Online Participation - Participation in The Social Web

Participation in The Social Web

Online participation is relevant in different systems of the social web such as:

• Blogging (Nardi et al. 2004)
• Micro-blogging (Java et al. 2007)
• Online dating services (Siibak 2007)
• Social bookmarking (Benbunan-Fich & Koufaris 2008) (Ames & Naaman 2007)
• Social network services (Krasnova et al. Nowobilska) (Schaefer 2008) (Joinson 2008) (Jacobs 2009) (Penenberg 2009)
• Virtual worlds (Yee 2006)
• Wiki (Rafaeli & Ariel 2008) (Oded 2007) (Wilkinson & Huberman 2007)

Nielsen’s 90-9-1% rule: “In most online communities, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the action”. It is interesting to point out that the majority of the user population is in fact not contributing to the informational gain of online communities, which leads to the phenomenon of contribution inequality. Often, feedbacks, opinions and editorials are posted from those users who have stronger feelings towards the matter than most others; thus it is often the case that some posts online are not in fact representative of the entire population leading to what is call the Survivorship bias. Therefore, it is important to ease the process of contribution as well as to promote quality contribution to address this concern.