‘…as if it was okay not to be polite to longer-time members…’

Yes! I’d never thought about that, but that probably was the top and bottom of it. In the full version of the post, the moderator does allude to the fact that the group is full of ‘banter’ and that he didn’t want the reprimand to stop that. But a personal (offline) friend of his had had a bit of a torrid time when he joined, and this had spurred on the post. I wonder if he’d have issued the post it if he didn’t have that offline relationship though. Interesting – thanks for that.

I like the analysis and observations on membership and newbies. You have used the phrase a ‘self-proclaimed community” and ended with more questions if this group can be classified as a community – I thought this is done really well to reflect the status of a lot of self-proclaimed virtual communities. When one start to look around, we start to find a lot of these groups do not actually fall under the umbrella of a community, as the term is really a very fashionable word to use, and everyone wants to set up a community of some sort.

Thank you! I will want to try slideshare sometime!

I hadn’t heard of Slideshare before now and I LOVE it! It marries your narrative and visuals really well together and though I did have a couple of pauses to sit through [my laptop having a moment or two] I couldn’t wait to see what the next slide was going to bring. As a presentation platform I found it really clean and polished.
I found the structure of the group really interesting, the status/definitions of moderator and newbie – a hierarchy built around community rules and regulation.
A really enjoyable ethnographic study!
Nikki

On Jen’s point, I thought it was interesting (although maybe I took this out of context?) that the moderator wanted everyone to be polite to newbies, and then defined what a newbie was, as if it was okay not to be polite to longer-time members…?! I suppose the rudeness might have been caused by frustration with newbie-specific faults (not understanding norms, asking questions that had been answered to times before, etc.), so maybe that’s the reason…?

I did like the presentation style–wish we could get our academics to go with the minimalist approach ; )

I think that when I said that the moderator was trying to ‘avoid the rejection of otherness’, I was meaning that he was sensing a clique forming; a ‘bunkering’ down within the existing ‘old-timers” community. And he was sensing that these practices were in danger of excluding newcomers, or indeed lurkers. My thinking was, that by outlining his observations of this phenomenon, and asking for it to be changed, he was maybe trying to discourage this emerging insularity and was trying to embrace ‘otherness’. Does that make any sense at all?

P.S. If i never listen to that robot voice again it will be too soon But I did think it preferable to having to listen to my own dulcet geordie tones time and time again.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrpajcAgR1E

I actually found that the brevity of the communication in each slide and the subsequent impact on the length of the presentation worked in opposition to each other – if that makes any sense. In other words, I felt a bit constrained in how deeply I could really explore the theoretical notions (as compared to when writing) because I always had an eye on the amount of slides it would create. But it was an interesting exercise none the less, if a little frustrating.

My 500 wasn’t meant to be the narrator, but what a fabulous idea.

As for including percentages, it seemed the right thing to do at the time but actually I don’t think I should have done it. It makes the description quantitative rather than qualitative, and being qualitative is the point around ethnography (I think). And also without the data extraction tool it was difficult to be hugely accurate especially given this was a busy forum and was a moving target. And finally, it reminded me of a type of exercise I’d do at work and that’s never a good thing!!!

I also like sound a lot, but I find I have to concentrate far harder than when I read/look – my aural attention span is a bit rubbish. I don’t know why that is, perhaps there is some mileage in the old learning styles theories?