What do you think of when "Lurking" is mentioned?

What do you think of when "Lurking" is mentioned?

by Elizabeth Wallace -
Number of replies: 10

Welcome to this forum about Lurking. The topic of my roundtable discussion on Friday, June 16 at the STLHE Conference is "Lurking Around Knowledges". (For those of you who are good spellers, I'd like to point out that I always try to use Knowledges in the plural!)

I'm beginning the session by asking participants to play a little word association game: What synonyms come to mind when the word "lurking" is used? In any conversation I like to start with sharing experiences, so that we can become our own experts before moving on to hear what other experts have to say.

So if you're logging on to this forum, I invite you to post some of the words that you associate with lurking. No editing, please, just your first thoughts!

In reply to Elizabeth Wallace

Re: What do you think of when "Lurking" is mentioned?

by Susanne Nyrop -
Hello Liz,

can I use sentences instead of just single words?
As an online lifelong learner I've often met the phenomenon of vicarious learning!  For me, this means a freedom to read along and participate only when I feel I have something significant to add to the conversation, as well as the spare time to do so. This could for example happen in cases when I know only littie or close to nothing on a specific topic but found some interest to learn more. Then I would prefer to stay safe in the background just listening and  thinking, exactly like I would be doing in live contexts as an audience, probably note taking or looking up difficult or eye catching keywords and names.Maybe sometimes exchanging a few words with ny neighbour just backstage, without becoming visible and making a fool of myself in a public sphere with my ignorance.

I've met often with people who were "just silently lurking" in a free workshop or course (like this seminar), or a mail list, then suddenly coming out of the darkness after weeks oreven months now sharing something they wish to tell, and then adding how much they appreciate to be part of this active and vibrant community (this has often been the case in the Webheads in Action language educators' CoP where informal learning and having FUN are major succes factors).  They've been  observing participants in the legitimate periphery of the community and  may now feel ready to join the more openly active supporters.

Keywords here: vicarious learning, peripheral legitimate participants, active readers, reading along...

I'm usually trying to avoid using the negative term lurking and  propagating this more positive inclusive view But I also admit how challeging it can be when you really try hard to activate a conversation when there's only little response. This is where the Moodle facility of looking at activity logging can help; if people log in from time to time and read along there must be some reason even when they do stay silent.  I admit this could not work well in case of courses with some sort of diploma or grading - but what if we leave the result to be up to the individual learner how much or little he or she desire to learn at the very moment? Who said once: Learning is un-learning?

In reply to Elizabeth Wallace

Re: What do you think of when "Lurking" is mentioned?

by Barbara Berry -
Hi Liz,
When I think about "lurking" or in fact when I "lurk" I am:
  • hanging around, watching and waiting
  • reading and taking in what others say
  • contemplating on what others say
  • making sense of what others say in light of my own experience
  • wondering if I have anything to add that is relevant
  • finding my place in the discussion
Cheers,
Barb
In reply to Elizabeth Wallace

Re: What do you think of when "Lurking" is mentioned?

by Sylvia Currie -
Lurking...

motivating
humbling
encouraged
discouraged
valuable
unplanned
addictive
misunderstood
common
incidental
time-consuming!
educational
essential

In reply to Elizabeth Wallace

Re: What do you think of when "Lurking" is mentioned?

by Paul Beaufait -
As a lurker, I feel very much in sync. with what a number of you have written - Susanne in particular, who described my situation to a tee: "[A] freedom to read along and participate only when I feel I have something significant to add to the conversation, as well as the spare time to do so" (What do you think...? Tue Jun 13 12:19:00 2006). When I saw the first header on this discussion, I thought, "Ahh, yes, 'legitimate peripheral participation;'" and when I read the last word in the most recent post on this thread (14 June 2006, 09:52 AM), I thought, "Yup, 'essential!'" The tricky part, I guess, is planning and laying the groundwork for such participation, or just finding the time to do it. Time's up!
In reply to Elizabeth Wallace

Re: What do you think of when "Lurking" is mentioned?

by Kate Britt -

blush lurking = <blush>Me</blush>

so how can I both lurk and answer? Ok, here's a few words.....

PinkFlamingo is a Lurrrrkerrrrrwhat I do
shy shy
learning by listening
nuthin' new to contribute
more fun than speaking

it used to be scoffed at
more accepted now
appreciate that because
still like to lurk clown

and you know what?
It's amusing that a forum about lurking
will tend to bring the lurkers out to speak

In reply to Elizabeth Wallace

Re: What do you think of when "Lurking" is mentioned?

by Elizabeth Wallace -

Ah, I see that the concept of lurking evokes quite a bit of thought and reaction. And I'd like to add that the group of people who sat around the table at lunch today, on a beautiful summer day on the U of T campus had many of the same thoughts and ideas: eves-dropping, watching, listening, hanging about...some words with negative connotations, some with positive.

According to Wikipedia the term was first used in the 1980s with the first attempts at online exchange -- bulletin boards, email lists etc. It seems that we are stuck with the word, but through our discussion here, perhaps we can influence, just a tiny little bit, what lurking connotes in our own online community.  Let's see...

In reply to Elizabeth Wallace

Re: What do you think of when "Lurking" is mentioned?

by Heather Ross -
Liz,

I remember using irc more than a decade ago and lurking was a big issue. You could see someone was there, but they never said anything. It made people uncomfortable just as it would if you sat in a room having a discussion with several people and someone else sat down and just listened.

I think that people are less upset by this on discussion boards because you don't see the person "sitting there". As a result, lurking seems to be more expected and accepted on discussion boards and email lists.



In reply to Heather Ross

Design to support lurking

by Sylvia Currie -
Heather makes some interesting observations about how technology influences our lurking behaviours. I remember participating in chat sessions in Tapped In where members would add information about their intentions: "x tip toes into the room and sits quietly in the corner, happy to be listening in on the conversation". This shielded the participant from being called upon, and also relieved everyone else in the room of any obligations to be inclusive. I often wondered though, is it better to just have an invisible mode?

When selecting a platform and designing the community environment for SCoPE we had support for lurking right at the top of the list. In our use case scenarios we envisioned visitors to the site being able to read discussions, access resources, check out the calendar, etc. Then at any point that visitor wishes to contribute to a discussion, edit resources, or manage access (like unread messages) then s/he would be prompted to create an account. Likewise members can cruise around using guest access, which is the default and seamless to the member. This is one reason we chose Moodle for the community platform -- it already has these features built in. It isn't perfect though! I've had the messages from members asking... what happened to my edit button on my profile? How do I add to the wiki? not realizing they were using guest access. It's a user interface issue. All tools should be set up like the forum; the reply button is always visible but you are prompted to log in if you click on it using guest access.

I think guest access is a great feature for individuals in their lurker role. But how does it influence the community in other ways? One thing for sure is it's an issue for funders doing head counts as a measure of success! :-) What about facilitators? Does it make a difference not knowing how many people are reading along, or who they are?
In reply to Sylvia Currie

Re: Design to support lurking

by Susanne Nyrop -
hi dear Sylvia,

you mention an example from Tapped In where participants would signal their level of active presence in a sentence. I believe this habit was inherited from the old MOO text only interface with a strong tradition for acting as-if roleplay, also pointing at a sort of courtesy politeness that was to be expected .I recall one Japanese Tapped In participant who was always entering a room :bowing deeply. This could also be used for a lot of fun - there used to be many shortcuts that you could programme individually, such as standard greetings, or inventing a full costume that would show if people took a closer "look" at you! Such knowledge had to be learnt from others in a social context (or read from the help files on your own).

On your question about just total invisibility I'm not so sure I would like that myself as a facilitator. In an actual case which is not extremely succesful we have very little openly visible participants  - but at least they do make their footprints around in the Moodle; in this case there is also a matter of funding to worry about. We do allow guests, but at least they can be viewed in the full activity report. These matters are delicate. And what are our succes criteria - one thing that I know for sure is that it can be harder to document what's going on backstage as activity derived more or less  directly inspired from the open and visible conversation, who's calling who on Skype and sending individual emails, Googling and blogging independantly with some more or less indirect connections, etc