Thursday, September 25, 2008

Essay 2

For my second essay I chose to observe the New York Jets Usenet group at groups.google.com. There are over 350 active members that belong to this group and the message traffic if considered to be highly active with over fifteen-hundred posts per month. Usenet is defined as, “The Usenet is similar in many ways to conferencing systems, often referred to as a Bulletin Board System (BBS), and compared to e-mail distribution lists. It shares many qualities with these forms of computer mediated communication, but differs in many significant ways.” (Kollock & Smith, p.111) The Usenet is slightly different from these other forms of communication media by, “No central authority manages the Usenet. It is distributed in the that there is no central repository for the postings, and that each contribution is passed throughout the system of interconnected hosts.” (Kollock & Smith, p.111) After observing this Usenet group for several days I noticed that it contained many interesting characteristics that corresponded to topics discussed in class.

In this Usenet group there were many different discussions taking place regarding the New York Jets with various topics ranging from Jet’s players, coaches, draft pick opinions, strategies and game analysis. Most of the interactions that I observed were taken quite seriously by the users. The people participating in the conversation did not stray far from the topic being discussed at all. They would exchange messages back and forth and state their views of certain topics, sometimes listing statistics or factual statements, or even criticizing each other’s viewpoints. Most of the users also seemed to be very enthused male Jets fans. I didn’t notice any outsiders opposing the Jets trying to cause an argument, just deep focused conversation amongst Jets supporters. One example of this occurred on September 23rd, regarding a thread named, “New Coach, New Stadium.” A majority of this series of messages took place between users ‘Vinnie S.’ and ‘Harlan Lachman.’ Next year the Jets move into a brand new stadium, and many of the fans feel that when they start their new era, they should start with a new ‘experienced head coach.’ Vinnie. S. states, “I have seen enough from these aspiring head coached who used to be assistants. If you want to be a first class organization, then hire a first class coach. Throw a ton of money at Bill Cowher or Jimmy Johnson. I have seen enough of these assistants like Coslet, Carroll, Groh, Mangini, etc. We haven't been able to cover a slant or slot receiver in over 10 years. This is disgusting.” (Vinnie. S. from website) This statement is made by an avid Jets fan who is aggravated with the current coaching situation. Other users who responded to this message are agreeing with him, and feel that they should try to hire an experienced coach, but at the same time, one user who seems to be very knowledgable calls him out on the level of factuality in his statement. Harlan says, “Vinnie, are you saying that the great HC were never assistants? Bill Parcells, lil Bill, Cowher, and Johnson were never assistants? This was a stupid post.” (Harlan Lachman, from website) Harlan is agreeing with Vinnie. S. that a new coach is needed, but is also letting him know that his statement is not completely true because great coaches of the NFL have indeed started out as assistants, just like current Jet coach Eric Mangini.

Even though the Usenet is very convenient and a great way for participants to discuss many different topics, problems start to occur when a group’s capacity and usage is as large as this one. The first problem I noticed was that of ‘free-riding.’ Free- riding is described as, “Free-ride on others’ efforts, using and abusing the conversation without contributing to its maintenance.” (Kollock & Smith, p.115) With over 350 members in this group it is safe to say that many instances of free-riding occur. After observing this for many days I’ve noticed the same 15-20 user names contributing information and facts to the topics being discussed. An example of this took place on a September 21st, thread titled, ‘Jets are having punting issues.’ User ‘graybeard’ makes a post listing career stats for the recently released Jets punter, and the newly acquired Jets punter. After reading these facts the users know that the punter they released is in fact better than the new punter. (or on paper at least) People read this post and agree with him, and keep asking the question, “Why?” Hours later ‘graybeard’ responds with another post. This time his post is a direct quote from Eric Mangini stating why he chose to pick the punter up over recently released punter Ben Graham. (conversation can be found at, http://groups.google.com/group/alt.sports.football.pro.nyjets/browse_thread/thread/854e42941d41dbf4) This interaction shows people free-riding off of graybeard’s information and not putting any effort on contributing back to the factually content within the group. The second problem that occurs when a group is so large is that of abusing bandwidth. The definition is bandwidth is, “the volume of information per unit time that a computer, person, or transmission medium can handle. (Kollock & Smith, from Raymond 1993) So after learning what bandwidth means now we know that the problem can arise from, “When people don’t refrain from posting unnecessary information: such as, posting extremely long articles, reproducing long sections of a text rather than summarizing, and including long signatures.” (Kollock & Smith, p.115) After I observed this group I noticed many instances of people abusing bandwidth. Anything ranging from people re-posting the same message, and many times including a long signature at the bottom of a message they have written.

By observing a Usenet group for several days, and having a hands on experience with this form of communication medium, I feel that I now the many types of interactions that occur within a group. I also learned what kind of problems can occur when people abuse bandwidth restrictions and also when members of a group do not contribute to the informational content that can be found on the message board.


Works Cited:
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.sports.football.pro.nyjets/browse_thread/thread/854e42941d41dbf4

Kollock, Peter & Smith, Marc. (1996). Managing the virtual commons: Cooperation and conflict in computer communities. In Susan C. Herring (Ed.), Computer-mediated communication: Linguistic, social and cross-cultural perspectives (pp. 109-128). Philadelphia: John Benjamins

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