Wybo Wiersma.net

Attaining critical mass is notoriously difficult for online platforms, and many online communities fail because of this. A common feature of most successful communities, are threads, which are found on forums, Facebook, and on Quora, among other places.

In this paper Agent-Based Simulation was used to examine the impact of variations in thread-structures on growth and critical mass attainment.

What was found was that threads perform better than no threads at all, and indented thread-structures that allow users more control over what to read, improve engagement even further.

A popular view of online communities is that they transcend time and place. As threads and comments are posted during the circadian cycle, however, participants will see different (new) threads as they arrive, which then affects who interacts with whom and the social ties that form.

A case-study of the Hacker News community was conducted to measure these effects. Strong time-pressure effects were found at the thread-level. For social ties statistically significant effects were found as well; especially for users at the edge of the network. Even the two-week gap between the introduction of daylight savings time in the US and UK had an impact.

These findings indicate that online communities may not be as global as generally believed, and might limit the validity of purely social interpretations of online reply structures.

Online surveys are generally considered cheaper, faster, and more convenient. They also have a potential for international reach, allow for elaborate skip-logic, and eliminate errors in data-entry, to name a few of their benefits.

But many wonder about their validity.

In this paper all the important threats to the validity of both online and offline surveys are assessed. Such as lack of a sampling frame, and things such as experimenter effects.

As long as the pros and cons are taken into account, there is room for both, and with the arrival of smartphones, there might be a sampling frame for web-surveys soon.

The copyright system has become morally problematic and alternatives should be developed.

It is outdated first of all: Copyrights were initially introduced as regulation for the printing industry. But due to the spread of digital technology, copyrights now reach into all personal communication. Making upholding it not only impossible, but also mutually exclusive with privacy.

Second, in essence it consists of creating artificial scarcity. It negates the third reasons for why markets are effective in the physical realm: 1) decentralized decision-making, 2) efficient allocation of investments, 3) efficient use of resources. Not restricted use, but ubiquitous use is efficient for digital goods, because they can be multiplied at zero cost.

A levy-system could replace it.