Beyond end user content to collaborative knowledge mapping

Abstract

Most studies of social tools examine usage of each tool in isolation. Instead, we explore how online communities (a) combine multiple social tools, and (b) use social tools together with external tools. Based on interviews with community leaders and quantitative analysis of 128 online community spaces, we explored the combined use of six social software tools-wikis, blogs, forums, social bookmarks, social file repositories, and task-management tools. We contribute a detailed characterization of how enterprise online communities combine multiple social tools, adding to our understanding of community behaviors: Communities combine social tools to curate and organize complex information spaces. When combined, each tool is used for limited "core" functions; thus "social" features are not always leveraged for every tool. Leaders and members divide labor by tool boundaries. Our results suggest that an important overlooked aspect of social media concerns how different tools can be effectively combined. While most prior work on communities emphasizes end user content, we identify additional important design activities where community participants curate and organize pre-existing content from multiple tools to serve their community needs.

Understanding How GitHub Supports Curation Repositories

“…Matthews et al (2014) captured the source of each curated item in an organizational environment and found that both internal and external resources are curated with respect to different tools (wiki, blog, etc.) [12].…”

“…Matthews et al (2014) captured the source of each curated item in an organizational environment and found that both internal and external resources are curated with respect to different tools (wiki, blog, etc.) [12]. The curation efforts in intranet communities are often performed by community leaders, while members of the communities are encouraged to curate external resources [12].…”

“…[12]. The curation efforts in intranet communities are often performed by community leaders, while members of the communities are encouraged to curate external resources [12]. We would also like to follow a similar procedure to analyze the sources of the curated items and the status of the owners of curation repositories on GitHub.…”

The appropriation of GitHub for curation

“…Zhong et al (2013) conduct surveys of Pinterest and Last.fm users and find that the majority users engage with the curation site for personal interests rather than social reasons (Zhong et al, 2013). A recent study examines the ways that communities leverage a variety of social tools for curation to support vital community activities in a large enterprise environment (Matthews et al, 2014). The authors also call for future studies on curation in public Internet communities (Matthews et al, 2014).…”

“…A recent study examines the ways that communities leverage a variety of social tools for curation to support vital community activities in a large enterprise environment (Matthews et al, 2014). The authors also call for future studies on curation in public Internet communities (Matthews et al, 2014).…”