Project Proposals

CS 6470: The Design of Online Communities
Professor Amy Bruckman
Due:Tuesday, 9/13
Approximate Length:One page
Percentage of Grade:Counts as a homework assignment

Team Formation

Talk with your prospective team mates about their communication and working styles. Do they answer their email promptly? Do they use Slack regularly? Do they like getting work done early or at the last minute? How heavy a load are they taking this semester? What is their reason for being interested in the class? Find partners whose personal styles are compatible with your own.

Each team member should please hand in identical text for this assignment. After this assignment, we will create official project groups in Canvas to hand in future team assignments.

Proposals

Your proposal should include:
  1. The name and address of your site.
  2. Why you think this site is worth studying--what is interesting about it?
  3. Any special ethical risks of studying the site.
  4. The names and email addresses of your three team members.

Check the list of sites studied by students in this class over the last two years. Please do not pick a site that has been studied in the last two years. It's OK to study a site like Twitch or Discord as long as you don't pick the same channel that was studied recently.

Please follow the guidelines for site choice and appropriate behavior, and think carefully before choosing a 'dark' site (one with aggressive/flaming/inappropriate behavior or content).

The instructor and TAs are happy to give you feedback on possible site choices. However, please investigate the site yourself a bit before emailing us and asking us to look. Please do not send us a long list of sites. Make sure it is active. A bulletin board with less than 50 posts a day may be too quiet to study.