The Answerbag Journey

Before I begin I want to share some information about myself which will help my classmates understand my mentality about this assignment and how it changed as I spent more time trying to achieve 2 of the 4 requirements of answerbag. I have never liked social networking websites and I don’t care to participate in any of them or even lurk on them. The Schrack article on social media usage mentioned that extroverts may be more likely to participates that involve interacting with others like social networking sites. Well, I’m not an extrovert and I especially don’t like sites in which you can add “friends.”

The first thing I noticed about answerbag was the usage of performance appraisal reinforcers in the form of points. Questions and Answers were rated on a point scale and all users (I think) could add or subtract points. There was also a leveling system in which users who accumulated more points could wield more power. I soon found out that meant that users on a higher level could add or subtract more points based on their level.

My first strategy was to simply think of one good question that would get me 40+ points and 8+ responses. After browsing through the questions, I settled on dating as a category that was popular and accessible. I noticed that many highly rated questions were easy to answer such as “Can you describe yourself in one word>,” or “What do you look like?” I’ll admit that my original strategy didn’t have much merit. I actually refined my strategy over time when I realized that it wasn’t working.

I noticed questions that were too specific in genre didn’t get as many responses as those that were answerable by many people. I saw dating was popular so I tried asking: “What’s the worst dating advice you’ve ever received?” I got one quick response in a few minutes, but nothing after that. Then I realized that someone else already asked that question.

I also tried to answer some questions. I spent half an hour crafting a long answer to a question: “What’s your favorite female superhero?” It was about a paragraph long and I gave a pretty sarcastic answer. I thought that maybe it would get more points because it was more descriptive than most other peoples. I soon realized that this was not true.

After experiencing relatively little success with my first few questions, I reformatted my strategy based on my initial failures and some theories I got from the reading. My first goal was to just get a question that got 8 or more responses. I used some of the theories Tedjamulia and co. article on motivating content contributions to formulate a new plan of attack.

Proposition 3 of the article states "Members with trust in the community will contribute and participate more frequently." Although this is stated on a greater macro level, my theory was that the same would be true for my particular case. If I establish trust with people, they will be more likely to respond to my questions and contribute points. I decided to write a little bit about myself in my profile and also add a picture. I hoped that other members would feel I was opening myself up to them and thus they might be more likely to contribute to my questions. I also decided that I should also start responding to other people’s questions with well thought out answers so that they could see I was an individual worth responding to.

Proposition 11 in that article said that rewards and reinforcement that are informative and not controlling will increase a person’s desire to contribute. I applied this theory by responding to people’s answers on my questions and giving them points. I noticed this phenomena applied first hand by NUNYA, one of the most popular contributors. I answered several of her questions and she always responded and gave me +6 points. It’s true that it made me want to answer more of her questions because I felt like my answers meant something to her.

In addition I wanted to build up relationships with others in order to get them to contribute. Initially your question will be given priority since it is fresh, but after a while it will get buried under a bunch of new questions unless someone else bothers to look it up and respond. Usually only a friend would bother to do that.

The Java and Co. article on “Why We Twitter:…” argued that people in friendship communities often know each other. Since we didn't have much time to establish friendships on the site, I realized that it would be highly beneficial to get some support from my classmates. I talked to BJ in real life (he works in the cubicle next to me) and added him as a friend (Richard Sorge). I also added Junie (babalu) and George Lee(yops2k). I tried to add some people who I thought were in the class as well. I saw Oracle13 was a computer programmer that was asking a lot of questions and he joined Feb 9th and so I added him. I don’t know if he’s actually in the class. I also added Rinmarie who joined around the same time and was asking a lot of questions. I’m pretty sure I made a mistake with Rinmarie because even after she got 8+ responses and 40+ points on a single question, she continued to post questions.

***Edit****
Oracle13 is TomJenni. Thanks to her too for commenting on my questions.
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I typed in some of the names of the people in the class and found thechickenbus. I answered some of her questions and gave her points in an attempt to establish friendly ties. I think it was a very good move for her to identify herself to everyone else in the class by using the same name as in her blog. Junie and I both commented on her "Americans are ____" question which revived her question thread and allowed her to achieve the goal rather quickly. Her question on” Americans are ______” was an excellent example of taking advantage of trend analysis as mentioned in the Java article. The article mentioned that the word “school” is more frequent in the early week, while “friends” was more present during the weekend. She posted her question late at night (around 10:00 pm in Hawaii) which would mean that most Americans would be asleep but users in other countries might be on. I assume that people from other countries will be more opinionated on Americans. After observing that I realized that I needed to take into account my audience and even things like when I post and how I construct my question.

The question that I asked that got 22 responses was:

“I’m thinking of writing a poem to my girlfriend for Valentine’s Day. Ladies, would you prefer that or an expensive gift like jewelry?”

I wrote the first part of my question to give some background information about myself and establish a sense of trust. It followed from Hypothesis 1 in the paper on “Using Social Psychology to Motivate Contributions to Online Communities” by Ling and co. Hypothesis 1 in that paper is: People will contribute more to online communities when given personalized information showing that their contributions would be unique.” By including that information about my Valentine’s Day plans I hoped that people would be more willing to answer the question. I also addressed a specific audience (Women) with content matter that was relevant to the time (Valentine's Day). Based on my observations I noticed that there were a lot of women on answerbag (at least I didn’t notice if males outnumbered females by a wide margin). This went along with the Schrack paper on gender which said that MySpace challenged the digital divide that the internet was primarily middle class, Caucasian males. I hoped that by addressing women directly, I would make women feel that I valued their specific contribution.

While I did achieve my goal of 8+ responses with that question, I was disappointed to see that even with 21 responses (the 22nd was myself), I only got 33 points. I didn’t think of it back then, but maybe it was because I didn’t comment on anyone’s responses. I also realized that in order to get points it would be much easier to achieve 40 points if I got positive ratings from higher level people. It’s much easier to try and get 7 people who can give 6 points each to an answer rather than get 40 people who can give only 1 point each. I probably should have tried to make friends with high level people, but instead I tried to friend low level people. This realization didn’t cheer me up because I had already invested several hours trying to get this to work.

The question that got me 40+ points and finished the assignment was one that I didn’t expect to get me many points. I asked a genuine question about my volunteer work at Easter Seals.

“I help people with mental/physical disabilities do activities around town and I noticed that some people are disturbed when they see us. Is it unsettling for you to see someone with down syndrome? (Honesty appreciated)”

I was impressed by the responses that I got. One person mentioned that his brother as disabled and grew to appreciate people with special needs. Two others mentioned that they worked with people with disabilities for over a decade. I was touched that some people wrote paragraphs in response. The Ridings article on Social Communities mentioned that online communities provide emotional support and I experienced emotional support first hand through this question. Social support was the second most popular reason, as cited in the article, for health/wellness. The question became a starting point for people to talk about their experiences with handicapped people. At that point I felt like I became the third type of participant in the Tedjamulia and co. article; One that responded to others, engaged in a social interaction and made intelligent, distinct contributions.

I should also note that my down syndrom thread died with only a few responses and nine points, but then I Junie (babalu) commented on it to help me out. Beyond the wording and content of the question, I also needed the support of others to keep it from being buried under the sea of new questions.

I think that one of the keys of this question was the ending part (honesty appreciated). I did get some people who did admit that they were uncomfortable dealing with people with down syndrome. I’m not sure if these people would be willing to express a more controversial view without this statement. I also think that when I responded positively to many of the comments, it also offered positive reinforcement for others.

To the classmates BJ, Junie, George and whoever else who helped me pass this assignment I owe you one. I tried to help out others in the class that I could recognize but it was hard to find them. Even though I started on Monday I didn't achieve the two conditions until Friday. I learned a lot from this experience and I have a new appreciation for online social communities.

A link to my question. Click on my username PillowEatsBear to see my profile