What kind of a platform user are you?
There are several kinds of platform users:
Sporadics visit social network from time to time, mainly to check if somebody contacted them.
Lurkers is the largest group, they do not create any content, but consume and spread the content created by other groups. They are also notable for a propensity to time-killing.
Socializers use social networks to communicate, make new friends, comment on photos of the old ones, post congratulation messages on walls etc.
Debaters are a more mature and educated version of socializers. Besides communication, less shallow than in the previous case, they are interested in consumption and discussion of news and other information available in social networks.
Actives are engaged with all possible types of activity: communication, reading, creating, watching, establishing groups.
What kind of a platform user are you?
sporadic
lurker
socializer
debater
active
0voters
Source: Anastasia Bezzubtseva & Dmitry Ignatov A Typology of Collaboration Platform Users
Cards on the table, I am skeptical of this from the start since it is type psychology, which I see as being somewhat better in predictive power than astrology.
Section 4.1 (Brandtzá´‚g and Heim (2010))
This appears to be where the 5 types of platform users were taken from. Section 4 is simply a review of previous attempts at typing internet users, and not necessarily representative of the opinions of the authors of “A Typology of Collaboration Platform Users”.
Section 5
Essentially what they appear to have done is assume that a certain three factors which correspond to readily available data exist, instead of deriving them via factor analysis. They then make a second assumption that the data points can be meaningfully grouped into types. If they can be grouped into types, that would seem suggest that the chosen axes are not orthogonal, which, if true, would undermine the entire foundation of the exercise: one needs to find axes of maximum orthogonality, not ones that seems suspiciously not so.
“For greater classification veracity the obtained clusters were modified: some of the grey, blue and green balls formed a new class of creators, the rest of the blue joined the grey cluster; also, some minor rearrangements were made.” (paper)
I can’t read this any way other than that they didn’t like the results that they got, so they fudged them a bit until they fit better with their preconceived notions of what a type system for collaboration platform users should look like.
Conclusion
So I don’t think this paper does anything to support the idea of Type Psychology in the first place, much less the five categories chosen for the poll.
I agree with you. I did not finish reading it for the same reasons you mention.
But I was curious how forum users would see themselves. Just picked one of the typologies, but could have used another one too.
A “something in between” choice is missing here methinks. Those choices are too restrictive. As far as I am concerned I am someone that sporadically visits topics (category 1), does not create much content (category 2), I tend to use the platform to communicate ( category 3) and once I bite into a topic and start a debate I am as easy to get rid off as a cartoon bear-trap (and one could add “and equally as pleasant” ) (category 4).
By my guess, most people ( here and elsewhere ) belong to multiple categories.
Fair enough then. I have no issues describing myself as an INTJ even though I think the FFM is superior to MBTI, because INTJ happens to be a shorthand that will mean something to a fair number of people, which does a decent job of ballparking my personality. I don’t mind using these sorts of things as communication tools, as long as noone overstates what they can do.
I decided to go with “active”, though I’m not sure I post enough for that. I guess as long as I have Regular status I can’t be too far off.
Ahh, the one problem that nothing, from Type Psychology to presidential polling has been able to solve: bias introduced from the wording/order of the questions/prompts.
INTJ is one of sixteen Types of the MBTI personality test. FFM stands for the Five Factor Model, also known as the Big 5, which is based on factor analysis.
) (category 4).
