Evaluation

Hi everybody,

I guess this module is over again and there is only one thing left to do on this blog. I have to write an evaluation on my participation in the tv community. So that's what this blog is all about. Enjoy! :)

While searching for a community to join I had a hard time to think of something. Youtube wasn't interesting enough, Facebook I was already active on. One community I am a member in for about 10 years now, it is the oldest online community in the Netherlands called www.clubs.nl. I even pay for it. But because I'm a member for 10 years now, I didn't think there would be much I could find out about it anymore. So I chose another community. Because I'm a tv show freak it seemed like a good choice to find a community that involved tv shows and other addicts like myself. A community that I was already lurking on once in a while was www.tv.com. It has a database with much info about tv shows, but it also has a community part. So that was what made me want to join.

What made participating easy was that registering was really simple, you only had to fill in a couple of things to get an account. Or, even easier: connect with your facebook account so you didn't even have to register at all. When you were registered participating was fairly easy because on every page you could leave a review, give your opinion, rate the show, rate an episode, write content etc. So there were many things to participate in the community, even a forum.

What made it very difficult to participate is that the site was mostly deserted. I didn't know this before I joined the site, but I soon found out that there was almost no activity at all. When I went to the forum after a new episode of a cool show, there was nobody there to discuss with. All topics that were there were old and from episodes that aired months ago. When I wrote a review about a show there was no response, only two or three ratings about it being a good or a bad review.

I went back to this site because although it was deserted, I sometimes wanted to look up information about the shows, give some ratings about an episode and see if somebody else shared my opinion. Information was always there, because the big broadcasters would add it themselves.. I guess somebody has to do it, if the fans don't do it, they do it themselves. I also went back to the site if I was falling behind on downloading shows to see which one was the last one I saw by reading the summaries. By looking at the episode number I knew which one to download. (Downloading is legal in the Netherlands by the way.. ;) )

I was mostly a lurker on the site, which I had been for years now. The only thing that changed is that I was now a registered user. It's not that I didn't try to be an active member. If I like something very much I can be really active.. and even for years if I get the chance. But being an active member on this site was so hard! It's like everybody says: nobody wants to eat in an empty restaurant. And that is so true! I want to post a review and know it's being read. I want to participate in a forum and have a conversation with fans. But there was almost nobody there so what is left to do then? Yeah nothing left but lurking around. So that's what I did while sometimes leaving a comment or a rating.

The community used to be a non profit database site where people could enter all the things they knew about shows and episodes. Then it was taken over by a big tv broadcaster in the US that redesigned the site. Still the purpose is that fans actively enter content, but if they don't one of the moderators that have info about episodes just enter it to fill the site. You can't see who are the moderators on the site. Reactive moderation is used on the site. When you for example open user written reviews there are thumbs up and down buttons, but also a report abuse button. I also assume that moderation is paid because CBS is the owner of the site and they can't risk bad moderators leaving inappropriate content on the site so they get a bad name.

The site is very commercial. There are ads everywhere. Also it is noticeable that the content for CBS shows is always up-to-date. The main purpose is show enough clips and episodes of shows to get more viewers. There's a lot of money that's been put into this site and it shows. It is clear that they want to make money, preferably by getting viewers for their own tv shows.

I would improve the community by getting more people to the site and actively trying to get them out of the lurker stadium. The level system they use doesn't seem rewarding on this site, there is nothing valuable to unlock so why bother levelling? Maybe it would work better if you had to unlock things by levelling up. I would assign moderators to the forum that have a couple of shows that they are following so they can start topics and interact with people.

It definately is a promising community, but like I said before.. nobody wants to eat in an empty restaurant.. and that's too bad.

And this was everything I had to say about the community evaluation.

This was also my last blogpost for now..

BYE! :D thanks for reading! :)