Hi Lars

Fascinating to hear about your research and the Jakob Neilsen theory,
because it matches very closely to my observations over the last eight
years. 

In 2000, I set up www.mybrightonandhove.org.uk, a contributory heritage site
which has now grown to about 9,000 pages of user-generated content,
originally seeded by content from an interactive museum exhibit (the My
Brighton exhibit, which I worked on in 1994). Over the years, we developed a
content management system so that non-technical volunteers could run the
site and sub-edit/categorise the increasing volume of contributions, and we
now supply that software to other museums and archives round the country.
The latest example is www.livinghere.org.uk, for the Royal Albert Memorial
Museum in Exeter. So we have a bank of experience to draw on, from the days
when we used to solicit contributions by e-mail and paste them into static
HTML pages, to now, when the software enables users to add Google maps to
their pages and embed their own photos from Flickr.   

In terms of your queries:

1. PARTICIPATION CAREER

Yes, I'd say there is very definitely a 'hierarchy of involvement', which
you can encourage users to climb up with some timely interventions.  'My
Brighton and Hove' gets about 1,200 visitors a day, of whom an average of 12
will leave comments on other people's materials, and on average 1 or 2 will
make a fully-formed contribution (e.g. a written reminiscence, accompanied
by photos). To convert the 'commentators' into fully=fledged 'contributors'
of original material, two things are extremely valuable:

1) A human editor responding to the commentator within 24 hours, with an
encouraging note validating the comment and asking about any other
memories/photos etc. the person might have. Speed of response is crucial.

2) An automated e-mail informing people when their comments and
contributions have been published, and providing a link to the page.

A sub-set of contributors will turn into regular contributors; we've had
whole series of memoirs and photo galleries contributed over the years. And,
in the case of sites which are run by volunteers, regular contributors take
the final step up the ladder and turn into editors.  

2. INTER-USER RELATIONSHIP

I'm not quite sure I've understood this point... Certainly, the pattern of a
first-time user sparking a cascade of contributions on a particular theme is
familiar.  Local heritage websites build up a sub-set of loyal and prolific
regular users, who can be counted on to respond fairly regularly and
confidently to new material.  In a notable example, one local amateur
historian spends day after day responding to queries on the message-board of
the site - he must save the local studies library hours of work!   Arguably,
I guess, he is 'dependant' on the stimulus of new enquiries from new users
to exercise his expertise....but is that what you meant?

3. SOME OTHER POINTS IT MIGHT BE INTERESTING TO RESEARCH

I think it would be interesting to research whether users respond more
readily to contributions from other users than to more 'polished' and
elaborate content. For example, I suspect that a quickly-written
reminiscence by a user about a particular topic might receive more response
than a highly-edited oral history audio clip on the same subject - because
there is more equal exchange taking place (you can't talk back to an audio
clip - yet!). 

I'd be interested in research into the effectiveness of explicit entreaties
to users to contribute (for example, peppering your site with appeals to
'tell us about this', 'share that', 'join in', 'take part'). This sort of
language is tempting in the early days of a website, but I haven't seen any
evidence to suggest it makes any difference. On the other hand, it does seem
that you need to get the ball rolling by example: users will contribute if
they can see that someone else has.  Hence we encourage our clients to go
for 'soft launches', encouraging colleagues, friends and well-wishers to add
some initial comments and contributions to the site, so that by the time of
the hard launch it already looks as though the site has a life of its own.

I'd also be interested to know whether there is any research that quantifies
how much registering a username/password acts as a deterrent to
contribution. Informally, I'm planning to experiment with forms which users
can complete without registration, that will produce the same pages as those
created by user registration (though the forms won't provide the same
facilities for previewing material, choosing page layouts etc.).  Be
interesting to see how the rate of contribution compares...

You're welcome to give me a ring if you want more information.

Best wishes

Jack Latimer
 
www.communitysites.co.uk
Award-winning websites for museums, archives and community groups
 
Tel: 0845 6801542
Mob: 07977 445709
 
CommunitySites

85 Chester Terrace
Brighton
East Sussex
BN1 6GD

Reg address: 2 Brunswick Terrace, Brighton, East Sussex. 
Company no: 5697476.
 







   

 










-----Original Message-----
From: Museums Computer Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Lars
Wieneke
Sent: 31 March 2008 23:24
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Evaluation of user participation --- Request for data

Hi list members,

In the course of my research I'm investigating the application of user
created content in online museum environments. The two key aspects of my
research are:
1. Participation career
Do users start with relatively simple steps (baby steps) before they
continue to more complicated content formats? e.g. do users provide ratings
first, then comments and later full articles?
2. Inter-user relationship
In theory there is a 90/9/1 relationship between nonproductive/productive
and highly productive users (if you want to believe Jakob Nielsen...)
nevertheless, this relationship doesn't reflect the dependencies and
relationships between the different user groups and their contributions.
Lets take the "Re: The speculative aspect of using Web 2 [was: British
Postal Museum & Archive Wiki]"  discussion on this list as an example: A lot
of content had been produced, mainly by a quite small group of people.
Nevertheless this fruitful and intense discussion started with a (please
correct me if I'm wrong) first time contribution. The question is therefore:
Can we find similar patterns in other ucc applications as well?

In order to find answers to the previous questions it would be great to get
as much reference material as possible. So if you use user contributions in
an online museum environment I would be very glad to get in touch with you
and discuss about the evaluation of this data.
Furthermore I'd be glad to hear any anecdotical evidence of positive as well
as negative experiences with user contributions.

Thanks a lot in advance,

Lars



University of Brighton
Lars Wieneke
CHIRON Researcher

Watts Building
Brighton BN2 4GJ

T +44(0)1273 642912
F +44(0)1273 642160
E [log in to unmask]


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