Socio-Technical Environments for Distributed Communities

Project: Socio-Technical Environments for Distributed Communities

There is a famous observation: "If Organization X only knew what Organization X knows"!

The project should analyze and develop design guidelines by examining the commonalities and idiosyncrasies of distinct distributed communities; examples to look at:

• the SAP Developer Network community, consisting of more than one million registered users forming a highly active online community of developers, consultants, integrators, and business analysts building and sharing knowledge about SAP technologies via wikis, expert blogs, discussion forums, code samples, training materials, and a technical library (https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn); and
• the Sun Developer Network community, which is similar to SAP Developer Network, but that Java technologies (http://developers.sun.com); and
• the CreativeIT community (for details see below), consisting of participants in the NSF CISE research program on "Creativity and IT." (http://swiki.cs.colorado.edu/CreativeIT)

• Are the information needs of members diversified and idiosyncratic to their unique context and not easily covered with the traditional support based on documentation?
• Does the participation of members in such communities constitute Long Tail distributions? Analysis should focus on the peer support aspect of community members, attempting to understand the importance of the accumulated effects of little support given by a large percentage of members. For example, what is the distribution of produces to consumers?
• What motivates users to participate? What are the positive and negative effects of extrinsic incentives such as ratings and point systems?