Community Portals and Collective Goods: Conversation Archives as an Information Resource

Prior research investigating online communities has revealed several different types of communities, including those that are formed to support members with shared professional interests. One characteristic of these online communities is the creation and stewardship of collective goods. One particularly interesting example of such a collective good is the archive that is created out of the online conversation among the group members. In this paper, an online community of news reporters is examined in order to understand the use and general awareness of the archived conversation as a valuable information resource. A content analysis of a sample of the archived messages was completed and revealed considerable awareness and use of the archive among the community members. In addition, there was evidence of developing social norms that included searching the conversation archive for information before posting a new question. As the value of the archived conversation increases for a community, so does the need for better ways to browse and search the contents. A new data display, called a conversation map, was developed and is presented as a means to better grasp the rhythms and patterns of the archived discourse. These conversation maps illustrate temporal patterns of the group as a whole, as well as the message patterns of individual participants.