TY - GEN
T1 - Surviving an "eternal September" how an online community managed a surge of newcomers
AU - Kiene, Charles
AU - Monroy-Hernández, Andrés
AU - Hill, Benjamin Mako
PY - 2016/5/7
Y1 - 2016/5/7
N2 - We present a qualitative analysis of interviews with participants in the NoSleep community within Reddit where millions of fans and writers of horror fiction congregate. We explore how the community handled a massive, sudden, and sustained increase in new members. Although existing theory and stories like Usenet's infamous "Eternal September" suggest that large influxes of newcomers can hurt online communities, our interviews suggest that NoSleep survived without major incident. We propose that three features of NoSleep allowed it to manage the rapid influx of newcomers gracefully: (1) an active and well-coordinated group of administrators, (2) a shared sense of community which facilitated community moderation, and (3) technological systems that mitigated norm violations. We also point to several important trade-offs and limitations.
AB - We present a qualitative analysis of interviews with participants in the NoSleep community within Reddit where millions of fans and writers of horror fiction congregate. We explore how the community handled a massive, sudden, and sustained increase in new members. Although existing theory and stories like Usenet's infamous "Eternal September" suggest that large influxes of newcomers can hurt online communities, our interviews suggest that NoSleep survived without major incident. We propose that three features of NoSleep allowed it to manage the rapid influx of newcomers gracefully: (1) an active and well-coordinated group of administrators, (2) a shared sense of community which facilitated community moderation, and (3) technological systems that mitigated norm violations. We also point to several important trade-offs and limitations.
KW - Newcomers
KW - Norms and governance
KW - Online communities
KW - Peer production
KW - Qualitative methods
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85014777597&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85014777597&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1145/2858036.2858356
DO - 10.1145/2858036.2858356
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85014777597
T3 - Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings
SP - 1152
EP - 1156
BT - CHI 2016 - Proceedings, 34th Annual CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
PB - Association for Computing Machinery
T2 - 34th Annual Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2016
Y2 - 7 May 2016 through 12 May 2016
ER -