Newcomers

Joseph Reagle

Today question(s)

How to attract and retain newcomers to a community?

5 Problems

recruitment: of new members
selection: of members that are a good fit
socialization: teach newcomers the ways of the group
retention: of newcomers through engagement and development of strong ties
protection: of the community from newbie disruptions

What do communities vs platforms concern themselves with?

Blakely: “offloading”

Recruiting

What is social influence proportional to? (Latene 1981)
How much more effective is WoM (Sultan, Farley, and Lehmann 1990)?
What is the difference between heuristic (1, fast) and systematic (2, slow) thinking?

immediacy, strength, and number of influences one is exposed to
~10 times greater than advertising
implicit rules (e.g., halo effect) vs careful comparison

Sienna: “reminds me of Cialdini’s social validation”

Kahneman 1&2

Heuristics

What is the halo effect? (DC7)
What is social proof and how can it increase towel reuse? (DC9)
What is familiarity heuristic and how to employ? (DC10)

Halo effect which is when people see something good on one dimension, they expect it applies to all other dimensions
44%
people tend to like the people, things and ideas they are already familiar with

egs of inviting others?

Have you been invited or solicited others to join a community?

How so?

Which design claim is this??

Delete 10 Facebook friends, get a free Whopper

DC3. Recruiting new members from social networks of current members increases the number of new members more than impersonal methods. (Kraut et al. 2012, “Building successful online communities”)

Selection

Techniques for selection and screening?

pay money
undergo diagnostic
referrals

What are separating tasks?

Tasks which folks find inherently interesting which lead to self-selecting into the community.

MetaFilter: why a $5 entrance fee?

Hint: we’ll soon cover “cognitive dissonance.”

1999 MetaFilter founded
2003 Ask MetaFilter launched
2014 Many mods laid-off because of Google Panda
2019 aiming for fully member-supported
2022 struggling; six paid staff, including the owner; ~10K active members?
2022 transferred to Jessamyn West, first volunteer and first employee; Community Steering Committee elected in August

Anthony: i.e., difficulty of tasks

FB Cool Cat Group

Does it attract newcomers or repel them?

Discord Community Onboarding

What options are there for dealing with newcomers there?

Eve Online

The Bloodbath of B-R5RB

“Joining Dreddit”

In a group, identify examples of recruitment, selection, retention, socialization, or protection.

Seven Ages of Wikipedians

ex. Scavenger hunt

In teams of ~4 people, find me a good example of a user for each of the following. (Hint: you could find sevenages template page and click ⋮→“What links here.”)

WikiInfant (not aware of editing)
WikiChild (begun editing)
WikiTeen (become cynical)
WikiYoungAdult (accept policies/limits)
WikiAdult (balanced and mature)
WikiSeniors (loss of enthusiasm)
WikiDeath (stop editing)