Hi

My Brighton and Hove at www.mybrightonandhove.org.uk was originally built around a museum collection, though that is now a small part of a site which generates a constant flow of user-generated content.  The site won the award for Best Community Site at Museums and the Web 2008.

A few thoughts:

- as Frankie says, people will respond with what they know about and what they care about. My Brighton and Hove has no difficulty in getting people to add content (photo/memories/information), because it's based on their own knowledge and experiences.  

- I've seen little correlation between a site explicitly appealing to users to contribute in a particular way (e.g. on a particular topic, or using a particular feature) and their willingness to do so....what really makes the difference is if they can see that other people have contributed already. 

- users will be very helpful in response to requests from other users

- I suspect it's somewhat harder for institutions to get this sort of response than personal sites or volunteer-led sites:  there's something about a personal, peer-to-peer relationship that helps

We're about to switch on an 'album' feature for the site in the next few weeks, for people to collect and annotate their own sets of pages from the site.  I'm fairly sure there'll be take-up for that, because we've done a survey, and also the site has a loyal fan base of regular visitors who want to keep track of their favourite material, and find it harder now there are nearly 10,000 pages.  But the feature was originally commissioned for a more recently-established museum site, and it's taking much longer to take there....

A classic example of a page which gets the maximum reaction (a request for help, triggering nostalgia, mystery, and a shared memory of youth) is the photo of the 'glass animal' man in Brighton that's just been posted.  See the comments at the bottom of the page! 

http://www.mybrightonandhove.org.uk/page_id__9385_path__.aspx

Best wishes


Jack Latimer

www.communitysites.co.uk
Award-winning websites and cataloguing software for community archives and local history groups
Winners, Best Small Museum Site and Best Community Site, Museums and the Web 2008

Tel: 0845 6801542
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CommunitySites

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-----Original Message-----
From: Museums Computer Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Frankie Roberto
Sent: 09 January 2009 13:40
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: User contributed conent

On Fri, Jan 9, 2009 at 12:29 PM, Cristiano Bianchi <
[log in to unmask]> wrote:

On a project we are working on for a collection website, the issue has
> arisen of user contributed content - specifically of the idea of visitors
> creating their own exhibitions, by selecting works from the very
> comprehensive collection.
>
> I'm personally quite skeptical about the chances of anything like this to
> have some degree of success and I'd like to hear from others if they had any
> experiences and to what level of user acceptance. My feeling is that,
> generally, users need 'motivation' for contributing content, although such
> motivation does not have to be culturally very elevated.


Ha, this is such a big topic!  I think you're correct to be a bit sceptical
of how much of a response you'd get to a simple 'create your own [online]
exhibition' project, and to think about people's motivations for taking
part.

People often fall into the trap of thinking that you can motivate
user-generated-content by turning it into a competition and offering some
kind of tangible prize. Whilst there's nothing wrong per se with
competitions, it's very rare that the prize on its own will have much of an
impact. People are [rightly] critical of their chances of ever winning
anything, and even if they do fancy their chances, there's a big disconnect
between entering a competition and receiving a prize - the time delay
between the two events means there's no 'instant satisfaction'.

So forget trying to 'bribe' people to contribute content. To be successful,
you have to make the process of 'creating the content' a reward or
motivation in and of itself. There's a few different ways of doing this. The
first question you should ask yourself is how much effort, time, and
cognitive thought are you asking of users?

For instance, are you asking people to contribute something they already
know or feel - this is the case for example in product reviews on amazon, or
asking people to tell you stories and memories from their past. Bear in mind
that some things elicite a stronger emotional reaction than others, for
instance most people will happily give you an instant opinion on a Turner
Prize nominee (especially if it's a light turning on and off), but would
struggly to say much about a collection of dull paintings.

On the other hand, are you asking people to think and be creative about
something they've never thought about before? This is the usually the case
in design/drawing/writing challenges, and even in old-fashioned caption
competitions. In this instance, you have to make the activity itself
enjoyable. Some people like designing/drawing/writing for instance, and so
those competitions appeal to them as a way of practicing, responding to a
'brief', and being able to share and read other people's attempts. Thinking
up a caption to a funny photo can be a fun and amusing task on its own.

So is 'creating your own online exhibition' enjoyable as an activity on its
own? Perhaps, but quite likely not. After all, the act of curation is about
a bit more than just selecting works from a collection and writing some
blurbs about them. You get to help acquire new work, for instance. And
you're likely to be a subject specialist with a passion and extensive
knowledge for the area. Plus, you're in the position to actually make
decisions about hanging work in a physical space that people will actually
come and see, which is a bit more of a buzz than arranging pixels on a
screen (much as I hate to admit it).

You could still make a 'create your own exhibition' feature engaging. If the
interface is really beautiful and/or innovative, that can help (Apple are
really good at this - they've made the fairly boring act of picking music to
go onto your iPod much more fun by having a very smooth 'cover flow'
interface). Or you could highlight a really interesting subset of works for
people to choose from. Or make browsing the works an interesting and
engaging exploratory process - look at how easy it is to get lost in
Wikipedia by following all the inline links! Basically, you have to be
creative with making the activity more fun.

One last, but vitally important question is what is YOUR motivation for
producing a user-generated-content feature? Are you after the content for
some purpose (to put on a website, or in an exhibition) - in which case it
doesn't matter so much if you get a low response rate, so long as some of
them are good quality. Or are you interested in producing an educational
activity? In which case, it doesn't matter so much if the quality of the
content is crap, so long as people have been engaged with (and have learned
from) the process of creating the content.

Anyway, that's enough from me.

Incidentally, I'll be looking at this topic in more detail at my workshop at
Museums and the Web 2009:
http://www.archimuse.com/mw2009/abstracts/prg_335001907.html! (plug, plug!)

Cheers,

Frankie

-- 
Frankie Roberto
Experience Designer, Rattle
0114 2706977
http://www.rattlecentral.com

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