Hello, my name is Chris McNally. I'm a junior in the College of Engineering studying Electrical and Computer Engineering. I was born on Long Island, NY, but I grew up in Duxbury, Massachusetts. It was a smaller town where pretty much everyone knew everyone, so the transition from there to Cornell was quite startling freshman year. I'm still amazed when the Cornell police drive by at 1 AM without stopping to ask what I'm doing out walking so late.
I play bass occasionally, listen to music a lot, and enjoy video games perhaps a little too much. This past summer I kicked my World of Warcraft habit, which was a fantastic feeling because I saw people (in person!) more than twice a week. I also worked as a bank teller this summer for Sovereign Bank in my home town, which has spurred a slight interest in finance in me.
This semester my main goals are to survive ECE303 and ECE315, and if I can find time I'm hoping to work on a project team. I have my eye on the MAE baja car, but if anyone knows any other teams that are looking for a junior ECE major email me (csm44) or leave a comment.
In my travels through the Internet I've become interested in discussion forums, or asynchronous chats as Wallace describes them. They vary in size tremendously, and that size vastly affects the climate of the community. For example, I post on a technology forum that has around twenty to thirty members. I also from time to time read the technology news site called Ars Technica, which has a forum of tremendous size (there are almost 4000 people reading that forum just a second ago when I checked.) I post on the small forum quite regularly, but I've never posted on Ars (Wallace would call me a lurker, although that label makes it seem like I'm something from the movie Aliens). The size of it makes it seems like some kind of faceless beast that would eat me if I tried to break into the community, where as the smaller forum was a lot easier to break into. I'm interested in if this is a common problem for communities of that size, and if so what is the general threshold for which a community stops seeming like a small, friendly community, and starts looking like a collective mass of impersonal posts.
2 comments:
I find it really interesting to “meet” someone who likes to post on small forums. Personally, I’m not an avid forum participant, but I have had a little experience on different guitar websites, as well as other sites that cater to my own interests. However, for some reason I feel that I would be very uncomfortable posting in such an intimate forum. It’s not so much an issue of wanting to remain as anonymous as possible (though that is part of it) as much as a reluctance to develop a different identity online. I’m more comfortable just being known as Brianne.
I definitely agree with you on the point that forum size can have a large impact one's decision to post. It seems akin to trying to shout your point to a crowded room where everyone is conversing with each other, you won't be heard so why bother.
This is very real for me in large threads on the World of Warcraft forums. Why be post number 379 out of thousands when, I believe, the majority of forum members will read the first few posts and developer posts (the so called “Blues”) only? Then again I've responded on very small threads which dealt with issues I particularly cared about which continued to a pleasant discussion with random WoW player #834052. This seems to suggest that you have to consider different cases. Yes, the WoW forums are huge, but certain sub forums or threads may be small enough to entice reluctant people, such as myself, to post.
Additionally, personal contribution to the forum may stop people from posting regardless of forum size. Often times posters with low post counts are outright ignored, their opinion cast aside because they have yet to contribute enough. I've personaly experienced this by having people respond to a news article I've submitted to evilavatar.com referring to me as “the submitter” and not by screen name even though I started the thread in the first place.
Definitely an interesting topic with many more avenues to explore.
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