This paper examines online communities and describes how they can be differentiated from other Internet supported group interactions. A definition of an online community is given and three generic types are identified. These types are defined by the community models based on the value proposition for the sponsors and members. The value proposition for members is strongly influenced by the model...

Combating Attacks and Abuse in Large Online Communities

We describe XTreeNet, a distributed query dissemination engine which facilitates democratization of publishing and efficient data search among members of online communities with powerful full-text queries. This demonstration shows XTreeNet in full action. XTreeNet serves as a proof of concept for democratic community search by proposing a distributed novel infrastructure in which data resides o...

Communities offer a context for people to meet, communicate and collaborate. Tools to support communities usually provide a communication medium and functionalities to find communication partners. Thereby, they strengthen existing communities or enable completely new (virtual) communities. In this paper we briefly present some ideas towards the extension of community support to mobile environme...

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There is a growing body of literature on the concept of gender and women empowerment through information and communication technologies. However, there is no considerable effort to investigate how information technology affects feminism movements particularly in eastern countries. Drawn from the findings in the current body of literature and using activity theory, this paper postulates the sign...

Community detection in networks is a broad problem with many proposed solutions. Existing methods frequently make use of edge density and node attributes; however, the methods ultimately have different definitions of community and build strong assumptions about community features into their models. We propose a new method for community detection, which estimates both per-community feature distr...

A common model for offshore teaching involves intensive delivery by Australian academic with local staff supporting the subject. Technology has become a commonplace means of delivering subject material, including material supporting subjects being taught in an intensive manner offshore. This paper reports preliminary results of a trial conducted delivering University of Wollongong course conten...

Online learning communities are being touted as meeting the needs of distance learners and providing flexibility for on-campus students. Currently expectations are not being realized partly owing to a lack of experience and understanding of how such communities evolve, and the constraints and problems experienced by the learners. In this paper some strategies are identified that will inform des...

The purpose of this study is to validate an instrument to study role adjustment of students new to an online community of inquiry. The community of inquiry conceptual model for online learning was used to shape this research and identify the core elements and conditions associated with role adjustment to online learning (Garrison, Anderson and Archer, 2000). Through a factor analytic process it...