TY - CONF T1 - Social Regulation in an Online Game: Uncovering the Problematics of Code T2 - Proceedings of the 16th ACM international conference on Supporting group work (GROUP’10) Y1 - 2010 A1 - Mark S. Ackerman A1 - Jack Muramatsu A1 - McDonald, David W. KW - code KW - ethnography KW - games KW - online communities KW - police KW - social computing KW - social control KW - social interaction KW - social life KW - social regulation KW - socio-technical design KW - software infrastructure KW - user study KW - virtual communities AB -

More and more interaction is becoming code-based. Indeed, in online worlds, it is all there is. If software is providing a new basis for social interaction, then changing the infrastructure of interaction may necessarily change social interaction in important ways. As such, it is critical to understand the implications of code - we want to know what the use of code means for socio-technical design. In this paper, based on an ethnographic study of an online game, we examine social regulation in an online game world as a case study of socio-technical design using code. We wanted to know how changing interaction based in code conditioned use in our site. We found that code changed social regulation in three specific ways. First, code made some user actions that were socially unwanted to be immediately visible. Second, code could prevent some actions from occurring or punish users immediately. Finally, software was not able to see all action. Some user actions were too nuanced or subtle for code to catch; others were too ambiguous to place into code. Following Agre, we argue i that a "grammar of action" resulting from the use of code limits the kinds of behaviors that can be seen and dealt with. These findings suggest that there is more than just a gap between the social world and technical capabilities. There are new possibilities, tradeoffs, and limitations that must be considered in socio-technical design, and all come simultaneously.

JF - Proceedings of the 16th ACM international conference on Supporting group work (GROUP’10) SN - 978-1-4503-0387-3 UR - Complete ER -