Healthy Online Communities: What Tech Can Learn from Biological Ecosystems
Lessons from biological systems we can apply when monitoring how our digital communities are doing
When was the last time we thought about the bird, rabbit, or worm population in our neighborhood? Probably safe to say, never. Day to day, most people don’t think about the buzzing and vibrant ecosystems around them. We do notice, however, when something is inconvenient for us and forces us out of our daily grind. Rat chewed through the internet cable? Okay, maybe now I’m thinking about the status of Chicago’s booming rat population. While natural ecosystems have the capability in some situations to rebound without intervention, online communities are a different ballgame. When managing an online community it’s helpful to know before things break.
Biological ecosystems and their health are a priority area of concern for many scientists and industries, from ecologists to forestry and fisheries management. With decades of research conducted on these systems, they hold insights into fields that are seemingly unrelated at first glance. But an online community is more like a forest or a body of water than we might realize. Below are a few concepts from biological research that can be applied to the way we think about online communities.
What is Ecosystem Health?
Many people might be surprised to learn that a healthy ecosystem is not judged on its ability to remain the same. In fact, disturbances (e.g., fires, storm events) and the loss of species are not necessarily negative occurrences. An ecosystem that experiences a disturbance can exist in a new stable state — meaning it may not look the same as it did before the disturbance but it is able to recover.
While slightly differing definitions exist, ecologists suggest:
“an ecological system is healthy… if it is stable and sustainable — that is, if it is active and maintains its organization and autonomy over time and is resilient to stress.”¹
Ecosystem health is important because it provides information for the sustainable use and management of natural resources. The same can be said of digital communities. The goal is to create an online community that can be self-sustaining, active, resilient to outside stress, and evolve according to the needs of the members.
How Do We Measure Biological Health & How Can We Apply These Metrics to Online Communities?
1a. Biological Systems: Ecosystem Services
Ecosystem services are the direct and indirect benefits provided by an ecosystem; benefits such as clean air and water, food production, recreation, and local climate regulation.² These services benefit the organisms in the ecosystem, including humans. For example, let’s take an oyster reef (yep, oysters grow together in clumps, forming reefs!; see photo below). The physical structure of the oyster reef provides habitat for young fish and other small animals.³ The oysters themselves filter excess nutrients and particles out of the water, improving water quality and clarity.³ Oysters are a source of seafood for people to eat. These are all services provided by the oyster reef ecosystem. If, however, humans remove too many oysters to eat, the reef no longer functions. Tipped too far, the system may not be able to recover on its own (e.g., the Chesapeake Bay oyster population collapse). Ecosystem services are an indicator of the health of the system, and their continued delivery is essential to a well functioning environment.⁴
1b. Online Community Equivalent: Identify the Purpose & Goals of the Community
Similar to ecosystem services, each online community will have a common purpose and goals, or services they provide. Online communities live within a larger ecosystem, and when they are aligned with the purpose of the organization behind it, everyone thrives. Are members’ goals to get questions answered? If so, track views, response rate, response time, and upvotes/downvotes on posts. How many unique members are contributing to discussions? To understand if the purpose of the organization is being boosted, pay attention to whether members are involved in helping with different marketing activities — from content creation and spreading the word or giving feedback. These are signs of health because now members are involved with development, coming up with new ideas for products or services, helping out with tagging content, creating tips and tricks and knowledge base content, etc. By monitoring whether the community is achieving their goals and if members are contributing to the broader purpose of the organization, a sense of how healthy the community is can be gained.
This can be taken a step further by thinking about what are the barriers to the goals? Monitor those as well. In a biological system we might think of food or nutrient availability as barriers to fulfilling ecosystem services. In a digital ecosystem, a lack of experts or access to people, information, and feedback could be barriers.
2a. Biological Systems: Species Diversity
Another way ecologists assess ecosystem health is through diversity metrics. How many different species are present (species richness) and the distribution of their abundance (species evenness) are key measurements of health. Researchers commonly use the Shannon Diversity Index or Simpson’s Diversity Index, which combine these metrics (species richness and evenness), allowing changes to be quantified over time and compared.⁵ In addition to how many species are present, what are those species (composition) provides a deeper understanding of the community structure.
2b. Online Community Equivalent: Evaluate Community Structure
Are the right players present to achieve the community’s goals? What if someone were trying to build a community for new parents, but most of the members didn’t have children? That would pose a problem. Are the roles people play in a community all accounted for? Are there members who create conversations, ask and answer questions, make jokes, challenge opinions, defend others, go off-topic, and so on? Diversity metrics facilitate the assessment of community structure; who are the players and what’s their distribution? Those relationships lend greater insight into the question of the community’s ability to achieve goals and the broader purpose. Diversity in this case could mean diversity of content, demographics of members (e.g., age, gender, education, expertise, etc.), or distribution of leadership roles.
3a. Biological Systems: Colonization & Extinction
Ecosystems change in composition over time. Species colonize a new environment and species go extinct. Populations grow and shrink. The migration of one species can create availability for new organisms to move in. Measuring how populations shift in terms of growth, reproduction, death, predation, and others, are parameters that provide useful information about the health of the ecosystem.
3b. Online Community Equivalent: Churn & Retention
Ecosystem ecology tells us a community doesn’t need to be static to remain stable. This means that new members can join a community and old members can leave without affecting how the community functions. Turnover provides fresh ideas and perspectives. Find a balance between new people and the retention of existing members that works best for the community.
An example of tracking churn and retention is shown in the following community aging chart showing contributors in Git repositories of the OpenStack Project. Tracking membership in this way is more informative than simply measuring the historical growth of a community.
Conclusions
There’s no one size fits all when choosing health indicators. Each community will need metrics that are applicable to its specific goals. Additionally, it’s important to remember the interdependence of many parameters. Changes in one area may impact another. Make sure the factors measured are able to capture the whole story. Online communities are their own ecosystems and with a little help from biology, new insights and understanding are waiting.
References
- Costanza, R. (1992). Towards an operational definition of ecosystem health. Pages 237–256 in R. Costanza, editor. Ecosystem health: new goals for environmental management. Island Press, Washington, D.C., USA.
- De Groot, R, M Wilson, and R Boumans. (2002). A Typology for the Classification Description and Valuation of Ecosystem Functions, Goods and Services. Ecological Economics. 41(3): 393–408.
- Grabowski, JH and CH Peterson. (2007). Restoring Oyster Reefs to Recover Ecosystem Services. pp 281–298. In: Ecosystem Engineers: Plants to Protists. K Cuddington, JE Byers, WG Wilson, & A Hastings (Eds). Academic Press.
- Rapport, DJ. (1995). Ecosystem services and management options as blanket indicators of ecosystem health. J Aquatic Ecosystem Health 4: 97–105.
- Morris, EK, T Caruso, F Buscot, M Fischer, C Hancock, TS Maier, et al. (2014). Choosing and using diversity indices: insights for ecological applications from the German Biodiversity Exploratories. Ecology and Evolution, 4(18), 3514–3524.
This article is part of a series on digital community health. Read our other article: The Future of Connection: Metrics for Digital Communities.
Special thanks to Vincent Boon from Standing on Giants for collaborating on both articles with us.
