Final blog post

It was a fun and eye-opening experience for me to participate in an online community. Before i followed the module Community Building i was not really into only communities (i should have been though!).

It was easy to become a member in the community. The registering was simple and fast and i was immediatley able to become an active member. All functions became immediatley available for me as a newbie. It was kind of difficult though to participate in the community. Because i was new i did not have any 'friends' yet. When i was lurking on other users's profiles i saw that they were all pretty active and had a lot of friends. Which does prove that it is a real community, where people help eachother as often and as good as they can. Users have the same common ground; their passion lies in Cape Town.

Because i am planning to go to Cape Town for my final thesis, joining this community was an easy choice. When looking at it the first time i noticed that it was a big community with a lot of information. Whether it is about safety, food, accomodation, city trips everything can be found in there. And that is what i need! When this module is over i am sure that i will keep visiting the community to get more information.

When i posted my first question i got a respons within half an hour. Which was really fast. Within 2 hours i got a lot of answers which were really helpful. Because users respond that fast i kept checking it a few times a day. Because i don't know much about Cape Town myself and because i was looking for information my participation can be descriped as first a lurker and after a little time as active participant. I've posted questions, but i was not able to help others because i have little knowledge about Cape Town.

The organization of the community appeals to possess the same values as we have talked about in class. The moderation and ranking system is in my opinion good. Moderation is differentiaded in post-moderation and reactive moderation. Members become active moderators by giving them the opportunity to report inappropriate messages. Post-moderation is about the genre the post of a user is about. It has to be related to the kind of forum (there are 3 forums: Travel forum, Technical help forum and the Miscellaneous forum).

The ranking system is clear to everybody and ease to use. By just a simple thing as 'is this comment helpful' one can say if the comment was really useful or not. At the profile of the one who commented the result of the ranking can be seen immediatley. For more widespread information about the ranking system and moderation i want to refer to my previous blogposts.

The community generates money by giving experts and proffesionals the opportunity to become a member too and to track down and post the best travel deals from around the web. There is also a ranking for those kind of participants to see if they are really reliable and trustworthy. At what way the exactly generate money is not clear to me. I guess i have to search this part even more, but i was not looking for this kind of information.

During the seven weeks i was participating in the Cape Town Travel Guide i have learned a lot, i've experienced the advantages of a community myself and i am sure i am going to keep participating in the community. And not only about online communities i have learned a lot, but also about blogging!

* When i am going to manage it to do my final thesis in Cape Town you can follow my experiences on this blog!
I hope to keep you updated in february

Twittering word of the year

Twittering (in Dutch: twitteren) is the new word of the year in the Netherlands!

Check out the whole artical.

Moderation

Because we have talked about moderation in class last week i was curious how the Cape Town Travel Guide handles this. So i went looking for different kind of moderation in this community.

In the forum, by forummessages, there is this link"Report Advertising or Inapproriate Posting". Which you can click on by every message that is posted. To relate to the class Niels gave: this is an example of Reactive Moderation in a community. Users will spot something 'bad' quickly and can alert the moderators by clicking on this link. ( I wanted to know what the message would be when you click this link. But i couldn't because i couldnt find an inapprorate message).

When you want to post a question or if you want to reply, there are several messages in the header of the website. "* This Forum is for asking Travel Related Questions Only. All other postings will be removed.". This means that when you go off topic fe your post will be removed. This is an example of Post Moderation. Every post has to be read and checked by the moderator to see if the post is really relative to travel related questions.

The Cape Town Travel Guide community uses a combination of different kind of moderation. Which i think are good! I think they chose the best ways of moderation. In advantage of the users and the moderators themselves.

Ranking

Last week i have posted my question on the forum and after only half an hour i got a respons. It was really useful and the forum gives the opportunity to decide wether the comment was useful or not. When i clicked the button 'i think this tip was helpful' i got the message that my vote has been registered. But where is it registered to? Does this relate to the rating a person has?

There are three different kind of rankings:

1. VT rank: Your VT Rank is your overall rank as a tip maker and travel forum helper, within the VT community. Your rank is based solely on the ratings that your tips, and travel forum replies receive. While ratings and rank are mostly a fun, semi-serious way to interact with VT friends and to chart your progress, they also help to give a rough indication of where you might be likely to find helpful information. Additionally, it gives a thumbs up to great community members for sharing tips and helping others in the forum.

2. Deals rank: These top ranked members track down and post the best travel deals from around the web.

3. Rookie rank: A Rookie Rank is given to members who joined VT less than a year ago. 'Rookie' is a term usually used in sports that refers to a new player who is in this first year of the league. VT Members can have both a Rookie Rank and an overall VT Rank.

The formula of succes

"Would you like for me to give you a formula for success? It's quite simple, really: Double your rate of failure. You are thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn't at all. You can be discouraged by failure, or you can learn from it. So go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because remember, that's where you will find success. "

This is something totally different, but i think it is useful and good to know for all students (actually for anyone). I came across this sentence when i was learning for my other module, Entrepreneurship. And i wanted to share this with you.

Forum

The Cape Town Travel Guide forum is something i did not checked out yet. The forum is categorized in three main forums

1. Travel forum: for questions about the travelling to a certain place or country
2. Technical help forum: for when you have technical issues
3. Miscellaneous forum: for off topic conversations

I like the way the categorized the forum, there is exactly described why they exist and what you can do in each forum. The Travel forum seemed most appealing to me, so i checked this out..

A lot of questions are going on in my head about Cape Town. I don't have a place to do my final thesis yet. The business 4exchange is still searching for a place. But because i can't control it myself i just have to wait. Which i hate! Maybe someone in the forum can help me or give me some useful tips. So i posted this question on the forum. It was really easy to post the question and i had to option to get an e-mail when the first comment was posted. Thats handy! It looked really organized and simple. I think everyone who can use the internet can use this forum. I wonder when i get the first comment..

The forum

About ranking and moderation of the forum i will tell something in one of my next blogs about the Cape Town Travel Guide.