A FTEREFFECT

When probing for further clarification of the purpose and benefits received for helping others, the majority of the interviewees replied that it had benefited them, specifically in terms of improving their own knowledge of the software and developing best practices in solving problems. L in particular, mentioned that helping may have improved his knowledge of GameSalad and he could “clarify and cement concepts” in his mind, while helping the community. These outcomes may be positively correlated with the high level of agreement in the survey, on items around ‘acknowledgement’, ‘appreciation’, ‘helping others’, and ‘engagement rewarding’ issues. In addition, U shared an example where he benefited through finding better solution to a problem while reading another solution posted by other members to the same problem.

A further after effect was the development of shared knowledge pool. O touched on the effect helping could have over the community’s knowledge pool, saying:

156 “I just acknowledge that the more helpful the forum is in general, the better the knowledge pool will be.” – O (2)

Similar remarks were made about improving the quality and performance of the final products/applications created by interviewees. Helping had provided an opportunity to be reflective of their own practice - a valuable process in learning.

I

As seen earlier and developed further here, there were aspects of help that were problematic – problematic users. Although not an overwhelming issue, it has been mentioned several times as having an effect on the community interaction and relationship dynamics. Members came to the community to seek advice and guidance, and often, they approached the community after unable to solve a problem. They might be frustrated and without a proper mediation of emotions, this could lead to a number of unfavourable situations.

“Yelling” was a term frequently used by interviewees to illustrate a post or a comment by members who used capitalised letters for all of his or her words. As a community that relied heavily on texts to deliver messages, members used

emoticons and manipulate texts to better express the ‘tone’ of the whole message; capitalised letters, for example, were often perceived as strong, forceful, and emphatic. This, combined with punctuation marks, could sway the ‘tone’ of the message from being ‘soft’, to being ‘hard’. The message was then interpreted into a perceived behavioural trait. As one of the interviewees put:

“...If they are angry and using all caps for their title, and mad at Gamesalad because it is somehow Gamesalad's fault in their opinion I am much less likely to help them. For a normal, nice topic with lots of detail, I will try and help the person until their issue is fully resolved.” –T (2)

Not everybody who posted queries on the community was emotional in their post. Another type of problematic users found were the members who became over- dependent on the help given by the interviewees. For example, I came across a thread that was peculiar - there was no coherent flow on the discussion. After reading through the first two pages of the lengthy discussion, it dawned upon me that the person asking, X, had opened up few threads asking the same question i.e. asking others to help him understand the visual coding part of the GameSalad software. As a result of this, the moderator combined the threads into a single discussion, and warned X to not repeat the mistake. X was not the emotional type and this was confirmed by one of the respondents, who joined the lengthy

discussion, but in the end, backed down because he was ‘told off’ by one of the moderators. As F put it:

“X is fast running out of people willing to take the time to help him though, and is a good example of someone who is polite and friendly but still no fun at all to help…” – F (2)

Another example, far less evident in forum activity as a whole, but documented in one of the interviews, was with the linguistic problem users faced. One of the

interviewees, who was from a non-English speaking country, mentioned language being a barrier for him when communicating in the forum. Thus, he avoided on- going communication with others. Peeking into his comments history, much of his comments were short, and were kept to a simple comment, most probably to avoid lengthy follow-up discussions. Difficulty in comprehending what members were

158 asking, meant that their queries were less appealing for others to comment on. F, in his justification on how he handled such members, explained:

“I draw a firm distinction between someone who speaks poor English due to lack of effort (text speak etc.) and someone who speaks poor English due to it being a second language. I'll instinctively judge someone based on the effort they put into what they write, but I won't treat them differently because of it.” – F (2)

Both over-dependent users and linguistics problems posed some degree of difficulty and if none of the skilled members were available or willing to help, the obligation would fall back on the moderators, who would try their best to help the members on their queries.

M

This section discusses ‘motivation’ in a broader sense i.e. looking into elements that drives participation in a general sense. What makes people want to participate in discussions, and by an extension, the community? Looking at the daily and monthly statistics from the community, it was clear that the community was a hive for activities of all kinds of nature - from the announcements of updates to the

GameSalad software, to the daily question and answer threads. These activities were open - voluntary, and unstructured (in a sense that there was no instructions or sequential flow to navigate/direct discussions, as opposed to a more formal discussion). I identified in the community two categories namely ‘Extrinsic Motivation’, and ‘Intrinsic Motivation’. Table 24 below shows these categories, followed by discussion on each category and its sub-categories in greater details.

Table 24: The Categories of motivation with its frequency of mentions.

Category The general idea Numbers of times

mentioned

Number of interviewees mentioning it

Extrinsic External elements that influence _{members’ participation} 71 19

Intrinsic Internal elements that influence _{members’ participation} 19 8