Managing Online Communites: What Computer Games Can Teach Journalists
By Brad King
Assistant Professor, Journalism,
Emerging Media Fellow, Ball State University Center for Media Design
Ball State University
While the above cited article is not about Wikipedia per se, it is about online communities and the game-like nature of their social dynamics.
Here is an excerpt:
QUOTE
Richard Bartle, who would go on to become one of the foremost experts on game players, began studying how people interacted with each other. And it’s his expertise where we can begin to learn about communities.
He published a study on the taxonomy of gamers, outlining the four types of interactions players have and how those work together in communities. The player types — Achievers, Explorers, Socializers and Killers — lay the foundation for not only what elements need to be present within a game community (although this can easily be extrapolated for any community) but also what precautions and rules need to be in place in order for these communities to thrive.
This “simple taxonomyâ€, as Bartle refers to it, enables community managers to begin to quantify the actions within any system and subtly shift the environment to encourage different actions, ones that are more conducive to community building. Community designers could, as Bartle said, tinker with what the players could do, change the rules of the world, create a more interactive environment or build more direct action.
This taxonomy and the resulting analysis of communities, which Bartle began in the mid-80s, has become the foundation for how virtual worlds are developed and managed.
Bartle’s ideas, which are really more of an evolution of his thinking over the course of a decade, have found their way into the work of other luminaries who begin writing about the growth of online Web communities.
While each of those works examines communities ranging far outside the basic taxonomies, they each seem to agree on four basic principles for building communities and four basic rules for managing those communities.
The four principles — Good Content, Simple Navigation, Simple Interfaces, Decentralized Controls — align themselves with the Bartle’s Taxonomy in this way: The content is for achievers and explores, the navigation is for achievers, the interface is for socializers and the decentralized controls allows for the thwarting of killers.
The four rules — No Free Riding, Rules Compliance, Rewards, Ad-Hoc Growth — not only offer guidelines for punishing Killers, but also for encouraging Achievers, Explorers and Socializers.
He published a study on the taxonomy of gamers, outlining the four types of interactions players have and how those work together in communities. The player types — Achievers, Explorers, Socializers and Killers — lay the foundation for not only what elements need to be present within a game community (although this can easily be extrapolated for any community) but also what precautions and rules need to be in place in order for these communities to thrive.
This “simple taxonomyâ€, as Bartle refers to it, enables community managers to begin to quantify the actions within any system and subtly shift the environment to encourage different actions, ones that are more conducive to community building. Community designers could, as Bartle said, tinker with what the players could do, change the rules of the world, create a more interactive environment or build more direct action.
This taxonomy and the resulting analysis of communities, which Bartle began in the mid-80s, has become the foundation for how virtual worlds are developed and managed.
Bartle’s ideas, which are really more of an evolution of his thinking over the course of a decade, have found their way into the work of other luminaries who begin writing about the growth of online Web communities.
While each of those works examines communities ranging far outside the basic taxonomies, they each seem to agree on four basic principles for building communities and four basic rules for managing those communities.
The four principles — Good Content, Simple Navigation, Simple Interfaces, Decentralized Controls — align themselves with the Bartle’s Taxonomy in this way: The content is for achievers and explores, the navigation is for achievers, the interface is for socializers and the decentralized controls allows for the thwarting of killers.
The four rules — No Free Riding, Rules Compliance, Rewards, Ad-Hoc Growth — not only offer guidelines for punishing Killers, but also for encouraging Achievers, Explorers and Socializers.
It is left as an exercise for the reader (hello, Kato) to compare the general community organizing insights outlined in the above-cited article to the organization of Wikipedia.
