Lurker demographics: Counting the silent

Authors- Blair Nonnecke, Jenny Preece

Year – 2000

Published in – Proceedings of CHI 2000. The Hague: ACM.

Link - http://www.cc.gatech.edu/classes/AY2003/cs6470_fall/demographics.pdf

Importance to my Research – Medium

MY REVIEW
This paper studies lurking behaviour in two different email discussion lists (DL) – firstly Health DL and secondly Software Support DL.  Their studies indicate that the number of lurkers within the Health Domain (46%) are significantly less that those compared to the Software Support (82%).

One way to manage lurking would be to implement a tit-for-tat solution within forums. I am not sure how easy it would be to track this in a mailing list or DL. By tit-for-tat I mean, every user who want to benefit from a community, should in return provide some quantifiable returns back to the community. Within the forum domain, this could be very easily implemented e.g. one can lock threads with high views and major discussion to a limited set of users who have earned this status by contributing to the community. Hence depending upon the level of contribution that a user maeks to a forum, s/he may be eligible for privileged access to some resources within the forum. Some forums have implemented a monetary model i.e. memberships, all those who have memberships will have access to all the resources. Similar strategies have been implemented in BitTorrent or Comtella peer-to-peer software’s.

Lurking has become a big problem and this seems to be the only way to address this problem. If a tit-for-tat solution is implemented then a strong user contribution measurement model would be required, which is currently not available or is in its infancy. A lot of work needs to be done in this direction. We are doing some work in this direction.

Cite this review as
Review on “Lurker demographics: Counting the silent” by V. Potdar, 15th Feb 2008, Available online – http://drvidy.wordpress.com/2008/02/15/lurker-demographics-counting-the-silent/ 

ABSTRACT
As online groups grow in number and type, understanding lurking is becoming increasingly important. Recent reports indicate that lurkers make up over 90% of online groups, yet little is known about them. This paper presents a demographic study of lurking in email-based discussion lists (DLs) with an emphasis on health and software-support DLs. Four primary questions are examined. One, how prevalent is lurking, and do health and software-support DLs differ? Two, how do lurking levels vary as the definition is broadened from zero posts in 12 weeks to 3 or fewer posts in 12 weeks? Three, is there a relationship between lurking and the size of the DL, and four, is there a relationship between lurking and traffic level? When lurking is defined as no posts, the mean lurking level for all DLs is lower than the reported 90%. Health-support DLs have on average significantly fewer lurkers (46%) than  software support DLs (82%). Lurking varies widely ranging from 0 to 99%. The relationships between lurking, group size and traffic are also examined. 

Definition
Lurker – One of the ‘silent majority’ in a electronic forum; one who posts occasionally or not at all but is known to read the group’s postings regularly. This term is not pejorative and indeed is casually used reflexively: “Oh, I’m just lurking.” When a lurker speaks up for the first time, this is called ‘delurking’.

Reference Sheet
Every Lurker is a potential customer.

Should someone who never posts in public spaces, but regularly side-posts to individual group members, be deemed a lurker?

If a person posts once and then never again, are they lurking?

Is someone lurking when they go on holidays?

Is someone lurking when for a period of time they do not post?

Related Useful References
Nonnecke, B., and J. Preece. Persistence and lurkers: A pilot study. In Proc. HICSS-33 (Maui, Hawaii, 2000), IEEE Computer Society.

Nonnecke, B., and J. Preece. Shedding light on lurkers in online communities. In Proc. Ethnographic Studies in Real and Virtual Environments: Inhabited Information Spaces and Connected Communities (Edinburgh, 1999),123-128.

Nonnecke, B. & Preece, J. (2001), “Why Lurkers Lurk”. AMCIS Conference, Boston, June 2001, pp. 1-12. Available Online – http://www.ifsm.umbc.edu/~preece/Papers/AMCISlurker.01.pdf

Nonnecke, B. Lurking in email-based discussion lists. Ph.D. thesis: SCISM. London: South Bank University,2000.