Lurker
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references (ideally, using inline citations). Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (January 2008) |
In Internet culture, a lurker is a person who reads discussions on a message board, newsgroup, chatroom, file sharing or other interactive system, but rarely if ever posts or participates.
Contents |
[edit] History
The term dates back to the mid-1980s. Because BBSs were often accessed by a single phone line (frequently in someone's home), there was an expectation that all who used a bulletin board would contribute to its content by uploading files and posting comments. Lurkers were viewed negatively, and might be barred from access by the sysop, if they did not contribute anything but kept the phone line tied up for extended periods.
By contrast, many modern Internet communities now advise newbies to lurk for some time to get a feel for the specific culture and etiquette of the community, lest they make an inappropriate or redundant comment, ask a Frequently Asked Question, or incite a flame war. This leads to the tongue-in-cheek command to "lurk more", often intentionally misspelled as "lurk moar". The verb to "de-lurk" means to start contributing actively to a community having been a lurker previously.
There are also some who lurk on a forum habitually, and rarely, if ever, contribute. It is generally difficult to guess how many such lurkers are present, due to their silence. In flame-wars, a participant who is losing an argument will sometimes claim to receive email support from lurkers. This inspired Jo Walton to write a filk on the subject entitled "The Lurkers Support Me in Email".[1]
Mopo.ca has the biggest percentage of lurkers of any forum on the web.[1] Mopo has over 43,000 users and 2% of them have ever made one post. Only 0.3% have made at least ten posts.
[edit] Ethical implications of lurking
Researchers who study online communities (e.g., Lindemann, 2005) grapple with the potential negative implications of lurking. Specifically, the act of lurking, or “completely unobtrusive observation” (Garcia, Standlee, Bechkoff, & Cui, 2009, p. 58) may allow individuals to gain an understanding into how individuals interact online by reading their posts or chats. However, if the researcher’s presence is detectable and individuals are able to see that someone is lurking rather than participating, they may feel that they are being spied on (Garcia et al., 2009). Additionally, ethical issues may be apparent if lurking researchers “harvest” (see Sharf, 1999) or take posts/entries featured in chatrooms/online journals without asking for the individual’s consent. As a result, individuals in online communities may feel that they are experiencing private interactions, but a lurker may see it as a public space for observation (Lindlof & Taylor, 2002).
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- Garcia, A. C., Standlee, A. I., Bechkoff, J., & Cui, Y. (2009). Ethnographic approaches to the internet and computer-mediated communication. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 38, 52-84.
- Lindemann, K. (2005). Live(s) online: Narrative performance, presence, and community in LiveJournal.com. Text and Performance Quarterly, 25, 354-372.
- Lindlof, T. R., & Taylor, B. C. (2002). Qualitative research and computer-mediated communication. In T. R. Lindlof, & B. C. Taylor (Eds.), Qualitative communication research methods (2nd ed., pp. 247-278). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
- Sharf, B. F. (1999). Beyond netiquette: The ethics of doing naturalistic discourse research on the Internet. In S. Jones (Ed.), Doing internet research (pp. 243-256). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
[edit] Further reading
- Blair Nonnecke and Jenny Preece (2003). "Silent participants: Getting to know lurkers better". in D. Fisher and Christopher Lueg. From Usenet to Co Webs: Interacting with social information spaces. Springer. pp. 110–132. ISBN 1852335327.
[edit] External links
- Participation Inequality: Lurkers vs. Contributors in Internet Communities - Article with several examples of the large percentage of users who lurk and guidelines for encouraging more participation.
- Lurkerking Tongue in cheek project tracking lurkers of various forums.
- Lurker is also the name of a Free mail archiving software.
|
|||||||||||||||||
