Resnick Paul J, Janney Adrienne W, Buis Lorraine R, Richardson Caroline R
School of Information, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48104-1213, United States.
J Med Internet Res. 2010 Dec 17;12(4):e72. doi: 10.2196/jmir.1339.
Starting a new online community with a limited number of members who have not self-selected for participation in the community is challenging. The space must appear active to lure visitors to return; when the pool of participants is small, a large fraction must be converted from lurkers to contributors, and contributors must receive responses quickly to encourage continued participation. We report on strategies for overcoming these challenges and our experience implementing them within an online community add-on to an existing Internet-mediated walking program. Concentrated study recruitment increased the effective membership size. Having few conversation spaces rather than many specialized ones, staff seeding of the forums before members were invited to visit, and staff posting of new topics when there were conversation lulls, all helped to make the forums appear active. In retrospect, using even fewer separate spaces and displaying a flat rather than nested reply structure would have made the forums appear even more active. Contests with small prizes around participation in the forums and around meeting walking goals generated a lot of discussion; a contest for first-time posters was especially effective at moving lurkers to post. Staff efforts to elicit participation by asking questions had mixed success. Staff replies to posts that had not received member replies created a feeling of responsiveness despite limited membership.
创建一个新的在线社区颇具挑战，其成员数量有限且并非自行选择参与该社区。这个空间必须显得活跃，以吸引访客再次光顾；当参与者群体较小时，很大一部分人必须从潜水者转变为贡献者，并且贡献者必须迅速得到回应，以鼓励他们持续参与。我们报告了克服这些挑战的策略以及我们在将在线社区附加到现有的互联网介导步行计划中实施这些策略的经验。集中的研究招募增加了有效成员规模。设置较少的对话空间而非众多专门的空间，在邀请成员访问之前由工作人员在论坛上先行播种，以及在对话出现停滞时由工作人员发布新主题，所有这些都有助于使论坛显得活跃。回顾过去，使用更少的单独空间并展示扁平而非嵌套的回复结构会使论坛显得更加活跃。围绕论坛参与度和达到步行目标设置小额奖品的竞赛引发了大量讨论；针对首次发帖者的竞赛在促使潜水者发帖方面特别有效。工作人员通过提问来引发参与的努力取得的效果参差不齐。尽管成员数量有限，但工作人员对未收到成员回复的帖子进行回复营造了一种有回应的感觉。
