DHB: Collaborative Research: Solving Critical Problems in Online Groups

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Online groups are becoming increasingly important, for example, by creating the software that runs the Internet, building history?s largest encyclopedia, providing social support to millions, and enhancing opportunities for interpersonal relationships that span geographic boundaries. Regardless of the environments in which groups operate, to be successful all must meet three critical challenges: (1) Commitment: gaining and retaining members by managing members' commitment to the group and their motivation to exert effort on its behalf, (2) Coordination: coordinating members' actions to achieve collective goals, and (3) Control: ensuring that members adhere to important group norms. Although some online groups are very successful, many others fail. The large size, high turnover, weak social networks, and impoverished communication channels typical of many online groups inhibit their ability to overcome these challenges. The goal of this research is to help online groups deliver on their tremendous promise by (1) understanding the factors that affect the success of online groups; (2) shedding light on general group processes that also apply to offline groups; and (3) developing technological interventions that can help online groups achieve their objectives. The research will examine groups in three highly popular domains ? online health and technical support, the online-encyclopedia Wikipedia, and the most popular massively multiplayer game in history, World of Warcraft. Investigatory studies will use data-mining techniques to examine rich archival, longitudinal data about thousands of online groups using time-series methods. In addition, interventionist studies will follow up the investigatory research with computational interventions designed to improve the effectiveness of online groups. This research will develop principles to explain the factors that influence the success of online groups and groups more generally. Online groups are economically and socially important, as indicated by the fact that seven of the top ten Internet sites by traffic (according to www.alexa.com) are primarily online group sites. Because online groups have high failure rates, knowledge about the factors that underlie their effectiveness is critical for designers and managers. This project's technological interventions are designed to improve the performance of the groups in which they are deployed and to serve as exemplars for subsequent design efforts in other online groups.