Slashdot Mirror
Visualizing "Answer People" In Online Discussions
Marc Smith writes "'Answer people,' the folks who contribute much of the value in the Internet, are a small minority of all online users. According to a recent paper my co-authors and I have published in the Journal of Social Structure, less than 2% of authors in Usenet newsgroups are likely to be the helpful 'answer person' type — authors who reply to many other people with brief replies. The paper Visualizing the Signatures of Social Roles in Online Discussion Groups contains social network visualizations of the ties created when authors reply to one another. These images highlight the difference between these helpful folks and other types of contributors. The findings may apply to other threaded discussions, maybe even here at Slashdot."
... RTFM a helpful answer? if so, i'm one of the 2%!
Error:
Answer people enjoy solving problems and helping people. I won't consider myself one, but I do get a sense of accomplishment when I can help someone solve a problem or further a discussion.
And yet, Yahoo and other online corporations are (imho) exploiting these people by establishing "Answer" areas that reward people for answering questions with useless points. Do they get compensation or a cut of the advertising profits that yahoo is making on them? No. They get honor points.
Yahoo makes a mint on the viewership of the site and the answer people get a warm feeling... maybe it breaks even. I stopped answering questions after reading the hundredth obvious "I don't want to do my homework, so I'll ask it here" question.
At least sites like ePinions.com rewards it's reviewers with a pittance of the revenue their reviews generate.
is to imagine a guy in his late 20s sitting in his parents basement sucking down Mountain Dew and inhaling cheetos.....
Oh wait, thats not what you meant by "visualizing" them, is it?
Monstar L
One doesn't have to write lots of brief replies to be useful.
... interesting.
Some of the most important and helpful - if less frequent - responses are ones that are longer explanations of complex problems or concepts. Disregarding these from consideration is
Message boards, email discussion lists, etc. are used by an awful lot of companies as a cheap substitute for providing real support for their products. Go to some company's Support web page: you have 3-4 basic options:
1. Buy a $upport contract or pay-per-incidence
2. Free email support! It only takes 3-5 business days to get an unhelpful reply.
3. Visit our support forums. There are plenty of suckers out there who have already bought our product and figured it out, no thanks to us. Get your answer from them because, hey, they supply the knowledge for free and it only costs us a few $ to maintain the support forum!
Of course if you really do have some sticky problem, or a valid complaint, well, the support forums are not an officially recognized means of communication to the company. Having said that, we'll still delete posts/threads and bar any whiners that make us look bad. So, back to #1 if you really do need technical support.
I used to be an "answer" guy on a couple of mail lists. Not anymore. Why? because I've moved beyond the products I used to know a lot about. Now I ask the questions for new products I'm learning. That, and the fact that I've realized how much I've "given away" and not gotten anything back from. If I'm going to waste my time, it might as well be on slashdot.
All pass beyond reach of medicine. None pass beyond the reach of love.
Which ironically could be why it's so popular.
1: Most don't initiate a topic. Simply reading the latest cool stories.
2: Look at the social network diagram of an answer person. Few interconnections. It indicates introverted social behaviour, which is classic computer/science etc geek/nerd. It's not like we're short of those.
3: Hands up the system administrators and technical support analysts.
In fact, the way Slashdot is structured with the constant new topics may even attract "answer people" over other bulletin board cultures. It'd be interesting to see an analysis done here. It'd be interesting if different bulletin board systems encouraged different types of people to use them. Hmm, you could even track the types of interactions based on the age of the story and by UID to see if the general culture has changed.
Interesting social research.
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