The Mechanics of Online Communities

While we know quite a bit about visitor behavior inside museums, less is known about the virtual audience. Do users want a more participatory environment on our websites? A survey conducted in 2007 by the National Museum of Natural History, which asked users to rate potential features of a new Web portal on oceans, sheds some light. More than 800 responses broke out roughly into three tiers: 80–85 percent felt that “fun facts” and interaction with experts was important; 43–54 percent felt strongly in favor of the ability to customize or contribute content, or see other users’ recommendations; only 23 percent felt that discussion boards were important. Web 2.0 skeptics might conclude from these results that indeed users value expert opinion more than they want their own voices to be heard. Proponents might respond that over time, thousands of potential users who do want to play a more substantial role could add tremendous value to an important scientific site. The truth is undoubtedly somewhere in the middle—confirmed by trends seen in general studies of museum patrons—that visitors benefit from access to the interpretation of experts and the ability to participate in a substantial way in the learning experience.

Developers of Web 2.0 applications have come to understand that even if relatively few “power” users are making full use of the tools of participation, the benefits can extend to all members of an online community. Blogger and Internet entrepreneur Ross Mayfield has given this phenomenon a name: the Power Law of Participation. Mayfield draws a scale with, at one end, large numbers of users who are reading, marking favorites, tagging or leaving comments—low-threshold activities that can be described as “collective intelligence.” As the level of engagement increases the number of users drops, with “collaborative intelligence” activities such as refactoring, moderating and collaborating being performed by a few at the high end of the scale. According to Mayfield, it is these higher-order activities that form the core of successful online communities, but “[the] point isn’t just the difference between these forms of group intelligence—but actually how they co-exist in the best communities.” He cites the classic example of Wikipedia, where “500 people, or 0.5 percent of users, account for 50 percent of the edits.”29

Another key concept when contemplating the chaos that could ensue from inviting user participation is differentiation of access. Some museums have experimented successfully with allowing select groups of outside contributors to, for example, add descriptive tags to works of art, help with object research or collaborate on exhibits. As Jennifer Trant of Archives and Museum Informatics points out, part of trusting our audience is knowing who our contributors are and assigning levels of access. “Trust is built on identity; identity requires identification. . . . Assessments of trust require a history of an individual’s actions—linking their trace with a distinct identity. Individuals build trust by behaving appropriately, over time.”30

Conclusion

As of this writing, museums have talked about online user participation a great deal but concrete examples with measurable results are only just emerging. An example from the physical realm, however, demonstrates what is possible when museums adopt visitor-centric learning objectives and interpretive processes. In 2005, the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum invited six local artists to create original works using museum collections in an exhibition titled “Conversations: Collections, Artists, Curators.” The goal of the exhibition was to “help make visitors more open to the many ways and means of learning, including the use of the imagination.”

© Mike Franklin

Moreover, the museum acknowledged that “part of the learning process might not necessarily lead directly to an appreciation of some new scientific fact, but it can serve as an important initial first step or stage in stimulating an interest in something new.”31

Though the exhibition was highly popular with a broad audience, it is especially worth noting the positive reactions of both the artists and the museum staff to the unusual collaborative process. Said one exhibition curator, “As the artists made selections for their installations, our curators came to see the collections and our scholarly pursuits from fresh perspectives. The installations include items that we might have never placed on public view and juxtapose things that we would probably not have thought to put together.”32 One of the artists, expressing his pleasure at being invited to participate, said, “This exhibition gives me a chance to use the collections I loved as a child and the Native American material that has so informed my life to help celebrate the museum’s magical potential.”33

In similar fashion, Web 2.0 tools promise to enable many forms of what the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum calls “the countless potential dialogues between the museum and its public.”34 While this requires museums to deliberately lessen their control as to how their objects will be used, discussed and contextualized, the rewards are only beginning to be imagined. Deeper levels of trust and collaboration with users could not only improve learning and increase audience engagement, but also enhance knowledge and stimulate creativity across the board. Taking the long view, it is apparent that the Internet as a medium of communication is still in a young, experimental stage. But many think that it has the potential to rival the advent of the printing press in its ability to radically alter the transmission of culture, methods of scholarship and even relationships of power. It seems clear that in order to secure a role for museums in the twenty-first century, the current Internet phenomenon—some say, revolution—must be taken seriously.

End Notes

1. Lev Grossman, “Time’s Person of the Year: You,” Time (December 25, 2006): 40.
2. Steven Johnson, “It’s All About Us,” Time (December 25, 2006): 80.
3. Wikipedia, s.v. “Web 2.0,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0 (accessed December 21, 2006).
4. See Tim O'Reilly, “What Is Web 2.0: Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software,” O'Reilly Media, Inc., www.oreillynet.com/lpt/a/6228.
5. For a fuller discussion see Wikipedia, s.v. “Folksonomy,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folksonomy (accessed June 21, 2007).
6. David Weinberger, “Folksonomy as Symbol,” Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/home/home?wid=10&func=viewSubmission&sid=2541.
7. Elaine Peterson, “Beneath the Metadata: Some Philosophical Problems with Folksonomy,” D-Lib Magazine, November 2006, www.dlib.org/dlib/november06/peterson/11peterson.html.
8. See the steve homepage, http://www.steve.museum/.
9. Wikipedia, s.v. “Social Software,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_software (accessed December 21, 2006).
10. Wikipedia, s.v. “Wikipedia,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia (accessed January 17, 2007).
11. Cindy Long, “Getting WIKI With It,” NEA Today (October 2006): 40.
12. Cited in Elizabeth Merritt, “Root of All Evil? The Ethics of Doing Business with For-Profit Entities,” Museum News 85, no. 4 (July/August 2006): 31.
13. Maxwell L. Anderson, “Introduction,” in The Wired Museum, ed. Katherine Jones-Garmil (Washington, D.C.: American Association of Museums, 1997), 16.
14. Stephen Bitgood, Beverly Serrell and Don Thompson, “The Impact of Informal Education on Visitors to Museums,” in Informal Science Learning: What the Research Says About Television, Science Museums, and Community-Based Projects, ed. Valerie Crane (Dedham, MA: Research Communications, 1994), 67.
15. See Anderson, Wired Museum, 19; and Howard Besser, “The Transformation of the Museum and the Way It’s Perceived” in Wired Museum, 153.
16. See Wikipedia, s.v. “Star Wars,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars (accessed August 9, 2007).
17. Besser, Wired Museum, 121.
18. James Boyle, “Reinventing the Gatekeeper” (keynote address, “Beyond Broadcast: Reinventing Public Media in a Participatory Culture,” Harvard University, May 12, 2006), www.beyondbroadcast.net/blog/?p=100.
19. Darlene Fichter, “Web 2.0, Library 2.0 and Radical Trust: A First Take,” weblog, April 2, 2006, http://library2.usask.ca/~fichter/blog_on_the_side/2006/04/web-2.html.
20. Seb Chan, “Radical Trust and Web 2.0,” weblog, August 31, 2006, www.powerhousemuseum.com/dmsblog/index.php/2006/08/31/radical-trust-web-20/.
21. John H. Falk, “An Identity-Centered Approach to Understanding Museum Learning,” Curator 49, no. 2 (2006): 161; and George E. Hein, Learning in the Museum (London: Routledge, 1998), 147.
22. Falk, “Museum Learning,” 161.
23. Jay Rounds, “Doing Identity Work in Museums,” Curator 49, no. 2 (2006): 139; and Daniel Spock, “The Puzzle of Museum Educational Practice: A Comment on Rounds and Falk” Curator 49, no. 2 (2006): 176.
24. Hein, Learning in the Museum, 151; and Spock, “Museum Educational Practice,” 178.
25. Hein, Learning in the Museum, 143–144.
26. John H. Falk and Lynn D. Dierking, Learning from Museums: Visitor Experiences and the Making of Meaning (Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2000), 187.
27. Falk and Dierking, Learning from Museums, 194–195; Hein, Learning in the Museum, 146; and Rounds, “Identity Work,” 142–143.
28. Falk and Dierking, Learning from Museums, 200; and Hein, Learning in the Museum, 153.
29. Ross Mayfield, “Power Law of Participation,” weblog, April 27, 2006, http://ross.typepad.com/blog/2006/04/power_law_of_pa.html.
30. Jennifer Trant, “Trust, Audience and Community: Museums, Libraries and Identity,” weblog, September 1, 2006, http://conference.archimuse.com/node/106.
31. Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, See|Hear: Museums and Imagination (Los Angeles: Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, 2006), 13.
32. Ibid., 19.
33. Ibid., 32.
34. Ibid., 19.