Don't hate if you can't participate

The next few blogs will all have the same subject: participation.

Like I mentioned the last time. We need a sort of participation-rewarding system in order to motivate people to participate.

Now I know from my final paper on YouTube, that the result or reward of participation is being able to share/evaluate/change the prominent norms and values within the community. It's actually the same in the offline counterpart. You can imagine that you can't just change the 'rules of the game' by entering a community: you don't have the right since you don't know the people, you don't understand the rules of conduct and values of the community. Put in other words: You have to be a player, to change the rules of the game. The more you are a player, the more legitimacy you have to do that (though the legitimacy is never NEVER absolute, the greatest thing about web 2.0 ;) ).

That doesn't mean it's hard to become a member and it shouldn't be. As a new member of the community, or newbie, you're absolutely welcome and people within the online community are happy to explain you everything, that is, if you show them you're interested and willing. Everybody had to go through that stage of being new, so they do understand.

A website should always allow for different stages of participation. Lave and Wenger suggest five types of trajectories amongst a community:

Peripheral (or Lurker) – An outside, unstructured participation
Inbound (or Novice) – Newcomer is invested in the community and heading towards full participation
Insider (or Regular) – Full committed community participant
Boundary (or Leader) – A leader, sustains membership participation and interactions
Outbound (or Elder) – Process of leaving the community due to new relationships, new positions, new outlooks

The problem in the MM travel website lies that leaders were created without them really participating. The result now is that we have a lot of leaders on the website that didn't create a specific culture online. Real leaders are the ones motivated to contribute to the community by interaction, updating their profile and so on. Our leaders we have to motivate ourselves!

Now we have a lot of leaders and no MM travel culture. So people that are new ( lurkers and novices) they are not obliged to participate, since there IS NO MM travel CULTURE online. They don't feel the urge to interact, since there will be no change in the culture by participating. They assume they are the same as the leaders (which is actually absolutely correct) since they are not participating either. I hope I've made myself clear.

On the other hand: what else could we have done? It's true that most online communities grow slowly at first, due in part to the fact that the strength of motivation for contributing is usually proportional to the size of the community. As the size of the potential audience increases, so does the attraction of writing and contributing. This, coupled with the fact that culture isn't created overnight, means creators can expect slow progress at first with a new virtual community. As more people begin to participate, however, the motivations will increase, creating a virtuous cycle in which more participation leads to more participation.

Still it's frustrating. Especially seeing more people getting involved in the website without ever feeling the urge to interact. They forget they will also feel bored online if nobody interacts with them and recognizes their contribution...