Monitoring Research in a Forum Community

(Not too) Long ago, before Facebook, and Twitter and MySpace, was a period of time when online communities formed in the form of a discussion forum. A group of people with a common hobby or goal congregate in cyberspace, share their knowledge with each other and in turn the community benefits as a whole as everyone's level of knowledge on that topic increases. Moderators controlled user activities by setting rules to the forums, monitoring chat rooms, and checking for unusual behavior from certain users. The community help patrol the forum by flagging posts that could be of concern for the moderators to block or to remove. If necessary, moderators have the right to ban users from using the forum altogether. Members of the forum also collectively ensure the quality of the forum by "calling out" on other people if users post information that is incorrect, and in the long run inaccurate information is filtered. Long-term users supported by the community also further act as mentors within the forum - new users often seek advice from veteran members to learn the "tricks of the trade".

One very popular forum is FlyerTalk, where global travelers collide to discuss recent flight deals around the world, mileage systems of various airlines and hotel points systems, and get travel tips for popular places and destinations off the beaten path. New users often ask senior contributors for hints for flight routings and how to get the most out of their travel budget, and people around the community are willing to help. However, as soon as a user posts inappropriate activities (like unauthorized advertising, posting rude comments or minor offense like posting on the wrong forum), it only takes 5 minutes for the community to publicly dismiss the posting and for moderators to be alerted. Overtime, this community benefits from the shared knowledge, and the community is often able to put themselves in an advantageous position over airlines and hotels.

Imagine this kind of efficiency in an online forum for academic scholars. As a community, researchers share their findings or insights on a forum in different topics. Scholars globally can comment and analyze new studies, in hopes to raise the level of knowledge of all users. Hot topics would generate discussions across a demographic much wider than traditional methods. These posts would be patrolled by the community too - anything posted is subject to scrutiny by everyone on the forum, and inaccurate information would be ultimately be rejected. Essentially, all information on the forum would've undergone some form of peer review for it to stay posted, thus, ensuring credibility and quality of these posts. Young researchers can now draw from the wealth of information from experts around the world at once to improve their methods or to get insight on results. This kind of interaction can only benefit the research community in the long run, especially when the trend in everything is to be globalized through the use of the internet.  If research and knowledge sharing is still solely bound to textbooks and peer-reviewed journals, the rate of information being delivered could be slower than the rate of how things are changing – eLearning and technology is a great example, where data from studies that took 5 years to complete is now obsolete because of the new technology that’s been made available in within that time frame. By being more flexible and opening up other channels of knowledge sharing, information would be more relevant without necessary sacrificing reliability and credibility.

And to finish off my post, here is the link to FlyerTalk (one of my favorite forums). Enjoy!