SELF-ORGANIZATION OF VIRTUAL COMMUNITIES

Need and Members’ Participation

Juliana de Melo Bezerra and Celso Massaki Hirata

Computer Science Department, ITA, São José dos Campos, Brazil

Keywords: Virtual community, Self-organization, Participation, Members.

Abstract: In a self-organizing virtual community, the members are responsible for defining the norms that govern the

community. A model for self-organizing virtual communities is proposed. The model is useful to study a

self-organizing community and understand how it is structured in order to improve its self-organization

feature. The model is used in two investigations. We investigate the need of self-organization feature by

virtual communities. We also investigate the participation of members in the self-organization process, by

identifying the categories of members that contribute significantly during the elaboration of norms.

1 INTRODUCTION

Virtual community is a group of people, who come

together for a purpose online, and who are governed

by norms (Preece, 2000). Norms are specific to a

social context, and they are generally established in

order to regulate the people relationships (Palaia,

2005). Virtual communities are not fixed over time;

they evolve due to the members’ interests and

demands. Communities that promote their own

evolution, are called self-organizing communities.

Self-organizing virtual communities are

dialectical systems in which technological networks

and social networks are interconnected and produce

each other in a self-referential loop (Fuchs, 2006). In

this article, self-organization is understood as

meaningful changes in community norms performed

by the members themselves. Meaningful changes are

those that require formal acceptance of members.

Self-organized virtual communities are more

flexible, which stimulates participation and

involvement of members. It may result in more

motivation and commitment to the members,

contributing to the persistence of the community

over time (Moe et al., 2008, Crowston et al., 2007).

The term self-organization is related to changes

in distinct social structures and it is used in the

descriptions of the dynamic creation of content (or

knowledge) in communities (Bieber et al, 2002). The

term is also used when describing the changes in

interaction among members (social networks) over

time in a community (Crowston, 2006, Lin et al.,

2007; Moor and Weigand, 2007, Baek et al., 2009,

Xianjin and Minghong, 2009). We are particularly

interested on the basis of the structures’ changes,

which are the changes in the norms that govern the

community.

In this article we investigate which types of

virtual communities are more prone to be self-

organizing. We use the typology proposed by Fuchs

(2006), which includes three levels of virtual

communities: cognition, communication and

cooperation. Our hypothesis is that the need of the

self-organization feature depends on both the

community objective and the members’ involvement

to meet effectively the community objective.

Another open issue is the self-organization process,

which is the process used by members to propose,

discuss, and approve norms. Our objective is to

understand which classes of members actively

participate in the process. Our hypothesis is that the

members that have already developed the sense of

ownership of the community contribute to norms’

elaboration.

In order to investigate the underlined hypotheses,

we first propose a model of self-organizing virtual

communities relating the components identified by

Preece (2002) and the concept of self-organization

provided by Fuchs (2006). Aiming to reason about

our first hypothesis, we use the model to identify if a

virtual community has the self-organization feature.

The second hypothesis is validated by analysing

some discussions about norms reported in Wikipedia

community.

486

de Melo Bezerra J. and Massaki Hirata C..

SELF-ORGANIZATION OF VIRTUAL COMMUNITIES - Need and Members’ Participation.

DOI: 10.5220/0003345204860493

In Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies (WEBIST-2011), pages 486-493

ISBN: 978-989-8425-51-5

 2011 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

The article is organized as follows. Section 2

presents the model for self-organizing virtual

communities. In Section 3, we investigate the need

of self-organization in virtual communities. In

Section 4, we reason about the participation of

members during the self-organization process in

Wikipedia. Section 5 concludes our work.

2 SELF-ORGANIZING VIRTUAL

COMMUNITY MODEL

There is no agreed definition about virtual

community. We use the definition by Preece (2000),

who identifies the following elements of virtual

communities: shared purpose, people, norms and

computer technologies. Self-organization theory

describes reality as permanently moving and

producing novelty. The process of the appearance of

order in a self-organizing system is termed

emergence or evolution (Ashby, 1947, Fuchs, 2006).

In the self-organization of a virtual community, a

structural component (the virtual part) and the actor

component (the social or community part)

permanently create each other. So, actors agency

structures, while structures constrain and enable

actors. Social action produces and reproduces

knowledge, rules, and resources that enable the

existence of the overall community (Fuchs, 2006).

We proposed a model for self-organizing virtual

communities and it is illustrated in Figure 1. The

model is composed by three main elements

identified by Preece (2002): members (people),

norms, and system (computer technologies). Preece

(2002) also identifies the element shared purpose,

which is implicitly presented in the model through

the community goal. Members belong to the

community motivated by their personal goals, which

should be aligned with the shared purpose of

community. Norms impose discipline to members,

because they regulate the community by establishing

the appropriate and inappropriate values, beliefs,

attitudes and behaviours (Palaia, 2005). The system

encompasses the means for the members to work in

their activities and interact with other members. The

system is designed to meet functional requirements

that follow the community norms. For example, if a

norm states that content is editable by any member,

the system shall provide the adequate functionality

to it. So, the norms are implemented by the system

and the members use the system. We understand

member as a person associated to the community,

while user is his/her logical representation in the

system.

Members

Norms

Operational norms

Enforcement norms

Self-organization norms

System

Resources

Access Control

Procedures

discipline

define

use

implemented by

Community

Changes Restrictions

motivate guide

Enviroment

Figure 1: Self-organizing virtual community model.

We assume that the community exists inside an

environment and can be influenced by it. Then, the

definition of norms may be motivated by changes in

the environment and also guided by restrictions.

Examples of changes in the environment can be the

best practices of other communities. Examples of

restrictions imposed by the environment are of ethic

and moral nature, social laws and rules. The norms

of a community in general have to follow these

restrictions, for example the user agreement of

Linkedin community refers to United States

Civil Code.

We can identify the self-organization feature

discussed by Fuchs (2006) in this model. The actors

are the members of the self-organizing virtual

community. The structures include the norms and

the system. The relation “actors agency structures”

can be explained as: members define the norms that

governs the community, which are implemented by

the system that supports the community. The

relation “structures constrain and enable actors” can

be understood as: members use system respecting

the discipline imposed by norms.

In the next sections, we discuss about the

elements of the proposed model.

2.1 The Norms

A norm is a type of principle, precept or rule that

states obligation, permission, power attribution or

competence attribution. In general a norm can be

imperative (that imposes duties) and/or attributive

SELF-ORGANIZATION OF VIRTUAL COMMUNITIES - Need and Members' Participation

487

(that confers rights). A norm is general and abstract,

because it does not regulate a specific situation, but

establishes a principle that can be applied in many

concrete cases (Palaia, 2005).

Norms may have associated procedures to be

followed by the community. Procedures detail the

operational participation of members in order to

guide the accomplishment of norms. A norm defines

“what” shall be followed by members, while a

procedure explains “how” a norm (or a set of norms)

can be put in practice, but the difference between

them sometimes may be blurred. Changes in

procedures are considered improvements in the

system and not an evolution, because only the

operational activities are affected. Changes in

procedures can be made by an authorized member or

group established by some norm. Changes in norms

represent the evolution of the self-organizing

community and shall be a result of a consensus

among members.

The norms regulate distinct aspects of a

community. They can be classified into three main

groups: operational norms, enforcement norms and

self-organization norms. Operational norms regulate

the cooperation of members to develop their

activities. The definition of norms is essential for the

community organization and the enforcement of

such norms shall be also addressed, because a norm

shall contain a coercion element in order to force the

members to follow it (Palaia, 2005). So, enforcement

norms are important to regulate the entire

enforcement process (Bezerra and Hirata, 2010).

Finally, self-organization norms define how

members propose new norms or improve the existent

ones, and how the proposals are analyzed by

members in order to assure the community

acceptance.

Not all norms are formally codified in self-

organizing virtual communities. There are informal

norms that can be inferred by members, for example,

a norm that states that a person shall be aligned to

the community goal in order to become a member.

Therefore only the essential norms should be

explicit. This parsimony keeps the trade-off between

freedom and discipline, as explained by Pascale et

al. (2001): “Neither too many rules nor too few

rules. The key to self-organizing resides in a field of

tension between discipline and freedom... In

organization, rules provide discipline.”.

2.2 The System

A virtual community is supported by an information

system based on Internet technology (web-based

system). The system, sometimes named as

community system, teamware, and groupware, is

used as a means for the members to achieve the

community goal.

Although there is no perfect technology

configuration for a system as it changes from

community to community over time (Wenger,

2007), it is possible to identify three main

components in a system: resources, access control

policy model, and procedures. Resources

encompasses all the goods developed in the

community, such as messages in forums, articles in

Wikipedia, and documents and codes in open source

communities. The permissions over the resources

are handled by an access control policy model

according to the social roles presented in

community. Procedures, introduced in Section 2.1,

are driven by the norms and detail the operational

interaction of the members.

The platform of the system can take advantage of

distinct technologies (Michaelides et al., 2008, Geib

et al., 2004)., for example: asynchronous

technologies (which involve a time difference, e.g.

email, and discussion boards), synchronous

technologies (e.g. instant messaging, synchronous

cooperative editing systems, and video

conferencing), and functions for content

management and the exchange of knowledge (e.g.

blogs, wikis, and document repositories).

The creation, elimination or modification of

system components may require some

implementation made by an authorized system

developer. The changes in system related to

correctness (to correct bugs), adaptation (new

versions of software or platform) and prevention (to

increase performance or to ease future maintenance)

are seen as operational tasks of the system

developer. The changes in system concerned to the

improvement of its functionalities are directly

related to the changes of norms approved by

community. In this case, we observe the relation

“norms are implemented by system” shown in

Figure

as part of the self-organization of virtual

communities.

2.3 The Members

Members are responsible to create, increment, and

adapt the norms that govern its relations and

processes. The active participation of member is

essential for the community evolution, because the

members have the detailed knowledge about the

problems and expectations (Moor et al., 2007). Any

member can be an agent of change who influences

WEBIST 2011 - 7th International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies

488

what emerges from individual interactions (Olson

and Quade, 2006).

Some researchers (Michaelides et al., 2008; Geib

et al., 2004) state that the productivity of a virtual

community depends heavily on the fact that its

members accept the community system that supports

it. However, in self-organizing virtual communities,

the members have the possibility to change norms

and consequently the system according to their

goals. The members are responsible for the

community evolution. They are not seen as mere

users of a system controlled by an individual or a

selected group. As explained by Fuchs (2006), the

self-organizing virtual community is not controlled

by an elite group take takes decisions, but by self-

managed networks of activists.

Members in virtual communities are in general

volunteers because they show interest with the

community goal. The self-organization characteristic

is attractive for the members because it stimulates

involvement, resulting in more commitment,

motivation, sense of ownership, and desire for

responsibility (Moe et al., 2008).

2.4 The Self-organization Process

In order to coordinate the self-organization, some

process shall be defined. This process is regulated by

the self-organization norms mentioned in Section

2.1. The self-organization process is a group

decision making process, whereby members have to

debate the issues and reach a decision. Based on the

phases of the group decision making process

identified by Simon (1960), we argue that the self-

organization process may include the following

activities: problem definition, identification of

alternatives, analyses of alternatives, and solution

implementation.

In the problem definition activity, a member

indentifies a problem regarding a norm or a set of

norms. The problem may include ambiguous or very

specific norms, and even the missing of norms to

regulate some issues. The problem is then discussed

by other members during the identification of

alternatives activity in order to identify possible

alternatives for solution. In the analyses of

alternatives activity, members discuss the identified

alternatives and choose the more appropriate one. In

the solution implementation activity the solution is

applied to community. The solution can be a change

of norms or a creation of new norms, and may

require some technical implementation in the

system.

The presented self-organization process is not

unique; each community forges its own process. The

chosen process may also evolve during the

community life cycle, however in general such

changes are more subtle to achieve consensus in

community.

3 THE NEED OF

SELF-ORGANIZATION

In this section, we investigate why some virtual

communities are more prone to self-organization.

The objective is to validate our hypothesis: “The

need of the self-organization feature depends on

both the community objective and the members’

involvement to meet effectively the community

objective”. To achieve our objective, we identify

some virtual communities according to the self-

organization feature. We then discuss the results of

the classification in order to validate our hypothesis.

We select some virtual communities of distinct

typologies and identify the self-organizing ones, as

shown in Table 1. The self-organizing virtual

community model illustrated in Figure 1 is used to

do such identification. The key is to verify if the

relation “member define norms” proceeds. To verify

it, we analyse what is stated in community norms,

and also we observe the actual behavior of members,

in order to know if they really contribute to the

elaboration of norms.

The chosen typology is the one proposed by

Fuchs (2006) that divides virtual communities in

three levels: cognition, communication and

cooperation. The first level represents the computer

networks and application programs that enable a

user to connect to a virtual world. The second level

characterizes the computer-mediated communication

between users that is regularized by general rules of

interaction and shared interests. In the last level,

jointly produced resources emerge through the

cooperation among the users, which share feelings

of togetherness and belonging.

Web-based discussion boards, blogs, group

blogs, online dating and friendship services and

online rating are examples of communication

communities according to Fuchs (2006). In this

category, we selected the following communities to

study: Twitter, Linkedin, Orkut, LinuxQuestions,

and PlanetMath Forum.

Twitter is a social networking and microblogging

service, owned and operated by Twitter Inc., which

enables its users to send and read other users'

messages called tweets. Members interact using the

SELF-ORGANIZATION OF VIRTUAL COMMUNITIES - Need and Members' Participation

489

system. The norms of the community are

responsibility of the owner company, so Twitter is

not self-organizing. The same analysis can be

inferred about Linkedin and Orkut communities.

Table 1: Virtual community classification.

Community

Business

Model Type

Typology

Self-

organizing

The Times

of London

online journal cognitive no

UOL Radio internet radio cognitive no

Twitter

social network

and microblog

communication no

Linkedin social network communication no

Orkut social network communication no

Linux

Questions

forum communication yes

PlanetMath

Forum

forum communication yes

BSCW

shared

workspace

cooperative no

PlanetMath

Encyclopedia

wiki cooperative yes

Wikipedia wiki cooperative yes

Netbeans

open source

project

cooperative yes

Apache

open source

project

cooperative yes

LinuxQuestions is a forum where members

discuss topics related to Linux. It has a simple set of

norms called “LQ Rules” that mainly regulates the

conduct to be followed, for instance forbidding

content with obscene, personal attacks and

advertising. The norms were created by the

community founder; however there is a specific

thread of forum where the members can discuss the

norms and propose some enhancements. Due to this

possibility, the relation “members define norms”

holds and the community is self-organizing. The

same analysis can be inferred about PlanetMath

Forum.

Fuchs (2006) exemplifies the cooperation

communities with wikis, shared workspace systems,

groupware and knowledge communities. In this

category, we analyse the following communities:

BSCW, PlanetMath Encyclopedia, Wikipedia,

Netbeans, and Apache.

BSCW is a service for the international scientific

community to share documents safely across the

Web. Its norms are established by Fraunhofer FIT,

the company that developed BSCW. As members

cannot define the norms, the community is not self-

organizing.

PlanetMath Encyclopedia is a free, collaborative,

online Mathematics encyclopedia. The norms of this

community are called “PlanetMath Collaborative

Documentation” and are established by members,

then classified as a self-organizing community.

Wikipedia norms are available for all members

as content pages in wiki pages too, so members can

access the norms and improve them (Goldspink et

al., 2008; Beschastnikh et al., 2008; Forte and

Bruckman, 2008). As the relation “members define

norms” hold, Wikipedia is also a self-organizing

community.

Another cooperation community is Netbeans.

NetBeans.org is a community committed with the

open source development of a Java IDE (integrated

development environment). NetBeans provides some

detailed norms to discipline the activities of

members. The decisions regarding the norms are

discussed in public main lists in order to assure a

consensus (Jensen and Scacchi, 2005). So, the

members define the norms and the community is

self-organizing. The self-organizing characteristic is

also found in Apache community.

Associating the typology of virtual communities

(cognition, communication and cooperation) with

the self-organization aspect leads to some findings.

The self-organization aspect is absent in cognition

communities, because the members are mostly

interacting lonely with the system in order to

retrieve some specific information. Communication

communities tend to be not self-organizing.

Members are mainly concerned to establish relations

and to discuss about general content; and they are

not involved in the definition of norms. Exceptions

may occur, for instance, PlanetMath Forum and

LinuxQuestions are self-organizing communities.

Communities based on forum have a tendency to be

self-organizing, because they require more

involvement of members to effectively achieve the

community’s goal of sharing information and

experiences. Cooperation communities are more

prone to be self-organized, because the members

work together in activities and therefore they are

concerned to the norms that regulate these activities.

The community objective is related to the

community type, which in turn motivates the need

for self-organization. It confirms our first hypothesis

that states that the need of self-organization is

related to the community objective and to the

involvement of members.

WEBIST 2011 - 7th International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies

490

4 PARTICIPATION IN THE

SELF-ORGANIZATION

PROCESS

In this section we investigate the participation of

members in the self-organization process. The

objective is to validate the hypothesis: “Members

that participate of the self-organization process have

already developed the sense of community by

contributing actively of the operational activities in

the community”.

The participation investigation is performed for

Wikipedia, a well succeed example of self-

organizing community. The data availability is a

positive aspect to research the community. Norms in

Wikipedia are available as wiki pages. The

discussion among the members about a norm is held

in the talk page associated to the norm page. There is

also a special page called “Village Pump (policy)”

page, which is used to discuss existing and proposed

norms. We have studied ten cases of “Village Pump

(policy)” page in September, 2010. The cases are

listed in Table 2. Based on the analyses of the

discussions about norms in Wikipedia, we validate

our hypothesis. We also comment some

characteristics of the discussions and reason about

the self-organization process.

Table 2 shows the selected cases and the type of

the Wikipedia member that had initiated the

discussion. We specified three categories of

members based on the social roles that they perform

in Wikipedia: admin members, specialized members

and regular members. Admin members are members

that hold roles related to Wikipedia administration.

In this category we include the following roles found

in Wikipedia: “administrators”, “bureaucrats”, and

“stewards”. Specialized members are general

members that have access to some specialized

administration function. In this category we include

the following roles: “checkusers”, “reviewers”,

“account creators”, “oversighters”, “rollbackers”,

“autopatrolled”, and “edit filter managers”. Regular

members are the registered and anonymous

members, both active (that contribute to the

Wikipedia content) and inactive (that only read the

Wikipedia content).

For each discussion in Table 2, we count the

number of participants and contributions in each

user category. It is shown Table 3. For instance, D1

had a total of 12 distinct participants that provided

35 contributions during the discussion. The 12

participants were 4 admin members, 7 specialized

members, and 1 regular members. From the 35

contributions, 10 were provided by admin members,

18 by specialized members, and 7 by regular

members.

Table 2: Analyzed discussions about norms.

Id Discussion Initiated by

D1 Article cleanup templates

Specialized

member

D2 Email from email provider

Specialized

member

I come to bury editors, not to praise

them ...

Specialized

member

Need Button: "This Article Needs a

Practical Example"

Regular

member

Notability of cities, towns, and

neighborhoods

Specialized

member

Self-Identification versus Verifiable

Fact.

Regular

member

D7 The power of the Arbitration Committee

Specialized

member

The SCOTUS recently ruled that

promotion of illegal material is not a

guaranteed right; however, someone

keeps adding links to illegal material to

the Tor article.

Regular

member

D9 University "reputation" sections

Admin

member

D10 Wikipedia image policy?

Specialized

member

Table 3: Number of participants and contributions in

discussions.

Admin

users

Specialized

users

Regular

users

Total

P C P C P C P C

D1 4 10 7 18 1 7 12 35

D2 2 2 1 1 0 0 3 3

D3 3 17 11 40 2 16 16 73

D4 1 1 1 1 4 4 6 6

D5 5 9 5 12 5 9 15 30

D6 2 6 1 2 3 27 6 35

D7 5 6 5 12 0 0 10 18

D8 2 2 2 2 1 1 5 5

D9 1 2 1 1 1 1 3 4

D10 4 4 2 9 0 0 6 13

* P indicates the number of participants, and C, the number of

contributions

Regarding the participation of members in the

self-organization process, the figures presented in

Table 3 show that distinct categories of members

SELF-ORGANIZATION OF VIRTUAL COMMUNITIES - Need and Members' Participation

491

can participate of norms’ definition. As admin users

are entirely involved in the definition of norms, their

participation is verified in discussions. The

participation of specialized users is also verified in

discussions about norms. Specialized users

participate of the community with special

administrative tasks, so they may have doubts about

how to proceed in some situations and their

experience can help during some discussions.

In order to understand the participation of

regular members in the studied cases, we investigate

the degree of involvement of the member by

retrieving his registration date, and the quantity of

contributions he made in articles during 2010. We

note that the regular users that participate of

discussions about norms are mainly those involved

in content edition. As they have their activities

coordinated by norms, they are more interested on

understanding the established norms and

contributing to their evolution. One exception is

identified: a regular user without contributions in

articles that initiated discussion D3. This exception

is explained by the fact that he is a new member in

Wikipedia.

Although any member can contribute to the

definition of norms in self-organizing virtual

communities, not every member does. Members

who developed the sense of ownership of the

community are more likely to participate of the self-

organization process. In Wikipedia we observe that

the members that participate in the self-organization

process are mainly administrators, members with

some specialized administration function, and

members that contribute with content in articles. It

confirms our second hypothesis.

Based on the observations in Wikipedia

discussions, we have other findings. The number of

participants and interactions during a self-

organization cycle varies according to the issue

being debated. When the proposed evolution

changes significantly the way the community

operates or its basic organization, this kind of

proposal is more difficult to be approved. We also

identify some issues during the self-organization

process that could be improved in Wikipedia and

can be important to any community addressing self-

organization. The initial proposal sometimes is not

clear, which demands effort by the members to

understand the issue being addressed. The initial

proposal in general does not specify which norms

are related. It is sometimes difficult to relate past

and present discussions. The discussion among

members can take too long, because there is no

deadline to close the issue. The conclusion of a

discussion is not clearly identified; it is sometimes

necessary to read all the comments to infer the

conclusion. Finally, when the group achieves a

conclusion, there is no indication about how or when

the changes (if any) shall be implemented in

community.

5 CONCLUSIONS

The social relations in virtual communities develop

themselves in space and time, and they cause the

incidence of norms. When members contribute to

the community evolution, through the definition of

norms, the community is called self-organizing.

We propose a model for self-organizing virtual

communities, taking into account members, system

and norms. Although it is a simple model, the

relations among the elements can be complex. The

model is useful to study a self-organizing

community and understand how it is structured in

order to improve its self-organization feature.

We use the proposed model to identify self-

organizing virtual communities of distinct types.

This investigation allows us to understand that the

need of the self-organization feature depends on

both the community objective and the members’

involvement to meet effectively the community

objective. It is useful to identify virtual communities

where the self-organization feature can be attractive.

Analysing discussions about norms in Wikipedia,

we verify that the members involved with the self-

organization process are in general members that

actively contribute to the operational activities in the

community and have already developed the sense of

ownership of the community. It is important to be

able to stimulate the correct members in community

in order to improve the quality of the participation

during the self-organization process. We also

identify some issues in discussions that can be

improved in order to benefit the overall self-

organization process in virtual communities.

As future work, we intend to investigate how

conflicts during discussions can be managed in

virtual communities, i.e. how they emerge and can

be detected, and how to address them contributing to

their accommodation.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

To Tony Ahn, for providing relevant information of

use by active members of Wikipedia.

WEBIST 2011 - 7th International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies

492

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