Homework: Research Questions

6470: The Design of Online Communities
Professor Amy Bruckman

Due:	Thursday, 10/13
Format:	Double spaced, 12 pt. font
Approximate Length:	One page

Now that you've had a chance to begin to understand your site more deeply: what is interesting about it? You handed in some preliminary research questions with your proposal. Now revise them.

Write one to three research questions about your site, and explain each one. The first half of your paper will follow the Amy Jo Kim template and the richly describe your site. But the second half should tell us something interesting about it. What about the site is worth understanding more deeply?

Here are some examples from past papers for this class:

• Deviant Art: How does Deviant Art support users' art accomplishments?
• Wikipedia: Why do people contribute to Wikipedia? How do they learn to be contributors?
• Something Awful: The design of Something Awful includes features that are unusual, like giving new users an insulting "stupid newbie" icon, and making people who break rules pay to rejoin the community with a new account. Why is the design different, and how well do these atypical featuers functions?