My final blog

Now here is my last final blog. As mentioned before I joined the community psd-tutorials because of my interest in designing and digital painting. Before I joined psd-tutorials I was pretty sceptical, because I never thought much about joining a community. Although I am a member of several communities I would never have joined psd-tutorials without our community building lessons. But now, at the end of the module I will not delete my account because I find this community very useful.

So as you know now, I like psd-tutorials. But what I learned during analyzing communities is not what I experienced self. I can find useful information and inspiration but I do not feel like building up relationships to other member. My sister`s feelings and experiences I described before I cannot understand. Maybe this is because I am not long time enough a member or I did not participate actively enough. Psd-tutorials is a very big community and maybe it needs to take more time to become truly involved with other members.

To become a member on psd-tutorials was very easy. I just needed to fill in my nickname and password, got activation link and the registration was done. The participation was not that easy because after I signed in I could see that there are many members joining very actively. So I did not have a special question and most of the threats were already answered. Most of the questions are answered only a few minutes (mostly less than five) after asking them.

So in my last blog I can say I enjoyed becoming a member of psd-tutorials and I made some very interesting experiences during analyzing psd-tutorials. Because of my reflection, my talks to other people and reading blogs and texts about this topic I could learn a lot about communities and their meaning in the social web.

Development of communities

While talking about motivation of community members I already told you about my sister who is an active community user and my own experience about good behavior online.
As I met my sister yesterday she told me about her community. Now, a few weeks before Christmas they are organizing an action, in Germany we call it “wichteln”. Everybody who wants to join can answer a questionnaire about his/hers preferences, interests and hobbies. This is sent to another member who filled in this questionnaire and for this user one has to buy a small present.
“Wichteln” is a tradition that many people in Germany do. This shows how behavior on online communities is adapted from behavior in the physical world.

Social Media

As we all learned during the lesson we know that communities consist of social media elements. I found an interesting link about the evolution of social media, maybe it gives you some useful background information.

http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/10/the-history-and-evolution-of-social-media/

Usability on psd-tutorials

The usability on psd- tutorials definitively could be better. After joining I felt a bit lost, because there is no welcome, with an explanation of tools or other things you can do.
Because psd-tutorials is a pretty big community with many subcategories a explanation at the beginning would be pretty helpful.
The first things you see on the startpage of the community are buttons with actual contests. I will come later back to the point contest. Although I think this is a funny and interesting aspect of the community I would not put it on the front page.

Meaning of a Community

While participating in a community I recognize that many people adapt the “rules” of the physical world also to the online world.
So one example: I read today a new thread where a member asked a question about how he can reach a special result with Photoshop. This user signed in yesterday and from his status we can see that this was his first posts. He did not get immediately an answer. Another community member rebuked him for not introducing himself and greeting the other members.
As I read this it became clear to me that the online world is not as anonymous and impersonal as it often seems. People who are participating in a community do well appreciate a bland and respectful behavior.

One more link….

I already posted this blog in general, but here is one more interesting link you may profit from while building your own community.

http://www.communityspark.com/95-things-i-have-learnt-in-9-years-of-community-building/

What do people like on online communities?

As mentioned before I never thought much about online communities. Now while I´m participating for a while in the community psd- tutorials I start enjoying it. I already found many interesting information that were really useful for me and my design work.

While we were discussing in our team about how we could motivate people to participate I recognized a difference. On psd- tutorials people talk about their hobbies, their common interests. This is a big difference to our communities, where we want people to talk about their own problems and very personal subjects. While my sister were busy with organizing her wedding she joined a community weddix.de to find tips about a perfectly organized day. Now more than two months after the wedding she still participates in the community daily. Now she sometimes gives tips to futural brides, but most of the time she posts in off-topic threads.
I asked her why and she gave me the following answers:

- In your own environment not everybody has the same interests at the same time (wedding). This was the reason why she signed in in the community.
- She is still a member, because she met there people she is regularly in contact with
- The Community growed and has now many subcommunities. It startet only about weddings but now there are also topics like honeymoon, building houses, children, holidays, cooking, swine flue…
- It is another sphere talking with other members than meeting with real friends

I hope this information can be useful to you all, when you think about motivating people to become users in your community.