User motivational mechanism for building sustained online communities

The proliferation of online communities on the Internet nowadays may lead people to the conclusion that the development of custom-made communities for particular purpose is straightforward. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Although software providing basic community infrastructure is readily ava...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Cheng, Ran
Other Authors: Deters, Ralph
Format: Others
Language:en
Published: University of Saskatchewan 2005
Subjects:
Online Access:http://library.usask.ca/theses/available/etd-09262005-014650/
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spelling ndltd-USASK-oai-usask.ca-etd-09262005-0146502013-01-08T16:32:16Z User motivational mechanism for building sustained online communities Cheng, Ran information overload peer-to-peer system online community membership The proliferation of online communities on the Internet nowadays may lead people to the conclusion that the development of custom-made communities for particular purpose is straightforward. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Although software providing basic community infrastructure is readily available, it is not enough to ensure that the online community will take off and become sustained. Most online communities suffer from the scarcity of the user participation in their initial phase. To address the problem, this thesis proposes a motivational mechanism to encourage user participation. The main idea is to introduce a set of hierarchical memberships into online communities and reward active users with better quality of services. The mechanism has been applied in a small-scale online community called Comtella and evaluated. The results showed that, although the mechanism was able to motivate users to participate more actively and make more contributions, it led to a deteriorating quality of user contributions, catalyzed information overload in the community and resulted in a decrease in user participation towards the end of the study. <p> Therefore, to regulate the quality and the quantity of user contributions and ensure a sustainable level of user participation in the online community, the proposed mechanism was improved so that it was able to adapt the rewards for particular forms of participation for individual users depending on their reputation and the current need of the community, thereby influencing their actions of contributing. The improved mechanism was also implemented and evaluated in the Comtella system. The results of evaluation showed that the mechanism can guarantee stable and active user participation and lower the level of information overload in the online community and therefore it can enhance the sustainability of the community. Deters, Ralph Cooke, John Chirkov, Valery I. Vassileva, Julita University of Saskatchewan 2005-09-27 text application/pdf http://library.usask.ca/theses/available/etd-09262005-014650/ http://library.usask.ca/theses/available/etd-09262005-014650/ en unrestricted I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Saskatchewan or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report.
collection NDLTD
language en
format Others
sources NDLTD
topic information overload
peer-to-peer system
online community
membership
spellingShingle information overload
peer-to-peer system
online community
membership
Cheng, Ran
User motivational mechanism for building sustained online communities
description The proliferation of online communities on the Internet nowadays may lead people to the conclusion that the development of custom-made communities for particular purpose is straightforward. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Although software providing basic community infrastructure is readily available, it is not enough to ensure that the online community will take off and become sustained. Most online communities suffer from the scarcity of the user participation in their initial phase. To address the problem, this thesis proposes a motivational mechanism to encourage user participation. The main idea is to introduce a set of hierarchical memberships into online communities and reward active users with better quality of services. The mechanism has been applied in a small-scale online community called Comtella and evaluated. The results showed that, although the mechanism was able to motivate users to participate more actively and make more contributions, it led to a deteriorating quality of user contributions, catalyzed information overload in the community and resulted in a decrease in user participation towards the end of the study. <p> Therefore, to regulate the quality and the quantity of user contributions and ensure a sustainable level of user participation in the online community, the proposed mechanism was improved so that it was able to adapt the rewards for particular forms of participation for individual users depending on their reputation and the current need of the community, thereby influencing their actions of contributing. The improved mechanism was also implemented and evaluated in the Comtella system. The results of evaluation showed that the mechanism can guarantee stable and active user participation and lower the level of information overload in the online community and therefore it can enhance the sustainability of the community.
author2 Deters, Ralph
author_facet Deters, Ralph
Cheng, Ran
author Cheng, Ran
author_sort Cheng, Ran
title User motivational mechanism for building sustained online communities
title_short User motivational mechanism for building sustained online communities
title_full User motivational mechanism for building sustained online communities
title_fullStr User motivational mechanism for building sustained online communities
title_full_unstemmed User motivational mechanism for building sustained online communities
title_sort user motivational mechanism for building sustained online communities
publisher University of Saskatchewan
publishDate 2005
url http://library.usask.ca/theses/available/etd-09262005-014650/
work_keys_str_mv AT chengran usermotivationalmechanismforbuildingsustainedonlinecommunities
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