A few years ago I came across the site slickdeals.net while looking for a good price for a new monitor I was planning to buy. I quickly became wrapped up in the forums on the site and became a part of the community. I started to recognize regular posters and learn about each member’s personality. I also learned the norms of the forums over time. The most important norm I learned, which I later found out applied to many other online communities, is the norm to give credit where credit is due.
In the slickdeals community, when a user finds a good deal for a product, he/she will make a new thread in the forum informing other members of the deal. If other members find this information helpful, they have the ability to give the original poster “rep points” (short for “representation points”) and also grade the thread with either a thumbs up or thumbs down. Overtime, certain members stand out because of the amount of rep points they have. These members are the resident experts on finding good deals. Rep points also provide an incentive for members to find good deals and post them, which keeps the community alive.
This example also applies to other online communities such as digg and stumbleupon. In these communities, a user can mark a webpage as interesting and then other users can see the webpage. If another user also enjoys a site, they can increase its score by “digging” it for digg or clicking “I like it!” for stumbleupon.
The Leviathan in these situations is often ridicule. If members of the community don’t give credit to those who help, then there is no incentive for anyone to contribute anymore. Also, on slickdeals, people who use the site without contributing or giving credit to others are sometimes known as “leechers" and are often made fun of. In stricter forums, administrators play the role of the Leviathan because they can offer punishments such as temporary banning a user.
Users will also feel the need to give credit to other members because they will feel the need to conform to other members in the community. Wallace discusses we give up certain freedoms to live in a safe world. In the online community, we may make changes to the way we act just to fit in. Generally people like to feel accepted and that often means conforming to the group’s norms.
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Hi Matt. I agree with your analysis of websites like slickdeal and stumbleupon. I always found it strange, though, that people would even respond to basic criticism online. Why would I care what some stranger across the world thinks of my post, when I am just another stranger to them? I feel like I would never feel like putting in much extra effort to change anything (although I am not an active forum goer, so I can't say for sure). According to SIDE, I would probably have an individual identity salient, and would be anonymous as well, leading to reduce compliance of the norm. Nonetheless, these simple comments really do seem to change peoples actions toward conformance to the norm, just as Wallace's "raised eyebrow" would suggest.
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