary Making & Involvement Cost • In high cost involvement environments targeted content boundaries are crucial – without them communities are likely to fail • High cost of noise leaves little room for experimentation or learning

15. Boundary Making & Involvement Cost (cont.) • In low cost involvement infrastructures boundaries affect the complexity of the development problem • Wide boundaries (relative to individual interests) make the viability of the community dependent on the particulars of the participation • Targeted boundaries allow for viable communities under a range of participation structures

16. Model Implications • To create a viable online community use narrow, highly targeted boundaries • Consistent with strategy of building from a small, focused core • Boundary must still allow for enough people to generate content (contingent critical mass). • More likely to be feasible in populations with many individuals or concentrated interests

17. Model Implication (cont.) • When highly targeted boundaries are not possible, an online community’s survival is more affected by variation in the participation structure • Possible explanation for difference in emphasis between research on public and organization/education bound communities

18. (A Few) Limitations • Focused on dynamics of one community • Hence, it doesn’t deal with competition with other, overlapping communities • Ignores any implications of individuals’ interests extending beyond the formal bounds of a particular community

19. USENET Crossposting & Realized Boundaries • “In practice, when posters cross-post many messages to another newsgroup they can effectively merge into the same group. Readers and participants in each closely cross-posted newsgroup are effectively members of a single larger meta-newsgroup. There is good reason to believe that there are far fewer meta-groups than distinctly named newsgroups since 34% of newsgroups cross-post more that 50% of the messages they contain. In 4% of newsgroups more than 90% are cross-posted to (or from) other groups.” (Smith, 2003; p. 75)

20. USENET Boundaries & Boundary Breaking • Formal boundaries: • Signaled by a name • May or may not be enforced • Technology links name and content set • Individuals reading messages from newsgroup X only see messages from X • Realized boundaries: • Individuals may choose to place messages in multiple spaces simultaneously • Can be wider than formal boundaries

21. USENET Boundary Measures • Diffuseness • Proportion of messages crossposted • Visibility • Range • # of crosspost targets • Salience • # of crossposted message per target

22. Community Dynamics • Interaction initiation • # of Starters: Individuals posting initial messages • # of Starts per Starter: Starter involvement • Interaction extension • # of Repliers: Individuals replying to messages • # of Replies/Replier: Replier involvement • Responsiveness • Proportion of start messages receiving a response

23. Visibility and Diffuseness • Visibility (range and salience) is positively related with interaction initiation and extension • Diffuseness is negatively related to interaction initiation and extension • Repliers & replier involvement • Starters & starter involvement

24. Contribution Structure and Responsiveness • Higher levels of starter participation and involvement are negatively related with responsiveness • Higher levels of replier participation and involvement is positively related with responsiveness

25. Boundary Breaking Start Msgs/Starters - Proportion of Msgs XPosted - # of Starters % of Starts Responded To + # of Targets # of Repliers + + XPosts/Target Reply Msgs/Repliers

26. Data and Methods • Technically focused • microsoft.public USENET newsgroups (comp.* groups have similar results) • 2001 (2000 and 2002 have similar results) • > 50 Posts (to exclude brand new and dying groups) • Log transformations (non-normality) • Path analysis with OLS regression

27. Results

28. Results (cont.)

29. Implications • Are cross-posts positive or negative for technically focused USENET groups? • Yes… • Differential effects of crossposts likely to matter • New, mature, and dying communities • Different competitive environments

30. Implications (cont.) • Cross-posts are individuals choosing to expand the community boundary • Narrow boundaries in a competitive environment create conditions for boundary breaking (i.e. crossposting) • Individual focus on visibility • Individual with interests which extend across boundaries are more likely to crosspost • Leads to need for broader boundaries to avoid the negative effects of boundary breaking

31. Summary • Sometimes focus on refining focus • Low or no competition • Technological restrictions on boundary breaking • Possible tradeoff between content boundaries and community sensitivity to participation structures • Sometimes focus on managing inclusion • Competing communities and individuals with interests that exceed typical community range • Boundary breaking technically possible • Tension between negative and positive consequences of boundary breaking

32. Future Directions • Empirical studies of boundary breaking • Finer grained logitudinal data (monthly) • Dyadic analysis • Life cycle analysis • Micro effects of crossposts • Development of simulation model • More explicit representation of technology choices

33. Content Boundaries as Development Challenge • Boundaries define identity • Part of the basis for individuals’ initial expectations • Boundaries define “exclusion” criteria • Designing content boundaries is a matter of matching population interests and content space boundaries

34. Formal Structures Individual Interests & Expertise Content Technical Infrastructure

35. Overview Start Msgs/Starters - Proportion of Msgs XPosted - # of Starters % of Starts Responded To + # of Targets # of Repliers + + XPosts/Target Reply Msgs/Repliers

36. Boundary Breaking in USENET Groups • The previous discussion focuses on how realized boundaries can often end up be much less than community developers intend. • However, as noted above this is a greater issue in context with relative small populations • When you move to large populations you encounter the opposite issue: what occurs when realized boundaries are bigger than formal ones?