I’m a lurker.
I enjoyed Jakob Nielsen’s “Participation Inequality: Encouraging More Users to Contribute” because it really made me think about how I participate and how audiences in general tend to participate on the Web. It also made me feel a little better about being a lurker – I assumed I was in the minority, but now I know I’m in the majority of internet users.
Nielsen’s division of audiences into three categories was at first surprising. I would not have guessed the disparity between the number of people who contribute and the people who “lurk.” Nielsen provided clear descriptions of the three categories: Heavy Contributors, Intermittent Contributors, and Lurkers. While in have in the past tried to be an Intermittent Contributor on various sites, I have too often been turned off by the other posters to even bother. It has seemed to me that forums and comment sections are just venues for bitter/crazy/obsessed people to vent behind the safety of anonymity. For instance, I had to stop reading the comments section on any online newspaper during the 2008 election because the level of vitriol from extremists on the right and the left made me a bit depressed and convinced that the whole country was going mad. (Thanks to Nielsen, I can now assume that only about 1% of the country is crazy.) Even after the election was over, I couldn’t bring myself to click on the comments button.
The same is true with sites like ESPN.com, which as a sports fan I love. I am a hardcore Cowboys fan, and sometimes after a game, I think it’d be nice to see what other people thought about a certain player’s amazing play. However, I have resigned myself to not even scrolling down to see the comments anymore, because they are full of juvenile taunting and name calling from fans of other NFC East teams, and usually devolve into 3 or 4 posters taking over the entire thread to one-up each other with insults and not even mentioning the game. I think Nielsen was spot-on when he explained how Heavy Contributors can lead to poor quality information, because this group tends to dominate other participants and drive them off with their negativity.
Participant feedback can’t be seen as representative of the audience because of the inequality of participants. Less frequent contributors, like myself, tend to not want to participate because it’s not seen as worth the effort – what is the point when it’s just going to be overwhelmed by the more active users? Nielsen’s conclusion that you can’t overcome this problem seems accurate to me. I like his more practical goal of encouraging more participants by making it easier for people to participate, and by selecting comments to post (not allowing one group of users to dominate by posting repeatedly). Nielsen’s right that you can’t force people to become frequent contributors, but you can make it more accessible and the environment more friendly for when they do decide to participate.
As for the other sites we visited, I thought The Lost Museumwas really cool. I think it’s a great way to make people feel involved in history. I also liked that there was the option to solve the mystery, or to just browse. I liked being able to walk around through the rooms without actually having to play the mystery-solving game. I do wish more context was given for the site up front, though. I feel like some of the information in the “How to” section would have been better placed on the home page or in an “About” section. If I didn’t have to visit this for an assignment, I don’t think I would have had the patience to sit through the existing intro.
As a sports fan, and a political junkie trying to get myself away from all the hateful nonsense, I relate to the comments section. Here's an example: a cyclist was accidentally killed by a motorcade yesterday for the 47-nation nuclear summit. There are only 4 comments on this post as I type this response to your blog. Read them.
Sad isn't it? Is this what we want to open ourselves up to? It's bad enough that the historical profession often seems about tearing apart a book or argument that was recently published, but do we really want to open ourselves up to a public that seems less detached from genuine humanity each day?
But then I thought about Dan Gifford's site. Who would take the time to respond to his site? Aficionados, people walking down memory lane. If you build a history site that can attract people who share your interests, then you can receive some feedback that can be very helpful. However, if you build a site that feeds on controversy, on eye-catching headlines designed to drive traffic, then you are going to get responses akin to Tony Romo being gay, or Jerry Jones a pedophile, or the President being both a Nazi and a Commie.
So I guess we shouldn't lose hope, and hopefully we can design sites that can elevate discourse and hopefully give the "lurking" web user something to fondly remember or think about. Easier said than done, right?
Posted by: Rwany Sibaja | 04/13/2010 at 11:29 AM
Sorry, my attempt at linking the motorcade-cyclist article didn't work. Here's the link to the article and the callous comments: http://www.politico.com/politico44/perm/0410/bicyclist_killed_5533502d-2791-4c8f-a0c0-55c2aa03a209.html
Posted by: Rwany Sibaja | 04/13/2010 at 11:30 AM