Abstract

Web 2.0 has provided variety of pathways for individuals to contribute ideas, information and solutions to other individuals around the world. Online communities such as Yahoo Answers, Google mail.ru, 3form.org are examples of places where Web surfers go and share information and brainstorm on the problems or questions posted by others. Although many ideas are created and shared through Web 2.0 communities, with time and attention being two scarce resources, individuals face some challenges when seeking the right information. In this article we investigate two concepts of idea integration and idea visibility that we believe are critical to the success of knowledge sharing communities. Ideas proposed and recorded in these communities rarely converge to comprehensive solutions; although pieces of information are available, there is not enough motivation for the contributors to integrate their ideas with those previously suggested and to create a more comprehensive idea or solution. Little or no integration of ideas leads to information redundancy and to generation of long list of ideas and solutions that in addition to causing cognitive overload, significantly decreases the visibility of the ideas that might be relevant to the information seeking individuals but are hardly exposed to the viewers.

Share

COinS