Threaded Discussion: A Mini-Analysis

I found a very interesting thread on the Verizon cell phone Google Group (alt.cellular.verizon). It is amazing how much time people dedicate to this environment. The thread I look at analyzing was originally posted by “Hunter” and he shares his experience about calling in to check on his usage minutes when he finds out that Verizon is tracking more minutes than he knows he has used. He gave more details about where he was living, calling from, and typical monthly cell phone usage. Five days after his original posting, there had been 56 responses to him (or to others within this thread), some on target, some a bit more tangential. Some people (either Verizon employees or other people with strong ties to Verizon) shared information about Verizon implementing a new billing system while others shared plausible explanations such as time delays in updating your minutes due to roaming or inadvertent cell phone usage and ways to eliminate this possibility (i.e., use a flip phone so you don’t accidentally dial someone).

So now for the million dollar question, “Why do people volunteer their time to help other people out?” I found Eric Raymond’s, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, enlightening, specifically his terminology of egoboo (egoboosting, or the enhancement of one’s reputation among other fans) as a drive behind participants’ volunteer activity. This phenomenon seemed to be a possibility for postings from some of the people participating on the alt.cellular.verizon board. Having posted on this board myself, it was interesting to see some of the same people posting in throughout the various threads I read. It was also interesting to see the participants banter back and forth, almost as if they were in a debate session or involved in a family feud. It is apparent from the communication that these folks know and recognize one another’s screen names. I also think some of these participants genuinely enjoy conflict and contention. They like to spark arguments and put others on the defense. Some of the users enjoy sharing their expertise and inside information, perhaps again an example of egoboo. There is definitely a social element to these boards. Of course there are those that post on occasion, but it quickly became apparent that there are a few people who spend a considerable amount of time in this Google Group.

I was also interested in Kollock and Smith’s concluding remarks about shortcomings of newgroups. “Many newsgroups remain relatively uncooperative places, filled with noise and argument.” I definitely found this to be the case on alt.cellular.verizon. Sometimes the participants were helpful, cordial, and appeared to be working towards a common goal of finding solutions. Other times (more often than not), the participants were spending time flaming one another, calling each other names, and pointing out other’s errors and shortcomings.

All in all, this was a very interesting opportunity to see how people interact in these online environments, to conduct some discourse analysis, and to hypothesize what motivates the people to participate in these types of discussions.

Logged hours: 6 hours searching archives for a discussion thread in which a question is asked and a significant amount of time is spent by one or more people trying to answer it.