What are electronic forums?

Electronic forums are discussion groups conducted through the exchange of messages via computer networks. In these forums, people exchange information, viewpoints, and ways of doing things in a variety of topics. Through the exchange, people signal their interests and get to know others' interests. Electronic forums bring together people with similar interests who otherwise would not have met (people who do not know each other and people who are geographically distant) at a comparatively low cost.

Electronic forums have the capability to efficiently link those in need of information with the appropriate sources of expertise. However, some negative unintended effects such as information overload and content irrelevance as well as problems with respect to the quality of information and difficulties to stimulate the contribution of messages have been reported.

Three kinds of electronic forums

At present, the focus in this web site is public asynchronous electronic discussion groups, in opposition to electronic forums within organizations and real time online groups such as electronic "chat" and "moos".

Three major kinds of public asynchronous electronic discussion groups have been growing steadily in North America: mailing lists, Usenet newsgroups and Web-based forums. Mailing lists have a high percentage of forums with academicor professional content. Newsgroups have a high percentage of forums oriented to computer-related matters, hobbies and recreation, but the number of forums focused on academic or professional matters has been growing. For now there is no available data or report on content trends in Web-based forums. Some of these forums are moderated, meaning that the messages are first sent to a moderator for approval before they are available to all members of the group.

There exist over:

• 71,618 mailing lists (Liszt, March, 11, 1997)
• 15,264 Usenet newsgroups (Liszt, Sept. 25, 1996 updated from Uunet)
• 48,000 Web-based forums (Forum One, March 11, 1997).

Mailing lists use mail distribution programs that allow one to send messages to many users at the same time. Two well known programs are LISTSERV and majordomo. Newsgroups use a distributed conferencing system Usenet news groups. Web-based forums use a variety of conferencing programs for the World Wide Web that allow a group storing and access text messages. A well-known program is Hypernews .

What are electronic forums + Three kinds of electronic forums + What are people using the forums for? + Issues in the adoption and use of electronic forums

What are people using the forums for?

People have a variety of purposes for using electronic forums. Some use the forums as a way of getting information and keeping updated in their field or interests. Another use the forums as a way to participate in or listen to the exchange of ideas in their field or interests, and still others use the forums to network with others with similar interests. The forums allow them to meet other people, to keep and build contact with others (see a sample of academic mailing lists users' accounts). Users can also develop purposes as a group and collaborate on shared goals (see ProjectH an online collaboration project).

There are forums for professional and academic pursuits, for hobbies and recreation, for community pursuits, support groups, activism, customer support, etc. You can get a better idea of what electronic forums are by looking at the following examples (not available yet):

• Professional and academic,
• Hobbies and recreation,
• Community,
• Support groups,
• Activism,

List of articles about how specific groups are using electronic forums:

• Armstrong, A., and Hagel, J. (III). (1996). The real values of on-line communities. Harvard Business Review May-June; 134-141.
• Conner, P. W. (1992). Networking in the Humanities: Lessons from ANSAXNET. Computers and the Humanities(26), 195-204.
• Kovacs, D. K.; Robinson, K. L.; and Dixon, J. (1995). Scholarly e-conferences on the academic networks: How library and information science professionals use them. Journal of the American Society for Information Science 46 (4) 244-253.
• McCarty, W. (1992). HUMANIST: Lessons from a global electronic seminar. Computers and the Humanities(26), 205-222.
• Rushkin, K.J.; Kofke, W. A., & Turndorf, H. (1995) The anesthesiology discussion group: Development of a new method of communication between anesthesiologists. Anesthesia and Analgesia 81; 163-166.
• Stephen, T. and Harrison, T. M. (1994). Comserve: Moving the communication discipline online. Journal of the American Society for Information Science 45 (10) 765-770.
• Wiggins, Gary (1995). CHMINF-L The chemical information sources discussion list. Journal of the American Society for Information Science 46(8)

What are electronic forums + Three kinds of electronic forums + What are people using the forums for? + Issues in the adoption and use of electronic forums

Issues in the adoption and use of electronic forums

I review five important issues in the adoption and use of electronic forums. I discuss these issues using the theoretical framework and results of a study on academic mailing lists. However, this framework can also be useful to analyze newsgroups and web forums participation dynamics. The issues are:

• The reciprocal interdependence among users
• The content relevance problem
• The transient membership
• The Moderator/Manager/Listowner role
• Conditions associated with successful mailing lists

The reciprocal interdependence among users
A phenomenon that distinguishes interactive media in general and collaborative mass media in particular is the reciprocal interdependence among users. Reciprocal interdependence means that individual users of interactive media (such as electronic forums) cannot achieve the potential benefits offered by the medium on their own.

Markus (1990) discussed the issue of reciprocal interdependence among users in relation to the adoption process. Prospective adopters of interactive media need to know that they will have sufficient and relevant communication partners; if these conditions are absent there is a risk that medium use will not only fail to spread but also will become extinguished.

Markus (1990) explains that there is a difference between types of innovation in terms of influence among early and late adopters. For most innovations later adopters are influenced by early adopters but not vice versa. For example, someone considering starting to use a computer for word processing will be influenced by peers who have already adopted word processing but does not need to worry about the number of future adopters of word processing. In interactive media influence goes both ways: early adopters can be influenced by later adopters vand vice versa.

If early adopters do not have their messages reciprocated or if only a few follow them in adopting the medium, they can leave, thus initiating a process of use extinction. On the other hand, if early users' communications are reciprocated and new people adopt the medium, early users are stimulated to stay and to increase their use, thus generating benefits and attracting new users and a cycle of increased adoption is initiated.

In my view, reciprocal interdependence among users has another referent besides the adoption process and that is the on-line interaction process. It is on-line interaction itself that draws people in to contribute messages. Some researchers posit that each on-line message has the potential of accomplishing two goals: to communicate content and to stimulate the responsiveness of interlocutors (Feenberg, 1987; Rafaeli, 1988; Rafaeli and LaRose, 1991). A more interactive on-line communication setting is likely to increase participation (Rafaeli, 1988; Rafaeli and LaRose, 1991; Rafaeli and LaRose, 1993). (full references)

What are electronic forums + Three kinds of electronic forums + What are people using the forums for? + Issues in the adoption and use of electronic forums

The content relevance problem in academic mailing lists
Some factors related to people dropping out of lists are the threat of information overload, time investment, and list content relevance, according to results of a study on academic mailing lists. Complaints about the volume of messages and the amount of information received as well as about irrelevant content appeared frequently in study participants' comments on their academic mailing lists experience. These users were very aware of the time they invested in reading and contributing messages. In fact, they had developed strategies to deal with these problems. Some left the list when there were too many messages and/or too much irrelevant information, some of them had limited their participation to a few lists; all participants had quickly learned about the need to screen messages and had developed some screening routines.

It seems to me that the central issue here, as perceived by the participants, is that of the proportion of relevant content to the flow of messages received. Other authors (Howard, 1992; Conner, 1992 and McCarty, 1992) have described similar complaints and behaviors in academic mailing lists participants.

Conner (1992) describes two types of users and their reactions to irrelevant content in a list called ANSAXNET. First, there are those who complained about "chat", they thought that chat cluttered the discussion; these were established members of the discipline that had thrived in the print media and subscribed to certain traditional methodological standards. Second, there are those users who seemed willing to tolerate and even guarantee the possibility of that "chat" even if it was irrelevant to their interests; they represented an emergent culture in the discipline with alternative standards and seemed aware that Academic mailing lists offer a different way of professional exchange than does print media.

McCarty (1992) described two similar types of users in the HUMANIST electronic list: a) "radicals" who wanted a totally unrestricted list and b) "reactionaries" who wanted that only material of high quality was included in the discussion.

The problem of relevance in academic mailing lists is difficult to solve because what one person considers irrelevant is relevant for another. As one author says "there is not one criterion of irrelevance but potentially as many as there are participants in a discussion" (McCarty, 1992, p.215).

Also, the perception of irrelevance is a different phenomenon in different media. Academic mailing lists participants' transfer their expectations from other media--print text and oral conversation--to electronic text (Conner, 1992; McCarty, 1992). Academic mailing lists participants do not realize that they do "filter" in more traditional media because filtering practices have already become unconscious (Sam Lanfranco, personal communication, June 1993).

McCarty (1992) and Conner (1992) have pointed out that the solution lies in getting academic mailing lists participants to perceive mailing lists as a new medium with its own characteristics rather than as a variant of other media. (full references)

What are electronic forums + Three kinds of electronic forums + What are people using the forums for? + Issues in the adoption and use of electronic forums

Transient membership in academic mailing
In a study on academic mailing list users discarded lists both in the process of exploring and finding suitable lists and after having established membership in some lists for a time. There were many situations that lead to leaving the list:

• If a user feels s/he is not getting the benefits s/he expects from the list
• If a user feels that s/he dislikes the tone or way a topic is being discussed but feel unable to change that kind of discourse.
• If a new user finds out that s/he does not share the purposes of the list or the style of interaction in the list.
• If an older user feels that his/her priorities have changed and the list does not contribute to these new priorities.
• If some external event interrupts the normal receiving of or access to messages there are some participants that don't bother to restore their membership.

Data provided by Comserve (online services of the Communication Institute for Online Scholarship Inc.) on lists subscriptions and memberships point out the same high turnover of mailing lists users as was found in this study. They reported in 1993 that over 42,000 subscriptions to their lists had been processed but an approximate number of only 5,900 sustaining users.

Is participants' fragile binding to mailing lists bad or good? One could speculate that minimal membership stability and participants' involvement are necessary to develop some basic conditions for an active list exchange: a flexible boundary respect of topics to be included in the discussion, a sense of the type of discourse of the list, some participants becoming active contributors, etc. So perhaps the question is how much participants' transience and non-involvement can a mailing list live with and still be functional as a collaborative mass medium.

What are electronic forums + Three kinds of electronic forums + What are people using the forums for? + Issues in the adoption and use of electronic forums

The Moderator/Manager/Listowner role
The electronic forum's Moderator/Manager/Listowner role is becoming more salient as different communities are achieving access and adopting electronic discussion groups as a new form of dialogue. The Moderator/Manager/Listowner role is complex, involves many different functions and skills and also takes time. The Moderator/Manager/Listowner functions have been integrated into five groups:

Discussion moderation: Provides the model of communication for the group; facilitates discussion; can intervene in "flames" situations; ask questions of the forums participants in order to activate the discussion.

Editing functions: Decides if the contribution is on-topic; deletes or returns inappropriate contributions; digests contributions.

Management functions: Oversees the logs and file archives and statistics about the forum; oversees/controls the subscriptions and drop out of members. Promotes the forum. Problem solver.

Expert functions: Resident expert in the field of the list.

Promoter functions: Manages the inflow and permanence of members; organizes and promotes special/periodical events in the forums. Relates with institutions (academic/professional; community etc.) sponsoring the forums and with other government bodies.

Not every Moderator/Manager/Listowner exercises all of these functions nor does it seem necessary that s/he exercises them all. Some forums can even survive without a Moderator/Manager/Listowner but when such is the case the achievements are not high. A Moderator/Manager/Listowner's efforts can make a forum very productive in terms of the discussion output and in terms of organizing the gathering of documents and materials from and for the forum audience. An active Moderator/Manager/Listowner can even compensate for the lack of a high number of regular contributors. An skillful Moderator/Manager/Listowner can steer a forum to become an electronic community.

The profile offered here highlights the crucial role the Moderator/Manager/Listowner plays in the everyday forum activity. It also can assist in the design of learning resources and support programs for listowners as well as in a process of formal recognition for this role.

What are electronic forums + Three kinds of electronic forums + What are people using the forums for? + Issues in the adoption and use of electronic forums

Conditions associated with successful mailing lists
One way of measuring the success of an electronic forum's is its level of user participation -- rates of message contribution and adoption. The conditions associated with a high rate of contribution and with a high rate of adoption as described in a study on participation in scholarly mailing lists are:

• A balanced inflow and outflow of members: The most successful mailing lists in the study showed a moderate balanced input and output of members. They also showed a balance between the number of new and old users as well as between those users who are planning to stay and those who are transient . This likely means that there is always a core of participants who have stayed long enough to have understood, accepted and maintained the goals and style of interaction of the list. At the same time there is room for innovation through the addition of new resources and interests brought to a list by the incorporation of new users.

• Members who perceive themselves to be receiving a high number of benefits from the list: In those lists in which a high number of participants perceived themselves to be receiving a high number of benefits, there was a higher number of participants who contributed more regularly. Benefits were also associated with participants plans to stay, with intentions of using the forums interactively, and with involvement in the lists exchange. Participants in this study seem to conceive the medium as useful to keeping them updated; helping them to get materials and answers; giving them a feeling of belonging to a wider community; offering them the opportunity to express themselves and enhance contacts, and, finally helping them to learn about the electronic medium itself. Benefits seem to function as incentives that keep participants in the list and that predispose them to contribute.

• A high percentage of regular contributors: The most successful lists had a higher number of participants contributing more regularly. These active communicators perhaps have a higher need or desire to communicate with other members, the fact is that numerous or regular contributions give a participant a "presence" in the forums. Other participants can start perceiving some regularities in the style or content of the regular contributor's messages. The particular perspective or form of his/her messages together with other regular contributors' "presences" can break the sense of uniformity and anonymity and bring into the list individuality as well as communality and help to stimulate arguments and bring more people into the discussion.

• An active listowner in the list exchange: The most successful lists seem to have a listowner contributing a high percentage of messages to the exchange, especially in the small lists. A listowner can help to make salient communication style and content more adequate for the purposes of the group; s/he also can stimulate discussion and help in resolving conflicts that arise during the interaction.

What are electronic forums + What are people using the forums for? + Issues in the adoption and use of electronic forums