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One of the first internet communities I ever participated in was a forum of message boards
dedicated to HER Interactive's series of Nancy Drew computer games. Though the forum had
a few social spaces, it was predominately a site for users to help other users by answering
their game-related questions with hints or spoilers. Thus, this forum represented a DISCRETIONARY
DATABASE, a type of information public good consisting of shared information to which
individuals separately contributed. Game hints on the forum were open-source and non-exclusionary:
they were written by hundreds of geographically distributed, uncoordinated users, and relevant
advice could be created, perused, and solicited by anyone with an internet connection. The
variety of contributors made this website an example of a generalized exchange, where
exchanges of resources are many to many instead of one to one. Though the forum was open-source,
content creators on the website did not lack incentive to provide efficient, high-quality
support to other users in need. Beyond just a norm of reciprocity, where users help others
with the expectation they'll in turn be helped someday, users were motivated by reputation
and by commitment to group identity. Reputation was something quite literally awarded to helpful,
active users on the forum in the form of "rep points." The number of points you had accrued
communicated your reliability and history as a user, and lent you a higher status in
the community. Another motivating factor behind contributions was commitment to the sense
of community created by the group identity of "Nancy Drew fan." Some contributors were
so devoted to the source material that they derived intrinsic value from talking about
it and helping other fans. So even though each contribution to a discretionary database
benefits all users except the contributor who already has the information, contributors
were still motivated to create content because of these factors. If you came to the message
boards and posted because you were stuck in the middle of a Nancy Drew game, you were
likely to receive a helpful response in just a few minutes. Of course, for all of the users
who were directly contributing to the maintenance of communal forum information, there were
plenty of other users benefiting from its resources without posting any new information
of their own. Still, these free riders did not negatively impact the quality of the forum
because there was a large enough coalition of active users answering people's questions
and filling other content needs to counterbalance the free riders' inactivity. I had a great
run as a part of that active coalition, and it was a lot of fun to grow up in this part
of the internet!
