A survey about "Online communities"

[ShyGuy68]

An frequent member of the board are doing this survey, and would like to ask everybody to do it, and return it to him/her via e-mail.

The reason I'm posting is to be sure that those who choose to answer it, won't be biased towards the member who are doing it, so here goes.
________________________________________

The Intro:

This is a real research project going on for an Applied Ethics class at USF in California.

The Internet and how people interact are a hot topic of study. You can help this project by taking the time to fill out the survey below. It's indepth, and every response will give a clearer and more accurate picture of expectations and realities.

Every response will be included in the paper.

The deadline is November 29th.

Please email your answers to either alypo@california.com, or jansurvivor@hotmail.com.

If you have questions about the paper or the subject matter, email them and a student will be happy to help. If you would to hear the results of the survey, please let them know.

Everyone's voice is needed to make this succesful. Please consider taking the time to help and make your ideas heard.

Thank you!

 

[ShyGuy68]

The Survey

When attending a social gathering or group in ‘real life’ ethical behavior, communication, honesty and trusted relationships are all expected. People assume when they go to these groups that the members will act accordingly. These assumptions usually pay of with developed healthy acquaintances, friendships and loved partners.

Online communities are good sources also for these kinds of interaction. The communities usually are focused around a central theme or topic. Members, though, often interact beyond the topic and move into personal discussions and friendships.

This survey is helping to address whether the same standards of ethical interpersonal and group behavior in face-to-face groups operates in the same way in online communities?

If you would like to answer the questions one section at a time, and send those results separately, that will be fine. Take your time to think about the ethical issues raised and how they impact both you and your community. If you can only do one section, please answer the questions in section four on Relationships.


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Questions are categorized into four sections: general, community vs. individual, communication, and relationship.


A. General

1. Do you expect members of an online community to behave with the same ethics that your friends and family do? Why?

2. Is it possible a keyboard and monitor can provide a means to create a new personality? Do you trust that people are as they describe themselves to be?

3. Does anonymity bring out behaviors that people would not do otherwise in ‘real life? Why?

4. Do you think the ethical standards of daily life, such as trust, honesty, fairness, apply to online communities? Why?

5. Are online communities subject to the same ethical issues as real life? Will they collapse and fail if ethical behavior is ignored?

6. Are the expectations online higher towards ethical behavior or lower?




B. Individual vs. Community

1. Is interacting in an online community an individual experience or does the aspect of ‘community’ influence how you perceive your role there?

2. Is an individual responsible for the overall health and spirit of a community? Why?

3. Are individuals responsible to other ‘members’ of the site? If so, how and why?

4. Can one individual damage or destroy a community? How and why?

5. Is there a collective system of values in an online community?
If so, it is possible to keep it stable? How does it form?

6. What is the balance between Freedom of Speech and responsibility to the community?

7. Are there struggles for leadership and power in a community? How does it manifest itself?

8. Most people bond with others like themselves. What are the values that you bond with in others in your community? How do you observe other sub-groups bonding? What do you think ties them together into a sub-group.




C. Communication

1. How important is trust in communicating with fellow members? Why?

2. The majority of face-to-face communication is non-verbal: body language, gestures, facial expressions, and voice inflections. Do you find it challenging while communicating with fellow members not to use non-verbal cues?

3. How do you get your intended meaning across without those nonverbal cues?

4. Much of face-to-face communication is a quick give-an-take to make sure both parties understand the context of the conversation. Those quick exchanges or short check-ups do not usually exist on a message board. How easy is it to misunderstand a posted message without that ability to check quickly on the implied meaning? Can that affect the community as a whole?

5. Do you find most posted messages are declarations or conversational in tone? Does that affect how well you feel you understand the intended message?



D. Relationships

1. Do you feel its possible to develop relationships online that are as close as those offline? Why?

2. What kind of relationships do you interact within in your community? How would you rate them? Intimate, close, friend, acquaintance, stranger, other human with only shared interest in site’s subject matter?

3. What criteria do you use to base your ideas about other person? What makes you take interest in becoming friends with them?

4. How much do projected perceptions of others impact your understanding of members in your community? Is it based on word choices, grammar, tone, and subject matter?

5. Explain your tolerance level towards the following ethical relationship issues:
a. trust
b. honesty
c. manipulation
d. duplicity
e. transparency
f. sex
When would you consider terminating a relationship based on these issues? How would you recognize crossing the line and not being able to repair the relationship?

6. Considering all communication is done in text, how is it possible for someone’s feelings to be hurt within a community?

7. Is conflict resolution easier or more difficult to obtain online? Why?

8. Can you be sure that someone is honestly representing his or her true selves? What methods do you use to judge transparency and honesty in another?

9. Is it possible for someone to pretend to be a completely different person (gender, age, personality, history) and not be discovered? How much of an ethical issue is that in a community? What impact can lying have on a community?

10. What impact can impostering or hiding behind a false identity have on individuals and the community?

11. In ‘real life’, most people forget what was said hours after a conversation. In an online community, words are kept archived for sometimes years. Does this have an impact on the relationships within the community? If so, how?


Last Question: Do the terms ‘real-life’ and ‘virtual life’ contradict each other?

 

[Cutie Lillie]

just bumping it up

 

[Claymore]

Going to answer on here instead of by e-mail. If you want, you can cut and paste my post and e-mail it to the person conducting the survey. Be prepared for long and winded responses.

A. General

1. Do you expect members of an online community to behave with the same ethics that your friends and family do? Why?

Difficult to say. I expect people to behave with certain ethics, yes, but not nessecarily with all the same ethics of my friends and family. The reason being is that you narrow down who can and can't be your friend if you expect them to share all of your ethics. But expecting them to share some of your ethics is another matter. Then it becomes it is more likely that you can have a much broder range of friends.

2. Is it possible a keyboard and monitor can provide a means to create a new personality? Do you trust that people are as they describe themselves to be?

Yes and no. That is to say that anyone can create what might appear to be an alternate personality for themselves. Many people may actually do just that to protect themselves online from allowing others to get to know them personally enough to be able to use their personality. This would be a kind of defense mechanism.

Others may start out to create an alternate personality, but they let there real personality slip through. Perhaps they don't realize their doing it. Or perhaps they do, but feel at ease with who their chatting with online.

Still others may choose to combine both elements. They feel at ease enough with the people they meet online to call them friends, but at the same time their wary of someone who might try to use their info against them. Or to become them.

3. Does anonymity bring out behaviors that people would not do otherwise in ‘real life? Why?

Again, yes and no. In this case it depends on the person. Some people are totally uninhibited and have no problem being who they are. Others feel inhibited about who they are in real life that being able to come online where you can't see each other face to face, where it's more difficult for others to find out who you really are, allows them to do things they normally wouldn't.

Myself, in real life someone who didn't know me, and isn't too good at judgeing folks they just meet, might not realize that I tend to be a bit shy. But online I can be out going if I choose. At times I think I still come across as shy, but at other times I know that folks would find that hard to believe because I can be friendly and ready to meet and greet folks. But having anonymity makes it easier for me to relax and try to be me with people I don't know.

4. Do you think the ethical standards of daily life, such as trust, honesty, fairness, apply to online communities? Why?

Yes, they do. Because we actually bring these aspects of real life with us when we go online. We go into forums and chatrooms and we seem to still want to make friends, even if we'll never see the people we talk with. And these aspects are all a part of devloping the bonds of friendship.

5. Are online communities subject to the same ethical issues as real life? Will they collapse and fail if ethical behavior is ignored?

I'm not sure. We expect much of them, but at the same time we can use them as a temporary escape from reality.

6. Are the expectations online higher towards ethical behavior or lower?

This depends on who you are.


B. Individual vs. Community

1. Is interacting in an online community an individual experience or does the aspect of ‘community’ influence how you perceive your role there?

Well if it were an individual experience, it wouldn't be a community now, would it? Community is the key word. A person can go online to search for information or to play games. Or even to post their own websites. But online communities are things like e-mail, chatrooms, and forums. In a chatroom or a forum, you expect to talk with folks. Share your ideas and discuss various subjects. With e-mail you'll often get a lot of junk mail you don't want. But you also get letters from friends and family that helps you keep in touch. These are things you can't do by yourself.

2. Is an individual responsible for the overall health and spirit of a community? Why?

No. As I essentially said above, a community is made up of individuals who come together to make a whole. An individual can have an impact on the whole, yes, but it takes everyone to have an effect on the health and spirit of the community. If an individual says something that could improve or hurt the community, this can only happen if the others in the community agree with them and follow their lead. Even if they disagree, in the case of hurting the community more than improving it, if they follow their lead they can cause the affect the individual was leading to. But the group can always ignore the individual, and thusly any effect that could be caused by an individual becomes a mute point.

3. Are individuals responsible to other ‘members’ of the site? If so, how and why?

Yes and no. See my answer to number to to better understand. Overall, individuals need to show everyone else the same respect they would like to be treated with. In this aspect they are responsible.

4. Can one individual damage or destroy a community? How and why?

Ah, this question is so much like number two, and yet it is so different. Yes, an idividual can damage, and possibly even destroy, a community. They do so through negative emotions. By being argumentive, makeing folks uncomfortable, making folks angry so as to deal with them in the same manner as they are using on the community as a whole, they can damage the community. People begin to fear seeing them because they know they'll be doing the same thing over and over again.

5. Is there a collective system of values in an online community?
If so, it is possible to keep it stable? How does it form?

I'm not sure.

6. What is the balance between Freedom of Speech and responsibility to the community?

Again, I'm not sure.

7. Are there struggles for leadership and power in a community? How does it manifest itself?

There can be. Usually this comes about as a result of strong personalities who may generally be viewed as a leader of some kind butting heads, with each wanting to be the leader and not wishing to be a follower.

8. Most people bond with others like themselves. What are the values that you bond with in others in your community? How do you observe other sub-groups bonding? What do you think ties them together into a sub-group.

I'm afraid I can't answer this because I really don't pay that much attention to it.


C. Communication

1. How important is trust in communicating with fellow members? Why?

It probably depends on the person. Because of the anonymity of the net, some people may feel that they really can't trust anyone on line.

2. The majority of face-to-face communication is non-verbal: body language, gestures, facial expressions, and voice inflections. Do you find it challenging while communicating with fellow members not to use non-verbal cues?

It is a little more challenging because there is a certain amount of physical communication, as well as tone of voice, that we don't get. A look of joy or disgust on the face gives us an idea of what a persons feeling. A shake or nod of the head tells of if they agree or not. Shrugging ones shoulders suggests they may not know an answer.

Tone of voice also is important when they speak. verbal communication can essentially be just what they same, not how they say it. A question can become a statement if a persons tone of voice leaves out a certain questioning quality, and yet the person could still mean it as a question.

In online communities, we mostly can only read what's going on. Thusly, we must begin to master tone of the written voice to get a feel for emotion. A feel that we'd get face to face by tone of voice and physical expression.

3. How do you get your intended meaning across without those nonverbal cues?

See the answer to the previous question.

4. Much of face-to-face communication is a quick give-an-take to make sure both parties understand the context of the conversation. Those quick exchanges or short check-ups do not usually exist on a message board. How easy is it to misunderstand a posted message without that ability to check quickly on the implied meaning? Can that affect the community as a whole?

You obviously never meet my mother or sister, or else you'd never have asked a question like this. No chance, really, for give and take in a communication with them, only take.

And this little fact can be found in online communication too.

5. Do you find most posted messages are declarations or conversational in tone? Does that affect how well you feel you understand the intended message?

It depends on the post itself, and where posted. In a forum, it can be a declaration or a conversation. Recently, in a lit forum I visit, someone informed us that a certain series of books was not literature and then went on to say that if you disagreed with them then you were essentially acting childish. That very much was a declaration. It felt like they were saying that their opinion was the only one that mattered and if anyone else had an opinion opposite of theirs, they were acting like a child demanding they get their way.

In a chat room, post move along at a much faster pace, and take both tones.


D. Relationships

1. Do you feel its possible to develop relationships online that are as close as those offline? Why?

Yes. Despite what people may think, developing relationships are natrual to human behavior no matter how their established. Think about pen pals. People were developing really close relationships through this method before the net even exsisted.

2. What kind of relationships do you interact within in your community? How would you rate them? Intimate, close, friend, acquaintance, stranger, other human with only shared interest in site’s subject matter?

It depends on the people I talk with and how I feel about them.

3. What criteria do you use to base your ideas about other person? What makes you take interest in becoming friends with them?

Again, it depends.

4. How much do projected perceptions of others impact your understanding of members in your community? Is it based on word choices, grammar, tone, and subject matter?

To be honest, I'm really not sure. It could be a combination of two or more of those choices.

5. Explain your tolerance level towards the following ethical relationship issues:
a. trust
b. honesty
c. manipulation
d. duplicity
e. transparency
f. sex
When would you consider terminating a relationship based on these issues? How would you recognize crossing the line and not being able to repair the relationship?

Moving on.

6. Considering all communication is done in text, how is it possible for someone’s feelings to be hurt within a community?

All communication may be done in text (unless the community is one that actually allows folks to hear each others actual voice through the use of a microphone), but text carries tone with it. AS we talk online, we become more accustumed to reading the tone of the text. It is the tone of the text that hurt's a persons feelings.

7. Is conflict resolution easier or more difficult to obtain online? Why?

Yes, and no. Is it easier to obtain in real life? Again, yes and no. Even if we use a totally different personality online, we can still be stuborn about resolving conflict.

8. Can you be sure that someone is honestly representing his or her true selves? What methods do you use to judge transparency and honesty in another?

Didn't I essentially answer this earlier. Really, you can never be sure, but you can ignore that fact. Tone of the writen voice can sometimes help here. If a person sounds fake, they may usually be.

9. Is it possible for someone to pretend to be a completely different person (gender, age, personality, history) and not be discovered? How much of an ethical issue is that in a community? What impact can lying have on a community?

Again, I think I answered this earlier. In some ways we have to expect that people may be bringing a certain amount of duplicity to the community about who they are. Theres no way we can really check to see if this is so.

10. What impact can impostering or hiding behind a false identity have on individuals and the community?

That depends on the situation. If someone is impersonating a well known person to that forum or chatroom, they can do a lot of damage. Someone people like and trust online can suddenly be hated due to the antics of an imposter.

11. In ‘real life’, most people forget what was said hours after a conversation. In an online community, words are kept archived for sometimes years. Does this have an impact on the relationships within the community? If so, how?

Actually, you may be slightly mistaken here. Remember what I said earlier about their being three basic communities. With forums and e-mail what's said may last for some time. But with chatrooms, most often people will not see things that were said minutes before. And this forces you to scroll up and hope it's still there, if you really want to see it. Most often you want to remain in the heat of the moment, conversing in the now. Hours later you won't remember what was said. And there will probably not be a record of what was said for you to go back and refresh your memory.

In the other two forms, you pretty much may choose to let it go.


Last Question: Do the terms ‘real-life’ and ‘virtual life’ contradict each other?

Yes and no. Again, a virtual life maybe a life created to temporarily escape from real life. They could collide if you fail to keep them seperate, or if you decide to merge them.

 

[Cutie Lillie]

wanting to ask for more help

Just wanted it to be known I'm the one who is working on this project for school...

in light of everything that happened, I am grateful for everyone who has already responded with their imput. Its timely and relevant for many others online.

thank you Claymore for your answers...they have been saved.

I have one more week of collecting feedback in this topic.

If anyone would still like to have their voice heard ..I would be grateful for their participation.

Thank you, Shyguy and Hecate for your help in this..

 

[Hecate]

just giving it another push up ....

.. and reminding myself to finish and mail the survey as well

 

[Merelan]

I am working on it now. Damn, thought I could whip it off, but the questions are the type that make me stop and think.
Darn ya.

 

[Cutie Lillie]

*blush*

Sorry about that !!!

do what you can.. don't feel you have to answer all of them...

Section D is the most important


and thanks Merelan!