The Lurker Thing

[Tim Regan]

Hi All,

Even researchers who study online social spaces don't see eye-to-eye 
on the value of lurkers. For example, Jenny Preece 
(http://www.ifsm.umbc.edu/~preece/) sees value in it (check out her 
2001 paper with Nonnecke called "Why Lurkers Lurk" 
http://snowhite.cis.uoguelph.ca/~nonnecke/research/whylurk.pdf or 
http://tinyurl.com/e5gp) while Marc Smith 
(http://research.microsoft.com/~masmith/) doesn't.

I think lurking is a good thing. I also post on a Philip Pullman 
discussion list http://www.darkmaterials.net/forum/ where posting 
large volumes is encouraged. The result is loads of annoying posts 
like "me too", "yeah, I loved that bit", or even the mind bogglingly 
uninteresting ":-)"!

I like to compare it to theatre going in the time of Shakespeare. In 
Shakespeare's day there were four classes of people involved in a 
theatre production: the stage crew, the actors, the groundlings, and 
the gallery. I see lurkers as the gallery, posters as the 
groundlings, JKR and her fictional cast as the actors, and the list-
elves as the stage hands. It's not a perfect analogy, but it does 
show how many different approaches to an online community help make 
the place richer.

Cheers,

Dumbledad.