Knowledge sharing, maintenance, and use in online support communities

  • Authors:

  • Derek L. Hansen

  • Affiliations:

  • University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI

  • Venue:
  • CHI '06 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems
  • Year:
  • 2006

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Abstract

Widespread adoption of collaborative authoring tools (such as Wikis) by online communities has fostered new ways of storing, sharing, maintaining, and using community knowledge. My dissertation research examines the effect and potential use of these shared knowledge repositories within online technical and medical support communities using short-term ethnography (including content analysis and interviews), surveys, and quantitative analysis of behavior traces. I characterize the key technological mechanisms, and the processes and social norms at play. I then use this knowledge to propose best practices and novel social and technical designs.