A Proposed Framework for Designing Sustainable Communities for Knowledge Management Systems

Despite considerable academic and practitioner interest in knowledge management, success of knowledge management systems is elusive. This chapter provides a framework which suggests that KM success can be achieved by designing sustainable communities of practice. Communities of practice have proven to have significant economic and practical implications on organizational practices. A growing body of literature in KM recognizes the importance of communities that foster collaborative learning in organizations and almost all KMS have a ‘network’ component that facilitates connecting people in communities of practice. Evidence has shown that communities have been a key element in KMS of many companies including Xerox PARC, British Petroleum Co., Shell Oil Company, Halliburton, IBM, Proctor and Gamble, and Hewlett Packard.

Online Behavior Modeling

Organizations need effective and affordable software training. In face-to-face settings, behavior modeling is an effective, but expensive, training method. Can behavior modeling be employed effectively, and more affordably, for software training in the online environment? An experiment was conducted to compare the effectiveness of online behavior modeling with that of face-to-face behavior modeling for software training. Results indicate that online behavior modeling and face-to-face behavior modeling provide essentially the same outcomes in terms of knowledge near transfer, immediate knowledge for transfer, delayed knowledge for transfer, perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, and satisfaction. Observed differences were not significant, nor were their patterns consistent, despite sufficient power in the experimental design to detect meaningful differences, if any were present. These results suggest that organizations should consider online behavior modeling as a primary method of software training.

A Survey of Trust Use and Modeling in Real Online Systems

This chapter discusses the concept of trust and how trust is used and modeled in online systems currently available on the Web or on the Internet. It starts by describing the concept of information overload and introducing trust as a possible and powerful way to deal with it. It then provides a classification of the systems that currently use trust and, for each category, presents the most representative examples. In these systems, trust is considered as the judgment expressed by one user about another user, often directly and explicitly, sometimes indirectly through an evaluation of the artifacts produced by that user or his/her activity on the system. We hence use the term “trust” to indicate different types of social relationships between two users, such as friendship, appreciation, and interest. These trust relationships are used by the systems in order to infer some measure of importance about the different users and influence their visibility on the system. We conclude with an overview of the open and interesting challenges for online systems that use and model trust information.

Trust Modeling and Management

This chapter introduces trust modeling and trust management as a means of managing trust in digital systems. Transforming from a social concept of trust to a digital concept, trust modeling and management help in designing and implementing a trustworthy digital system, especially in emerging distributed systems. Furthermore, the authors hope that understanding the current challenges, solutions and their limitations of trust modeling and management will not only inform researchers of a better design for establishing a trustworthy system, but also assist in the understanding of the intricate concept of trust in a digital environment.

Politeness as a Social Computing Requirement

This chapter describes how social politeness is relevant to computer system design. As the Internet becomes more social, computers now mediate social interactions, act as social agents, and serve as information assistants. To succeed in these roles computers must learn a new skill—politeness. Yet selfish software is currently a widespread problem and politeness remains a software design “blind spot.” Using an informational definition of politeness, as the giving of social choice, suggests four aspects: 1. respect, 2. openness, 3. helpfulness, and 4. remembering. Examples are given to suggest how polite computing could make human-computer interactions more pleasant and increase software usage. In contrast, if software rudeness makes the Internet an unpleasant place to be, usage may minimize. For the Internet to recognize its social potential, software must be not only useful and usable, but also polite.

The Retaliatory Feedback Problem

Online auctions are an increasingly popular avenue for completing electronic transactions. Many online auction sites use some type of reputation (feedback) system—where parties to a transaction can rate each other. However, retaliatory feedback threatens to undermine these systems. Retaliatory feedback occurs when one party in a transaction believes that the other party will leave them a negative feedback if they do the same. This chapter examines data gathered from E-Bay in order to show that retaliatory feedback exists and to categorize the problem. A simple solution to the retaliatory feedback problem—feedback escrow—is described.

Cyber Stalking

Cyber stalking is a relatively new kind of cyber terrorism crime. Although it often receives a lower priority then cyber terrorism it is an important global issue. Due to new technologies, it is striking in different forms. Due to the Internets provision of anonymity and security it is proliferating quickly. Technology and tools available to curb it have many limitations and are not easy to implement. Legal acts to protect people from cyber stalking are geographically limited to the concerned state or country. This chapter reviews cyber stalking, its approaches, impacts, provision of legal acts, and measures to be taken to prevent it. There is an immediate need for research in the various dimensions of cyber stalking to assess this social problem.

Multiagents System Applied on a Cyberbullying Model for a Social Network

The contribution of this chapter is to present a novel approach to explain the performance of a novel Cyberbullying model applied on a Social Network using Multiagents to improve the understanding of this social behavior. This approach will be useful to answer diverse queries after gathering general information about abusive behavior. These mistreated people will be characterized by following each one of their tracks on the Web and simulated with agents to obtain information to make decisions to improve their life’s and reduce their vulnerability in different locations on a social network and to prevent its retort in others.

The Anonymity of the Internet

Commerce performed electronically using the Internet (e-commerce) faces a unique and difficult problem, the anonymity of the Internet. Because the parties are not in physical proximity to one another, there are limited avenues for trust to arise between them, and this leads to the fear of cheating and promise-breaking. To resolve this problem, I explore solutions that are based on Thomas Hobbes’s solutions to the problem of the free rider and apply them to e-commerce.

Negotiating Meaning in a Blog-Based Community

This chapter addresses how members of a blog-based community share problems and support each other in the problem solving process, both sharing knowledge and offering support. Problems are divided into three categories, unique, shared, and community, each having its own particular norms for presentation, knowledge sharing, and resolution. Additionally, processes may differ based on discourse that centers on one individual blog versus discourse that spans multiple blogs. Findings show that intersubjectivity, norms, roles, and individual ownership of virtual space all are important elements contributing to the problem sharing and solving process.