Making Seed accessible to Newcomers
Buzz
Newcomers need a hooking association with something they have seen: e.g. “live wiki”
It will be a good idea for these words to be part of the description of the platform:
Welcome to Ethosfera’s Seed! Our Live Wiki where you can read, comment, link live documents, and collaborate with Ethosfera!
We need a simple way to communicate to Newcomers how to use Ethosfera’s Seed
Why?
Spain is not the biggest market for Notion (notion has a similar structure to peer production communities)
Caveat for sources: limited information (likely inaccurate because it wants a paid account before displaying more); websites use a proxy variable: track the traffic on Notion, instead of another more precise metric
Obsidian is even more professionalized and interface-heavy, so if Spanish users have limited exposure to Notion, they will likely not have had any to Obsidian
Point: Users might know of such platforms, but they will likely have a hard time getting used to its functions!
Idea: create graphics (better if moving) that tell any user how to use the platform
Engaged Community
Labeling Comments
Deliberative Platform Design: The case study of the online discussions in Decidim Barcelona: studied how designs can nudge better online deliberations
Conversation Threading (commenting on documents and reply to comments)
Comments Labeling
Marking interface so it allows the user to “label” or “flag” their comment - creates more engagement
Potential labels: question, objection (negative comments lead to more deliberation), clarification, source request, supporting evidence, related idea, suggested edit, summary, other (free text)
Opportunities to also reply to other comments on the document
App/Email Notifications
Increasing Participation in Peer Production Communities with the Newcomer Homepage: talked about activation, retention, and productivity
Developed suggestions for retention: more retention came from meaningful edits/contributions that keep the user engaged → i.e. the more edits we can make them do in 24 h, the greater the likelihood they will return
Concrete suggestions
Feedback loops: app/email notifications → “someone responded to your comment”
Contributor recognition (continued in "Like Systems/Comment "Picks')
Community-specific reason to return: app/email notification that someone posted a document - e.g. "A New Document was Added on Ethosfera"
Email/App notifications can include a suggestion to what enhanced features you get when you become a Seed member: “Did you know you can post your own documents free of charge and collaborate with Ethosfera? Become a Member now and try this feature!”
Hooking Newcomers after the first 24 hours of their first comment is key for their retention. First app/email notification must be well-timed.
More Extensive Tutorial for “Hard-Core” Members
Increasing Participation in Peer Production Communities with the Newcomer Homepage: discussed the marginal benefits of a Newcomer Homepage that explained more extensively how editing in Wikipedia works
Lead to a small percentage increase in the likelihood of “activation” (i.e. people start contributing, not jus reading)
We can develop our own version of a Newcomer Homepage which explains in greater details:
Benefits of commenting
Linking articles
Citing
Posting on your own Seed
Collaborating with Ethosfera so your own document can be visible to Ethosfera Seeders
Rationale: Extensive explanations might drift away casual readers who are “about” to try out the comment feature for the first time (the paper mentions these findings in discussing the risks of a “pop-up” disruption). Members are likely more deeply invested and would like to learn the full palette of features that Seed can offer
The first members will be guests in past in-person Forums who we can reach out to. Through their consecutive Forum attending, we can infer they likely think of themselves as part of the “Ethosfera family.” Thus, they would be more patient, more eager to engage, and will have a higher probability of retention than a casual reader.
Like Systems/Comment “Picks”
Highlighting High-quality Content as a Moderation Strategy: The Role of New York Times Picks in Comment Quality and Engagement found in 2022 that comment “picks” by the moderators under politically charged news publications in NYT, lead to more fruitful deliberations
Rationale: Corporate Wiki Users: Results of a Survey studied that one of the reasons why corporations use “inside” wikis is if they believe it increases their credibility. Thus, if Ethosfera’s Seed maintains a highly professionalized image, with thoughtful contributing comments, our retention rate will be higher. A way to signal what is a “good,” or “thoughtful”, or “professional” contribution could be through picks
Community Guidelines
(similar to those of subreddits)
A set of rules on what the expectations of the community is, central goal + a code of conduct
Point: professional + the space to explain the Chatham House Rules that Ethosfera follows.
Communicating Safety
Currently, to make a Seed account, the only safety feature to ensure ownership of the account is the passkey which requires biometrics
Despite the fact that there is an option to learn more about how “passkey” functions, said information is linked to a lengthy (but informative) page on GitHub
To decrease the likelihood of newcomers being deterred (fearing for how their data is processed), we could add a brief notification when the user is about to create their passkey: “Seed Hypermedia does not store your biometric information.” and add one more sentence that simplifies the process of how Seed uses said data. Suggestions: only your local device stores your data; Seed uses an encrypted version, etc.
The link to GitHub should be kept for access to further and more detailed information, but the summarized/disclaimer version could be added for informing less tech-savvy users
We should discuss the possibility that mentioning of biometrics at all could deter more users than deterring less
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