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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