(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2014)
Pileggi, Hannah; Morrison, Briana; Bruckman, Amy S.
This descriptive study explores deliberate barriers to user
participation on the long-lived discussion site Metafilter.com.
Metafilter has been in continuous operation since its founding
in 1999, and at the time of this writing has around 12,000
active users. While many newer online sites appear eager to
eliminate barriers to participation and recruit as many new
members as possible, Metafilter charges a $5 fee to join and
has a mandatory one-week waiting period before new users
are allowed to post. In this paper, we explore both why these
barriers were imposed and why some users choose to surmount
the barriers to become members. Our data sources
include historical documents posted on the site, interviews
with eleven site members, an informal user survey, and an interview
with the Matt Haughey, the site’s founder and owner.
Implications of these design features are discussed.