Social Relationships in Massive Multiplayer Online Games

Two studies offer very interesting insights into the social networking behavior of players of fantasy massive multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPG or MMOG). In a longitudinal analysis Shen et al. [1] analyzed the driving factors of social relationships in EverQuest II and Ang et al. [2] had a closer look at the players in a guild in World of Warcraft. At second glance, many results can be generalized to communities of practice.

Communities of Action: Are Online Activists Different from Offline Activists?

Theoretically, the question whether political online participation differs from offline participation can be answered in two ways [1]:

Sense of Community: Is there a fifth dimensions?

In three papers, Obst et al. [1, 2, 3] published the results of their investigation about the sense of community (SOC). They had asked 359 members of SF fandom attending Aussiecon 3, the 1999 World Science Fiction Convention about the way they feel about the fandom community (a - relational - community of interest with membership from all over the world) and about their neighbourhood (a geographical community). The main research interest was to find out whether McMillan and Chavis' four dimensions of SOC played a role in both community types (relational and geographic) and whether there is a separate fifth factor - conscious ingroup identification. Both assumptions were confirmed by the results.

Community feedback is likely to perpetuate undesired member behavior

The feedback of other community members is considered to be an important corrective factor in moderating community discussions. Liking a post, voting on a comment, rating are the most common feedback mechanisms. Theoretically, feedback would lead users to behave in ways that benefit the community.

Successfull Managment of Online Health Communities

Browsing the Internet, I stumbled across these three interesting articles about the successful management of online health communities. Here are the (slightly modified) abstracts:

Virtual Communities of Practice - Start-up and Cultivation

Since the early 90s, Jean Lave's and Etienne Wenger's concept of communities of practice [1] has produced a huge amount of scholarly and more popular literature, first as a theory of learning and later in the field of knowledge management. In the advent of the digital era, communities of practice are not just organized as face-to-face communities but as virtual communities as well and so Wenger et al. [2] re-conceptualized communities of practice for digital environments.

(Dis-)satisfaction with the online community - Herzberg’s two factors theory in a community context

Intuitively, one would say that satisfaction and dissatisfaction are like two poles on the same continuum. But that is not necessarily so. In the context of job satisfaction and job performance Herzberg developed his two factors theory and showed that there is a set of factors that causes satisfaction (motivators) and another one that causes dissatisfaction (hygiene factors) when absent. [1]. The practical implication is that to improve job attitudes and productivity, administrators must recognize and attend to both sets. The question is whether this theory can be applied to satisfaction with an online community and participation in community life as well.