Reading Reaction: Sept 10

In the reading, Managing the virtual commons: Cooperation and conflict in computer communities, Kollock and Smith both speak about a few issues of communication that translate from the real world over to the Internet. One issue that is transparent throughout the reading is the issue of free-riding and how to correct it in certain online situations, like Usenet.

But in all honesty some of the reasons given for free-riding on Usenet, all in all do not make that much sense to me let alone I would consider it free-riding. In terms of bandwidth, as long as you in some way contribute to the conversation on hand you are doing what is right, even if you do end up writing long replies. But for someone to "Lurk" as Kollock and Smith say, that is in no way free-riding. Free-riding to me at least is for example there are three people that plant trees, one digs the hole, the other puts the tree in and the other put the dirt back into the hole. Now one calls out sick and the other continue to do their job, yet no one does the job of the man that is out sick because they have no incentive to do it, if they all get the same amount of compensation, that at least to me is free-riding.

I think that anyone using any type of communication on the Internet needs to remind himself or herself, that they are on the Internet. Kollock and Smith bring up a good point concerning Usenet and a post titled "Make Money Fast." Essentially the post is just a form of spam that is still common on message boards today as well as back then, but the way to get rid of such people so that conversation can continue is to follow the same advice that you would in real life if someone was antagonizing you, just ignore it and it will go away, just as Kollock and Smith advise.

Sure, once users connect to Usenet they can be advised by a FAQ file, but most people are in such a rush to start communicating with others that they fly on past that and worry about the consequences later. I know I have personally disregarded the rules just to get what I wanted to do faster, did it end up biting me in the end, not yet at least to my knowledge. Some things just can not be fixed, Usenet or not we still have most of these issues popping up in a Web 2.0 world.

READING
Kollock, Peter and Smith, Marc. (1996). Managing the virtual commons: Cooperation and conflict in computer communities. In Susan C. Herring (Ed.), Computer-mediated communication: Linguistic, social and cross-cultural perspectives (pp. 109-128). Philadelphia: John Benjamins.