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Which Way Did They Go?: Newcomer Movement through the Zooniverse

Authors:

Carsten Østerlund,

Veronica Maidel,

Kevin Crowston,

Gabriel MugarAuthors Info & Claims

CSCW '16: Proceedings of the 19th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing

Pages 624 - 635

https://doi.org/10.1145/2818048.2835197

Published: 27 February 2016 Publication History

Abstract

Research on newcomer roles in peer production sites (e.g., Wikipedia) is characterized by a broad and relatively well articulated set of functionally and culturally recognizable roles. But not all communities come with well-defined roles that newcomers can aspire to occupy. The present study explores activity clusters newcomers create when faced with few recognizable roles to fill and limited access to other participants' work that serves as an exemplar. Drawing on a mixed method research design, we present findings from an analysis of 1,687 newcomers' sessions in an online citizen science project. Our analysis revealed three major findings: (1) newcomers' activities exists across six session types; (2) newcomers toggle between light work sessions and more involved types of production or community engagement; (3) high-level contributors contribute large volumes of work but comment very little and another group contributes large volumes of comments, but works very little. The former group draws heavily on posts contributed by the latter group. Identifying shifts and regularities in contribution facilitate improved mechanisms for engaging participants and for the design of online citizen science communities.

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https://doi.org/10.2179/0008-7475.87.1.54
Anhalt-Depies CBerland MRickenbach MBemowski RRissman A(2022)Use of latent profile analysis to characterise patterns of participation in crowdsourcingBehaviour & Information Technology10.1080/0144929X.2022.208182042:10(1487-1495)Online publication date: 7-Jul-2022
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Aristeidou MHerodotou CBallard HYoung AMiller AHiggins LJohnson R(2021)Exploring the participation of young citizen scientists in scientific research: The case of iNaturalistPLOS ONE10.1371/journal.pone.024568216:1(e0245682)Online publication date: 19-Jan-2021
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cover image ACM Conferences

CSCW '16: Proceedings of the 19th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing

February 2016

1866 pages

ISBN:9781450335928

DOI:10.1145/2818048

General Chairs:
Darren Gergle
Northwestern University
,
Meredith Ringel Morris
Microsoft Research
,
Program Chairs:
Pernille Bjørn
University of Copenhagen
,
Joseph Konstan
University of Minnesota

Copyright © 2016 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 27 February 2016

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CSCW '16: Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing

February 27 - March 2, 2016

California, San Francisco, USA

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CSCW '16 Paper Acceptance Rate 142 of 571 submissions, 25%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 2,235 of 8,521 submissions, 26%

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Cited By

Soteropoulos DMarsico T(2022)Community Science Success for Herbarium Transcription in Arkansas: Building a Network of Students and Volunteers for Notes from NatureCastanea10.2179/0008-7475.87.1.5487:1Online publication date: 1-Jun-2022
https://doi.org/10.2179/0008-7475.87.1.54
Anhalt-Depies CBerland MRickenbach MBemowski RRissman A(2022)Use of latent profile analysis to characterise patterns of participation in crowdsourcingBehaviour & Information Technology10.1080/0144929X.2022.208182042:10(1487-1495)Online publication date: 7-Jul-2022
https://doi.org/10.1080/0144929X.2022.2081820
Aristeidou MHerodotou CBallard HYoung AMiller AHiggins LJohnson R(2021)Exploring the participation of young citizen scientists in scientific research: The case of iNaturalistPLOS ONE10.1371/journal.pone.024568216:1(e0245682)Online publication date: 19-Jan-2021
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0245682
Cho JWash R(2021)How Potential New Members Approach an Online CommunityComputer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW)10.1007/s10606-020-09390-030:1(35-77)Online publication date: 18-Jan-2021
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10606-020-09390-0
Reeves NSimperl E(2019)Efficient, but Effective?Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/33592793:CSCW(1-35)Online publication date: 7-Nov-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3359279
Overgaard AKaarsted T(2018)A New Trend in Media and Library Collaboration within Citizen Science? The Case of ‘A Healthier Funen’LIBER QUARTERLY10.18352/lq.1024828(xx-xx)Online publication date: Oct-2018
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Kou YGray CToombs AAdams R(2018)Understanding Social Roles in an Online Community of Volatile PracticeACM Transactions on Social Computing10.1145/32838271:4(1-22)Online publication date: 21-Dec-2018
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Jackson CCrowston KØsterlund C(2018)Did they login?Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/32743462:CSCW(1-16)Online publication date: 1-Nov-2018
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Krishna SBillot RJullien N(2018)A clustering approach to infer Wikipedia contributors' profileProceedings of the 14th International Symposium on Open Collaboration10.1145/3233391.3233968(1-5)Online publication date: 22-Aug-2018
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