com125 assignment 4: online economies - offtopic.com

A gift economy is when help and information are offered to others without any expectation of any help in return. Not only do these exist in real life, but also on the internet. Richard Brooks states, ‘’Most internet users collaborate with each other without the direct mediation of money or politics. Unconcerned about copyright, they give and receive information without thought of payment.’’ There are hundreds if not thousands of gift economies all over the internet. One of the most well known gift economies is Linux. One that may not be as well known is the web forum Off Topic, or OT. I participate in this online economy on a daily basis.
OT is a large, worldwide web forum which has over a dozen different message boards relating to different topics. There is an off topic forum (obviously) as well as a car forum, truck forum, for sale forum, relationship help forum, a forum to help people with various addictions, and also a religion forum, to name a few. While registration is only open for 4 months out of the year, it is free to anyone who is interested in joining. Currently, there are over 170,000 active members, and last week there were almost 85 million new posts!! That ranks OT as 6th in the world for most posts in a week, where it is consistently ranked.
So what makes OT an online gift community? Taken from Peter Kollock’s article ‘’The Economies of Online Cooperation: Gifts and Public Goods in Cyberspace,’’ Rheingold (1993) has described interaction in one online community (the WELL) as consisting of a gift economy, in which help and information is offered without the expectation of any direct, immediate quid-pro-quo. Even in more anonymous settings, such as Usenet discussion groups, there is a surprising amount of free help and information given out, often to complete strangers whom one may never meet again.
Using that as a basis for analysis, OT is a gift economy because of the constant threads made asking for help with various topics. Some examples taken from current topics on the forum are, ‘’what should I mix Grey Goose with?’’ and ‘’just caught my g/f cheating on me, need advice.’’ While a majority of threads can contain rude, offensive and unhelpful answers, there are also an equal number of helpful answers. The people that can post these helpful answers are often complete strangers, people you will not likely ever meet in your lifetime. These people also never expect direct compensation for their help. They aren’t charging a fee, or expect a particular user to help them with a problem in the future. A professional PC consultant could charge you hundreds of dollars to fix your computer, yet if you make a thread on OT about what is wrong, you will likely get several people attempting to help you, free of charge.
An example of a thread which I helped in was when a member was considering moving to Buffalo for a job. He was looking for information about the city, what people thought about it, and what types of things there were to do around town. Being that there are several members from Buffalo, we were able to provide all the information he was looking for. I don’t know who the guy is, nor will I ever. I also don’t know the other members from Buffalo yet we all offered our opinions. Another time I made a thread asking for advice on building a computer. Within less than a day there was all of the advice and information I needed to buy the right parts and get my computer built. I have no idea who any of the other members were that helped, and I’m sure they don’t know me either.
As mentioned previously, not all of the information people provide is helpful. However, more often than not someone can get enough information or advice to guide them through their situation, free of charge or without a direct expectation to reciprocate. This is why OT is a great example of an online gift economy.

Sources:
The Hi-Tech Gift Economy by Richard Barbrook

The Economies of Online Cooperation by Peter Kollock

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