=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-2390/PaperD1
|storemode=property
|title=What do the Founders of Online Communities Owe to their Users?
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2390/PaperD1.pdf
|volume=Vol-2390
|authors=Cathy Chua,Manny Rayner
}}
==What do the Founders of Online Communities Owe to their Users?==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2390/PaperD1.pdf
What do the Founders of Online Communities Owe to their Users?
Cathy Chua1 , Manny Rayner2
(1) Independent researcher
(2) Geneva University
cathyc@pioneerbooks.com.au, Emmanuel.Rayner@unige.ch
Abstract
We discuss the organisation of internet communities, focusing on what we call the principle of “bait and switch”: founders of internet
communities often find it advantageous to recruit members by promising inducements which are later not honoured. We look at some of
the dilemmas and ways of attempting to resolve them through two paradigmatic examples, Wikispaces and Wordpress. Our analysis is
to a large extent motivated by the demands of CALLector, a university-centred social network we are in the process of establishing. We
consider the question of what ethical standards are imposed on universities engaged in this type of activity.
Keywords: online communities, social networks, education
1. Introduction and background In the rest of the paper, we start in sections 2. and 3. by
Our point of departure in this paper is CALLector. The 1 contrasting two paradigmatic examples, the Wikispaces and
overall goal of this new project is to create a social net- Wordpress communities. We include detailed quotes from
work which will link together producers and consumers of the creators of these sites, as they have deeply considered
online CALL content; most obviously, this includes teach- some of the issues involved. In section 4., we consider the
ers, students, content developers who may or may not be ethical obligations inherent in university-centred projects
teachers, and technical developers. The potential impact like CALLector. The final section concludes.
of a successful project creates an obligation to organise it
in an ethically responsible way. Ethical issues having to 2. Wikispaces
do with privacy on the internet have received a great deal The Wikispace community was established in 2005. It al-
of attention over the past few years; for example, they are lowed teachers to create wikis according to their own re-
the topic that receives most attention in the Stanford Ency- quirements, online spaces in which students would then
clopedia of Philosophy article on “Social Networking and participate. By 2012 it was reported that it had a base of
Ethics” (Vallor, 2015). The nature of “work” on the in- tens of millions of individual users, and many thousands of
ternet has also been the subject of some well-cited stud- institutions.
ies (Terranova, 2004; Baym and Burnett, 2009; Banks and Of particular significance was the communal collaborative
Humphreys, 2008). Certain important aspects of internet process Wikispaces permitted, with no geographical limita-
work have, however, been comparatively ignored, and it is tions, as one teacher describes:3
with some of these that this paper is concerned.
The specific issue on which we will focus is what we will For Vicki Davis, a teacher at the Westwood
call “the principle of bait and switch”, which in our expe- Schools in Camilla, Ga., the free wikis project
rience is regrettably common in the world of online com- has been a boon to developing her students’ sense
munities. A successful online community has substan- of how to be a responsible online citizen, as well
tial value; a conservative estimate is that each member is as for completing collaborative projects.
‘worth’ $10, so a community with millions of members is Davis’ institution has been part of the Wikispaces
worth tens of millions of dollars2 . This value largely comes project since the beginning, and has engaged in
from user input including content and technical develop- several different online initiatives that have in-
ment, advice, publicity, or simply time spent on the site volved more than 1,000 students from public and
which creates atmosphere necessary to a sense of commu- private schools in many different countries.
nity. At an early stage it is in the interests of the founders
to encourage use of the site and development of content by She said her students are using the wikis to re-
inducements, ranging from perceived prestige to extrava- search the ideas of digital citizenship raised in
gant assurances. A typical motive for this is to then sell Thomas Friedman’s famous book, The World is
the community, often to a large multinational. The users, Flat: copyright, digital law, digital ethics, and
who might more accurately be called collaborators, have digital etiquette, and are using the wikis to write
no rights and will not make any money from their unpaid collaborative reports.
labour and goodwill. If anything, they will find that things “When they’re done (writing), they have a collab-
start going bad for them. orative report and 10 to 15 students from at least
six countries have edited it,” said Davis. “They
1
https://www.unige.ch/callector learn what it’s like to live in a connected world.”
2
An internet search reveals no clear agreement on ways to es-
3
timate the value of social networks, with widely differing figures. https://www.cnet.com/news/a-quarter-
$10 per user is near the low end of the spectrum. million-teachers-to-get-free-wikis/
EnetCollect WG3&WG5 Meeting, 24-25 October 2018, Leiden, Netherlands 55
Multiply this by millions to see the impact that Wikispaces day is not going to get used. A great product that man-
created with their product, linking students and teachers the dates a narrow pedagogy will not achieve broad adop-
world over. tion. When you empower teachers to use technology
In 2012, the directors of Wikispaces made a long statement effectively, it magnifies the impact they can have on
discussing the ethics of their operation:4 their students.
We define success in edtech as building a sus- • Teachers exert a large and growing influence on the
tainable company that improves student out- technology decisions of their institutions. The impact
comes, empowers teachers, and increases the of this final point on ed-tech startups cannot be over-
reach and efficiency of educational institu- stated.’
tions. CALLector is also teacher-focussed; its expectation is that
They go on to discuss the moral imperative of sustainabil- it is a network for teachers to build a community. Teachers
ity: are, with good reason, wary of such sites. It is important to
understand and react appropriately to them.
When an established edtech company fails, it’s The Wikispaces manifesto next describes some things that
a big deal. The impact on students, teach- success in the field of education isn’t. For Fame and Riches,
ers, and administrators is far higher than for seek more promising arenas. And in particular for us:
similar services outside education. Money for Technology innovation in ignorance of customer
a replacement is tied up in an annual budget- benefit. Building novel features based on new
ing process. IT and technology support roles– technology is very satisfying — particularly to
already understaffed–need to juggle this emer- engineers — in the short-term. In the long-term,
gency alongside their existing responsibilities. we believe that most innovative products will bal-
Teachers and administrators simply do not have ance novelty with simplicity, and will always be
extra hours during the school year for technology based on a deep understanding of the customer.
training. Students need to start over with new ma-
terials and a new product to learn. It urges the model of charging in a fair and transparent way
from day one.
These factors mean that when an edtech company
closes its doors, their customers are left bearing a “Free” is without question a wonderful marketing
heavy burden. tool to get your product in the hands of as many
We believe edtech startups have a higher duty– students and teachers as possible. For a company
a moral duty–to their students, teachers, and ad- to survive, however, someone must foot the bills.
ministrators ... Build products that will sur- Of the many creative options available, we be-
vive the test of time. Build companies that will lieve the best source of revenue for an education
be around to support students and educators be- company is to charge your customers directly for
yond the next fad, the next wave of technology the services they use.
change, the next economic downturn. And tem- It is not only companies that must foot bills. However min-
per your expectations with a healthy dose of pa- imal the costs of an open source network are, they are not
tience. Companies that are built to sustain them- nothing. The internet bait and switch ploy of free until it
selves will be around long enough to find success. isn’t, is unethical at the best of times, but may be catas-
trophic in the field of education. Nor is advertising revenue
Although students are at the heart of any such operation
an acceptable ethical way to resolve this – if ever, but cer-
— ‘Reaching large numbers of students is hard, helping
tainly in regard to education.
them in a measurable way is harder, and proving that you
In 2014, Wikispaces was sold to TSL for an undisclosed
did is harder still.’ — Wikispaces, unlike many educational
sum. Founders Frey and Byers stated:7
startups (in CALL, Memrise5 and Duolingo6 come to mind)
considers teachers to be of vital importance because: Some of you may be skeptical, thinking that this
acquisition may affect our ability to continue to
• They are the great enablers of student adoption.
serve teachers as we always have, or that it might
Teachers decide which products and platforms their
change our focus so that we can no longer be
classrooms use.
the partners to the education community we have
• They know better than anyone how to help their stu- prided ourselves on being. To those concerns all
dents succeed. Teachers will show you how to build a we can say is ’watch what happens’.
better product, but only if you respect their time and Watch what happens? In July 2018, Wikispaces announced
the fact that all students, teachers, and schools are dif- its closure.8
ferent. A great product that requires a 25th hour in the
7
https://www.edsurge.com/news/2014-03-04-
4
https://www.edsurge.com/news/how-to- tsl-education-acquires-wikispaces
8
succeed-in-ed-tech http://helpcenter.wikispaces.com/
5
https://www.memrise.com/ customer/portal/articles/2920537-classroom-
6
https://www.duolingo.com/ and-free-wikis
EnetCollect WG3&WG5 Meeting, 24-25 October 2018, Leiden, Netherlands 56
Free and Classroom Wikis will cease to exist past ... technology has surpassed the site as more and
31st July 2018 23.59 GMT+1. After this date, more Wiki sites became available. Over the last
you will be unable to access your data. Therefore twelve months we have been carrying out a com-
we strongly suggest you take steps to extract any plete technical review of the infrastructure and
data you wish to retain from the site before this software we use to serve Wikispaces users. As
date. part of this review, it has become very apparent
that the required investment to bring the infras-
The tens of millions of users were given just two weeks to tructure and code in line with modern standards
save any data before it was destroyed. is very substantial. As such it is no longer finan-
cially viable to continue to run Wikispaces long
Once Wikispaces has closed the doors for good, term.
your data will be permanently deleted. There-
Was this true? Was it always TSL’s intent to close down
fore, data will become completely inaccessible to
Wikispaces? Did it take it over in order to do so? If it is
yourself, members, users, the public and our en-
true, why was it done in such a devastating way, ensuring
gineers.
maximum cost to the huge user base? Why did Wikispace
As a result of this, I would highly recommend even cut all its links dead? Why sell yourself as caring and
ensuring that you have exported all of your data then act in the most uncaring way possible?
before the end date of your Wiki to ensure that Furthermore, if it was true, did it matter? Teachers gener-
you have a copy saved. ally don’t want bells and whistles, as Wikispaces knew very
well. They want things that work, that are reliable, that are
It is difficult to imagine how Wikispaces could have been user-friendly. In the educational sphere, we note the exam-
less helpful in assisting the users they were now abandon- ple of the group of educational sites known as https://
ing: www.anglaisfacile.com/tous.php. It has been
running since approximately 2002 and has been recom-
The best option is to export the data from your mended to teachers ever since. It is ugly, absolutely set
Wiki and save it to your computer and then use in the past technologically, but this very fact recommends
the data to create new pages on a different plat- it. It is a straightforwardly free, community based site.
form. Due to the different settings on other web- Open Hub’s Project Cost Calculator9 gives an estimate of
sites, we do not have a way of exporting your the human cost of developing Wordpress, an enormous
Wiki direct from Wikispaces to another site. project which now powers over 30% of the internet:
Codebase Size: 560,703 lines
Alternatively, you can copy and paste the con-
Estimated Effort: 151 person-years
tent direct from your Wiki to your chosen Wiki
Estimated Cost: $8,282,611
site. There are many sites that are similar to
At the time of the takeover of by TSL, it is suggested that
Wikispaces and used for education purposes. We
Wikispaces’ annual revenue was $20M.10 And yet Wik-
would recommend conducting your own research
ispaces said it could not afford to update its software. This
in order to locate a site right for your needs and
despite the fact that Wikispaces’ claimed that its specific
set up or contact that company directly.
strategy was to invest in technology rather than extraneous
costs such as sales staff. They also said back in 2012:11
They give a few examples of sites that teachers could try
‘And if you serve a portion of your customers for free, they
and add:
need to know that they aren’t part of a bait-and-switch but
that their free usage ultimately contributes to your success.’
Please note that due to team capacity we are un-
We suppose that the founders of Wikispaces made a lot of
fortunately unable to advise further on alternative
money when they sold out to TSL. But for the rest of those
sites or assist with the export of your data beyond
involved in the development of Wikispaces, and that means
the information provided here.
every member of the community whose support made that
profit-making takeover possible, it was a disaster. How is
Wikispaces was not only telling teachers they had less two CALLector to avoid this?
weeks to save their own material, but, even more improb-
ably, to get their students to save theirs. Whatever mate- 3. Wordpress
rial might have been saved — and one suspects much must 12
Wordpress (WP) provides an example of a for-profit busi-
have been lost — the community-led collaboration between
ness which attempts to balance on the fine line between
teachers and groups of learners which extended around the
world was destroyed for good. 9
https://www.openhub.net/p/wordpress/
We don’t know the story behind this extraordinary rescind- estimated_cost
ing of what they claimed to stand for and what one might 10
https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/
reasonably call a betrayal of their tens of millions of users. wikispaces#section-funding-rounds
In selling out to TSL, one of the world’s for-profit educa- 11
https://www.edsurge.com/news/how-to-
tion giants, they promised technological improvements for succeed-in-ed-tech
12
their base. Instead, when they closed they stated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordPress
EnetCollect WG3&WG5 Meeting, 24-25 October 2018, Leiden, Netherlands 57
making money and being ethical. It is the most popular It’s important for me to know that WP will be
blogging platform in the world (though it has developed protected and that the brand will continue to be
beyond that) and has won many awards for the quality of a beacon of open source freedom regardless of
its open source software and for privacy. We look now at whether any company is as benevolent as Au-
its relationship with its users, its ongoing relationship with tomattic has been thus far. It’s important to me to
its own founding principles and how, therefore, it does on know that we’ve done the right thing. Hopefully,
the bait and switch measure. it’s important to you, too, and you’ll continue
Like Wikispaces, it has a prominent stress on ethical be- your support of WP, the WP Foundation, and Au-
haviour. Its Foundation Philosophy states:13 tomattic’s products and services. We couldn’t do
it without you!
In order to serve the public good, all of the soft-
ware and projects we promote should support the
following goals: The contrast is dramatic. Wikispaces’s founders in the end
did everything they had argued was unethical. Mullenweg
1. The software should be licensed under the early on safeguarded against the unknown future, takeover,
GNU Public License. his — or others’ — human weakness. He did all that could
2. The software should be freely available to be done to ensure that the ethical principles which initiated
anyone to use for any purpose, and without Wordpress would be maintained without interference.
permission. In doing so, Mullenweg was not acting only for himself.
3. The software should be open to modifica- The ethical desirability of his actions is linked to the core
tions. users which make an online community successful in the
4. Any modifications should be freely dis- first place. He avoids the following commonplace pattern.
tributable at no cost and without permission First start with an approach emphasising quality to attract
from its creators. the right sort of people to both form a critical mass and
to provide invaluable unpaid development advice. Then,
5. The software should provide a framework
once reputation is established, redefine critical mass, re-
for translation to make it globally accessible
place quality with quantity because this is where the big
to speakers of all languages.
money will be. For the core users such fundamental change
6. The software should provide a framework can be deeply traumatic. If they leave, they may keep their
for extensions so modifications and en- content, but they lose their home, their community. Giving
hancements can be made without modifying users ownership of their content is ethically necessary, but
core code. it is not sufficient. They need control of the community as
In his own blog, Matt Mullenweg stated in 2010:14 well.
Despite the ethical philosophy behind the Foundation, over
Automattic has transferred the WP trademark to
the years since its inception, WP has changed dramatically
the WP Foundation, the non-profit dedicated to
at a user level. As one may surmise from the name, it was
promoting and ensuring access to WP and related
made for words. Now there is pressure to monetise blogs.
open source projects in perpetuity. This means
Pictures have become dominant in the same way as they
that the most central piece of WP’s identity, its
have internet-wide, and the hosting of those has a price to
name, is now fully independent from any com-
pay.
pany.
Ad warnings appear on posts telling users to pay for ads to
This is really a big deal. be removed. Chirpy messages tell you to click on some-
I want to recognize and applaud the courage and body else’s blog posts because they liked yours. Creating
foresight of Automattic’s board, investors, and le- activity for its own sake is a prime motivation of WP now.
gal counsel who made this possible ... The WP It’s making money for everybody. Words, as the primary
brand has grown immeasurably in the past 5 years concern, are replaced by clicks. Receive an email advising
and it’s not often you see a for-profit company that somebody has commented on a post and it will include
donate one of their most valuable core assets and an exhortation to upgrade to a premium model in order to
give up control. However, I know in my heart that ‘support your growing audience.’
this is the right thing for the entire WP commu- At the time WP started up, people chose it, above the com-
nity, and they followed me on that. It wasn’t easy, petition, for a reason. Their goodwill is priceless and with-
but things worth doing seldom are ... out it WP is nothing. But WP has some complicated rela-
Automattic might not always be under my influ- tionships to cater for ethically. Is the user a commodity or
ence, so from the beginning I envisioned a struc- a customer? Does it depend on whether they are a free or
ture where for-profit, non-profit, and not-just-for- premium user? But the best content, which drives people to
profit could coexist and balance each other out. WP may be from free blogs.
Add to this another aspect which has relevance to CAL-
13
https://wordpressfoundation.org/ Lector: external support to WP users – WP itself employs a
philosophy/ very small number of people – is a revenue generator for an
14 unknown, but very large, number of people and they have a
https://ma.tt/2010/09/wordpress-
trademark/ relationship with WP too. What are they? A commodity?
EnetCollect WG3&WG5 Meeting, 24-25 October 2018, Leiden, Netherlands 58
A customer? Who is more important to WP? for shaping how we learn, teach, communicate,
Can WP conduct an ethical relationship with both of these? create, and organize our local and global com-
The more complicated and feature-rich it becomes, the munities. We are motivated by the conviction
more necessary technical support is. Technical support that the digital era provides rich opportunities
providers outside the official WP fold gain from this. for informal and formal learning and for collab-
So far WP has been fairly good at not falling off the orative, networked research that extends across
tightrope. We hope that CALLector, which shares many traditional disciplines, across the boundaries of
of these potential conflicts and dilemmas, will be a better academe and community, across the "two cul-
model again. tures" of humanism and technology, across the
divide of thinking versus making, and across so-
4. Ethical obligations of university-based cial strata and national borders. Participation is
projects our leadership model and collaboration by differ-
The examples of Wikispaces and Wordpress, as well as any ence is our guiding method. HASTAC’s mission
number of others specifically in the CALL domain in which is shaped by the active participation and interests
the CALLector project is operating, are startups established of our members. We are what our members make
with a view to making a profit. Some of those, for exam- us. As a "virtual organization" whose work cen-
ple Babbel15 and RosettaStone16 are overtly run as busi- ters on weaving together people and ideas from
nesses with straightforward relationships. They provide a across disciplines, HASTAC’s web site is both a
service for money. Others, like Duolingo and Memrise, platform for convergence and a stage for experi-
have a more complicated relationship with the user. They mentation and practice.’
provide something ‘free’ but of course there is always a It is evident from the literature that however obvious the
price to pay. Memrise users are discovering that at the mo- idea of ‘social responsibility’ is, defining it is not so clear.
ment, as the startup owners make massive changes to the Obligations to address challenges, solutions for a better
way in which the site is now run.17 CALLector, in con- world, are problematic in fruition (Weiss, 2016) not least
trast, is a project based at Geneva University with funding due to issues of funding (Shek et al., 2017). Recent min-
from a noncommercial source, the Swiss National Science utes for the EU’s Advisory Group on the Social Dimension
Foundation, which states on its site:18 of Higher Education20 discuss some of the issues involved
‘Our commitment to the public: Our work pro- in bringing greater equality to higher education within Eu-
motes the spread of knowledge in society. We rope and if this is an issue, one can surmise that the broader
ensure access to research results and communi- remit of obligations to society at large will not be easily
cate them to the public. We show how research fulfilled.
contributes to social progress, economic growth Against this background and despite the difficulties, how-
and a high quality of life.’ ever, one can see that universities are well placed to pro-
vide an ethical open-source resource of the type required
Around the world the idea of University Social Respon- by the CALLector project; the principles of USR also sug-
sibility, a spinoff from Corporate Social Responsibility, gest that it has the obligation to do so. To arm educators
is to be seen governing institutions of higher education at school level with appropriate technology for better learn-
(http://www.usrnetwork.org/; (Vasilescu et al., ing will ultimately advantage not only the schools and their
2010)). The USR Network, for example, explains the ra- students, but also universities who will reap a reward from
tionale for its establishment thus: ‘Based on the belief that students who come better educated in general. That is to
universities have obligation to work together to address the say, however altruistic it may appear to provide these re-
economic, social, cultural and environmental challenges in sources and develop the social network framework for their
the world and to find solutions so as to make our world best use, in the end higher education can expect a payout.
more just, inclusive, peaceful and sustainable. . . ’ This idea It’s an investment, not a gift.
has been part of the EU’s higher education for a long time Various quotes from (Schneller and Thöni, 2011)21 rein-
(Vasilescu et al., 2010; Schneller and Thöni, 2011; Wallace force this notion:
and Resch, 2017).
Emanating from the US is HASTAC which is19 ‘... no country can build an effective higher edu-
cation sector without human resources and qual-
‘a network of individuals and institutions inspired ity basic and secondary education. Inevitably
by the possibilities that new technologies offer higher education and research should also be in-
volved —- as part of its social responsibilities —-
15
https://www.babbel.com/ in the promotion of other education levels.’
16
https://www.rosettastone.co.uk/
17 20
https://community.memrise.com/t/ http://www.ehea.info/Upload/AG1_SD_1_
important-update-upcoming-changes-to- Minutes.pdf
memrise-community-created-courses/33461/17 21
All taken from Isabelle Turmaine and Chripa Schneller,
18
http://www.snf.ch/SiteCollectionDocuments/ “Universities’ contribution to Education for All (EFA)
snf_leitbild_e.pdf and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)”
19
https://www.hastac.org/blogs/superadmin/ http://www.seaairweb.info/Collaborations/
2011/08/16/hastac-defined-and-numbers 2011USR_ASEF.pdf
EnetCollect WG3&WG5 Meeting, 24-25 October 2018, Leiden, Netherlands 59
‘... it is the responsibility of universities to elim- //www.iau-hesd.net/sites/default/
inate barriers to higher education and integrate files/documents/io8_guidelines_final_
non-traditional students, thus to ensure alterna- version_2017-09-12_print.pdf.
tive pathways of access.’ Weiss, B. (2016). The rise of social responsibil-
‘In today’s global, fast changing, but also criti- ity in higher education. University World News.
cal world, universities need to be aware that they https://www.universityworldnews.com/
serve the society at large more than ever before. post.php?story=20160811095808959.
Therefore, they need to revisit their role, assume
social responsibility as an evidence-based con-
cept and foster sustainable development.’
‘Universities should particularly be supported in
communicating and exchanging good and inno-
vative ideas with the general public.’
‘... universities in ASEM countries should reflect
on the entire education process, from early child-
hood education to lifelong learning.’
5. Conclusion
Exploiting the addictive potential of the internet is a busi-
ness model. Offer free/generous terms, and then, once de-
pendency or addiction has set in, make ’em pay. Monetisa-
tion is the name of the game. The business argument is that
ethics don’t come into it. They need only obey the letter of
the law, or exploit its greyness.
Universities, however, are not businesses. Their raison
d’être is not to make money. They have a relationship with,
and obligation to, the community. The question to be asked,
therefore, is can CALLector, a university initiated project,
avoid these ethical dilemmas?
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Baym, N. K. and Burnett, R. (2009). Amateur experts: In-
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Chripa Schneller et al., editors. (2011). Knowledge So-
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shop, 5-7 June 2011, Innsbruck, Austria.
Shek, D. T., Yuen-Tsang, A. W., and Ng, E. C. (2017).
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EnetCollect WG3&WG5 Meeting, 24-25 October 2018, Leiden, Netherlands 60