Helping Hands: Design for Member-Maintained Online Communities
This thesis studies the design of member-maintained online communities, systems where many members help perform upkeep. A key design challenge is motivating members to contribute toward maintenance. Social science theories help to explain why people contribute to groups. We use these theories to design two general mechanisms for increasing people’s motivation to contribute.
http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~cosley/thesis/final.pdf