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Follow the (slash) dot: effects of feedback on new members in an online community

Published: 06 November 2005 Publication History

Abstract

Many virtual communities involve ongoing discussions, with large numbers of users and established, if implicit rules for participation. As new users enter communities like this, both they and existing members benefit when new users learn the standards for participation. Slashdot is a news and discussion site that has developed a system of distributed moderation to provide feedback about the value of posts on their site. This study examines three explanations for how new users learn to participate in a digital community: learning transfer from previous experiences, observation of other members, and feedback from other members. We find that new user behavior is affected by a combination of their viewing behavior, the moderation feedback they receive, and replies to their comments.

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    cover image ACM Conferences
    GROUP '05: Proceedings of the 2005 ACM International Conference on Supporting Group Work
    November 2005
    368 pages
    ISBN:1595932232
    DOI:10.1145/1099203
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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    Publication History

    Published: 06 November 2005

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    Author Tags

    1. feedback
    2. learning
    3. online community
    4. rating systems

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    November 6 - 9, 2005
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    • (2024)Negative Peer Feedback and User Content Generation: Evidence From a Restaurant Review PlatformProduction and Operations Management10.1177/10591478231224941Online publication date: 8-Feb-2024
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