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Smile, you're on [my sociology thesis]!
Kate of Lokys
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Registered User regular
Hello, H/A! Kate of Lokys here: irregular contributor, occasional solicitor of advice, and also... covert ninja-student observer of everything you say and do.
Ahem. More specifically, I decided to use the H/A forum as the subject of my undergraduate sociology thesis during my final academic year. For a period of one week back in February, I recorded every new topic that was posted to H/A, along with all of the replies. I recorded the number of threads started by each user, and the number of times they replied to threads started by others. I described the formal rules and unwritten norms of this forum, I compiled a bunch of pretty charts and tables, I brought in a lot of sociological theory (
Putnam), I used discourse analysis to explore the significance of individual and collective utterances within one example thread.
So, if you've ever wanted to see the phrase "limed for the truth" used in a formal academic paper, take a look! I think it's a fairly interesting read, and some of you will even feel the dubious glow of seeing your usernames in print. (I've actually been asked to cut it down to about 25 pages so I can submit it for publication to a peer-reviewed journal, which would be pretty awesome I think, if only for the inherent hilarity of having somebody with a PhD arguing with me about my interpretation of zombie0047's post).
The paper:
The Kindness of Strangers: Quantitative Observation and Discourse Analysis of Help-Seeking Activity in an Online Community
(I know this is neither help nor advice, but I received mod approval for this post).
Ahem. More specifically, I decided to use the H/A forum as the subject of my undergraduate sociology thesis during my final academic year. For a period of one week back in February, I recorded every new topic that was posted to H/A, along with all of the replies. I recorded the number of threads started by each user, and the number of times they replied to threads started by others. I described the formal rules and unwritten norms of this forum, I compiled a bunch of pretty charts and tables, I brought in a lot of sociological theory (
Putnam), I used discourse analysis to explore the significance of individual and collective utterances within one example thread.So, if you've ever wanted to see the phrase "limed for the truth" used in a formal academic paper, take a look! I think it's a fairly interesting read, and some of you will even feel the dubious glow of seeing your usernames in print. (I've actually been asked to cut it down to about 25 pages so I can submit it for publication to a peer-reviewed journal, which would be pretty awesome I think, if only for the inherent hilarity of having somebody with a PhD arguing with me about my interpretation of zombie0047's post).
The paper:
The Kindness of Strangers: Quantitative Observation and Discourse Analysis of Help-Seeking Activity in an Online Community
(I know this is neither help nor advice, but I received mod approval for this post).
Kate of Lokys on
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Congrats on getting it done - must be a relief.
I'm at work right now so I only got a chance to skim through it, but...Wow!
Looks very impressive and I can't wait to get home to actually read it, even though it'll probably be way over my head.
Well done!
I also feel kind of dirty that we were being watched, but I kind of like it.
@gamefacts - Totally and utterly true gaming facts on the regular!
More like the social entropy forum.
CUZ THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE MIDDLE AND IT'S GIVING ME A RASH
I was surprised in a way when I first started on PA at the level of support/concern total strangers were willing to give to one another. I'm not any more, I think the people on this forum are amazing, and now you've demonstrated it with stats. And you used SPSS!
Tell us your result when you receive it, and include graduation pics!
For paintings in progress, check out canvas and paints
"The power of the weirdness compels me."
I'm racking my brain wondering if I started any topics here during that time.
I don't believe it - I'm on my THIRD PS3, and my FIRST XBOX360. What the heck?
I couldn't help myself but laugh along with serious presentation of the rules and liming.
I don't know if you've already handed it in, but if not there are some small errors, you missed one [sic] in one of your quotes (in the quality part, you quoted someone talking about how he had a similar problem) and I don't think it is needed to describe /what/ SPSS is, it's just a tool nearly all social scientists use, I think it is safe to assume that your readers will understand what you mean if you just say that you used SPSS 16.0 as tool to analyse your data.
Heh, did she mention how one of the unspoken requirements of a "new kitten/puppy" thread was the need to placate the forum gods by posting "cuddly-wuddly" pictures?
She did indeed. I'm with Arikado in finding the serious presentation of it all as mighty amusing.
I only gave it a real quick skim thus far, I'll have to look at it in more detail later. But one part that rubbed me the wrong way was the analysis on pages 30-31 (pgs 35-36 of the pdf) which investigates the number of times someone asked for help as compared to the number of posts giving help.
The problem with this analysis is that it was limited to the single week of observation, and took no consideration of the long-term trend. Indeed, the community would probably actively discourage someone from asking for help more than 2 or 3 times in a single week, and certainly would discourage those who ask for help repeatedly week-after-week. It would be interesting (and possible) to search the history of the 10 most active responders and see how many NEVER asked for help of their own. I would bet almost all of them have.
If we're critiquing, I'd say your tables could be organized better, and your graph needs a proper title. But if you're planning on publishing it, I'm sure you'll work out all that stuff.
I don't go there. There be dragons.
Had a chance to read the whole thing - nicely done.
I have a question though, i am in the reference list (hooray!) but i'm not sure why as i didnt see my name anywhere in the body of the paper. I was only able to skim the paper (on my lunchbreak) though, and ran a search for my name. Perhaps i'm referred to more subtly
Just kidding. It's a decent read. Who knew we were so friendly, eh? (top 15 responders never asked for help thselves!)
Haven't read the rest of the paper yet (and I will!), but I'd agree with this. I don't think all of them would have never asked for help; even prolific people like Thanantos drop in some questions, but it's usually things like "How do I sort out my tax return?" rather than "emo emo i cant ask girls out ;( ;(" It's just the ratio will be low.
However, Kate does say:
"A number of users expended considerable quantities of time and effort on
aiding others with their problems, yet asked for nothing in exchange, from either the individuals
they helped or from any other users: “at this extreme, generalized reciprocity becomes hard to
distinguish from altruism and difficult to cast as self-interest” (Putnam, 2000, p. 135)."
I think my issue with that passage is the use of (lies, damned lies and) statistics implied that there was some positive correlation between thread creation and thread response. I think most of the hardcore H&A would not say that was true, but then again that's going to be perception. I'd really like to see this taking in a larger dataset for the journal article (maybe Raimus can give you a DB dump now that you're not an unseen observer?) so we can find out what's what.
Plus, although I am in the Top 10 of repliers (don't tell the boss
Also maybe think about making a mention that some people have relatively low participation, but very high quality, usually in realms of expertise. DrFrylock is a great example, particularly in academic/career threads (maybe Jasconius to a lesser extent? He seems to pop up in technology threads a lot, but is in others too).
EDIT: Now read the entire thing, really enjoyed it :^:. Well done!
This reminds me of a lecture I attended recently by Robin Wright on why businesses sponsor the arts.
Full text of the accompanying book is in PDF form here. Basically, he relates the act of altruism to behaviours in the animal kingdom such as peacocks growing large tails or Arabian babblers putting their own life in danger to protect others. The general theory being that while the act of altruism doesn't benefit the person directly, it's an ostentatious act that indirectly benefits the altruist as a demonstration of his excess resources. In the sense of peacocks tails it shows that it is strong enough to gather the various nutrients required to grow it and is thus a good choice for a mate, in the sense of businesses sponsoring the arts it shows that the business is achieving so well it can afford to 'waste' some of it's excess money on the arts and so they should be a safe choice to bank or do business with. Being helpful is basically just cock waving - "look how smart I am, my life is going so well I have time to help other people with their problems because I have so few problems of my own, marry me, have my children, live a comfortable, problem free life".
Interestingly, I suppose Wright would expect the larger analysis of the advice to request ratio to be more or less consistent with the one week sample. He reckons that only the most successful (animals, businesses, people) have the resources to act altruistically and even goes so far as to say that this is for the best as it means it retains authenticity as an indication of success. Therefore, I guess he'd expect the people with the least problems (and therefore the ones least likely to ask for advice) to be the ones most likely to give advice.
Oh, I should mention, I'm taken. Sorry ladies, you'll need to go after one of the other top ten helpers.
I'd be really interested in seeing a quantitative analysis of long term trends, as some other people have mentioned. I don't know if that's possible or feasible, but I think it would be interesting to see over the long term who the highest responder was who never posted a question, or how many people asked for help but never contributed back.
now let's see you dissect the Random Thoughts forum on hipforums
I agree, the time span was very limited, and a longer observation period would have produced more detailed results. Compiling all the data by hand was a right *bitch*, though - I reckon I spent as much time recording usernames and categories as I did actually writing the paper. But hey, if anyone gets bored over the summer and wants to continue or extend the work, by all means feel free! If Ramius is somehow able to press a magical button and churn out a dataset of post and response frequencies, I would love to run it through SPSS.
How long has this taken you so far Kate? I'm not looking forward to doing one of these in the future.
Well i do have kind of a personal interest there
I sure hope i had something more to say than just that one line, that sounds really mean! I do remember that thread, as well. (no, dont go looking for what i had posted in full, i'm sure the OP has long since forgotten :P )
On a side note, I'm a bit embarrassed that I'm the only new user who asked a question in that time. I broke the streak, d'oh! I'll never forgive myself.
I wouldn't doubt it. In truth, when it comes to posting topics, there's been times where I've asked a question that given some time I probably could have figured out myself... but I thought it might have a chance of bringing up an interesting conversation or teach me something I didn't realize about the subject if I posted it here. And pretty much every time, someone's brought up something that I might have never realized myself even if I had waddled through it on my own. It's useful to bring questions to the masses
Anyone want to take the Starmanbrand Reality Tour?
In seriousness, this paper was intense. Great idea, and I am probably going to have to check out some of the sources. If they are half as interestin' as the paper, I will have some good summer reading.