Blog by Annelies Fleurbaey

final post

2009-11-23T21:06:00.000+01:00

Here i am, my last blogpost. ever. Blogging is not my thing. I think you probably noticed.

But okay, despite missing a post or 2, i think i have done my best.

I found it hard to blog about my chosen community because it is such a boring one. I should have changed much earlier.

At first, it looked all well, the participation was easy, in a minute i was registrated and a member of WijfZonderLijf.

That's the point were it all kinda stopped. No welcoming post, nothing. It seemed like no one ever noticed i became a new member.

Even moderators never communicated towards me.

Maybe i had to test it a bit more by making very rude comments or start bullying someone, but that's just not me :)

well actually, i think it even wouldn't bother anyone because it seems like no one is active.

Ok maybe this is all a bit rude, but that's my own personal experience.

So for me, when i post something and no one react, it's a real motivation killer. I really didn't had the intention to come back ever again. But yeah, then the blog would be very empty. So actually the only reason i participated was this assignment.

I can believe people who are bored come back to see the fun post every day. That part of the community was still alive. Every day new cartoons or funny pictures are posted. But there are no real interactions in that part. Ok, people comment on the content but just to say they like it or not.

As a poster, you don't get the respect you want by sharing something.

By that, i haven't posted anything funny. When i post something, i wanna have the feeling i contribute to something and people like me for that.

I saw that there was a combination of post moderation, reactive moderation and distributed moderation. Someone noticed that a user used his post to update his own, and of course didn't liked it. He posted on the profile of the other member to ask to remove his post.

There are four sorts of members. they are al distinguished by a different amount of stars. i don't find how the system of the stars work, it is nowhere explained. I only posted a few things and apparently, i have 3 stars.

There are also a few statusses you can earn by good behavior. The highest rate is status "God" That's only Kay, the builder of wzl.

It's clear that the revenues of the community come from ads. There is a lot of advertisement on the site.

I would improve the community by maybe give it a new look, create interesting content, maybe tips and even more contests, and concentrate more on new members.

anyhow, i think it will take a lot of effort to give a new boost in WZL. Maybe they have to restructure and focus more on certain topics.

Also make a link more clear from the homepage where all the funny things are. When you can see an overview of the latest reactions on topics, It creates curiosity.

So i think this is it.. Goodbye WijfZonderLijf, see you never again :) :)

communities and web 2.0

2009-11-19T12:18:00.003+01:00

i found an interesting article about the development and progression of communities

you can read it here

solve problems

2009-11-16T16:16:00.001+01:00

I see that the only posts who are 'popular' are those with a contest or competition.

It's a way to try to bring people together. You choose some members or moderators to be the judge and members will try their best to become the winner.

on wzl, the 3 most visited topics are 'avatar design contest', 'miss wzl' and 'wallpaper design contest'.

I checked on other communities to see if it's something typical.

I remembered from intertet that those topics were there, but other topics were more active..

So today, i went to see if it's still that way..

Apparently, in the time i didn't checked intertet, many things have changed.

First of all the layout but i also found a topic called 'Miss and Mister intertet'

The openingspost started with: "because intertet isn't as accurate as it used to be and many members are leaving, we do this competition to rewake the community and the community feeling"

It's truly a way to make the community stronger.

Another new thing is the "win met je post" so each month, the poster of the best post wins a goldmembership for 1 month.

it really works because now many more posts are made.

I also found a topic "R.I.P DirtyWorks & Ximix". We discussed the fact what to do if a member dies..

Here, 2 members died very shortly after each other.

The first a car accident, the other cancer. They made a topic for both members. Other members share thoughts and feelings about it.

It's a bit weird that the psychical world and the virtual world come together.

maybe from now on (it's the last week, but still..) i post about the differences between the 2 communities, it's just more to write about..

guidelines

2009-11-12T12:10:00.002+01:00

We learned that it's important to set a few guidelines for the users, so they know what's appropriate and what is forbidden.

It's important because in that way, you will guide your users towards good behaviour, and hopefully a community where all members like to be.

I found an example of such a set of guidelines, in a very clear and easy way.

If you have read this one, you know exactly what you can or cannot post.

you can read it here.

not much more to say..

2009-11-07T12:56:00.000+01:00

REALLY! how boring can a community be?

i feel no commitment at all.

As i see it, only one topic is visited every day. It's a "story" made by the users just by adding 3 words to it.

And even here, there are just a few users ( i see 3 users who post a lot to it) who are participating.

I'd better checked the community longer before i chose this one.

There's nothing more to say about it. And with 2 weeks of no classes, i can't adjust the lesson on my chosen community.

I thought i would see a sort of hierarchy among the users, but with no activity, that's pretty impossible!

creating passionate users

2009-11-04T11:40:00.002+01:00

because of the lack of passionate users on wzl, i found an interesting article about how you can solve this problem.

It's a very good article, i think we should even see it in class !

you can find it here

enjoy!

wzl is dying!

2009-10-29T11:36:00.001+01:00

more and more, i have to force me to go to Wijzonderlijf.

If it wasn't for this assignment, i really wouldn't go there anymore.

I posted something but apparently, the topic doesn't come up. (to the top of the list i mean). So if you want to see where something new is posted, you have to look at the date in the last column.

So if a new member react in a old topic on the next page. no one will ever notice, the newie will think no one cares about his opinion or his participation and voila.. motivation and reason to come back.. gone!

I think this community is dying because of this. And of course the reasons i gave in the other posts here on my blog.

It's really important to create a reason to come back. It can simply be "to talk with others" but then the feeling you're accepted in a group is important.

If the reason to come back is to see funny things on the homepage, it can be a reason to come back, because the calender system isn't handy to see all things. so you have to come back every once in a while.

But the link with the users is 0,0. You hardly see who posted it, no one comment if they like the post and why or why not. It's just a 'bring together' of all cartoons and stuff from other sites. So the daily cartoon of some websites is posted.

It's not very attractive to comment on that.

I think wzl is dooooomed :)

Online Community Success and ROI

2009-10-26T13:39:00.001+01:00

Online Community Success and ROI

Posted using ShareThis

participating?

2009-10-24T17:26:00.001+02:00

I underestimated the difficulty to analyze a community.

I find it hard to do because i don't feel accepted in the community.

It seems like nobody has noticed i joined. Even moderators haven't said anything in these weeks I'm participating.

ok, i haven't really posted much, but that's because i don't feel like sharing anything with those people.

On intertet, people tell how they feel about something, but here, the posts are very very short and everything is a reaction on something a previous person posted. They quote others and tease each other. It seems like everybody knows each other for a long time, it's obvious tht almost every post is made by someone with 3 or more stars.

Personally, that creates a sort of distance and i don't want to participate in their conversation. I don't think it's my fault, because on intertet, i enjoyed it to post things (even though it wasn't interesting either).

Can wijfzonderlijf do something about that? i don't think so, as we saw, sometimes the older members take over the community. Maybe they don't even notice it's hard for new members to join the conversations.

But one mistake they make is that a new member don't receive any kind of feedback that he or she joined wijfzonderlijf.

Every new member on intertet gets a welcome wallpost from one or more moderators.

So the link i made in the very beginning (many birthdays today, so many members!)

was totally wrong. Ok, they have many members but how many are real?

why moderation?

2009-10-15T12:55:00.002+02:00

On this youtube, Mike Pascucci, Director of Moderation Services at Mzinga, explains why the right moderation tools are the key to a successful online community.

I think moderation is a big deal. It doesn't matter if you're a moderator of a small community or way bigger, it's always difficult to moderate in a good way.

You have to make sure the content is acceptable, but you have to keep in mind that users still feel free to post anything and don't feel censured.

moderation

2009-10-12T21:34:00.000+02:00

I was sick the last week so my computer wasn't on very much..

But now i'm going to double my activity this week ^^

Last week we talked about moderation. I think moderation is one of the most important keys to success in a community.

I was a member of intertet.be but i left because all the topics were closed from the moment something honest was mentioned.

The ancient users thought they could say anything and the reaction was simply to close the topic. The users didn't agree and started new topics to complain.

In the end it came to a point that no new topics appeared and everybody shared the same opinion and was complaining about the moderators.

In my community to analyse, i searched for a sort of moderation but i didn't seem to find it right away.

The fact that i can't find who the moderators are on first view is an indication that there's a lot of freedom among the users.

There's a page with restrictions and obligations but i don't know who is checking the content. It's definitely hidden. On the page with the rules they talk about "we" so it's the crew of wzl who decides what is coming online.

On the other hand, at the forum i discovered a ranking system. After each name there's an amount of stars. The maximum is 4 but some names have a big beautiful star. When i checked such a lucky- star owner i read in a comment that he's a moderator.

On Intertet, moderators joined immediately in discusses and from the moment someone said something a bit off topic or not really friendly, they reacted in red with a warning.

On wzl users tell each other comments aren't appropriate and so moderators don't have to play for policemen all the time. it's more social control and like i see it, it works on wijfzonderlijf.

other purposes of communities

2009-10-04T14:14:00.002+02:00

on 28th of september, we talked about why people start communities.

We saw there's a strong need to set a purpose.

Most purposes are positive and all a bit similar to each other.

The goal is mostly to bring people together and exchanging opinions about stuff.

That's all pretty great but what if the wrong people come together and they have very strong opinions about some things? Communities helps them to recruit other people to go with them.

I don't get that out of the blue, but i read an article.

'FBI finds terrorists AL QAIDA on facebook.'

It's a dutch article so i will just put the link to it:

http://www.hln.be/hln/nl/960/Buitenland/article/detail/773144/2009/03/17/FBI-vindt-gezochte-terroristen-al-Qaida-op-Facebook.dhtml

Terrorists uses Facebook as a way of propaganda.

Luckily also the FBI uses Facebook and it helps them with the investigation in the way where people are or how they got recruited. They already found some of the missed man due to facebook.

Personally, i don't think that Facebook has a great impact on finding or recruiting criminals or terrorist, because al qaida isn't so stupid. But likely, it's a way to find people, positively and negatively.

The chase to choose!

2009-10-01T21:58:00.002+02:00

When i was searching for a community to analyze, i first thought about puree-soiree. I like communities with a forum about all kind of stuff and not specific about one subject.

The principle is simple, people come together online and talk about what they like or don't like and give their opinion in all kind of discussions.

When i watched puree-soiree it seemed that there was not so much activity. I watched some post but i didn't saw any good things that i haven't seen before.

Today, i went to wijzonderlijf. this community is far more popular in belgium but i've never went there.

When i came on the homepage, a frame popped up about the future of wijzonderlijf and if wijfzonderlijf has to chance. Apparently they have a matter against them so the future is uncertain.

Due to this frame, i expected that the community was also dying.

The first thing i noticed where 49 nicknames of people that are celebrating their birthday today. When i watched the list of members, it's very very big.

Is it because there are many unactive members? we'll see!!

I kinda explored the website and i have seen some very funny things.

So now it's official.. the community i'm going to analyze is wijfzonderlijf.

www.wzl.be

reason for this blog

2009-09-24T12:05:00.000+02:00

Hello,

I'm Annelies Fleurbaey and i study communication and multimedia design at Genk, Belgium.

For this year, i've chosen 'Community building' and 'the narrative' as my first modules for the interfaculty.

For 'Community building' we have to participate in an online community. In this blog, i'll keep you posted about my experiences there.

I will also search for interesting articles or other things about virtual communities.

hope you'll like it!