The IBMPC computer conferencing facility of late 1989 bears little resemblance to the IBMPC computer conferencing facility of late 1981. What started as a simple and fairly informal mechanism for sharing information among a few dozen participants has evolved into a complex organism involving a broad range of formal and informal conventions, tens of thousands of contributors and perhaps 100,000 readers. The dynamic changes that have shaped the facility are not accidental, but they are hardly the result of a design process that anticpated the uses to which the facility would be put or the problems that would arise. They are, more often, iterative, and often independently developed, solutions to the problems that were encountered as IBMPC developed.
Where, for instance, insufficient numbers of shadows were a problem, as was the case in 1986 when not having access to a shadow was the number one problem people had in using IBMPC, a solution was found in the creation of additional IBMPC shadows. The solution is apparently a successful one. Only two individuals report the problem in the 1988 survey).
When complaining about the behavior of others in the middle of forums was a problem on IBMPC (reported by 10 respondents to question 86 of the 1986 survey), other solutions were found. A first incomplete solution was found in banning of meta-discussion from IBMPC forums. A second and more effective solution was found in the creation of meta-forums. These solutions hardly eliminated complaining (four respondents still report the problem in 1988) but they do channel such complaining away from other forums. Isolation of meta-discussion to meta-forums makes it easier for those IBMPC participants who dislike or have no time for such discussion to avoid it, thus reducing the extent of the problem.
Other changes in the conduct of discussion on IBMPC have had similar effects on the perception of problems on IBMPC. Of fourteen problems reported repeatedly in 1986, at least four appear to be much less severe in 1988. The increasing experience level and improving user interfaces to IBMPC appear to have decreased the need for a better user manual or tutorial. The movement of older information to the IBMPC archive, the availability of APPEND MODIFY, and increasing use of answers files appears to have increased the overall quality of information on the facility. Additional growth on IBMPC seems to have dashed any hope of reading everything on the facility, but user front ends that enable selective reading of IBMPC appears to have reduced the problem of information overload.
| Problem | 1986 reports | 1988 reports | |
| no local shadow of IBMPC | 12% | 1% | |
| quality of information | 10% | 3% | |
| information overload | 11% | 4% | |
| complaining | 8% | 2% | |
| user interface | 10% | 5% | |
| need a user tutorial or manual | 5% | 1% | |
| corporate nonuse of IBMPC | 3% | 1% | |
| keyword search | 11% | 8% | |
| tight reviewing | 8% | 6% | |
| no forum summary | 3% | 2% | |
| U.S./world differences | 2% | ||
| poor organization | 3% | 5% | |
| network speed | 8% | 10% | |
| finding things | 11% | 15% | |
| using the archive | 5% | ||
| unrestrained discussion | 8% | 27% | |
IBMPC appears to have improved somewhat in other areas as well. Direct use of IBMPC by IBM's product and marketing divisions has become increasingly obvious in both reports on IBMPC BENEFITS and in the direct participation of product representatives. Hence the perception, in 1986, that IBM hasn't make good use of the facility has both diminished and changed by 1988. Concerns in 1986 centered on IBM's failure to make use of IBMPC to build better products. Concerns in 1988 are that IBMPC isn't used enough by high level executives and isn't included as a part of new employee training.
A marked increase in the number and quality of forum following tools has had a similar effect. The number of people reporting user interface problems has decreased and the nature of complaints has changed. Users in the 1986 survey were likely to report that there was no good interface. Reports in the 1988 survey generally acknowledged that there were good user interfaces, but:
Three of the problems reported in 1986 are little changed in 1988. There is no guide to the forums on IBMPC (a forum summary). Hence the lack of a forum summary is reported as a problem by about the same number of people in each survey. Although there have been experiments with keyword search capabilities on some facilities, IBMPC still lacks a formal keyword search engine. Hence the number of people reporting this as a problem is about the same in each survey. Except for the use of meta-forums to facilitate feedback from participants (a practice already in place in 1986), the practice of administrating IBMPC has changed very little since 1985. Hence the number of people complaining about tight reviewing practices is about the same in both surveys.
Four of the problems reported in the 1986 survey apparently grow worse in the 1988 survey. Two entirely new problems appear in 1988, moreover. The new problems arise from changes on IBMPC. Vastly increased international participation on IBMPC changes, if not the perception of differences in the way IBM treats its U.S. and non-U.S. components, differences in the acceptability of such differences. The nature of this perceived difference varies. One participant complains that information on IBMPC is often too specific to the United States (Employee prices for PC's are a highly specific example, but the simply unavailability of many U.S. software packages in Europe is a more general and serious one). This latter problem is reflected in a second complaint (from two respondents) about the rules governing an IBM product software distribution disk, PCPROD, which is available only within the U.S..
The addition of the IBMPC archive as a store for older information creates a second new problem. The archive is apparently difficult to use and slow in returning requested information. The slowness of the archive in returning information reflects a more general problem, moreover: that of the speed of VNET in distributing messages around the company. The nature of network speed problems changes between 1986 and 1988. 1986 respondents were likely to complain about how appends would arrive out of sequence because of network speed problems. Standardization of all appends to Greenwich mean time solved such problems, at least at shadows of IBMPC. Hence the increased number of 1988 complaints about network speed frequently noted how long it could take for an append to make the circuit from an appender to IBMPC to a local shadow.
The organization of information on IBMPC was also an increasingly difficult problem in 1988, with twice as many respondents citing poor organization as a problem on IBMPC (a fairly important increase even when the larger number of 1988 respondents is considered). A related measure, finding things, is also cited as a problem by almost twice as many respondents. There are changes in the nature of complaints about this latter measure. 1986 respondents frequently cited the need for subject lines in appends. The automation of subject lines in many IBMPC front ends eliminated this suggestion from 1988 reports, but the increasingly frequent movement of older material to the IBMPC archive makes it much harder to find older appends, even when appenders know what forum the desired material exists in.
The biggest problem in 1988, however, is unrestrained discussion. Over one quarter (47 out of 177) of all 1988 respondents report "long discussions that beat a dead horse" (1988 respondent 3) and "discussions that run amok, either in trivia or emotional diatribes" (1988 respondent 11) as a big problem on IBMPC. Less than 10% (10 out of 122) of 1986 respondents report such discussions as being a problem. The source of the remarkable increase in reports of this as a problem is not clear. It would not appear, with complaints about reviewing at about the same levels, that this problem is the result of looser reviewing practices. Neither does it appear that, with both information overload and information quality reports on the decline, that it is directly related to either of these existing problems.
It may be that, with other problems of IBMPC resolved, that the unrestrained discussion of some issues has moved to the top of many lists of problems. This may be the result of changes in the way people use IBMPC. With many more people using IBMPC in 1988, it may be that many recent users of IBMPC tend to approach it more functionally. It may also be that the novelty of computer conferencing based discussion has worn off. Experienced users of IBMPC may be repulsed by the seventh appearance of a topic that inevitably attracts endless discussion.
A more likely explanation can be found, perhaps, in the changing patterns of interaction on IBMPC. No participant on IBMPC reads everything anymore, but there are some forums on IBMPC that grow so fast, often through repetitive and sometimes trivial interaction, that following even the one forum can be a problem. Some forums on IBMPC grow consistently at a rate of up to 5000 lines (four or five copies of this chapter) a week. Following these forums, which frequently have several threads (topics) interweaved at any given time can be difficult, especially when some of the threads are uninteresting. It is simple, given existing forum following tools, for most IBMPC participants to avoid forums that are relatively uninteresting. It is more difficult for participants to avoid uninteresting threads of discussion in forums they are interested in.
Solutions to the problems of unrestrained discussion may be difficult to come by. Hard line termination of discussions when forum owners and/or IBMPC reviewers think they are repetitive or overlong can only be accomplished at a cost of an increasing perception of tight reviewing practice. A better solution might be found in improving forum-following tools to automatically skip over the remainder of a thread at the request of the reader. Experiments in this direction are underway, however, both in FORASUMM, which allows a user to read appends selectively on the basis of the subject line, and FORASKIP, which allows readers to selectively skip past various subject matter. It should be interesting so see what, if any, effect these tools have on perceptions of this problem.
What is interesting, for most of the cases cited, is that the problems with computer conferencing, at least on IBMPC, have been a moving target. The most important problem in 1986 is not a problem in 1988. Another six of the remaining fourteen 1986 problems are apparently less of a problem in 1988, and the nature of several of those problems has changed in the interim. Of the remaining seven 1986 problems, only four grow worse in 1988, and at least two (unrestrained discussion and tight reviewing) may only be reduced in severity by increasing the severity of the other.
It would appear, moreover, that it is in the nature of these problems to be moving targets. It is common, for instance, to see problems stated as desired solutions. Many users in both surveys cite "finding things" as a problem. Many others cite "no keyword search", where keyword search is effectively a solution to the problem of finding things, as a problem. There are several examples of such "need this solution" statements of problems in the surveys, including "no shadows" (I need a shadow here), "no forum summaries" (IBMPC should have a summary of forum contents), and "user interface" (IBMPC needs a better user interface). It may be that the treatment of problems less as problems than potential solutions which, if implemented, would make the problem go away, is fundamental to the process of using media.
The apparent validity of this hypothesis on IBMPC is clear not only in the responses to the 1986 and 1988 IBMPC user surveys, but in the everyday conduct of IBMPC. Bids for rules on IBMPC are rarely stated as problems so much as solutions. When an appender to SENSITIV FORUM bid to ban multiline append epilogues (a multiline signature, somewhat akin to a postscript in a letter, which frequently contains information unrelated to the append it terminates), the discussion didn't start with a complaint about trivial content on IBMPC and requests for ways to reduce it. The discussion started with an attack on append epilogues and a proposal to ban them as a waste of valuable disk space.
Similar patterns of interaction can be found repeatedly in SENSITIV FORUM and other meta-forums on IBMPC. Hence it may be that problems are most frequently recognized in an awareness of their solutions.
This last point may be something of a universal. The inability to interact in real time with a distant other has almost certainly been a problem for as long as people have been aware of distant others. Whole wars have been fought in prior centuries over issues that might have been settled with a five minute telephone conversation. Lacking any practical way to accomplish such magic, however, it is doubtful that many people even thought about their inability to communicate in real time with distant others. They simply accepted what means of communication were available. Once the telephone was invented, however, perceptions undoubtedly changed rapidly, and there have doubtless been many people who have, at one time or another since, lamented their lack of a telephone.
This kind of innovation based paradigm shift certainly appears to have occurred on IBMPC. It required the possibility of shadows for the lack of a shadow to become a common lament. It required the possibility of automatic keyword search for keyword search to become a commonly requested feature. It required an awareness of user interfaces for IBMPC's user interface to become a commonly perceived problem.
For those problems that do not admit ready solution, it is often the case that conflicting problems must somehow be balanced. Unrestrained discussion may be regarded as a problem by some. Restraints on discussion may be regarded as a problem by others. It may be impossible to find a middle ground that satisfies the desires of both communities. Indeed, critics of unrestrained discussion may well disagree about what constitutes an unrestrained discussion and when a given discussion should be terminated.
It is important, when identifying the problems of a medium, to examine the problem for alternative sources. It is currently fairly common, for instance, to assign a certain addictiveness to computer conferencing (Hiltz and Turoff, 1978; Kerr and Hiltz, 1983; and others) and computer mediated communication. It may easily be the case, however, that computer conferencing is simply an effective means of communication. It may be that people who do a lot of computer conferencing do so because the medium is effective for their purposes.
One might easily argue that computer conferencing is no more addictive than mystery novels, telephone conversations, or face to interaction. A person might easily spend a great deal of time doing each, and the judgement of what the person was doing would depend a great deal on the context in which the judgement is made. The wife of an individual who spends a great deal of time reading mystery novels to the detriment of their relationship might easily judge that the individual is addicted to mystery novels. The literature instructor of an individual who spends a great deal of time on mystery novels might be much more complimentary. A teenager who spends two hours a day on the telephone might be judged as addicted. A business executive or salesman who spends two hours a day on the telephone might just as easily be regarded as effective. Although one rarely hears about individuals addicted to face to face communication, it remains the case that we typically spend more time in face to face situations than in any other.
It may, then, be the case that the assignment of addictiveness to computer conferencing may be nothing more than a thinly-disguised value judgement. It is certainly the case that no respondent to either the 1986 or 1988 surveys listed addictiveness as a problem with IBMPC, even in the face of rapidly growing personal use of computer conferencing (more on this in a coming chapter).
The possibility of solving the problems of computer conferencing leads to an inherent instability. Today's problems with computer conferencing may have little to do with tomorrow's problems. If recognition of a problem does not always follow from recognition of a possible solution, it certainly proceeds from the desire for a solution. This strongly contrasts with the relationship of a medium's users to that medium's benefits. The benefits of a medium are desirable. Users will attempt to maintain the perceived benefits of a medium for as long as they remain perceived benefits. The problems with a medium are undesirable. Users will attempt to reduce the problems of media to whatever extent they can. If, moreover, the problems are severe enough, users may opt for the ultimate solution of not using the medium.
It can be expected, then, that the benefits of a medium like computer conferencing may be more stable and easier to recognize that the problems of that medium. A statement of benefits may well prove accurate years later, altered only by the addition of newly discovered benefits. A statement of problems, by contrast, can, as was the case here, change substantially over a fairly short period of time. This short chapter documents sixteen such problems, several of them clearly transient. The chapters that preceded it have documented many more, all solved to some extent by better conferencing tools, specific genres of interaction, and formal and informal rules.