Dear readers, I have enjoyed this thoughtful discussion. The term lurker, with its negative connotations of passivity, is an ironic reference in the context of online *communities* where some people do not participate. But many, or most, online forums such as blogs do not host communities -- they host a diverse collection of readers. Some of the readers read and do not comment. And that's just ducky as far as I'm concerned. Readers do many other things --- like think about what they have read, talk to other people about it who may or may not have read it, add links to their own websites, and so on. Urging everyone to participate in a particular blog/forum/wiki would be awful, as noted in this discussion. Not having the presumed presence of a diverse collection of readers would be disappointing too, as also noted. In my publications, I use the word "readers" to talk about people who read blogs and such. Best, -- Bonnie On May 8, 2007, at 12:55 AM, Peter Timusk wrote:
I just want to add a couple of incomplete thoughts. I advocate and study "participatory democracy" via green party activism, grassroots organising ( any poly scientists here?) The green party was I believe and we claim the first Canadian party on-line.
also in academic terms I have recently completed a number of courses where either usenet or other on-line participation allowed me a better grade by my being an internet junkie. I know some feel that active participation is full of half baked ideas and unfounded statements but I argue that this is only a piece in an active learning process. And why the teacher must also participate with guidance as too good scholarship.
I sure that when school requires doing "group work" in the social sciences, that the convergence of work place software for group work with school work results in productivity. Perhaps lurkers would differ in opinion but I agree in the union sense of undemocratic these are free riders.
Peter Timusk, B.Math statistics (2002), B.A. legal studies (2006) Carleton University Systems Science Graduate student, University of Ottawa (2006-2008). just trying to stay linear. Read by hundreds of lurkers every week.
On 7-May-07, at 6:59 PM, Kurt Luther wrote:
A few relevant readings on the topic, mostly echoing Barry's observations:
Blair Nonnecke and Jenny Preece describe lurker practices and discuss some of the problems with defining "lurker." "It is unfortunate that the term lurker, with all its negative conntation, has gained acceptance...Rather than being free-riders, lurkers should be called participants..." http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/332040.332409
Brad Horowitz gives his theory of the relationship between what he calls creators, synthesizers, and producers. "...we don’t need to convert 100% of the audience into 'active' participants to have a thriving product that benefits tens of millions of users. In fact, there are many reasons why you wouldn’t want to do this. The hurdles that users cross as they transition from lurkers to synthesizers to creators are also filters that can eliminate noise from signal. " http://www.elatable.com/blog/?p=5
Kurt
Barry Wellman wrote:
John Veitch gave us a useful post that showed that most people Lurk. Altho John didn't explicitly say so, the general implication is that Lurking Is a Bad Thing. But imagine if everybody was actively contributing all the time. We'd be filled with noise. (As it is, I wonder about some of the posts on this list, including mine;-)) I absolutely don't want my 13-year old cousin (whom I love dearly) to contribute to the Social Networks article, or probably anything else. Nor, in fact, do I want some ignorant person to contribute. I am not for credentialism, but I am for knowledge and expertise.
Indeed, 99% of the time, I am a Reader only of Wikipedia articles. I try only to contribute when I actually know something, like Social Network, Bronx High School of Science, and Barbra Streisand.
YMMV
Barry Wellman
_____________________________________________________________________
Barry Wellman S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology NetLab Director Centre for Urban & Community Studies University of Toronto 455 Spadina Avenue Toronto Canada M5S 2G8 fax:+1-416-978-7162 wellman at chass.utoronto.ca http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman for fun: http://chass.utoronto.ca/oldnew/cybertimes.php
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Bonnie A. Nardi Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences University of California, Irvine Irvine, CA 92697-3440 (949) 824-6534 www.artifex.org/~bonnie/