User:OrenBochman/WGT/Social Roles

A Catalog of Social Roles

Wikipedians can occupy different social roles. Work on Usenet and other communities have indicated that social roles of different community members of virtual communities can change over time. On Wikipedia with its many coordination spaces it is entirely possible for one person to occupy different social roles.

Below is an attempt to catalog these roles and identify their

1. a functional definitions
2. network structure indicators
3. game theoretic indicators (to be added)
4. linguistic clues to power see bellow

By looking at SNA and Linguistics one hopes to produce a language independent methodology.

I also theorize that looking at actions of adding and removing sentiment from text is an indicator of emotional value worth investigating.

Information Roles

Information roles are :

1. Censor - reduces information contents

1. Creator - add new information

1. Mover - moves info around and rephrases

Leader Roles

Leadership roles require exercising power and providing leadership. Leadership also requires sharing of power and delegating responsibility as the community grows. The top issues with leadership roles are therefore:

1. providing leadership
2. exercising power
3. continuity, where the exists a failure to transfer the leader's role as the project matures.
4. stepping aside - good leaders let go of power once this is beneficial to their project.

Name	functional def	SNA	affect	Social Indexicality
Absent Leader	inactivity will correlate with a decline in the project.	Strong correlation of leader activity with the production of people who interact with him.	negative
Admin	gains power though elevated access	Will initiate admin action. (Block,Ban,Page Protection, etc - ) Will be asked to do the above.	neutral
Benevolent Dictator	the originator whose benevolence prevets forking but does not pass on the role	Project Centrality, Inner Centrality, Eigenvector Centrality	neutral
Elder	Ex Celebrity who contributes less but has the community's respect.	Ego network ratio of edit to talk has changed over time from edit to communicate. Communication is based on Questions	positive
First Servant	Leads by example, eschews power.		positive
God King	excessive use of authority	will have an admin actions than request	negative
Role Model	teaches by example	zero or low ratio of admin action events to leadership events	positive

Some questions:

• how do we characterize leadership events.
• how do we characterize admin events. Can we score and correlate them based on incoming requests ?

Hero Role

Heroes are the role assigned to core community members. Heros can become leaders. The issues of hero roles are: recognition, aspirations, ownership.

Header text	functional def	SNA	affect	Social Indexicality
UnsungHero Wiki-gnome	make many small edits c.f. substansive role below	small uncontroversial edits on many unrelated articles pages; alters are many and disconnected, minimal need for talk	positive
AttentionSeeker	require recognition	unlike gnomes will have more action on talk pages	negative
BuildingJanitor	an admin prototype for an admin		positive
Celebrity	highly visible prolific contributor (core contributor)		positive
RoleModel			positive
VestedContributor	inflated sense of ownership, which may lead to unnecessary conflict		negative
WikiMaster			positive

Community Role

• Lurker
• Newby
• VisitorRole
• GuestRole
• CommunityMember
• ModeratorRole
• HostRole
• DeveloperRole

Communication Role

• ContentRole
• TheAudience
• AuthorRole
• ReviewerRole
• EditorRole
• ProducerRole

InterWiki Role

• RefugeeRole
• GateKeeper
• BoundarySpanner (GluePeople)

Eccentric Role

• CourtJester
• FringeArtist
• AntiAuthoritarian
• Trolls
  • UsurperTroll
  • SpoilSportTroll
• Spammer
• HyenaRole
• EccentricCharacter
• ArthurStace
• VestedTroubleMaker - can get away with bending rule but is not part of a cabal (has no mutual defence pact, cannot influence the hiveMind etc)
• Biter - Bites new-comers (or old timers)
• VandalFighter
• AnonymousDonor unregistered user (long tail)
• KnowItAll
• RecordKeeper
• PoliceForce/VigilanteJustice

DiscussionRoles

• DevilsAdvocate
• Wiki:JustaStudent
• ColdBlanket
• DramaticIdentity feature:negative individual speaking "for an entity".
• FlameWarrior
• Ranter
• Answer person
• Question persons
• Dicussion person
• Discussion catalyst

note: network dynamics imply that there would be ratios between certain roles. For example an answer person will need many question persons.

events of interest

events are best organized as parts of games between two or more people.

• ham spam game:
  • article creation
  • article deletion nomination.
  • spamming
  • spam/vandal fighting

• communication games -
• Q&A Game
  • question
  • response
• Conversation Thread game
  • new thread
  • respond old player
  • respond new player
  • end thread

• Coordination games (consensus
  • consensus
  • no consensus vote

Other concepts

• right to leave
• peer pressure
• fun factor

Machiavellianism and other Psychological Factors

High Mechs will learn to work the system. In interacting with different social roles - they will learn how to manipulate these people to get their way. Some of these insights are available in the MeatBall web site. E.g.

• It could be using a policy to shutting down objections.
• It could be getting another person contribute (edit/research) 80% to their 20% work.

SNA definition

• Some Social roles can be observed directly in SNA visualization.
• Others may be possible to extract using algorithms.

The above lists include "functional" social roles, are their SNA based social roles that are non functional. Of interest are the their parallels can be extracted via SNA.

• whole Web net can expose leader roles.
• Motif and Motif rations in an ego web.
• Motif and Motif ratios in an ego web.

Lexical Analysis of Social Relations

1. a Linguistic/Ethnographic indicators.
   • metalinguistic words and expressions:
     • metasemantic definitions: (X is a Y; X means a Y).
     • metapragmatic events of language use (X ordered/insulted/teased me). - using verbs of speaking
   • grammaticality judgments.
   • capturing etiquette lapses (are these indicative of social standing) - ask DDG about these.
   • capturing mixed signals e.g (hyper politeness and contempt)indicating veiled aggression
   • can a speech between two different social roles - embodying different levels of the social hierarchy be differentiated. Are there discrepancy. Is there censure for exceeding your one's social standing.
   • are there performative formulas for establishing indexical equality in speech. Are these formulas effective means for manipulating the empowered to comply with the wishes if the proletariat

Indexical Analysis:

1. • look at deictic expressions: pronouns, anaphora, demonstratives, markers of tense, mood and modality and where they collapse the axes of denotation and interaction.
   • Identify the zero point defaults or origo of reckoning: -
     • I; me; my; to me; we, us, our, to us; you, your,to you; here, there; now, then; hither, thither; this, that
     • here, and now. This is a moving reference point relative to the rest of the sentence
   • Look at pronouns to recover the referent.
     • which - directs the previous context for who the speaker, hearer, etc are
     • that - directs to the circumstance of the utterer.
   • Look at denotational variables:
   • referents (entities).
   • predicates (Qualities and relations of entities).
   • propositions (state of affairs predicated entities).

this suggest the performative game where in an initial asymmetrical situation one side tries to force a symmetrical mode of communication

this type of analysis - requires parsing of the sentence, identifying verb valence, and resolving the deictic references used in each slot. (Pragmatical resolution)

the deictic selectivity of propositional acts shapes interpersonal realities by establishing a link between denotational and interactional variables.

Algorithm to identify the degree of specificity of an utterance.

1. look at and annotate:

• interrogative mood
• definiteness of determiners
• past tense

1. enumerate specific nodes with +; unspecific with - and non deictic cats with () i.e. neutral

With tight linkage the propositional act shapes the interaction. When the linkage is loose, the content appears to transcend the moment when the act was made. Looseness can create generic laws, contracts, commitments, stereotypical politeness

Role fractions of speaker:

• Animator - one who physically produces the current utterance.
• Principal - one held responsible for utterance propositional content.
• Author - one held responsible for utterance wording.
• Figure - persona performed through the act of utterance.

Algorithm to identify the degree of modalization and explicit performative locution.

1. look at and annotate each predicate with +/- for each feature:
   • interrogative mood.
   • past tense.
   • passive voice.
   • perfective aspect.

speech chain transmission:

... [S->R] [S->R] [S->R] [S->R] ...
        +--+  +---+  +---+ 
     --------------------------> time
   
S:= sender
R:= receiver

speech chains form networks.

Registers

• A semiotic register: a register where language use is not the only type of

sign-behavior modeled, and utterance not the only modality of action. A register of discourse is a special case.

• Enregisterment: processes whereby performable signs become recognized (and regrouped) as belonging to distinct register by a population.

can we identify different registers in a population.