communication tools in floss communities
DESCRIPTION
This is a presentation held at the Web Based Community conference 2007 on the communication tools that are used within FLOSS communities. Admittedly it neglects the aspect of mailing lists. A reason for this is that it focuses on the communities at large, and not on the narrower core team.TRANSCRIPT
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Salamanca, February 2007
Title in Black - Arial 40pt
COMMUNICATION TOOLS IN FLOSS COMMUNITIES
A LOOK AT FLOSS COMMUNITIES “AT LARGE”
- BEYOND THE DEVELOPMENT TEAM
Andreas Meiszner
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AgendaAgenda
• Background
• Communication Tools in FLOSS (Free / Libre Open Source
Software) Communities
• Point 1 Type Tools – Knowledge development and sharing
• Point 2 Type Tools – Relationship and trust building
• Excurse Forums
• Summary
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Background
The project behind: FLOSSComThe project behind: FLOSSCom
FLOSSCom is a 2 years EU funded project with the following objectives:
I - To identify the factors that contribute to successful knowledge construction in informal learning communities, such as the FLOSS communities.
II - To analyze the effectiveness of FLOSS-like learning communities in a formal educational setting.
III - To provide case studies, scenarios and guidelines for teachers and decision-makers on how to successfully embed such learning communities within formal educational environments to enhance student progression, retention and achievement.
IV - To evaluate the project and disseminate the results of the project to the wider community.
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Background
Floss Communities as Learning EnvironmentsFloss Communities as Learning Environments
Why might FLOSS communities be seen as a good case for (virtual) learning environments?
• Open and inclusive ethos: everyone can participate, no charges, no deadlines, life long
• Up to date content; everyone can add, edit and update the content
• A large support network; provided voluntarily by the community member in a collaborative manner nearly 24/7
• Free Riders welcome – the more the better
• New ICT solutions are adapted early by the community
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Background
Learning in Floss Communities Learning in Floss Communities
Informal / self-organized / problem based / practice based / experiential
/ incidental / reflection-on-action / tacit knowledge transfer by
observation, imitation, and practice / re-experience what others
experienced before / enabling re-experience by decreasing complexity
and transactive group memory / enabling re-experience by guidance,
openness and legitimate peripheral participation / enabling re-
experience by asynchronous communication and virtual
experimentation / individual processes of learning and collective
knowledge building / double-loop learning through social interaction and
competent use of technologies
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Background
Communities Communities ““at largeat large””
• Floss communities do not consist only of the development team, and not every community member intends to become part of it
• The largest group of Floss communities are the user, which might be learner too
“at large” in numbers:
• phpbb2: 49 core member and 299.485 registered user*
• osCommerce: 16 core member and 127.749 registered user*
• joomla: 20 core member and 88.343 user* English language user community only
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Communication Tools
General ObservationsGeneral Observations
• Though all of the communities develop software that provides a broad
range of communication and information tools, the ones being actually
used within these communities appeared to be rather narrow
• This is also true for the 3 reviewed e-Learning communities
• Although the e-Learning communities are aimed at producing state of
the art virtual learning environments, providing a broad range of
communication and collaboration tools, the forum seems still to be the
centre of the communities themselves
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Communication Tools
Point 1 Type: Knowledge development and sharing (1/2)Point 1 Type: Knowledge development and sharing (1/2)
• 94% of the communities had a forum
• The ones not using a forum were 4 out of the 5 wikis plus the social software Elgg.
• 94% of the communities made a documentation tool available.
• In all of the 51% of the communities that used a wiki, the wiki was also used for documentation purposes.
• Wiki communities were also the only ones using discussion pages that could be found at 4 out of the 5 wiki communities.
• Blogs were less frequently featured in only 34% of the communities and not all of the blog communities used blogs themselves (7 out of 13)
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Communication Tools
n = 80
5,0%4Video / Podcasts
5,0%4Discussion page
6,3%5Tags
33,8%27Blog
50,0%40Latest News Various
51,3%41Wiki
85,0%68News (Flash)
93,8%75Doku / KB
93,8%75Forum
%n
Point 1 Type Tools
Point 1 Type: Knowledge development and sharing (2/2)Point 1 Type: Knowledge development and sharing (2/2)
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Communication Tools
Point 2 Type: Relationship and trust building (1/5)Point 2 Type: Relationship and trust building (1/5)
• Point 2 type tools are in most cases fully or to a high degree integrated into
the members profile within the forum and only occasionally outside of the
forum
• Besides the 4 wikis without a forum, other types of communities provided
generally more (or less) the same numbers of profile options
• This might be due to the fact that the forum software used already
provided a range of options “on board”, since...
• Most of the communities that are not developing forum stand alone
software seemed to use available third party forum solutions
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Communication Tools
Point 2 Type: Relationship and trust building (2/5)Point 2 Type: Relationship and trust building (2/5)
• In 79% of the cases information on the members latest posts, publications,
or bloggings were provided
• In 75% of the cases, members also had the option to provide information on
their VOIP and messenger accounts – which appeared to be less often used
• 46% of the communities allowed members to provide information on their
interests or preferences, though again it seemed that this possibility was not
that frequently used
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Communication Tools
n = 8010,0%8Own(wiki)page1,3%1My Tasks2,5%2FOAF
16,3%13Buddy list7,5%6Geo Map
46,3%37Members preferences & interests75,0%60Members MSN, skype, chat, etc. information78,8%63Members publications, posts, etc82,5%66Members Roles / functions / Groups
Including:95,0%76Profiles
%nPoint 2 Type Tools
Point 2 Type: Relationship and trust building (3/5)Point 2 Type: Relationship and trust building (3/5)
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Communication Tools
Point 2 Type: Relationship and trust building (4/5)Point 2 Type: Relationship and trust building (4/5)
• Calendars and polls appeared to be generally less intensive used and the
availability of the tools might be seen rather as an “add on” / “nice to have”
• Integrated chat tools could be less frequently detected (19%), though many
communities allowed members to provide information on e.g. personal IRC
accounts within their profiles
• The “who is online” tool could be found at 58% of the communities and in 3
(4%) communities this tool was combined with a “who sees what” tool allowing
one to see what other members are currently doing
• A “Buddy” tool was provided in 13 (16%) of the cases and a FOAF (Friend Of A
Friend) tool in only 2 (2,5%) of the cases
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Communication Tools
n = 8010,0%8Shoutbox3,8%3"who sees what"
57,5%46"who is online"22,5%18Polls23,8%19Chat25,0%20Calendar / Events
%nOther Point 2 Type Tools
Point 2 Type: Relationship and trust building (5/5)Point 2 Type: Relationship and trust building (5/5)
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Communication Tools
Excurse Forums (1/4)Excurse Forums (1/4)
• Forums seemed to be the main tool for communication
• For 67 communities (84%) the posts per day could be calculated ranging
from 1 post per day to 1.260
• There seemed to be no correlation between the period the forum is online
and the post per day
• The most active community, Joomla, was only online for 410 days
• Also the number of members does not seem to have a direct impact on the
number of posts and threads per day (besides required critical mass)
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Communication Tools
Excurse Forums (2/4)Excurse Forums (2/4)
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Communication Tools
Excurse Forums (3/4)Excurse Forums (3/4)
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Communication Tools
Excurse Forums (4/4)Excurse Forums (4/4)
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Summary
• Forums seem to be a centre of communication within the FLOSS
communities at large
• Wikis seemed to be especially suitable for documentation purposes;
hence in all of the cases where a wiki was present it was used for this
purpose
• Wikis seemed to substitute prior existent documentation tools
• Blogs are still not that frequently present with only 1 out of 4
communities featuring them on their community site
Summary (1/2)Summary (1/2)
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Summary
• Information on other members’ contributions like prior posts or blog
entries seems to be valuable information (80%)
• Buddy lists, friend of a friend functions, tagging, geo maps, and video /
podcasts are still not that frequently used
• Though these communities were building a broad range of tools, or
integrating them into the software that they develop, they still do not seem
to make use of it themselves
Summary (2/2)Summary (2/2)