Many small online communities would benefit from increased diversity or activity in their membership. Some communities run the risk of dying out due to lack of participation. Others struggle to achieve the critical mass necessary for diverse and engaging conversation. But what tools are available to these communities to increase participation? Our goal in this research was to spark contributions to the movielens.org discussion forum, where only 2\% of the members write posts. We developed personalized invitations , messages designed to entice users to visit or contribute to the forum. In two field experiments, we ask (1) if personalized invitations increase activity in a discussion forum, (2) how the choice of algorithm for intelligently choosing content to emphasize in the invitation affects participation, and (3) how the suggestion made to the user affects their willingness to act. We find that invitations lead to increased participation, as measured by levels of reading and posting. More surprisingly, we find that invitations emphasizing the social nature of the discussion forum increase user activity, while invitations emphasizing other details of the discussion are less successful.
%0 Conference Paper
%1 citeulike:1086247
%A Harper, F. Maxwell
%A Frankowski, Dan
%A Drenner, Sara
%A Ren, Yuqing
%A Kiesler, Sara
%A Terveen, Loren
%A Kraut, Robert
%A Riedl, John
%B IUI '07: Proceedings of the 12th international conference on Intelligent user interfaces
%C New York, NY, USA
%D 2007
%I ACM
%K community contribution
%P 62--71
%R 10.1145/1216295.1216313
%T Talk amongst yourselves: inviting users to participate in online conversations
%U http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/1216295.1216313
%X Many small online communities would benefit from increased diversity or activity in their membership. Some communities run the risk of dying out due to lack of participation. Others struggle to achieve the critical mass necessary for diverse and engaging conversation. But what tools are available to these communities to increase participation? Our goal in this research was to spark contributions to the movielens.org discussion forum, where only 2\% of the members write posts. We developed personalized invitations , messages designed to entice users to visit or contribute to the forum. In two field experiments, we ask (1) if personalized invitations increase activity in a discussion forum, (2) how the choice of algorithm for intelligently choosing content to emphasize in the invitation affects participation, and (3) how the suggestion made to the user affects their willingness to act. We find that invitations lead to increased participation, as measured by levels of reading and posting. More surprisingly, we find that invitations emphasizing the social nature of the discussion forum increase user activity, while invitations emphasizing other details of the discussion are less successful.
%@ 1-59593-481-2
@inproceedings{citeulike:1086247,
abstract = {{Many small online communities would benefit from increased diversity or activity in their membership. Some communities run the risk of dying out due to lack of participation. Others struggle to achieve the critical mass necessary for diverse and engaging conversation. But what tools are available to these communities to increase participation? Our goal in this research was to spark contributions to the movielens.org discussion forum, where only 2\% of the members write posts. We developed personalized invitations , messages designed to entice users to visit or contribute to the forum. In two field experiments, we ask (1) if personalized invitations increase activity in a discussion forum, (2) how the choice of algorithm for intelligently choosing content to emphasize in the invitation affects participation, and (3) how the suggestion made to the user affects their willingness to act. We find that invitations lead to increased participation, as measured by levels of reading and posting. More surprisingly, we find that invitations emphasizing the social nature of the discussion forum increase user activity, while invitations emphasizing other details of the discussion are less successful.}},
added-at = {2018-03-19T12:24:51.000+0100},
address = {New York, NY, USA},
author = {Harper, F. Maxwell and Frankowski, Dan and Drenner, Sara and Ren, Yuqing and Kiesler, Sara and Terveen, Loren and Kraut, Robert and Riedl, John},
biburl = {https://www.bibsonomy.org/bibtex/236920b2f18e93cfe6c96af8d72be736b/aho},
booktitle = {IUI '07: Proceedings of the 12th international conference on Intelligent user interfaces},
citeulike-article-id = {1086247},
citeulike-linkout-0 = {http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1216295.1216313},
citeulike-linkout-1 = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/1216295.1216313},
doi = {10.1145/1216295.1216313},
interhash = {558dc8b253e3b1f36b7e8a1d1fc41342},
intrahash = {36920b2f18e93cfe6c96af8d72be736b},
isbn = {1-59593-481-2},
keywords = {community contribution},
location = {Honolulu, Hawaii, USA},
pages = {62--71},
posted-at = {2007-02-03 17:48:27},
priority = {4},
publisher = {ACM},
timestamp = {2018-03-19T12:24:51.000+0100},
title = {{Talk amongst yourselves: inviting users to participate in online conversations}},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/1216295.1216313},
year = 2007
}