"Nock, Nock." "Who's there?"
Privacy, Trust, and Commerce on the World Wide Web:
How egalitarian, self-organizing online communities work

by Brian Carroll
INLS 281
March 20, 2002

	eBay	go to description	go to analysis
	Wikipedia	go to description	go to analysis
	Advogato	go to description	go to analysis
	Slashdot.org	go to description	go to analysis

Key text: The Costs of Privacy, Steven L. Nock (Hawthorne, N.Y.: Aldine de Gruyter, 1993).

Concept explication:
privacy
     trust & reputation
         egalitarian, self-organizing communities
              credentials (earned & granted)
                   surveillance
                        shame culture

The project: Preliminary analysis of four self-organizing online communities in the dimensions of privacy protection and surveillance, and reputation/trust facilitation and shame mechanisms to create a matrix of "Nockness," or functional community offering a balance of privacy for its members and the ability for its members to "form reliable opinions of one another" (p. 1). 

The good communities achieve "Nockness."
The bad ones can be considered "Nock-less Monsters." (Sorry -- just too delicious not to use.)