One of the first things I checked out was the 8bitcollective wiki, authored by various site members, which gave additional meaning to the description of "completely open." It's contents include information about just about everything chiptune related, mostly written in an informal voice. The intent of the wiki seems to be to bring anyone and everyone up to speed on all fronts; one article even explains an inside joke on the site.
The wiki also showcased one of the key values of this community. The Hall of Shame reveals how much community members HATE intellectual property theft. While this may seem counter-intuitive for a site that publicly distributes music for free, the key is in the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA License, under which all music posted to 8bitcollective is licensed. Violators are posted here in the wiki, along with accounts and sources explaining what they did.
The next part of my fieldnotes will consist of looking at a few sample postings, some recent and some older, and examining the interactions that go on between poster and commenters. Every song posted has its own page, with a comment section, a more submissions from this user section, and a "like"s section (which lists the names of users who have indicated that they like this particular song). Each user also has their own page, featuring all of their submissions, comments given and received, and other submissions they have "liked." Additionally, a large chunk of the main page of 8bitcollective is "Latest Music Submissions," which means that whatever is new instantly gets some exposure that way.
Example 1 (Hot off the presses):
Canadian Curled Mustache (NL2.3), uploaded by "Oslo Fireflower" on March 4th 2010, 07:16 PM
"Description: My dreams involve Capri sun and Zero gravity. This song is for a kid named Cole."
I'm not sure about the significance of the description; it sounds a bit like inside jokes / personal references. In conjunction with the title, the description conveys a sense of humor. It is worth noting that (NL2.3) stands for NanoLoop 2.3, the program used to make the song. It appears most of Oslo Fireflower's music is made with NanoLoop, since most of his songs feature this tag. Oslo Fireflowers first activity
When I refresh the page fifteen minutes later, there are already 5 comments. The first one, posted at 7:21, from "spindle", begins, "YAY NEW OLSO FIREFIREFLOWER SONG!!!" indicating that spindle has come across Oslo Fireflower before. Sure enough, spindle has liked and commented on two other Oslo Fireflower songs, both glowing with approval. Spindle mentions some very specific musical elements he likes in the song, and compliments Oslo's NanoLoop skills.
To get a sense of the "who" in this situation, spindle's bio reads simply "i'm 13. 8th grade. name's jake." This provides some interesting demographic info, but not as much as what spindle says in another comment: "yes i am 13.lol alot of people on here are like 18-26." This seems to be a reasonable estimation of the average user profile, but more research will tell.
Oslo comments back to spindle at 7:24, thanking him for the comment and telling him about another project he's working on involving African instruments, and spindle responds enthusiastically at 7:21, forming a pretty continuous dialogue.
Another user, "FlashMob", jumps in at 7:29, saying "dope song lot of emotion...and nice wubzz:)" Emoticons are prominent in the comments sections, usually happy ones, but I have no idea what wubzz is. Olso returns the compliment at 7:33: "flashhh ahhhhhh he'll save everyone of uss. or something like that. you're the best man," making a Queen reference along the way. FlashMob and Oslo have a history as well, each one liking several of the others songs and exchanging positive comments and a little bit of tech talk.
The next day's comments bring more positive feedback, and more users who have a history with Oslo, one even refers to him by his first name, a piece of information that isn't available simply from his bio page. Oslo can't keep up responding to comments one by one anymore and simply replies, "Thanks everyone!!!! you're all greattt!"
From this case, I'm starting to see that one key element in this community is specific relationships between users that span multiple submissions for each, and involve a two-way street of mutual feedback. Another thing that struck me is how overwhelmingly positive the comments were. This could point to a number of things: a very supportive environment, a very superficial and disingenuous environment, users following site etiquitte and social codes, Oslo being a really good chiptune artist, or Oslo having a specific group of supportive friends on the site. I'm not passing judgement on which of these it is (or if it's something else entirely), just exploring the possibilities.
I think I'll post more examples in a separate post, this one is getting long. Next up is taking a look at one of the most liked songs of the week.
Wow you've picked a really fascinating topic. The use of online forums relates to Kiri Miller's Grand Theft Auto article, only this community seems to self-conciously historicize itself. It'll be interesting to see how your conceptions of chiptune history run up against theirs. People often misrepresent themselves, and especially do so online -- I wonder whether Jake's lying about his age.
ReplyDeleteSo, clearly long-term relationships are being fostered here. I wonder how many of those 16,000+ users are regular, serious users of the site and its music? And how many indulge relationships online that are reinforced in "real-life"? It seems to me that this is always a pertinent question to ask about online research: how, in what way(s), is what goes on here different than what might happen otherwise, and how important is it to the people involved that it happen online? What are the *benefits* of having it happen online? I think that it will be really challenging for you to get a deep sense of the way this community is shaped and what kinds of values structure the participation of its individual members (as opposed to those that are signaled by the statements you've found on the webpages), since your contacts with them may be random and fleeting in this environment - not to say that you can't draw some really interesting conclusions anyway, but that you have to frame them pretty carefully.
ReplyDeleteYou did say elsewhere that there is a live component to this, correct? What would be really exciting is if you could identify people who will be there or whose work will be there (at the live event, I mean), and arrange to find out about their earlier participation in this online community, and then ask them about it, observe the way that the live component interacts with the (previous) online component.