There’s an interesting discussion going on over at the IATEFL / British Council Cardiff Online site on why most online communities are quiet, with some people beginning to sound a little depressed by the levels of engagement and interaction these communities, lists and groups generate. I’ve been joining in a little – the succcess criteria are difficult to pin down, I think:
What if I manage say, seven lists with a combined membership of, say, 2,500 people? Now let’s say I post an announcement every week – something useful and relevant. And what if I get two replies each time, on average? Are those lists successful, due to numbers (quantity) or are they failing due to lack of interaction (quality)? It all depends, of course, on the nature of the list. My own thinking is that ‘lists’ are on the wane as social media become more important.
But the big thing for me is the spread. Here’s what I wrote on the Cardiff Online site:
(…) professionals are generally outgoing, interested, inquisitive, communicative sorts of people. When someone creates a new social/professional space for us, our natural reaction is to join it. But of course you can only spread yourself so far – we all work long hours, have personal lives, hobbies and interests. We don’t always have time to devote to all the communities we’re members of. I think I average about four invitations per week to join yet another ELT community that means something to someone, or a group of people.
But of course having me as a silent member is not very useful. Whilst i might lurk and take something from the community, I have no time to contribute to it. The more communities there are (and the more we join), the less likely we are to be able to contribute to them. And so the commuinities are quiet – in many ways we’re victims of our own success – every Web 2.0 enabled teacher I know has such a wide variety of options as to which communities to join.
So I took a decision towards the end of last year to drop the communities I didn’t need – and to which I couldn’t contribute – and to only keep the ones I am an active member of. And so I have three communities I regularly contribute to, and a couple of other tools I use as address books (here I’m thinking of Facebook and LinkedIn where, once a week, I log in, accept new friend invitations and then log out again before someone tries to convince me my ‘wall’ is ‘fun’ or I need a sheep thrown at me).
I think that people who set up communities truly believe they’re unique and extremely useful – but unless a significant critical mass of people opine the same, those communities are destined to be quiet and unsuccessful. What I’d like to see would be some kind of rationalisation of this urge to create communities and lists, some questioning (‘Does the world need this group/list?’, ‘Is there already a community/list that serves this purpose?’, etc.) before the actual establishment of the group. If we spread ourselves too thin, we run the risk of disappearing in our self-created ocean of repeated purpose and repeated information.
Hey Gavin – good points all. I am on study leave right now finishing my phd so have more time to contribute to lists and am more electronically active – I am really enjoying the enhancements this brings to my life. But in the usual course of things, and from September, I have also pinned down three or four sources that are really of use to me and got rid of the rest. Lurking doesn’t appeal to me much as an option. I like the idea of a framework and rationale (well a few simple questions like the ones you pose) before embarking, but how could that be taken forward given that the web is, by its very nature, so difficult to impose controls on? In IATEFL Online’s case isn’t it likely that this is connected to the active time likely being just after the conference whilst the experience remains fresh in people’s minds?
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Sara,
Yes, the Cardiff Online site has a definable shelf life. In a couple of weeks it will be dead and will simply serve as a media repository for another eleven months until the Harrogate Online site launches. But this is not an ordinary group, most of which are built to last – but most of which never take off. I think it’s natural electronic selection, myself!
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Like you I guess I think smaller numbers of groups to be in is better – you can only give so much time and attention, and if you want to do that in a decent way you want to focus on the “right” places. That leads to wondering what the right place is.
Second Life used to use forums, but that became “unsuitable” as numbers grew, so moved to a blog. Then they moved back to forums because the blog became unusable, and now they have multiple blogs, but all the discussion is moved to the forums. It’s very easy for me to say “I don’t think this is the right solution” (and I don’t) but honestly I don’t know what the load is like and the internal processes are like and it might be the best current solution.
I guess I want something with archiving into groups and threads like a forum, push like email lists (complete with quotes of earlier parts, but sensibly trimmed), able to write either into a forum or reply by email but with the two routes working together (so if I reply by email you can read it easily in the forum, and vice versa), and just for fun a good system for SIGs with good summaries going to the larger group. Oh, and all automated (except the individual replies of course). It’s probably doable, but it’s not there yet that I’ve seen?
And, just by-the-by your Captcha asks me to type the two words. Last I checked 42/26 is not a word, it might be a mathematical expression though.
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I wish there were some sort of centralized hub so one could see which types of communities already exist, and maybe minimize redundancy. But then, I guess that would mean yet another group to belong to…
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But it’s fine to lurk; just because new technologies enable us to be more interactive, it doesn’t mean we can’t just consume group material as content. Perhaps we feel pressured to comment or contribute, even if we have nothing to say. Some blogs don’t even allow comments for this very reason… http://secondlanguagewriting.com/explorations/Archives/2006/Jun/ToCommentorNottoCommentb.html
The other problem is that this groups get to big, and these days too diverse. I’ve been herded into a couple of “ning”s recently, but I just get lost in there. Is it a blog, a network, a forum…?
Things like IATEFL online work well because they are short term, and they are based on a real, shared event. I notice that, within larger networks, small groups form and dissipate to solve particular problems. I myself tend to lurk on lists like yahoo groups until I have a specific question. I guess it helps to use networks for the purpose they best fit.
So yes, there are far too many groups out there…. that’s why I started my own ; )
I’m tryng to set up a small community of interlinked blogs through tumblr, where participants share their online reflective journals online – I think this direct, reciprocal arrangement could be one way forward.
Alex Case has linked to this discussion, so I guess it’s ok to link back…?
http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/teaching/blogging-for-teacher-development/
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If a “hub” could work, I guess it would look something like onestopblogs. I was actually thinking of writing to Macmillan to suggest doing something similar for TEFL forums (all the latest posts from all of them chronologically on one page)
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In my opinion, a lot of these groups are a waste of time, and only serve to replicate the same conversation over and over again. I can have more fun, and learn a lot more, from talking with my colleagues at work, where the remarks are more relevant and cutting (edge?).
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Sandy,
Thanks for this – though I’m not sure, I would usually prefer a wider and more diverse community than the people sharing the same physical space as me…
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Not everyone is into the same things, even if they share the same passions. For this reason I think communities will always fluxuate. If there is a big topic worth talking about, people will talk. If not well…
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