1. Home
  2. Taxes General Forum
  3. Studying knowledge-sharing on misc.taxes.moderated

Studying knowledge-sharing on misc.taxes.moderated

Hello to all MTM'ers,

It's been a while since you last heard of me, but I'm Enrique Murillo, who in the past conducted research on knowledge sharing in various newsgroups, including misc.taxes.moderated. Last time I posted here (search google survey murillo) was to thank newsgroup members for generously taking the time to fill out my survey.

Now that I have a regular academic position, I have continued doing research on MTM since it really is the best functioning newsgroup I came across during my PhD. I really believe the story of this virtual community should be told, and now is a good time because most (sadly not all) key contributors are still around.

I have been working with a coauthor (my doctoral supervisor) on an ethnographic account of MTM: an in-depth description of interactions to show that the newsgroup is very good at knowledge sharing, and in fact operates as an Internet-based Community of Practice . This is an interesting research contribution because there are few solid studies of virtual CoPs, and even fewer use online ethnography.

We now have a pretty decent working paper which we would like to send to a peer-reviewed journal. However, we would like some of you to preview the paper for two specific reasons:

a) We would very much appreciate your feedback on whether we've got it right, specifically our descriptions of this community: its traditions (e.g. Holiday greetings), professionalism, camaraderie, etc. That's a relatively short section of the paper, and I promise it's interesting. It has a nice Social Network Analysis of the group (which I'm publishing as a separate book chapter) showing who's core and who's more peripheral.

b) We want to make sure authors have no objection to our quoting the messages on which we base our analyses. Rest assured we've disguised names, removed e-mails, and none of the messages we want to use are anything but positive reflections of the character of the newsgroup and its members. However, since we are analyzing verbatim messages, an interested reader could find the original post with a Google search. So, even though it's all posted online, we want to inform authors about our quoting their messages, and assure them we are willing and able to use other messages if they so prefer.

Specifically, after a very elaborate sampling procedure, we reproduce and analyze individual messages extracted from the following threads (message authors in parethesis):

12 Apr 2005 Fix this group!!! (Wayne Brasch, Jonathan Kamens) 7 Apr 2008 Calif. state tax question (Alan Kalman, Katie Jacques) 5 Jul 2001 Purchasing a practice (Frederick Jorden, Dick Adams) 23 Jan 2007 Section 121 (Stuart Bronstein, Bill Brown, Alan Kalman) 2 Jul 2008 Final Regs Published Section 152(e) (Alan Kalman) 11 Sep 2001 Deemed Sale of Residence in 2001 (Rich Carreiro) 23 Feb 2003 nol & amt (Benjamin Yazersky, Tom Healy)

My contact details are below. I know you're in the final weeks of tax season, so feel free to contact me after April 15. I will only send a copy of the working paper to those of you who ask. I have already sent a copy to Dick Adams (March 1st), since I felt the Moderator should be the first I talk to.

My regards to all,

Dr. Enrique Murillo Departament of Business Administration Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México Av. Camino a Sta. Teresa 930 México, D.F., 10700 Tel. 5628-4056 Fax. 5490-4665

formatting link
emurillo at itam dot mx

Reply to
Enrique Murillo
Loading thread data ...

Dr. Murillo,

I have no objection to your proposal.

Good luck.

Regards, Bill Brown

Reply to
Bill Brown

Thanks Bill,

Enrique

-- Dr. Enrique Murillo Department of Business Administration Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México Av. Camino a Sta. Teresa 930 México, D.F., 10700 Tel. 5628-4056 Fax. 5490-4665

formatting link
emurillo at itam dot mx

Reply to
Enrique Murillo

I'm on board and good to go. Full speed ahead, man!

I would like to see a copy if you don't mind. You can e-mail me directly at snipped-for-privacy@alliancetax.com, please.

Good luck, Gene E. Utterback, EA, RFC, ABA

Reply to
Gene E. Utterback, EA, RFC, AB

Please send a copy of the paper to the address on this post.

Reply to
Alan

Hmm.. doesn't strike me as a typical date in the world of on-line tax discussions...

I'm surprised at how old some of the messages analyzed are.

I wonder what changes in the analysis the last two years of robo-moderation would have. Before, often there was one question, then up to a full day later, a handful of direct replies would come through all at once, with none of the respondents knowing what the others were saying as they replied.

Now, we have threaded discussions.

-Mark Bole

Reply to
Mark Bole

Actually Mark, we use that post to illustrate the use of the newsgroup as a collectively-built searchable knowledge repository. The OP's message was submitted before the tragic events of that day. But I think you're right, we should use different message to make this point; thanks for mentioning it.

You are correct in thinking we're not reporting on MTM as it is today, but as it was a few years back. In the paper we try to emphasize what virtual communities of practice are capable of, and in that sense, the archives of MTM provide better evidence. As you are probably aware, interactions in MTM have been on a downward trend for several years now (and I would like to know the opinion of the group on whether this is a good or bad thing).

Quite right, the dynamics of the group have changed. Ernie Klein made a similar point on April 20 2008:

======== Beginning of quote ========= Before robo, when the latency from posting to seeing ones post could be

12-24 hours (or more at times - depending on beer judging schedules), and then an equal time to receive a response, one tended to be very sparse and conservative with their postings.

With robo, when posting time to response time is measured in minutes instead of days, the group tends to become much more wordy and to engage in much more give and take.

Is that good or bad? I am not sure myself. While I enjoy the more open dialog, I miss the tighter control that kept the dialog more on topic and professional.

======== End of quote ========= I have given some thought to examining that in a separate paper. For instance by comparing knowledge exchange in March 2007, the last tax season under Dick's solo moderation, and March 2008 or 2009. But I need to think about the relevant measures: avg. thread length, avg. message length, thread duration, number of participants per thread, etc.

The real toughie is developing a quantitative measure of knowledge exchange that allows you to make meaningful comparisons... I have a friend who's done a lot of work on measuring knowledge exchange by a quantitative content analysis of corporate Web 2.0 platforms: blogs, wikis, and corporate facebook pages. I plan to talk to him about applying his methods to this newsgroup, which is as exemplary as they get. I'll let you all know if we do something in this direction.

Thank you for your comments,

Enrique

-- Dr. Enrique Murillo Department of Business Administration Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México Av. Camino a Sta. Teresa 930 México, D.F., 10700 Tel. 5628-4056 Fax. 5490-4665

formatting link

Reply to
Enrique Murillo

Enrique, others have asked you to e-mail them a copy of the paper. I'd be interested in reading it as well. will it posted someplace? If so, please provide the link. I know the paper is not yet ready, but when it is, it should be very interesting.

========================================= MODERATOR'S COMMENT:

- enrique provides his email address, anyone interested can send him a private note if they wish.

Reply to
Wallace

BeanSmart website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.