Tom Peters (week 8's reading response)
From Collectivate Course Wikis
- This page is for week 8's reading response to Tom Peters' research. For his main page, see Tom Peters. For his research page, see Tom Peters (research page).
The quote:
When the max subgraph size of a guild is plotted against the guild size, you get some interesting results -- the maximum guild cohesiveness occurs around the guild size of 50. Larger then that, guilds have a much more difficult time remaining cohesive (Allen).
My response:
In this article Allen was further covering the use of the Dunbar Number in online social networks. A few people pointed out that early research done on online games neglected the fact that many players have "alts" that exist in the same guild. So here, he compares guilds that are currently online as well as cliques that are hanging out in similar zones.
He makes two interesting notes in this article... that the peak size for an efficient guild is around 50 while once a group grows past 10, it becomes increasing difficult to maintain group cohesion.
I really would like to implement this idea further in our project. I was thinking of the following. Jon and I were talking earlier and we planned on having acquaintances and friends. Acquaintances would hurt your friend score (because you aren't able to maintain steady friendships). But I think we can further expand this.
What we originally wanted was you make a friend (actually you start off as an acquaintance). After 3 online movies together you become friends. Now if you don't interact with your friend every so often (at least like once a month or so) you loose them as a friend, and they fall back to the level of acquaintance (which will negetively effect your score). If you want to become friends again, the minimum views will be lower. There would also be a max cap of friends you could have (probably 50).
Using this research I was thinking of slightly varying this. If you have 10 or less friends, it would be very easy to maintain friends. Maybe after two views you become friends, and you only need 1 view per 3 months to maintain. However as you increase your friends, it will become progressively harder for you to maintain these friendships. Perhaps, if you hit 100, you need to 1 view every couple weeks or so, or you start loosing friends.
The more friends you have, the higher your score. I was also thinking of maybe implementing best friends (for like averaging 2 views/week or something). I'll need to think more on that. But I think this is a good start for now.
Works Cited
Allen, Christopher. "Dunbar Number & Group Cohesion." Life with Alacrity. 28 Oct. 2005. 19 Mar. 2006 <http://www.lifewithalacrity.com/2005/10/dunbar_group_co.html>.